Wear Down Worship
If these fools cannot be kept away from gathering, they can surely be led to worship half-heartedly.
We have had great success in the last few decades in corrupting some church leaders in their otherwise good motivations to make their assemblies more accessible, exciting, and entertaining. In this way, the worshipers have been made to think that they are there to be an audience rather than to worship the Enemy. There... Continue Reading
Sage Counsel On Growing Useful As You Grow Older
Archibald Alexander’s motto for the elderly: “Endeavor of to be useful, as long as you are continued upon earth.”
What you need is a purpose to help you instead of petrifying your soul. Alexander’s motto for the elderly was “Endeavor of to be useful, as long as you are continued upon earth.” Sounding almost like a twenty-first century counselor, he suggests “imbecility and dotage are also prevented or postponed, or mitigated, by constant exercise... Continue Reading
God Does Not Need You…and That’s Good News!
What good news it is, then, that the gospel depends on a God who does not depend on us.
God is incommensurable, incapable of being measured by the same standards of our human existence. Unlike everything in this world, his existence is not grounded in, derived from, or contingent on something or someone else. No one brought him into being, nor is he dependent on something or someone else to continue being. What... Continue Reading
Yes, the Social Justice Movement Is a Threat to Evangelicals
There is enough evidence of influence from godless ideologies on evangelical teachers and entities to warrant concern.
Godless ideologies are running rampant in our culture. They are also making inroads into some of our evangelical churches and institutions. If we do not open our eyes and address it, it will get worse. Failure to recognize this is naïveté in the extreme. Recognizing it and failing to address it is dereliction of duty.... Continue Reading
Why the PCA Should Vote to Amend BCO 42-4 and BCO 43-3
Presbyteries urged to vote to amend BCO 42-4 and BCO 43-3.
The reason we need to adopt this proposed BCO amendment has to do with two different notifications that are ambiguously discussed in these sections of the BCO. Without clarification, these sections seems to state that the notices of appeals or complaints may be sent by e-mail or facsimile. In fact, this is not authorized in... Continue Reading
The Fear-Driven Life
Lessons from Genesis 12 on God's Most Frequent Command
The fear-driven life is self-centered. It doesn’t see the union we have in Christ, and therefore the perfect security we have in God. It sees only what it stands to lose—not what it has already gained! Do you know what the most frequent command in the Bible is? It’s not “love one another.” It’s... Continue Reading
My Only Comfort
When you stare death in the face, that is when you remember the power of the resurrection.
When you look death right in the face, when your loved ones go through trials like this one, you learn to say things like this: What is thy only comfort in life and in death? That I, with body and soul, both in life and in death, am not my own but belong to my... Continue Reading
Duke University Rejects Young Life Group Over Christian Beliefs
The reason: Young Life's stance on sexuality.
The decision at Duke is not the first time Christian groups have been sidelined on college campuses because they ran afoul of some so-called non-discrimination rule they must follow in order to have the same benefits as other groups. The Duke University Student Government Senate has voted unanimously to reject the Christian group, Young... Continue Reading
God’s Word Working Through God’s Spirit
“God’s Word, working through God’s Spirit, is God’s primary instrument for growing God’s church.”
God has always worked through the preaching of his Word in the power of the Spirit. The book of Acts should be enough to convince me. Take the connection that Luke makes between the focus of the apostles on the Word and prayer, and the results: “‘But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to... Continue Reading
Who’s Afraid of Religious Reasoning?
If people fear what they don’t understand, then one of the most feared things today is religious liberty.
Rather than suppose that mutual respect requires we hunker down and leave each other’s beliefs unexamined, Americans must continue to value a rigorous, sometimes uncomfortable exchange of ideas. Contrary to elite opinion, traditional Christians can hold their own giving reasons in the public square. Rather than letting personal and religious reasons rust from lack of... Continue Reading
The Arizona Supreme Court Strikes a Powerful Blow for Free Speech and Religious Freedom
The Arizona Supreme Court rule that Christian calligraphers and painters Joanna Duka and Breanna Koski could not be compelled to use their artistic talents to help celebrate same-sex weddings.
