failure

The fear of God is essential to what it means to be a believer, yet there seems to be a modern aversion to this often misunderstood theme. Tune in as James and Jonathan talk to long-time friend Keith Plummer as he shares the security and courage that the fear of the Lord is intended to give to God’...

Oh, the goodness of God’s anger! That God, in his divine simplicity, has anger and is immutably angry, presupposes that God has goodness and is good. Christopher Ash and Steve Midgley state the doctrine well, “If God were not angry with evil, God could not be good. If God did not hate evil, he...

“So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” – Romans 8:12-13 We come now to one of those verses where a mere 1500 words cannot...

God reveals Himself not as “Mother,” but “Father,” and so fatherhood is foundational [1] as is maintaining Biblical gender designs during the annual Gay Pride Month this June. While prototypical man and woman were in many ways the same, they also were given sex distinctions so that they could fit...

As a mother of four children I’ve heard quite a bit of grumbling and questioning. But as I listen to my children, I’m often convicted at how many times I grumble about a particular circumstance or question why God has allowed something in my life. Scripture reveals that these are serious sins...

The Christian life is no stranger to apparent paradoxes; apparent because they are not true contradictions. Yet there are many times where we seem pulled between two opposites. Walking the path between grace and truth can be a challenge in our interactions with others. We wrestle with the...

Your teen-age daughter wants to start dating a young man who is quite nice, very likeable, professes faith in Jesus for salvation, but his dad is an adulterer, even while remaining married, and is verbally abusive toward women. What do you say to her, and why? Someone on pastoral staff at your...

Do Calvinists believe in free will? Jonathan and James point to the Westminster Confession of Faith chapter 9 to help us tackle this turbulent topic. The Confession is very careful to qualify what it means for man to have free will while establishing the boundaries of human freedom. What does it...

It had been a long, hot summer. The heat wave outside seemed to match the heat wave in my own heart of anger, chaos, disappointment, fear, grief, insecurity, loneliness, and physical pain. One night things seemed particularly bad. I was overwhelmed with the different needs of each of my four...

To understand anger and its peaceful Biblical therapies, we make use of the Puritan John Downame’s book, The Cure of Unjust Anger . [1] Downame focuses on Ephesians 4:26 to frame his discussion: Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath. Downame describes anger as, “…an...