We cannot be reminded too often of the goodness and grace of God. Unbelief is the perennial temptation, and part of that unbelief is the idea that our unbelief is greater than the purposes of God. No—the legs of unbelief are too short to outrun the goodness and grace of God. We like to put …
Proverbs and Rule
In the great work of restoration that is gospel ministry, God is preparing us for maturity. He wants us to grow up into an ability to rule. We must rule, first ourselves, and then after that the vocation that God has given to us. It must be done, all of it, under the Lordship of …
Dead Generals
In the second verse of the meditation, you heard the names of a number of British generals—Burgoyne, Howe, Clinton—from the time of our War for Independence, over two hundred years ago. This sounds very odd to our modern ears, for we have come to believe that worship is an vapory and “spiritual” thing. But we …
How It Tastes
When we trust in God for our salvation, we need to be careful with what we do with that pronoun “we.” We often think that it is God’s task to save each individual soul, and then we assume that the whole operation is then handed over to the collective “us,” whether in the church, or …
Reputation or Testimony?
We have to guard ourselves against the visible sins, the high-profile sins, of course. These would be open, black-letter sins. Don’t rob banks. Don’t shoot out the street lights. Don’t engage in computer fraud. But we often find ourselves avoiding such sins, not out of a zeal for holiness, but rather because we have capitulated …
Gravel on the Ground
When we gather to worship God, we gather to hear the Word, sing the Word, eat the Word, and drink the Word. We are then given a benediction so that we might go out into the world and live the Word. We are Christians, which means that we are people of the Word. The Word …
Spirit’s Wild
We are evangelicals, but we do not want to be presumptive evangelicals. We believe in the necessity of the new birth, but we also believe in the invisibility of it. In the same passage where Jesus taught us that a man must be born again, He also taught us that we cannot capture the Spirit …
Misreading Mojo
You have been exhorted many times to learn how to read the story, and especially to learn how to read the story you are in. This means that you must learn to identify (correctly) the protagonist and the antagonist. But in good literature, and in real life, this is not a matter of looking at …
On Not Getting Weird
As God continues to bless us as a community, one of the things we will notice is that the blessings of God are as uneven here as they are anywhere else. We want to live out the ramifications of koinonia fellowship, so that the one who has little does not have too little. One of …
A Church Building Is Not Your Cozy Spot
In the kindness and providence of God, we have come to a place where we are seriously undertaking the work of pursuing a church building. There is of course a lot to do, but one of the most important aspects of our prep work is reinforcing certain spiritual assumptions in you, the congregation. Church buildings …