A small oops is in order. In a post last week, I noted that out of 64 weddings I have conducted, only four of those marriages had ended in divorce. I had (for some reason) done the percentage calculation for six out of sixty-four, giving a rate of around 9%. The actual rate is a …
Worship As A Gift
Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! Our Lord and Father, we come to You in the name of Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, and who has poured out the Holy Spirit upon us. We long for fuller communion with You, and we praise You for …
We Believe In One Gods
We are gathered to worship the triune God. The fact that He is triune is not a side doctrine; it is at the very center of who we are. It is not the case that we believe that monotheism is “basic,” and that our particular form of monotheism affirms this extra truth. All unitarian conceptions …
The Kingdom of God is Not Like Crackers
The Supper of the Lord is not simply a continuation of the festival of Passover. It was instituted at that festival, and certain features of that feast are still incorporated in what we do here. For example, this cup is called by St. Paul the cup of blessing, which was the third cup in the …
A Gibbering Ape
“Christian parents (and particularly mothers) must recognize that the temptations to lust comes down to us from our father Adam, from our members which are on the earth (Col. 3:5). They do not originate with the world or with Hollywood. The world can and does enflame these lusts, but the world does not create them. …
Divorce Rates
Last fall I was doing a conference down in Florida together with Rob Rayburn. During the course of one of my talks, I mentioned something I had picked up from a famous Barna survey, which indicated that there are not any appreciable lifestyle differences between evangelicals and generic pagans when it comes to issues like …
June Bugs Into Sea Lions
Dear visionaries, It really is good to hear from Susannah from time to time, because it inspires me to write. But she might want to remember the comment of P. G. Wodehouse concerning folks like me. Some minds are like the soup in a poor restaurant — better left unstirred. She says, for example, that …
Unity and Doctrine
This is an important issue to settle. For it is obvious that the issues surrounding Calvinism are not a dispute about secondary matters like baptism or church government. For those who have followed closely, this whole debate actually centers on the full meaning of the gospel. How should we then approach brothers in the Lord …
Continuing Kindness
Our Father and great God, we thank You for Your continuing kindness to us. We thank You for the work behind us, the work before us, and the salvation rest You have provided in the death and resurrection of Your Son and our Lord. We thank You also for the food and wine You have …
A Christian View of War
The decision to have a war is a corporate decision; the decision to go to war an individual one. And once a man decides to go to war, of course his individual behavior in combat has corporate ramifications. When the church was in her infancy, the question of war was a simple one. “Blessed be …