The Blessing of Elderly Saints
Recently, a local pastor in the area told me that the median age of his church was somewhere in the mid-20’s and that he had no one over the age of 50. Many would have been impressed by such a…
Category Christward Collective
The Slow Miracle of the Lord’s Day
Whenever I get the opportunity to speak about worship in either a Sunday School series or an Inquirers class, I try to work in the following thought from Hart and Muether's With Reverence and Awe: “God’s intention was to bless…
The Kingdom Manifesto (Part 1)
In an increasingly politicized age, we have become used to political slogans designed to encapsulate the heart of a candidate’s message–everything from “Change We Can Believe In” (2008) to “Make America Great Again” (2016). In the high politicization of American…
Writing to Strangers for the Savior
Why do we write? Perhaps more precisely, For whom do we write? This question might be easier to answer for preachers putting pen to paper on a weekly basis: they write for God himself, to proclaim the truth, to expand…
When Revival Happens Elsewhere
Iain Murray describes biblical revival as consisting of “…a larger giving of God’s Spirit for the making known of Christ’s glory… a sense of God… not only in conviction of sin but equally in the bewildered amazement of Christians at the consciousness…
Freely Forgiven, Freely Forgive
In the adult Sunday School class at our church, we're studying Jesus's parables. This week's parable was “The ungrateful servant” from Matthew 18. The topic is, of course, forgiveness. The passage begins with Peter asking Jesus how many times he…
The Hard Job of Interpreting Job
This past Sunday evening, a young woman in our congregation asked if I knew of a book or sermon series to help her work through portions of the book of Job. She was, like any who have spent time studying…
The Rock Badgers Would Like a Word With Us
“Do you know what would happen if the world suddenly stopped spinning?” I asked my kids during our morning Bible time. My 12-year-old consulted one of her favorite books What If: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions.1 If the earth…
Reading the Bible: Ordinary Reading (Part 2)
In the previous post we established that good Bible reading requires us read the Bible as God speaking to us in a manner that we can naturally understand. But how do we actually do that? It’s harder than you might…
The Psalm-Singing Church
It should sadden us to learn that the church of our day has neglected one of the greatest treasures God has given her to worship Him–namely, the Psalter. The living God has breathed out an entire book of truth for…