How Not To Pray: Two Correctives from Christ
It is incredibly interesting that when Jesus honored the disciples’ request, he first taught them how not to pray.
Matthew 6:8 is one of the most important verses in order to understand the Lord’s Prayer: “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” If we come to understand that our Father knows our needs before we ask him, then far from leading us away from prayer, our prayer lives will be utterly... Continue Reading
When the Church Becomes Worldly
The greatest enemy of the Western church is not the state or any ideology such as atheism, but the world and the spirit of the age.
Jesus said, ‘You will know them by their fruit.’ Just wait long enough for their ideas to ripen, and in case after case it turns out that the much-trumpeted ‘new kind of Christianity for a new world’ turns out to be the old kind of compromise and heresy. Such worldliness is inexcusable because it is... Continue Reading
Hell is Not Separation from God
The problem here is that hell, rather than God, becomes the object of fear.
Think of Jesus’ sober warning: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28). Hell is not horrible because of alleged implements of torture or its temperature. (After all, it is described variously in... Continue Reading
Rules Without Reasons: Why the Culture Is Eating Evangelicals for Lunch
What are the ultimate reasons for God’s rules and revelation?
This tendency to affirm Scriptural fiats “for whatever reason” while isolating them from the natural theology employed by the human authors of Scripture is an attempt to be—as C. S. Lewis called it—“more spiritual than God.” But it will result—and already has resulted—in dramatic concessions to the anti-Christian culture. A conservative evangelical author was... Continue Reading
Can Men And Women Be Friends?
What if the Bible has a better way for us to pursue purity and holiness through our friendships, even the coed ones?
Do you want to know more about how to be sacred siblings, about the challenges and blessings of spiritual friendship? Read her book. Aimee gives a thoroughly biblical answer to the question, “Why can’t we be friends?” Men and women can be friends but only when we remember who and whose we are, brothers and... Continue Reading
God Doesn’t Waste Words
God doesn’t waste words, but sometimes it seems like he does. The Bible contains plenty of information that seems superfluous to us, information we tend to breeze over too quickly.
Pay attention to the oddities in the Bible — and there are a lot of them. Seemingly extraneous things are not extraneous at all. What they have to say is important because God chose to include them. The odd details in John 21:1-14 are not the main points of the chapter. Nor are my observations... Continue Reading
Biblical Doctrine and Extrabiblical Terminology
That we have to borrow metaphysical language to explain the scriptural realities makes those realities no less scriptural.
And so, the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity — which is summarized by the confession that God is one, and that this one God eternally subsists in three co-equal and consubstantial persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, which persons, though distinct from one another, each fully possess the undivided divine essence — is not... Continue Reading
Undivided – An Open Letter to Vicky Beeching
Overall I found Undivided overwhelmingly depressing – here’s why.
Reading your book you come across as a lovely person who has had a horrible time. Something for which I can only feel empathy and sorrow. But that is not enough to make me overturn what the Bible says. I’m not sure why my heart – or indeed yours- should overrule the word of our... Continue Reading
When All Things Are Made New
The most difficult problem I’ve faced is the problem of suffering.
Scripture says that the end defines the significance of the beginning (Eccl. 7:8). God alone knows the end from the beginning comprehensively, but in His Word, He gives us a glimpse of the end toward which we are moving. And if we can focus our attention on the end and not merely on the now... Continue Reading
The War for Inner Peace
How Desperation Fuels Contentment
And if we expect peace in this age to always feel peaceful, we’ll rarely experience real peace — the kind that meets reality and adversity head-on. If we never feel any tension, urgency, or desperation in our peace, then we’re probably experiencing something other than true inner peace. It might feel peaceful for the moment,... Continue Reading