When It’s Okay to Think About Your Week During Worship
The real issue is that there are good distractions and bad distractions.
We’ve all heard and maybe prayed prayers requesting that our minds not be distracted in worship. I’ve often wondered what people think the answer to this prayer might look like. Are we asking to pull the plug of the worshipper’s mind, so that everything about life is drained out except for a special group of... Continue Reading
What is a Weekend?
Sabbath observance is eroding
The meaning of weekend has changed since Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defined it as “often a time during which business is suspended and most shops are closed,” and since the Puritans adopted blue laws to prohibit commercial activity on Sundays. Sabbath observance is eroding. In general, our culture does not support the biblical view... Continue Reading
Christians Don’t Have ‘the Right to Be Stupid’
Religious freedom is no joking matter.
Christians who continue to face persecution around the world often look to American Christians to continue to uphold religious freedom and set a standard. Coptic Christians in Egypt have told me that one of their greatest fears is that someday America will no longer be a place where Christians can express and live out their... Continue Reading
Battling Sinful Sarcasm
Brothers and sisters, let's not sarcastically banter our way out of relationships with one another
Let’s call a spade a spade: sarcasm often gives us license to be lightheartedly hateful. Only I can look inside my heart and determine when I’m honoring God with my sense of humor and when I’m grieving his name. When my sarcasm condemns, judges, shames, or isolates God’s image-bearers, I sin against God’s cherished craftsmanship.... Continue Reading
The Power of the Flying Pink Elephant
The "Power of Positive Thinking" vs. faith in the God who saves
It’s knowing who Christ was, what He did on the cross, and what He still does for us to this day that strengthens the believer for every task. For Peale’s salesmen, and Edwards, these kinds of biblical verses seemed to be more like a mantra, a self-assuring, almost self-hypnotizing sense that a higher power was... Continue Reading
Stupidity of Bitterness
Indulging in bitterness is one of the most stupid things we ever do.
All too often, rather than turning to God for grace to respond to the wrong with wisdom and forgiveness, we choose to indulge bitterness. We keep thinking about that wrong. We play it like a video in our mind over and over. We stab ourselves with the sharp memory of the incident, feeling the pain... Continue Reading
Words Can Be Slippery Things
It’s not enough just to use the right words, you also have to be holding to the correct understanding of those words.
People will insist that they believe that Adam and Eve were real historical people, that they were the first human beings, created in the image of God. It sounds orthodox on the surface. But we need to dig deeper: what do you mean by human being? Was Adam ever a baby nestled at his mother’s... Continue Reading
A Warped Worldview: Another Moral Effect of Pornography
The link between pornography and changing attitudes towards same-sex marriage
Put bluntly, our worldview is shaped by what we allow to enter our minds. Given the massive psychological and physiological effects of pornography on male users, we should hardly be surprised that exposure to porn is so closely associated with the development of a generally permissive sexual morality and, specifically, with increased support for same-sex... Continue Reading
What About Those Who Have Never Heard?
Jesus is the only way of salvation
One of the difficulties people have with Christianity’s claim to be the only road to heaven, “the scandal of particularity,” as it has been called, concerns those who have never heard the name of Jesus. “What about the person in the Muslim world who was never taught of Jesus? What about the poor soul in... Continue Reading
Your Heart Matters More Than Your History
We mustn’t think the ways things were have determined the way things are
There’s no doubt that where we’ve been has an effect on who we are. Sanctified common sense tells us not to ignore the past. But the post hoc fallacy warns us against giving too much power to the past. According to the Scriptures, the most important stuff in life flows inexorably from the human heart,... Continue Reading
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