Dear Timothy, Perhaps nowhere are the Puritans so helpful as in offering guidelines for the process of spiritual, biblical meditation. Here’s an outline of their method. First, ask the Holy Spirit for assistance. Pray for the power to harness your…
Almost any article today could have the word “Coronavirus” in the title. This small organism has changed most of our lives and continues to affect us in many ways. While some of our questions simply require a lot of wisdom,…
Late in 1664 it was apparent the bubonic plague was making one of its unwelcome visitations of Europe by registering in London for an extended stay checking out early in 1666. It varied in the number of victims from month…
Dear Timothy, The Puritans show us the need to be praying men of God. They were truly “men of the closet.” In their closets—their special, private place dedicated to prayer, be it in the bedroom, the attic, or the open…
God is slandered daily. Satan, who is a liar and the father of lies, makes sure of it. One of his favorite lies to spread about God is that he doesn’t love us, that he wants nothing more than for…
Dear Timothy, The Puritans show us the importance of catechizing your own church people and your neighbors. Like the Reformers, the Puritans were catechists. They believed that pulpit messages should be reinforced by personalized ministry through catechesis—the instruction in the…
Fear. It’s an emotion we all know well, and in recent weeks, it’s one that has asserted itself in our minds and hearts. We fear both ourselves and loved ones catching the virus. We fear what will happen to our…
Dear Timothy, As we’ve seen, when God’s Word is preached experientially, the Holy Spirit uses it to transform people and nations. And in this experiential preaching, the Puritans focused on Christ. As Scripture clearly shows, evangelism must bear witness to the record…
Dear Timothy, I’ve written to you about how the Puritans stressed the practice of a piety that flows out of sound doctrine. And yet they also promoted the experiential dimension of Reformed preaching. Puritan preaching explained how a Christian experiences…
Editor’s Note: Find previous entries in this series at the end of this article. The law/gospel hermeneutic wrongly separates the Bible’s indicatives from its imperatives. That’s the first problem that we addressed in our last article. But there’s a second problem…
