The efforts and prayers of my week reach a fevered pitch every Sunday morning around 11:20 am. I enjoy prayers, Bible reading, and music with my spiritual siblings prior to that time; but as 11:30 approaches, my heart beats faster, my palms get sweaty, my internal prayers become more excited and often terror grips me. You would think that I…
Category: <span>church</span>
As regenerated children of God, we understand that our chief end or ultimate purpose is to glorify God and (by?) enjoying him forever. But how we do that could be described as our chief duty (or “delight” if the word “duty” carries too much baggage for you). Our chief duty then is given by Jesus when he said that the…
Many Baptist, church-going adults remember attending Sunday School as a child fondly. The quaint little classroom with the blackboard; Miss “Mumford” and her cool little flannel-graphs whose characters never seemed to face the correct way; the little offering basket where we put in our nickles and dimes; and of course, singing those short children’s songs that sought to take profound…
Tim Challies (avid blogger and Christian author) recently interviewed Dr. Russel Moore about the value of reading fiction. I have always enjoyed some fiction (historical fiction sometimes irritates me, but that is just my tastes I suppose). In this portion of the interview, Dr. Moore writes some interesting thoughts about the value of fiction for the Christian and makes some…
I realize my last two posts might have seemed somewhat heavy and critical. In this post, I have decided to link to three articles that are well worth the read. So the problem is that one of the three (the one by Albert Mohler) is pretty heavy, but he says something that is so relevant and needs to be said.…
2 Thessalonians 3:1-2 Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified, even as it is with you: And that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men: for all men have not faith. Paul sensed a great opposition to his ministry through those whom he classified as unreasonable and…
God really challenged me regarding the basics of Christian growth in my recent study of Romans 12. I have been preaching through Romans for some time now at our church, but I took some time to pause last year before jumping into Romans 12. As I have been contemplating and meditating on God’s Word. I was struck with how basic…
Of all the “respectable sins” (a term coined by the author Jerry Bridges) pride has to be one of the most pernicious and pervasive. There is not a human soul in existence today who is not troubled by this destructive attitude of heart. Arrogance, egotism, self-pity, self-aggrandizement, morbid introspection, public self-exaltation, and many more descriptions of pride characterize our daily…
Have you ever noticed that every generation speaks fondly of their youth and the culture of that youth and somehow finds a way to work into the conversation, ‘Those were the good ole’ days”? Christians are no different, we often reminisce about the church of yesteryear, romanticizing how it was so much better than it is today. Christians tend to…
As professing born-again Christians, we claim to cling to the cross of Jesus, or the gospel, as our source of deliverance from sin. But we often compartmentalize God’s deliverance/salvation thinking that the gospel saves me from the penalty of sin (eternal judgment in hell) providing me a secured future in heaven (often thought of as some kind of Christian nirvana),…