How Do Pastors ‘Count It All Joy’?
When God loves us with his saving love and gives us saving faith, he commits, because he cares for us, to inject our lives with various trials to train, grow, sweeten, strengthen, and mature what matters most in us.
When he lovingly brings pastoral trials into our lives — and he does so lovingly — he is working for us and in us, one of the greatest goods imaginable. When He tests us, he is taking action to keep us. And He keeps us not just by protecting our present level of faith and... Continue Reading
Denying the Trinity to Affirm Sodomy
A critique of 'The Widening of God’s Mercy' by Richard Hays.
The very idea that humans are made in the image of God is rendered vacuous. (Gen. 1:27: “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”) Affirmation of sodomy entails the hermeneutical unmaking of the created order. This is why Paul singles it... Continue Reading
Send, Preach, Hear, Believe, and Call on Jesus Christ (Romans 10:14–21)
In order for anyone to believe, Jew or Gentile, we must send preachers who preach so that the lost can hear, believe, and call upon the Lord for salvation.
The problem for Israel was not hearing. Just as general revelation wordlessly speaks of the glory of God to all of creation, so also “the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17) had analogously been spoken to the Jews and Gentiles (Romans 10:18; cf. Ps 19:4). Neither was the problem for Israel its understanding (Romans 10:19a). They... Continue Reading
A Physicist’s View of Nonbinary Sexuality
Like in magnetism, so in people, opposites attract; if we try to change the rules then the foundation of an ordered society crumbles.
The world has believed that marriage is for a man and a woman. Men and women are different. Viva la difference! They were made to complement one another and to be close, just like the positive and negative charges in physics. This was part of God’s created order. From God’s creation comes order, predictability, productivity,... Continue Reading
Piety, Politics, and Protestantism in the Era of Trump
The devotees of the Réveil believed their Protestant Christianity contained spiritual salvation. They also saw it as an essential and conservative civilizational bedrock in a time of dangerous social change.
There is historical precedent to correlate an embrace of more conservative conceptions of political authority with an accompanying an increase in piety, and vice versa. A symbiosis between conservative politics and more substantive Christian piety typified the Réveil, a religious and in some ways political revival movement that swept France, the Low Countries, Switzerland, and... Continue Reading
6 Things to Do When You Don’t Feel Like Going to Church
How to cultivate the desire and practice of weekly worship.
Pray that God would open the eyes of your heart so that you might know the hope and riches that are yours in Christ Jesus (Eph. 1:18). Pray that God would fill you with songs of praise and thanksgiving as you meditate on the great things He has done (Eph. 5:19–20; 1 Peter 2:9). Early in... Continue Reading
Preach the Gospel
Christians need the gospel.
If you preach, make sure your preaching offers me Christ. I need him. I need to confess my sin and receive forgiveness each week. I need to see again that I’m raised up and seated with him in heavenly places each week. I need to encounter these truths in mind, in heart, and in body;... Continue Reading
Ten Petitions and Praises about the Sabbath
Will you help us to keep your day without grudging, but with joy.
Help us to be a church that remembers the fourth commandment. Help us by your Spirit to be careful to keep this one commandment, so that we might better keep all the rest of your commandments. Help us to see that we are stronger together when we spend more of our day in worship, more... Continue Reading
A Revival of the 5th
As we labor for cultural revival it must begin in this relationship between fathers and their children.
Let the instruction of your father and the wisdom of your mother be as a crown, a sword, a scepter unto you. They bestow you with the royalty of being children of the covenant, and so receive that lofty calling and fulfill it in honor of both God your Father and your parents. The true... Continue Reading
Covenanting to Choose David Over Saul
How to Use Republican Democracy to Advance Towards a Godly Country
The reason why we find ourselves often in a lesser-of-two-evil election is because we think like 1 Samuel 8 Israelites way too often. We end up in a kind of Judas-esque situation trying to back a different horse at the last minute because what we thought we had is not what we actually wanted. Lots... Continue Reading