Being convicted of a sin is not the same thing as feeling vaguely bad about it. In Scripture, conviction is described as being “cut to the heart,” it is a heart-piercing. Jesus was born into this sinful world in order to deal with sin—to really deal with it. He is no false prophet, that we …
Reflections on Christopher Hitchens
Scripture says that it is better to go down to the house of mourning than to the house of laughter (Ecc. 7:2). The reason given in that passage is that this enables the living to “lay it to heart.” The death of Christopher Hitchens should in the first place remind us of our own mortality. …
Just Me Being Silly
Yesterday the House approved the National Defense Authorization Act, and the Senate is likely to do the same today. There is a possibility that the president will sign it, but he might veto it, and things have come to a pretty pass when I am hoping that Obama will protect us from the Republicans. What …
And He Is the One Who Teaches Us
“Our triune God is not one frozen word, eternally stuck. The conversation is everlasting, glorious, swift, and beyond all reckoning. If this conversation were water, do not think of an infinite static ocean, but rather of an infinite cascading waterfall. No top, no bottom, no sides, no back, no front — and falling with infinite …
Which Is a Hindrance
“One reason why people sometimes doubt the abiding value of God-centered preaching is because they have never heard any” (Piper, The Supremacy of God in Preaching, p. 21).
The Life Invasion
“This means that God has spoken Himself into a very imperfect and broken world, and He has done so perfectly. What are the implications of this? This could not happen without bringing the world to life” (Heaven Misplaced, p. 44).
Walking By Faith
“The true usefulness of our preaching will not be known to us until each fruit on all the branches on all the trees that have sprung up from all the seeds we’ve sown has fully ripened in the sunshine of eternity . . . God will hide from you much of the fruit he causes …
Foundational Ministry
“Accordingly, preachers of the Word are not so much teachers who afford intellectual satisfaction or orators who delight the people after an artistic fashion, as shepherds who see to it that the sheep have food and drink to sustain their life” (Volbeda, The Pastoral Genius of Preaching, p. 68).
Not Compassion at All
You have a button in front of you, placed there by a helpful genie. But instead of giving you the standard three wishes (and why doesn’t anybody ever wish for ten wishes?), the genie has limited your options. If you push the button, the real income of all the “have-nots” in the world will double …
Reagan and Mao
Conservatism is not a static ideology. It is not an ideology at all, actually, but it is especially not a static one. But ostensible conservatives today like to act as though the decision of the ages rests upon whether we want Obama in or out. Everything rides on the consequences of this election. This is …