The Wrong Kind of Fear
The people of God are very prone to the wrong kind of fear, when new difficulties appear to them.
In a cloudy and dark day, when your fear grows, remember what a care God takes for His people. They are set as a seal upon His heart, and written upon the palms of His hands. He has said, “He that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of mine eye.” Would we be afraid, if we... Continue Reading
True Delight
God invites us to find our joy in him.
Our spiritual forebears saw the day of worship as a great market day for the soul where we taste the spiritual delicacies of God’s Word. On the first day of the week, we take in the sweetness and strength of the friendship of God’s people. Resting from the cares of the workaday world we are renewed as we sing his praise and pray with his people. This world holds... Continue Reading
Whose Reputation? Whose Glory?
We can learn a lot from Moses and his concern for God’s glory.
Too often we are concerned about our own reputation when we should be concerned about God’s. As I am reading through the Pentateuch once again, I find at least three major incidents in which Moses showed his complete concern for the reputation, honour and glory of Yahweh. Each one involves three elements: the Israelites rebelling and... Continue Reading
Build Your Ministry Around the People God has Given You
How do we even figure out what exactly we ought to do to make and grow disciples?
When it comes to working out what your church will do, you first have to figure out what your people are able to do. There is no point coming up with an amazing plan for outreach if it centres around certain key skills your people don’t have or time commitments they aren’t in any position... Continue Reading
Night Terrors and Nearness: Real Comfort in Non-Solutions
Just as children sometimes need just their father’s presence, sometimes Christians need just a pastor’s presence.
What our people need in their moments of desperation is what my son needs in the middle of the night. He doesn’t need a lecture about his subconscious, what a dream is, and why it doesn’t need to be feared. Instead, he needs the comfort of knowing I’m there. As pastors, we have the distinct... Continue Reading
The Mandate for Home-Based Disciple-Making
Our children are our primary—though not only—mission field.
The goal for us as Christian parents is to see our children receive Christ, grow in spiritual maturity, and serve God with all their hearts for the rest of their lives. While not every child of Christian parents will do that, by God’s grace many will. Parents, do not neglect the prime area of making... Continue Reading
6 Amazing Parallels Between Exodus and the Gospel of John
God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt that point us to our ultimate deliverance in Jesus Christ.
Believe in Jesus for eternal life. To reject him is to miss what the whole Bible is about, especially Israel’s deliverance from Egypt as recorded in Exodus, which the entire Old Testament celebrated. Jesus is salvation sent from heaven—our bread, our water, our life, our law-keeper, our everything—there is no other name given by which people... Continue Reading
The Hostility of Loving Your Neighbor
What Does Love Thy Neighbor Really Mean?
When people try to force their unbiblical political agenda onto the Bible, we should reject this. The Bible should shape society and politics. But woe to us if we try to use the Bible to justify secular beliefs about what is most loving. Attempting to contort “loving your neighbor” to secular ideas of the common... Continue Reading
Feeding our Longing
How do we long?
The great writer on joy and longing, C. S. Lewis, tells us in a famous passage from The Weight of Glory that we are far too easily pleased. We do not know what the Lord is offering us, what joy is available to us in God. Lewis argued, especially in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, that we find our... Continue Reading
Abiding in Christ in a World of Self-Love
The fact is that we are living in a culture which prescribes as a cure what the Bible describes as a sickness.
Self-care, self-talk, self-esteem, and the like can only take us as far as the self will go, and they will only be as dependable as the self can be—which is to say, not very dependable at all. But when we find our value, our confidence, our joy by turning our gaze to the Savior who... Continue Reading
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