The One Who Endures: The Church
Not too long ago at a small party, I was chatting with a young lady who had just switched churches. She had left a rather large, seeker-sensitive type of church in the Washington D.C. area, a church which put…
Tag Sanctification
The One Who Endures: Perseverance and Counseling
My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. John 10:29 I have benefitted greatly from the teaching ministry of the late R.C. Sproul. …
Surveying Sanctification: What About God’s Holiness?
Quite a while ago, I met a woman with whom I had attended a particular church several years earlier. At the time of our meeting we were both worshiping in different congregations. In the midst of the conversation, having discovered…
Fullness of Joy and Pleasures Forevermore
The very first John Piper book I read was Future Grace. Its title is taken from Peter’s exhortation, ‘Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed’ (1Pe 1.13). It provides the important…
Surveying Sanctification: Already Made Holy by God
Within Reformed theology there is an emphasis on the “already, but not yet” aspect of the Christian faith and life. It’s an emphasis, though, that is not merely within Reformed theology but more importantly Scripture. Our Triune Lord has already…
Surveying Sanctification: A Grammar Lesson
When we consider the Biblical doctrine of sanctification, it is important to recognize how the doctrine is often portrayed in Scripture. It is organized first around who we are and then second around how we should live. The Bible first…
Watchfulness: Recovering a Lost Spiritual Discipline
In recent decades the evangelical church has seen a resurging interest in the practical aspects of Christian spirituality. Books on spiritual transformation and the spiritual disciplines line our shelves. Many of these are helpful, offering wise instruction on practices such…
Holy Helps for a Godly Life
Spiritual disciplines have now been a regular feature in Evangelical teaching on discipleship for several decades. This has been a good development, to the degree that it has led believers into renewed habits of bible reading, meditation, and prayer. …
Joy that seeks us through our Pain
The French Jesuit priest and philosopher, Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) said, ‘Joy is not the absence of pain’. Others have made the same observation repeatedly, either quoting de Chardin, or else expressing the same thought from their own perspective. It…
John Newton as Father – Through Joys and Pains
The first part of John Newton’s life is well known. Born in 1725 in Wapping, London, he lived a turbulent youth, dominated, from age 17, by compelling feelings of love for Mary Catlett, known as Polly. The impulsiveness of these…