The court stated: “Ultimately, the City’s analysis is based on the flawed assumption that Plaintiffs’ custom wedding invitations are fungible products, like a hamburger or a pair of shoes. They are not. Plaintiffs do not sell “identical” invitations to anyone; every custom invitation is different and unique. For each invitation, Duka and Koski create different... Continue Reading
The Return of the Celebrity Pastor
Mark Driscoll is back.
Driscoll is not an abusive husband, but he is an abusive spiritual teacher – one who seems to keep repeating the same mistakes. For the many young (and not so young) men who have benefited from his ministry in the past – we feel the pain, but we must not be sucked into his orbit... Continue Reading
A Question of Image(s)
Larger Catechism 109 on the second commandment: not “making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image….”
We are to rely on the means of grace to portray Jesus as both God and man, not the skill of an artist. Furthermore, we do well to remember that there is a special warning in the second commandment. If we love our neighbors, we ought to warn them of how God views images, not... Continue Reading
In Australia Presbyterians and Reformed Churches Move Closer
Two Australian churches – the Presbyterian Church of Australia (PCA) and the Christian Reformed Churches of Australia (CRCA) have signed an agreement to work more closely together.
This agreement can be seen as a long-delayed response to the Presbyterians who decided not to enter the union that produced the Uniting Church in 1977. That led to the re-emergence of the Presbyterians as a more conservative church. The CRCA was founded by Dutch migrants in 1951. They had no desire to form a... Continue Reading
Mass Murderers and Public Execution in the Bible
While there is no cure for mass murders in this imperfect world, there is clearly a deterrent mandated in the Bible.
No, we don’t need more political speeches. We don’t need more legislation. We don’t need the confiscation of guns. We don’t need the hubris of the State seeking to replace the wisdom of God. We need a church to fulfill her responsibility of informing the civil magistrate of his duty. We need preachers willing to... Continue Reading
1619, Slavery, the Founding, and All That
Everything evil we now call “racist,” whether the thing is actually racist or not.
The New York Times, from any proper and true understanding of history as well as of racism, has just presented us with de facto racist history, a history based solely on race and racism. Additionally, The New York Times claiming any originality in this observation is simply ridiculous; racism has been the cry of the Left since the... Continue Reading
No Greater Place
Devotional Thoughts from Psalm 84
Charles Spurgeon introduced his thoughts on the psalm in this way: “If the twenty-third be the most popular, the one-hundred- and-third the most joyful, the one-hundred-and-nineteenth the most deeply experimental, the fifty-first the most plaintive, this is one of the most sweet of the Psalms of peace” (from The Treasury of David). Psalm 84... Continue Reading
Little Greek Gems: Confidence in Prayer–Ephesians 1:18
Is Paul praying for the Ephesian believers that the “eyes of their hearts” would be opened for the purpose that might be able to understand OR is he praying confidently for something, knowing that the eyes of their hearts have already been enlightened? I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be... Continue Reading
Book Review: “Beyond Authority and Submission,” by Rachel Green Miller
It is evident that Mrs. Miller defines men and women as substantially equivalent and that the “co-laboring” she sees in Scripture is a partnership of ontological equals.
Because Mrs. Miller has neglected to deal with the relevant ontology, the thesis of her book is unproven and hence fails. However much we may agree on the equality of men and women as images of God, as fallen, and as redeemed in Christ, that does not remove the stubborn reality of ontological differences. At... Continue Reading
The Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting
That has been the consistent teaching of Christianity for the past two thousand years—but somehow we’ve lost sight of it.
Because you will die, you need this hope. We may not think we need this hope now when we’re relatively healthy. But remember: one day you will die. Christianity prepares you for this day and gives you hope even when you face your greatest enemy, which is death. Earlier this year I attended the... Continue Reading
New Hearts for God’s New Covenant People
God will work his law into the hearts of his new covenant people.
