Keep watch on your heart and fan the flames of personal devotion to Christ. Abundantly use the ordinary means of grace. Instead of relying on the intensity of the revival, turn again and again to Bible reading, prayer, self-examination and confession, death to self-interest, a joyful focus on the cross, faithful evangelism, service, and eager... Continue Reading

My depression is a thing that exists. Therefore, God is using it to conform me more to the image of Christ, to conform believers around me more to the image of Christ, to potentially bring other elect members of the kingdom to the point of faith so that they become more like Jesus, and in... Continue Reading

Concerning full preterism I cannot help but see it as eschatological heresy. Obviously it robs the Church of her Blessed Hope. But more than this, it radically undermines her confidence in the perspicuity of Scripture, thereby discouraging us from turning at all to the life-giving streams of the Word of God.   This essay is... Continue Reading

The sanctifying power of the Spirit is much like uprooting and killing all the weeds that threaten to overtake us. Without the sanctifying power of the Spirit, sin would overrun our lives and choke us to death, but since we have a Helper – One who comes alongside of us in our weakness – we... Continue Reading

I pray that we love Christ so greatly that our souls feel that Christ deserves more love than we have toward him, so we continually cry out to Him to help us love Him more. I pray that we love the Lord Jesus Christ with an incorruptible love.   In the final verse of Ephesians,... Continue Reading

Christ keeps His sheep rotating through different areas of sanctification, assuring us, I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly (John 10:10). Yet Phillip Keller notes that shepherds also take the sheep into deep wells of dark caverns for water: “Many of the places we may be led into will appear to... Continue Reading

Spurgeon kept the baptismal pool filled — even when no baptisms were scheduled (81). His people would always have the mission set before them. May our pools be figuratively filled with importunate prayers, compassionate tears, and joyful proclamations of the excellencies of our glorious Christ. May we be fully awake, fully alive, sowing much. And... Continue Reading

The Old Testament is relevant for the Christian life because it is Christian Scripture. We are children of Abraham by faith, so the earlier covenants and redemptive acts of God are part of our history. We need the warnings and exhortations of the Old Testament. We need its songs and proverbs. We need to know... Continue Reading

It will not always be winter, though it may be a long and dark winter. On that final Day, “the sun of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings” (Malachi 4:2). In the meantime, you must meditate on the goodness of God, even when we do not see it. I do not know why... Continue Reading

Matthew tells us that Jesus is the son of Abraham, by which he means not merely that Jesus is a descendant of Abraham, but that He is the promised seed of Abraham, the One in whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed (Gen. 22:18; 26:4). This “all nations” reach of the salvation... Continue Reading