As prayerful reflection on the truths that we find in Psalm 17 brought divine perspective to Isaac Watts, it did so for David and for countless others Soldiers of the Cross. So let it bring optimistic hope to you in Jesus Christ our Lord. For this Psalm is about Him, anticipates Him, and follows the Gospel pattern of seeing that the things that come against us are really the things, like the Cross brought Resurrection, the things that lead us home.

The liturgy is always the starting point for considering a service. Its structure informs not only the real progression from one element of worship to the next, but it produces an atmosphere through its words and its shape. The dramatic layering of elements in the pre-Reformation Mass greatly contrasts with the one-thing-at-a-time approach of Reformed... Continue Reading

I wonder: do good churches go bad because they appoint closet liberals to the ministry? Or do they go bad because they appoint good people to the ministry who do not understand the nature and importance of confessional subscription and who will therefore, wittingly or unwittingly, help to water down the very mechanisms established by the church to preserve the gospel for the next generation?

The great Francis Schaeffer gave us a nice example on this important point. A fearless, tireless, and brilliant defender of biblical inerrancy, he said the faithful hold a "full" or "strong, uncompromising view of Scripture." He never said "literal view" because to say so is literally not true.

I wonder what would happen if America had a culture that simply taught children that doing something big for God and His Kingdom is nothing more and nothing less than loving God and neighbor.

If I am reading the current situation correctly, we often seem to be living in the past, trying to recapture the halcyon days of Calvin’s Geneva, or the Puritans, or the continental Reformed scholastics, or the Dutch Second Reformation, or the southern Presbyterians, or the Afscheiding, or whatever. Here the temptation to hagiography that avoids critical treatments or pesky discussions of historical development is great.

In a Gospel perspective, this is a healthy development. It is good that non-believers know that they are, in fact, not believers. Cultural Christianity is not Christianity, and no one will find salvation through merely identifying as Christian. The disappearance of cultural Christianity will weaken the culture, but it should strengthen the church. The church, after all, had better know the difference between authentic Christian faith and “fuzzy fidelity.”

A little dignified respect is in order, for the sake of God’s image if for nothing else. And most crucially, as we look at the fine print of some present controversy may our eyes not become so squint that we can no longer behold the wonders of being God’s children and the beauties of God’s world.

Just to be clear, this is not a post against “mom blogs”, or whatever they’re called. If you write a mom blog, that’s cool with me. This is a post to encourage the moms who tend to freak out and feel like complete failures when they read the mom blogs and mom Facebook posts.

It is often said by commentators you are the back of your baseball card. That is, you are defined by facts. The same is true of the Child of God. They are what they are according to God’s Word and not how they feel about themselves at any given moment.   I realized the other... Continue Reading