godliness

Mongol Leaders and Their Christian Wives While Europe was engaged in the Crusades, a new threat emerged from Asia: the Mongols, a fearsome population the talented warrior Genghis Khan organized into a powerful empire. At the time of his death, this empire stretched from Eastern Europe to the...

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...

Soon believers all around the world will celebrate Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Some will go to church because they are expected to do so by family. Others will go because they know the joy of gathering together on the Lord’s Day to worship Him. Still others will show up broken and tormented by...

Hannah Marshman – A Pillar of the Serampore Mission Did Hanna Marshman know, when she left England for India, how much the missionary community would depend on her for wisdom and strength? It’s hard to imagine what she expected to do or find. As one of the first female missionaries, she had few...

Where I live signs of spring usually arrive by the beginning of March. Although my favorite season is fall, I am always happy to see the flowers bloom and trees make new leaves. It reminds me that although I could not see it during the winter months, God made the flowers and trees in such a way...

The first question and answer of the Heidelberg Catechism has resonated with generations of people familiar with it. Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death? A. That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death – to my faithful Saviour, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid...

From the very opening pages of Scripture we see God’s sovereign rule over mankind in an authoritative and governmental way. He gives his law to Adam that he is not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And when Adam and Eve do eat of that tree they are depicted as being in...

Ann Judson’s Missionary Work Ann Judson, one of the first two women to be sent as American foreign missionaries, is a familiar name for most Christians. She is particularly remembered as the sacrificial wife who hid her husband’s Bible translation inside a pillow and took it to the jail where he...

Public worship can all too easily feel lacklustre and mundane, not just for a congregation, but also for the one entrusted with leading it. This is not some new phenomenon. It has been a challenge for the church throughout its history. Indeed, it was at such a low point in the history of worship,...

A colorful coat given to a boy. An evening walk on a palace roof. A red cord hung from a prostitute’s window. These brief scenes from over three thousand years ago should have no bearing on our lives today. Yet these moments were used to bring about the most important event in human history: the...