Why Should I Go to Church?
When we meet together on the Lord’s Day with our brothers and sisters, it is a foretaste of that great day.
When you come to church, you receive blessings from the Lord that you cannot get anywhere else. God has promised that as His church gathers together, He will bless them in a way that is distinct from when they are on their own. Jesus promises that when two or three are gathered in His name, He... Continue Reading
Who Created God? Two Answers and an Application
He always existed. He’ll exist forever.
We’ll never understand fully God here, on earth. In fact, being finite we won’t fully comprehend God then, in glory. The reasons are simple: God is spirit (John 4:24); His thoughts aren’t ours (Isaiah 55:8); We’re are finite, with a beginning and an end, thus our minds are limited (Deuteronomy 29:29). As those whom God created,... Continue Reading
Meet My Friend: Father, Son and Holy Spirit
"Friendship with God" by Mike McKinley
McKinley is an engaging narrator who is conscious he’s standing on the shoulder of a giant. He’s crafted a book that is faithful, revitalising and, thankfully, trimmed of Ye Olde English. Occasionally, his preacher’s socks are showing when he drifts into overly formulaic three- and four-point chapters, but sometimes we all need little steps before... Continue Reading
Cultivating Godly Desires
The living Lord calls us to actively craft new desires.
As we delight ourselves in the Lord, He reshapes the desires of our wandering hearts. As we seek Him, our appetites will be transformed, and our disordered longings will be replaced by cravings for Christ’s supremacy. The very dreams we once directed toward earthly idols get mercifully re-centered on the only reality that can truly... Continue Reading
One Flock
Jesus had told them that they were to preach the good news to all creation.
Praise God for His expansive vision of the covenant of grace. Praise God there is one hope, one faith, one baptism, one Lord and Savior of all – Jesus Christ. There is one flock and one shepherd. One pasture and one Pastor. The gospel is highly offensive but broadly applicable to all people everywhere. And... Continue Reading
Beloved of God
Popular culture and biblical truth.
The crisis in the world over father-absence and mother-absence seems to be getting worse – certainly in the West. More and more wounded children simply grow up to become wounded, angry, dysfunctional and embittered adults. They desperately long to know and experience real love and acceptance. While most humans – including too many parents even –... Continue Reading
How the World Met C.S. Lewis
“Made for another world” but helping believers and skeptics alike understand Christian hope for the past 80 years.
Lewis lived in a time and place in desperate need of hope. He offered that hope by articulating the truths of the Christian worldview. Lewis did not bring novelty to the people of Britain during the war. He simply brought the truth and communicated it in a way that could be understood and applied. ... Continue Reading
Magnificent Messiah
The Lord Jesus Christ, having made purification for sins, has sat down at the right hand of the Father in the majestic heights.
He reigns, for us, at the right hand of God; He dwells forever in the Heavenly Zion-Sanctuary; He is King and God over those celestial courts which He has purified by His blood. Relish the height of the Mount “not beclouded in smoke” but “happily drenched in the eternally-efficacious blood of the crucified, risen, exalted,... Continue Reading
When Elders Disagree
A Pathway for Pastoral Conflicts
Throughout the whole process, seek to extend grace to the fellow elders that God has designed to lead his church. A plurality of elders is a precious gift of God. Where one elder might be quick, bold, or decisive, others balance him out with gentleness, discernment, thoughtfulness, and pastoral care. And where some elders may... Continue Reading
Matthew Henry, A Method for Prayer
Matthew Henry points out, prayer needs to made for the world in general.
Henry’s book is a fine work, however, as wonderful as the book is, the Alliance has done a great service by taking Method and putting it in form for daily prayers. The free subscription provides a daily prayer addressing any of a variety of subjects with their lengths running to three or four hundred words. For more... Continue Reading
Discipleship in the Family
We have hearts, spiritual centers of our being, from which our behaviors flow.
The Bible also teaches that our hearts are born in corruption (Ps. 51:5; Rom. 5:12), thus the members of the family—both parents and children—ultimately need to have their problems solved from the inside out. That brings parents back to the Great Commission. The fundamental need of discipleship is a new heart cleansed from sin. Only Christ can... Continue Reading
Examples Of Victorious Death
History is full of tens of thousands of saints who have died victoriously in Jesus with great joy, despite the affliction death brought.
Scotsman, David Dickson (c. 1583–1662), well-known for writing the first commentary on the Westminster Confession of Faith and for his commentaries on the Psalms, Matthew, and Hebrews. When his friends were gathered around his deathbed, one of them asked him when in the throes of a painful death what he was thinking. Dickson replied, “I... Continue Reading
“Be Doers of My Preference”
It is scary how simple it is for the devil, not to change the Bible, but to twist it (2 Peter 3:16).
Somehow (I still wonder how He did it), God pulled me out of this prideful place, and made me see that I was pushing my preferences and not God’s Word. I actually didn’t change my mind about much of what I thought, I just changed the way that I spoke and thought about it. Now,... Continue Reading
Preparing for Death Every Sunday
The Lord’s Day is God’s gift and preparation for our eternal destiny.
You do not have to fear standing before God in judgment if you have made a practice of confessing your sins and standing before the judgment seat of Christ every Lord’s Day: hearing his pardon, receiving his absolution, and being comforted by the knowledge of his love and grace. You will not be idolatrously wed... Continue Reading
A Presbyterian’s Confession: “The Rainy Sabbath” (1825)
This letter offers thoughtful readers one of the best little windows into the mindset of early nineteenth-century reformed believers regarding the Lord’s Day.
