What if we stopped spending our energies and wealth primarily on what appears to be a burgeoning internal Christian consumer industry–trying to create trendy venues, diverse and entertaining special music, the best conferences with the most eloquent speakers, endless programs, classes and groups, books and dvds, and youth-fests?   A friend just passed along this... Continue Reading

This is the most egregious violation of religious liberty that I have ever seen. The United States Government is forcing these Christian business owners to pay for abortion inducing drugs in their employees’ insurance plans. It doesn’t matter that the law violates their religious liberty to conduct business in a way that is consistent with... Continue Reading

Since it appears as though God would use your blood to sign his truth, there is nothing better than for you to prepare yourself to that end, beseeching him so to subdue you to his good pleasure, that nothing may hinder you from following whithersoever he shall call.     Quotes from Tracts and Letters... Continue Reading

My concern is that Reformed folk are tempted to become the sanctification police and scope out everything that is said on the subject, analyzing it to its tiniest minutiae, as if the doctrine itself is at stake.  The Reformed tradition is not completely uniform on this doctrine (though there is a unified core belief about sanctification).... Continue Reading

“Applying the Bible” doesn’t quite get at it. That comes across to me as a bit quiet and clean. Gardening is full of grunting, sweat, dirt–and sometimes holding your nose. Read the Bible with a pitch fork, garden rake, and shovel in your hands–not with rubber gloves and tongs delicately turning over crackling pages of an ancient... Continue Reading

With apologies to triskaidekaphobiacs reading this, here are 13 trends that will impact the American church in 2013. Some are obvious, some not so obvious. The first four, became obvious in the aftermath of the 2012 national election. Triskaidekaphobia? It means the fear of 13. This being the year 2013, it’s an issue. It’s not... Continue Reading

According to some, religion isn’t merely about following rules, but it is also about becoming a good person. One is good by the deeds s/he does. But if religion is simply about acquiring goodness on account of your merits, do you really need religion? There are plenty of good people, comparatively speaking, who are agnostics,... Continue Reading

Pastors, do something this week to remind your wife how thankful you are for her in all these unseen, overlooked labors of love she does to serve you. Remember all those Sundays she stayed home with sick kids so you could preach and be grateful. That is her ministry so you can do your ministry.... Continue Reading

Spurgeon’s depression could be so debilitating that he could “weep by the hour like a child”—and not know why he was weeping. To fight this “causeless depression,” he said, was like fighting mist. It was a “shapeless, undefinable, yet all-beclouding hopelessness.” Even though Charles Spurgeon lived about two hundred years after John Bunyan, I think... Continue Reading

First, many of the books of the Bible are stories. They are meant to be read as stories, and you understand them better if you read them that way. Others, such as Paul’s letters, are not stories, but if you read one of them in one sitting, you get a good sense of the overall... Continue Reading