When it comes to salvation, what we are hoping and pleading for is for God to change our hearts. When it comes to evangelism, we pray that God would do his sovereign heart-transplanting work in those around us. Then, give him the glory for it all. Redemptive history is an amazing thing. You can... Continue Reading
Were the Earliest Christians Only Concerned about Oral Tradition?
Early Christianity was a religion of textuality, even if most its adherents were illiterate.
There’s little doubt that oral tradition still played a role in the second century and beyond. But, the evidence suggests that there’s little reason to prefer oral tradition as the default, catch-all explanation for the Gospel tradition in the Apostolic Fathers. Over the last number of years, I’ve had the opportunity to spend a... Continue Reading
A Reformed Ministry—And Some Practical Problems
There are no pat answers.
Is it possible that we are treating some things as being of the essence of the faith, when in fact they are only inherited from a past century, or are part and parcel of the twentieth-century middle-class culture? Are we in fact defending and propagating practices that can be dispensed with, without any compromise of... Continue Reading
Divine Aseity and Christian Apologetics
Why God's self-existence matters for defending the faith.
Apparently, we depend on God in every possible way, not just as physical life requires. We cannot hold the simplest thought together without God. We cannot value rightly without God. We cannot see anything as really beautiful apart from his light shining into our hearts and minds. Break free? Of God? Let us rather rejoice in... Continue Reading
What Makes Food Different from Sexual Immorality? (1 Cor. 6:13)
What we eat is inconsequential, but that sexual immorality carries with it the most serious consequences possible.
Among the Seven Deadly Sins as formulated by medieval Christians, the deadly sin of Gluttony was always linked closely with the deadly sin of Lust and sexual immorality (Willimon, Sinning Like a Christian, 133). The fourth-century desert monk Evagrius of Pontus famously called gluttony the “mother of lust.” Even after the Reformation, the Westminster Larger Catechism includes gluttony... Continue Reading
Drew Brees Criticized for Promoting Focus on the Family’s Bring Your Bible to School Day
Bring Your Bible to School Day was launched in 2014 by Focus on the Family to encourage students to “celebrate religious freedom and share God’s love with their friends.”
In the 22-second video titled “Shout Out From Drew Brees,” the 12-time pro-bowler encouraged kids to take part in the national Bible movement. Brees tells the audience that one of his favorite verses in the Bible is 2 Corinthians 5:7, which states “For we live by faith not by sight.” New Orleans Saints star quarterback... Continue Reading
Devotional Minimalism
What you need to realize is that your relationship with Jesus Christ is not just one more priority you need to work on—it is your very identity.
Soccer practice and work commitments are part of life, but they are not life. God is. Your goal is not to survive or thrive in society. Your goal is to glorify God. And yes, society is an arena for that, but when it edges Jesus out of your schedule, you are missing the point of... Continue Reading
Two Christologies & Liberation Theology (Part 1)
With the rise and fall of kingdoms and countries and their respective impact and effects on people groups across the globe, the questions regarding Christ prevail, especially in regard to how people view themselves in relation to God and how they worship.
Christology answers the questions, “who is Jesus” and “how are we supposed to respond to what we know?” Christianity is built on the person and work of Christ, which includes pre and post incarnation, as well as the incarnation itself. One cannot understand the totality of Christianity outside of having a solid grasp of who... Continue Reading
Shepherd the Flock of God That Is Among You
I’m speaking for the kind of joy that comes from knowing God has called you to a particular flock, and being grateful for that incredible privilege, knowing it’s more than you deserve.
“The flock that is among you.” What an amazing phrase. Not some other flock somewhere else. Not the masses on social media. Not those who would be part of a platform. These people, this flock, matters. They need all of our attention and love. They are the ones to whom God has called you. Out... Continue Reading
What Do We Do With All The Pieces?
How does my faith respond when the echo chamber that I was part of ugly explodes?
God is doing something good here. It’s good for me to doubt a faith whose hope was tethered more to Reformed Evangelicalism than to Jesus Christ. It’s good for us that our echo chamber has blown up. But what do we do with all the pieces? In his book, In Two Minds, Os Guinness quotes John... Continue Reading
