Spur One Another On (pt 4)
Church that gathers to one another one another for the glory of God as we live for his kingdom that is both here and approaching.
Inviting you to commit to gathering with God’s people, to recognise the drift into apathy, and change your habit. If that’s you this morning, will you share that with someone, so they can pray for you and encourage you to come along Sunday by Sunday?And it’s not just Sunday. We need to be meeting with... Continue Reading
I May Not Be the Best, But I Choose to Be My Best-Maxim # 60
If we all gave up everything we weren’t the best in, we’d end up doing nothing except being the best at giving up and quitting.
Should I have given up real estate because there may have been a few better real estate agents than me? No, I should have fulfilled the place I had, giving excellent service, along with my wife, and help the people we helped. There will always be people smarter and more talented than me. I... Continue Reading
Pastor’s Job Description
Four essential responsibilities of a shepherd.
Sheep are defenseless and vulnerable. They are not predators but prey. Therefore, they need shepherds to protect them, particularly when it comes to false teachers who prey on the flock (Acts 20:29; Eph. 4:14). These teachers make lies sound like truth; they make slavery look like freedom; they offer poison as candy. They present the pathway to... Continue Reading
Would You Attend Your Son’s Execution?
The day will come when the crosses that stand before us will be seen to have achieved God’s purpose just as much as the one that stood before her.
I can barely bring myself to picture Mary as she stood before the cross, but I love to picture Mary just a short time later. Her grief must have been intense in the day that elapsed between what we now call Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Her senses must have been overwhelmed, her body exhausted... Continue Reading
Is There Anything Else you Would Rather Do?
Virtually nothing can compare with this joy, this contentment, this pleasure, this freedom. And all of it is found in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Those who, by grace alone, have “seen” the “face” of Jesus Christ by faith, are so-enrapt by this visage that they earnestly and sincerely *want* to meet with their God every day. In fact, this fellowship with The Holy Trinity becomes *so* special to them, that nothing else can replace it/replicate it/or (even) compete with... Continue Reading
God’s Mercy Deserves Sacrifice and Worship
Give us a church wholly committed to Jesus, with nothing held back. For when you lay yourself on the altar, everything changes.
You take your ordinariness, your ‘nothing special,’ and you give it wholly to God for Him to use as He wills. There is nothing in you of value in itself, and yet you may set yourself apart and place yourself entirely in His hands. If the mercies of God are the reason we respond, what... Continue Reading
Ordinary People
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.
I have marked the words “ordinary” and “insignificant” because it is clear from the records that this is not how Jesus regarded such people. Again and again he gave them his attention. He listened to them. He helped them. Mind you, my category of powerless and low-status people is problematic. Jesus was not a social... Continue Reading
Act in Accordance with Your Prayers
We might say that one of the ways we express our confidence in God’s ability and willingness to answer our prayers is through our actions in accordance with those prayers.
In Matthew 9, Jesus was busy traveling throughout the region, teaching, preaching, and healing everyone who came to Him. Understandably, crowds followed Him everywhere, and “when he saw the crowds, he felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dejected, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matt. 9:36). That’s when Jesus gave a prayer instruction... Continue Reading
The Foot of the Table
Our Lord highlights two things for our kingdom conduct in this world.
Jesus lays out the pattern for greatness in the kingdom. “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you. Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is... Continue Reading
God’s Gift to You Is Real Life
"For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building."
This cultural moment has conditioned us to want tangible rewards. But raising children, loving our spouses, and serving our local church—none of these provide a linear view of progress or accomplishment. Yet God has promised that He is doing His eternal work in and through us (Phil. 2:12–13). The unrecognized spheres in which we serve... Continue Reading
Live Not by Lies
Individual conscience and objective truth.
We must again reckon with our consciences—with the inescapable conviction that certain things are real, and therefore universally true, regardless of how we feel about them. If they’re true for everyone, then the loving thing is to have the courage to seek them, live according to them, and call everyone to do the same, especially... Continue Reading
Waiting on God
Are you looking elsewhere? The secret of every great spiritual movement is not moving. It is setting our eyes upon Him, our hearts in a determined trust, and moving only as He directs.
We want to be noticed for what we have done, but impatient faith that is not focused on God is no faith at all. It can only yield humanistic fruit, the fruit of the flesh that Paul describes. To wait is to understand your place. To wait is to realize who the great God of... Continue Reading
The Perfect Man
His life, death, and resurrection are the only works I’m trusting in.
When He was tempted, He never faltered. He never gave in. When He was tired, and hungry, the devil came and tried to turn His head. But Christ was victorious. When He dealt with His mother and unbelieving brothers, He was without sin. When He flipped tables and cracked the whip, He never sinned. The... Continue Reading
How Do we Know That we Are Not Deceived?
"Truth of the Person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ--all revealed in and by the Holy Scriptures."
You may have asked yourself at some time: “If all the unbelieving world is deceived, how may I know that I am not?” That is a good question; and you have several very strong “pillars” to support you. Principal among them is your Christ, the One who has united your humanity to His divinity, and... Continue Reading
Precious Affections
When God creates better loves in us.
There is only one escape—to ask God to fill you with new affections, his loves. For forever joy and peace, it’s wise to nurture new and better loves in the here and now. God alone is the source of all that is true, good and beautiful, and as fallen creatures, we need his loving hands... Continue Reading
An Eleven-Year Assault on Children’s Rights and Needs
Obergefell was a disaster, but the American conscience may be starting to take notice.