You may well suppose, then, Mr Editor, that the Sabbath is a valued and honoured day in my family; and that the invitation “let us go up together to the house of God,” is heard with gladness, and joyfully accepted. Sometimes, however, the Sabbath is a rainy day!—To be sure, I do not suffer a... Continue Reading
Encounters with Jesus in the Ashes
Jesus sought you, saved you, and he is changing you day by day.
When Jesus plucks us out of our own ashes, he doesn’t expect perfection—he has already attained that on our behalf (2 Cor. 5:21). We have died with Christ, and he will raise us to life. He has purchased our right-standing with God. Still, he does want to change us, little by little, to love sin... Continue Reading
Train Yourself for Godliness
Reflecting on Paul’s Words in 1 Timothy 4:7–8
The pursuit of godliness requires focus, sacrifice, commitment, and endurance. Paul knows that training is a perfect metaphor for Christian obedience—training “for godliness” (1 Tim. 4:7b). This kind of training has value for the present life and the life to come. In other words, there is an all-compassing value to this pursuit. Don’t you want to... Continue Reading
God Made Us Male and Female- Why We Cannot Change Our Gender
Submitting to God’s created pattern for humanity is a part of our response of faith to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
God doesn’t need to conform to our feelings, or our biological ability to mutilate our bodies. God has made and declared what is good. It is good for men to be manly, and good for women to be womanly. Each culture WILL look slightly different, but that doesn’t change the created order of God, and... Continue Reading
About That One Barth Quote
Disregard for a Manmade Method of Theological Inquiry Is Not Indicative of a Bad Character
Guess who is marked out as a false prophet by such criteria. Karl Barth. For that man maintained a lifelong, impenitent, and fairly public affair with his research assistant, Charlotte von Kirschbaum, in which he both refused to repent when confronted by his mother and forced his wife (who knew about the affair) to accept... Continue Reading
It’s Just a Distraction
The devil loves to get us talking about good things, so long as we are not sharing the best thing.
Be aware of the schemes of the devil and avoid being distracted from the main thing. When we go to share Christ, let’s actually share Christ! We need to tell folks about sin, and righteousness, and the coming judgement. People need to hear about their great need, and they need to hear that God in... Continue Reading
Why Mixing Up Social Justice and Biblical Justice Matters
One of the crucial errors at the heart of this new social justice framework is a redefinition of sin.
Many Christians in the West recognise that they have received blessings that others have not. We have education, wealth, and opportunities that many around our world do not. Social justice advocates want us to feel guilty about this and to see it as a privilege for which we should automatically feel ashamed. If we allow... Continue Reading
Deep Mirth and Mourning
How many tragedies go unmourned and unhonored by the church because of our loss of the capacity for sorrow?
“How can it be right to laugh when there is so much to grieve?” This is more of a question of context. We clearly must weep, just as we clearly must laugh. There are times for both, as Ecclesiastes says, but what are the proper times? Weeping should not be self-focused, but for others; laughter... Continue Reading
Lies that Paralyze: Weaponizing Pleasant Words
Lies that Live- Part 10
Many more pleasant, but false words seep into our culture. One way to be inoculated against them is to focus on what’s true, good, and beautiful. Or, as the author of Hebrews put it: But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from... Continue Reading
Hypocrisy and God’s Reputation
The Word teaches us that it honors Him when we confess our sin and sinfulness.
Our pride convinces us that God needs us to hide our sins, so as to not to bring shame upon Him. But He calls us to bring it out into the light, denounce it, be ashamed of it so that by His mercy our shame might be turned into the uplifted face of those who... Continue Reading
The Battle for Grace Alone
Augustine argued that the very cooperation with grace was the effect of God’s empowering the sinner to that cooperation.
The operative word in Augustine’s view is that regenerating grace is monergistic. It is the work of God alone. Pelagius rejected the doctrine of monergistic grace and replaces it with a view of synergism, which involves a work of cooperation between God and man. The early part of the fifth century witnessed a serious controversy... Continue Reading
Salvation Out, Self-Help In
We no longer believe in sin, so we no longer believe in a saviour.
Discussing the “saccharin-like” preaching of Joel Osteen, Wells says this of the kind of God he presents: “The dominant view, even among evangelical teenagers, is that God made everything and established a moral order, but he does not intervene. Actually, for most he is not even Trinitarian, and the incarnation and resurrection of Christ play... Continue Reading
Nourished on the Words of the Faith
Returning to the Church's true source of strength and vitality.
If God says sound doctrine is good for us, then that’s the way it is. If He says meditating upon His law day and night is what makes a man prosper and mature (Ps. 1:3), then that’s simply what we’ve got to do. It matters very little if our flesh objects otherwise. God’s Word sets... Continue Reading
Praising God During the Wait
Three Things We Can do During the Waiting Period
Praying comes last after we Seek God and Praise God. Praying comes as a result of seeking God by His Word, and Praising God for who He is and what He has done. We come to God through words after we have already heard His Word and praised Him despite our circumstances. Our seeking is... Continue Reading
Isolationism: A Historic and Christian Take
Isolationism is the belief that a country should avoid involvement in other nations’ military, economic, and political policies. How should Christians think about national foreign policy?
The Scriptures are clear that governments act per the will of God (Romans 13:1, Colossians 1:16). The U.S. prides itself on democracy, independence, and freedom for all. America is not perfect; it fought its own battle with slavery and civil rights. However, the founding ideals and principles have maintained prominence in American culture and have... Continue Reading
Knowing God According to His Self-Revelation
Swinnock focuses the gaze of his readers on the incomparable greatness of God, who “is boundless in His duration, perfections, attributes, and being.”
In the course of his book, Swinnock considered at least sixteen specific attributes of God. He defined God’s attributes as “those perfections in the divine nature which are ascribed to Him so that we can better understand Him. They are called attributes because they are attributed to Him for our sake, even though they are not in... Continue Reading