The end of the year — a spiritual summary

This year, our church has read through the New Testament and Psalms. (In the coming year, the plan is to read the Old Testament, though we’ve also provided the NT plan coordinated with the 2013 dates.) Part of my desire was not only to read through the plan, but to blog every day about what […]

The tree in heaven

“And on either side of the river was the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” (Rev. 22:2; NASB) Heaven. What pictures come to mind when you hear that word? Streets of gold? Pearly gates? “St. […]

Praise the Lord

Indicators of skewed priorities in churches abound. Yet this morning’s newspaper contains a statement from a pastor of a “sound,” “evangelical” church that pinpoints the problems in too many contemporary American churches: “We’re really building a community center, more than we are a worship center.” It’s rare to read or hear such an open acknowledgement […]

“May God be as good to you as he has been to me…”

What does a husband say to his wife when he knows death is imminent? Even more, what does a husband say to his wife when he has been falsely accused of a crime and has been sentenced to death through the injustice? In 1944, pastor Helmuth von Moltke was accused, tried, and convicted of conspiracy […]

Resolved to change?

Are you think about some things that need changing in the coming year? Here are some resources to help you think through some resolutions for next week: There are many Bible reading plans to help order your Bible intake. Here are some I’ve accumulated over the years. (UPDATE: Here are also two chronological plans I’ve […]

Looking for — and seeing — God’s glory

It’s often hard to see the good in the midst of hardship. When a child receives a diagnosis of cancer or a long-time employee is laid off before Christmas or a college student fails a required course in the semester before graduation or the girl says no to the marriage proposal or the friend betrays […]

Eternity for the unredeemed

It has become somewhat popular in certain spheres of Christendom to be apologetic about Hell. Not only do unbelievers ignore or even scoff at the realities of Hell, but even believers are prone to minimize what awaits those who reject Christ. But the Bible is unapologetically clear about the eternal future of the unredeemed (see especially […]

Contrasts of Christmas

In his book, The Christ of Christmas, James Montgomery Boice reflects on a sermon by Donald Grey Barnhouse, “The Contrasts of Christmas:” [This message] is of interest here because each of the eight contrasts developed by Barnhouse illustrates this central paradox. First, Barnhouse compared Luke 2:11 with John 1:12. Both deal with birth. In the […]

Five reasons to praise the Lord

Old Testament believers were often (approximately 50 times) called to praise the Lord with the Hebrew word “hallelujah” (which literally means, “praise the Lord”). Yet in the New Testament, that word appears only four times — and all four of those references are in the first six verses of Revelation 19. From these few references, […]

“That’s What Christmas Is All About”

HT: Biblical Counseling Coalition Blogs.

The end has come

The babe in the manger whose arrival more than 2000 years ago we celebrate today was as helpless as any other child ever born. He who created the vast expanses of the heavens and the stars that fill them and the atoms that comprise them was dependent on the care of his teenage mother and […]

Paradoxes of Christmas

We haven’t done it this year yet (we might be a little late!), but one of the things the girls particularly always like to do at Christmas time is go and look at the lights — we’d ooo and ahh at all the extravagant decorations. And when the girls were little, Raye Jeanne and I […]

It’s Christmas. Be fearful.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God’s coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, […]

You shall call His name…

When Raye Jeanne and I chose names for our children, they were our attempts to give them an identity. We desired for them to carry names that would reflect our desires for them. And we hoped that the legacy we left them with their surname would give them a heritage to live for when we […]

Good news the day before Christmas

No, the good news is not of a last minute sale with free delivery by Christmas morning. The good news is that there is rebellion against God and there will be increasing rebellion against God, but that rebellion does not mean that God is overwhelmed. To the contrary, the good news is that God is […]