At our once-rural (now-suburban) church, we have two weekly prayer meetings. On Wednesday nights, we gather to pray for an hour, structuring our time around praise, confession of sin, and supplication. On Lord’s Day afternoons, we gather for just twenty…
Of all the Minor Prophets, perhaps Jonah is the most read and beloved, and certainly not for its brevity but for its extraordinary story – a story of a prophet running from God,…
The sermon was the minister’s attempt through reason to encourage faith as it affected this life and the next. They were committed to a style that was plain but not dull. Each minister was pledged by his own creed to…
God frequently called the prophets to physically demonstrate the truth that God had for his covenant people to learn. Hosea was no exception. When God told Hosea to marry “a wife of whoredom…
The Puritan preacher’s concern was light and heat; light from the pure Word of God to penetrate the darkness of the heart and soul of the hearer, and heat from the passion and pathos of the heart and soul of…
The Puritan preacher saw the role of preaching much differently than we do today because he saw the role of the preacher so much differently than we do today. Rather than seeing the preacher as just “one of the boys”…
One of the great follies of which many studies on Puritanism are guilty is the practice of analyzing and criticizing the Puritans rather than allowing them to analyze and criticize us! It is not my intent in this series of…
In Matthew 12, Jesus and the disciples experienced events that had to be bitterly disappointing. Jesus healed a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute and the Pharisees said “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this…
Ultimatums usually aren’t helpful. Especially if you’re engaged in work that draws heavily on one’s personality. When you attempt to take up a mantra or a method which doesn’t fit you, you should follow David’s example, and give Saul his…
For many of us the inability to gather with church family during parts of the pandemic increased our appreciation for our pastors, elders, deacons, and fellow church members. It has not been unusual to hear people testify of how they…