At its core, the natural family recognizes that the husband of a woman who gives birth is the father of the child. Thus the presumption of paternity, which stretches back to pre-colonial times, has allowed the spouse of a woman to be listed on the child’s birth certificate, uniting children to both biological parents in... Continue Reading
The Christian Position on Race Will Offend Almost Everyone
To despise a person because of his body is to swing at the God who made it.
Racial pride insults creation and racial hatred denies the gospel. A faithful church welcomes, disciples, loves and evangelizes without sorting souls by skin. America cannot stop talking about race because America has never known how to tell the truth about it. Race, as a God-created rank of human beings, is a lie. Racism, as... Continue Reading
Principled Polytheism and the PCA
A view on the Westminster Larger Catechism Questions 108 and 109
My position is derived from understanding the reason for the change to WLC 109 and the omitting of any change whatsoever to WLC 108. In WLC 109 regarding what sins are forbidden in the second commandment, the original version (1646) said that “tolerating a false religion” is breaking the second commandment. Our American forefathers removed... Continue Reading
Men With Chests
Where there are no men, destruction comes.
The promise stands: the gates of hell cannot withstand the advance of holy, righteous, dangerous men. The only question is whether we’ll rise up and take what’s been promised, or continue sitting while everything burns around us. There is a passage in the book of Ezekiel that should make our generation shake in its... Continue Reading
Newlyweds, Tend the Garden
A good marriage doesn’t grow just because we want it to. It has to be cultivated.
The most important thing in your marriage is not your marriage. It is your relationship with God. All of your marriage flows out of your relationship with him. God doesn’t merely hand you a shovel and tell you to try harder. He teaches husbands and wives to love with a love they first received from... Continue Reading
The Hammer and the Scimitar
History shows the dangers of the alliance between socialists and Islamists.
Loving God and our neighbor means restraining evil and promoting good, not standing aside while the hammer and the scimitar take turns chipping away the Christian foundations of our society. Tuesday night, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani saw three of his preferred congressional candidates defeat establishment-backed Democrats in New York primaries. Mamdani, who... Continue Reading
The Divine Goal: Theology Leads to God (Ad Deum Ducit)
We are preparing our eyes for the blinding, beautiful light of the face of God.
We study the attributes of God now so that we will not be total strangers to His beauty when we see Him on His throne. We study the person and work of Christ now so that we can begin to learn the language of the country we are marching toward. We live in an... Continue Reading
How Did Noah Point to Christ?
In response to the curse foisted upon creation by the first Adam, one now arises who will begin the process of deliverance from this curse.
While baptism threatens with the floodwaters of judgment those who would apostatize against His covenant, it marks off Christ’s own as those who have indeed passed through the judgment waters safely in the “ark” of His own person and work. Noah stands at a watershed moment in history (2 Peter 3:5–7). In doing so,... Continue Reading
The Value of Hardship
When we are able to lose everything because we know that we get to keep Jesus, this makes God look great to the world.
Anything that hardship can take or prosperity can give pales in comparison to the One with everlasting treasures at His right hand. He is infinitely valuable. Christian suffering proves to the world that God is great. Think about it. Everyone experiences suffering. Hardships and trials mark the human race. We all experience loss, adversity,... Continue Reading
Four Problems with Believing Faith Is a Matter of Free Will
If God cannot compel our will, God has no control and cannot fulfil any of His plans.
If God is not in control of the human will, if He is not sovereign over that, we are saying that we are sovereign. Not only are we sovereign, but God is impotent. We are in control and there’s nothing God can do about it. There’s nothing He can do to change it. This is... Continue Reading
PCA Minister Paul D. Kooistra Called Home to Glory
Dr. Paul D. Kooistra, 83, has entered the presence of his Savior after a year-long battle with cancer.
On July 1, 2026, Dr. Paul D. Kooistra, 83, entered the presence of his Savior after a year-long battle with cancer. A beloved preacher and writer, Dr. Kooistra served as coordinator of Mission to the World from 1994–2014. He is remembered for his strong leadership, passion for global missions, and commitment to teaching about the... Continue Reading
Presbyterian Polity and the American Revolution
By describing the American Revolution as a “Presbyterian rebellion,” the king [George III) was closer to the truth than anyone giving credit to Thomas Paine or John Locke.
Critiques of political rulers based on Presbyterianism was nowhere more pronounced in the case of English and Scottish exiles who brought the ideals of Geneva home to their respective realms. Among the first advocates of Presbyterianism, such as Knox in Scotland and Thomas Cartwright in England, this new church government not only questioned the rule... Continue Reading
Jubilee Celebration of American Independence, July 4, 1826
“The Great American Experiment” had proven itself and the nation had a promising future.
As the nation celebrates its 250th anniversary, recall the 50th Jubilee of July 4, 1826—when Americans gathered in Washington to mark the Founders’ “Great American Experiment” as a proven success. That same day, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died within hours of each other, their passing on the Declaration’s golden anniversary seen by many as... Continue Reading
Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Generosity?
It is not good to waste the resources that God has given you by using them foolishly.
Let us give generously and seek to help our brothers and sisters in need but let us also make sure that our generosity isn’t actually harming those we’re intending to help with it. Read: 2 Thessalonians 3:6-12 Christ commands us to be generous and charitable, particularly toward our brothers and sisters in Christ (Rom.... Continue Reading
She Kept Saying, “Quality of Life”
Best quality of life is radically different for the Christian and the non-Christian—God is in one and not the other.
For you and me as Christians, the best quality of life will have as its foundation our faith in Jesus Christ as our substitute, dying for our sins on the cross, and Him as our righteousness, our only way of acceptance before God. Recently, my wife and I were on an international flight. Sitting... Continue Reading