February 2012
6 posts
Internalizing the Word
The challenge had been laid down. My dad said he wanted us to memorize one hundred verses over the year. I was 11. One hundred verses seemed daunting, and I wondered how I’d ever do it. But since our church was celebrating 100 years, part of the challenge to the congregation was to take in and memorize 100 verses.
One of the great privileges of growing up in a Christian home was the...
Great quotes from Luther's Commentary on Galatians
The world bears the Gospel a grudge because the Gospel condemns the religious wisdom of the world. Jealous for its own religious views, the world in turn charges the Gospel with being a subversive and licentious doctrine, offensive to God and man, a doctrine to be persecuted as the worst plague on earth. As a result we have this paradoxical situation: The Gospel supplies the world with the...
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The Essentials of Christianity
Being a Christian doesn’t only mean that you subscribe to a certain set of doctrines. There are other equally important things that must be true. Jonathan Edwards explains.
It is essential to Christianity
that we repent of our sins,
that we be convinced of our own sinfulness,
that we are sensible we have justly exposed ourselves to God’s wrath,
that our hearts do renounce all sin,
that we...
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The Grace of Adoption
From Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity:
“We have enough in us to move God to correct us, but nothing to move him to adopt us, therefore exalt free grace, begin the work of angels here; bless him with your praises who hath blessed you in making you his sons and daughters.”
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Me Worship?
There’s nothing quite like taking a child through the check-out line at the grocery store. After spending a long time walking along or sitting in the shopping cart, marketers know that a well-placed chocolate bar, pack of gum, or a colourful candy wrapper will grab the child’s attention as they wait for the clerk to scan each item. And that eye-catching item becomes more than...
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Patience in Controversy
John Newton:
“In controversy, commend your opponent by earnest prayer to the Lord’s blessing. If a believer, deal gently with him for Christ’s sake. The Lord loves him and bears with him; therefore, you must not despise him or treat him harshly. The Lord bears with you and expects you to show tenderness from a sense of the much forgiveness you need yourself. Soon you will meet...
January 2012
11 posts
2 tags
The Dangerous Side of Being an Encourager
People like Barnabas are always needed in the church. They are peacemakers, the go-betweens who seek no glory for themselves but only seek to bring out the best in others. But “would-be” Barnabases of today need to hear a further lesson from this outstanding biblical figure. Barnabases want everyone to be happy, but sometimes it simply is not possible to please everyone without serious...
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The Anti-Trinitarian, Anti-Gospel,...
Russell Moore:
Pornography is a universal temptation precisely because it does exactly what the satanic powers wish to do. It lashes out at the Trinitarian nature of reality, a loving communion of persons, replacing it with a masturbatory Unitarianism.
And pornography strikes out against the picture of Christ and his church by disrupting the one-flesh union, leaving couples like our ...
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Moral Relativism and the Ability to Drawing Lines
Last week for his Breakpoint program, Chuck Colson told about the recent experience of a member of our church, Dr. Stephen Anderson, who teaches philosophy at A.B. Lucas Secondary School in London, Ontario. His students had just finished a unit on metaphysics and were about to start one on ethics. Colson writes about Anderson’s plan for getting the conversation about ethics going. To jump...
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God's Empowering Presence
There’s something freeing about a fresh start. We hope that a new year, a new job, a new town, or school will make things work out differently. We’ll have a different routine, work harder, get better grades, have better relationships, improved eating, sleeping, and exercising.
But it only takes a short while to realize that old patterns have resurfaced. The laziness that affected us last year...
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Preparing for Sunday
“In the name of God, brethren, labor to awaken your own hearts, before you go to the pulpit, that you may be fit to awaken the hearts of sinners. Remember they must be awakened or damned, and … a sleepy preacher will hardly awaken drowsy sinners. Though you give the holy things of God the highest praise in words, yet, if you do it coldly, you will seem by your manner to unsay...
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Trusting God in Adversity
“It would be a very sharp and trying experience to me to think that I have an affliction which God never sent me, that the bitter cup was never filled by his hand, that my trials were never measured out by him, nor sent to me by his arrangement of their weight and quantity”
- Charles Spurgeon, as quoted in Darrel W. Amundsen, “The Anguish and Agonies of Charles...
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Crucifying the Technological Interrupter in Me
I was standing in line at the store, talking on my cell phone, when it was my turn to complete my transaction at the till. I had a moment of awkwardness - what do I do? Keep talking? Hang up? Ask the person to hold on for a minute?
Technology - especially smart phones - have created an interesting social experience out in public. The most important person often becomes the person who is...
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Crucifying The Interrupter in Me
You’ve done it. I’ve done it. Someone starts talking and you’re ready to finish their sentence. You’ve heard it before. Maybe it’s subconscious. Maybe it’s intentional. Maybe it’s a pattern that’s developed because of thoughtlessness.
Interrupting is an incredible form of pride. Interrupting says, “I know what you’regoing to...
3 tags
The Fuel of Marriage - Keller
Tim Keller on how satisfaction with Jesus fuels marriage:
The simple fact is that only if I love Jesus more than my wife will i be able to serve her needs ahead of my own. Only if my emotional tank is filled with love from God will I be able to be patient, faithful, tender, and open with my wife when things are not going well in life or in the relationship. And the more joy I get from my...
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Great Reads in 2011
Nothing stimulates the mind like a couple of good books. In 2011, four books stand out:
1. The Meaning of Marriage by Tim and Kathy Keller. Keller examines Ephesians 5 and shows how the biblical view of marriage gives us the power, mission, and fortitude for a strong marriage. Deconstructing the cultural ideals, the Kellers show that God’s design for marriage is grounded in the good...
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Cruciformity - Shaped by the Cross
Cruciformity. It’s a strange word. When something is cruciform, it’s in the shape of the cross.
In many places, church buildings are designed in the shape of a cross. In the dark ages, soldiers had their swords shaped like a cross to remind them who they fought for. And for Christians throughout the ages, the cross became the definitive symbol woven into fabric, imprinted on...