Help for marriages

I regularly read books and magazines and journals and websites and have conversations with people that remind me that many marriages are in desperate need of God’s grace to intervene and save them from self-implosion. I also listen to several audio sermons each week to stimulate my own heart to joyful obedience to Christ. And […]

Sola Scriptura

The audio from the recent Sola Scriptura conference hosted by Countryside Bible Church has now been posted. There are six messages in all, two each by Steve Lawson, Bruce Ware, and Don Whitney. I could only attend one evening, but have downloaded the rest of the messages and am looking forward to listening to all […]

I like leftovers…

I like leftovers. It hasn’t always been that way. Mom always had a meal schedule. I don’t remember exactly how it went, but it was something like, Sunday is turkey legs, Monday is chicken, Tuesday is pork, Wednesday is ground beef, and so on. And periodically there would be a surprise “clean out the refrigerator […]

Family worship

It is a common occurrence that a man struggles with how to provide spiritual leadership to his wife and children. Why is that? Perhaps it is because — Laying aside all flattering words, I may say plainly that I regard the neglect of family worship as springing from lukewarmness and worldliness in religion. [J. W. […]

Sunday Leftovers (2/11/07)

Proximity to Christ does not guarantee faith in Christ. This was the reality of the half-brothers of Jesus prior to His resurrection (though they later trusted in Him; cf. Gal. 1:19; Jude 1). It makes you wonder, doesn’t it, how they could be so close to Christ — seeing His lack of sin day after […]

Sex and marriage

I have a book in my library that always makes a friend of mine laugh when he sees it on my shelf. The book is Lauren Winner’s recent release, Real Sex: the Naked Truth About Chastity. He laughs because the spine simply reads, “Real Sex Winner.” Yet (while I don’t agree with everything in the […]

Thoughts on Dying and Living

Generally we say, “living and dying.” Life comes first, then death. Yet for the believer, the order is reversed. There is death, and then there is life eternal in all its fullness. I thought of that as I read the blog accounts of the passing of J. Alan Groves. I was unaware of the life […]

Questions to sanctify your life

In this morning’s devotional, Oswald Chambers asks a number of helpful questions to stimulate sanctification in our lives: When we pray to be sanctified, are we prepared to face the standard of these verses? We take the term sanctification much too lightly. Are we prepared for what sanctification will cost? It will cost an intense […]

Final Thoughts from Adophe Monod

I just finished reading Adolphe Monod’s Living in the Hope of Glory this morning. Several statements stood out as I completed the book: “We have no idea of what we would be able to do if we were completely lost in such total harmony with God; if we would seek no other will than his. […]

Sunday Leftovers (2/4/07)

A comment made by David Wells in his book God in the Wasteland resonates in my mind as I think about discipleship and the state of the church: “God rests too lightly — too inconsequentially on His church.” That is, too many believers follow God too superficially. And too often, He is followed weakly because […]

A pmrovocative statement about arriage

Speaking of the difficulty the disciples had in hearing Jesus’ words concerning marriage in Matthew 19, John Piper said Sunday, “…how much more will the magnificence of marriage in the mind of God seem unintelligible in a world that we live in where the main idol is self, and its main doctrine is autonomy, and […]

Music worth a listen

I don’t often purchase new music — most of what I buy was written 200 (or more) years ago. And I rarely make musical suggestions to others. But the other day I found a reference to some new music, and on a whim, listened to some excerpts and then made a purchase. In the album, […]

Sunday Leftovers (1/28/07)

The cartoon character Broom Hilda once lamented, “I’ve searched all my life for the key to happiness. “I found the key to happiness once…” “The next day someone changed the locks.” Even believers are not immune to such thinking. We believe that we have found the key to happiness, and then realize that what we […]

Must reading

If you read one thing on the Internet today or this week or this month, let it be this morning’s commentary by Al Mohler, “The Scary Logic of Peter Singer.” The topic of bioethics and eugenics may not be a favorite of yours, but as believers, we must be informed about how the culture thinks […]

Sunday Leftovers (1/21/07 )

One of the great (and often over-looked) truths about salvation is that God draws (compels) men to believe. This action originates with the Father’s eternal plan (Jn. 6:44; Eph. 1:3-6), but it also includes the resurrecting work of Christ as the means by which salvation is fulfilled (Jn. 6:39, 40, 44, 54) and the revealing […]