Category: CHRISTIAN LIFE
How to Avoid Being a Theological Ignoramus
J.I. Packer tells a personal story about his freshman year in college (see Bruce Milne, Know the Truth, IVP, 1998, p. 9). The chaplain at his school took some of the students on “pastoral walks.” Packer was on one of those strolls and said of the...
Loving What is Beautiful
We were made for beauty. Our concept of beauty will vary, distorted by what theologians call “the Fall.” That is a way of speaking of the evil present within us permeating all aspects of our person. This causes one woman to long for an illicit affair...
Shelved or Serving in the Latter Years?
Can you do much for God and his kingdom when you get old? God thinks so. He has used many older people to accomplish valuable kingdom work, recorded colorfully in both the Bible and Christian history. Take Moses. He was 40 when he killed an Egyptian...
Eat This, Not That: Feasting on the Scriptures Privately for Effective Ministry Publicly
We live life in two basic realms — private and public. Who we are in one sphere influences the other. This idea comes out in Paul’s words to Timothy, “If you put these things before the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus,...
If Many Die at Once: A Brockton Dialogue
A Brockton Dialogue The older, wiser Mr. Brockton: When scores of people lose their lives at one time, it isn’t alarming, but it is tragic. The younger disciple, James: How is it possible not to be alarmed if 5000 die in an earthquake or 10,000 in...
Should We Still be Devoted to the Public Reading of Scripture?
Is the Bible read much at your church’s meetings? Should it be? At the beginning of 1 Timothy 4, Paul says the false teachers in Ephesus were “devoting themselves to . . . teachings of demons” (v. 1). Later in the chapter, he charges Timothy: “Until...
My Gains Eaten Away
In Earnest Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea, the superstitious old man on his dilapidated skiff had no luck catching any big fish for a long time, but this day as he allowed the wind to carry him out much further than before, and after nearly...
The Cat, Witty
I’m lazily reading James Herriot’s tribute to cats called Cat Stories, illustrated by Lesley Holmes (the illustrations are as satisfying as the stories). Herriot has an attractive and thoughtful manner of relating his veterinarian stories, as some of you will know. Herriot’s book allows me to...
God’s Way, Not Ours: Kingdom Advance Out of Something Awful
The story of the death of the first martyr of the early church, Stephen, is both ugly and spectacular (see Acts 7:54-60). The ugliness of Stephen’s murderers is found in such phrases as these: “they were enraged” (v. 54); “they ground their teeth at him” (v....
Faint, but Pursuing
The name “Gideon” means “hewer” or “one who cuts down”. It carries with it connotations of strength, one who fells great trees, strikes down enemies, and topples mighty opponents. When the angel of the Lord once greeted a man named Gideon, he did so appropriately for...
