History: Why Read it? A Pastoral Perspective
I am an avid history reader. I have been since about the age of five. That’s 48 years of history reading. I became an avid church history reader when I came to faith in Christ in 1983. Since then church…
Tag Biblical Exposition
Morals and Theology at the start of the Reformation
In the years just before the Reformation, a great number of Christian leaders saw the need for moral reform in Europe. The church was corrupt and the gap between biblical precepts and daily life seemed far too great for an…
History: Covenant & History
The first day of creation consisted in God creating day and night. God created light and distinguished it from darkness. God created history and filled it with the objects he created, sustains and perfects. What we call “history” is dependent…
Prayer: A Simple Method
You are a pastor in a small city. You’ve known your barber for almost twenty years. One day while he trims he asks for help in prayer. He, like many others, struggles in that area. So, you decide to go…
Joseph’s Decision
19 And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. 20 But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a…
Prayer: The Closet
Private Prayer is the life source for every true believer. And yet, while we would acknowledge the truth that praying is to the Christian as breathing is to any living creature, we would also admit along with Martin Luther that…
Rehabilitating Mary
Christmas is fast approaching and images of Mary are everywhere – from cards to Nativity scenes – but she is strangely absent from many, if not most Protestant pulpits. Yes, she may be accorded a passing reference in the Christmas…
Prayer: How to Pray
There are any number of passages on prayer to which one could turn. But there is something powerfully succinct about Paul’s words in Colossians 4: “Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving” (v. 2). Here we have…
Prayer: Sovereignty & Prayer
I love the Lord, because He hears my voice and my supplications. Because He has inclined His ear to me, therefore I shall call upon Him as long as I live.[1] One of the frequently asked questions about God’s sovereignty…
Theological Roots and Moral Fruits of Reformation
The leader of a major campus ministry recently said “If forty people approach a campus minister with an objection to Christianity, one worries about Bart Ehrman and his attacks on the authority and reliability of Scripture. The other thirty-nine have…