Talking to Your Kids About Sex & Marriage Recently my pal Jay Younts, who holds down the fort at the Shepherd Press blog, wrote a series about talking to your children about sex. He did this at my request, actually, since I had gone looking for information and did not find a lot that was…
Today is Family Day here in Canada (or in Ontario at least–each province celebrates the day a little differently), so I’ll be mixing my time between work and hanging out with the family. A La Carte will return tomorrow. For now, here’s a short reflection on the nature of temptation. In Bruce Walke’s Old Testament…
Blogs often have a living quality to them, where an author picks up older content, improves it, and posts it again. I’ve been known to do this and have seen plenty of other bloggers do the same. And why not, really. The medium lends itself well to that kind of change and growth and evolution.…
This week I read Jaron Lanier’s book You Are Not a Gadget. Though often quite obscure, the book does offer a lot of opportunity for reflection on the way technology is impacting our lives. He has written what is probably the cleverest Preface to a book I’ve ever read (and, if I do say so…
First off, I apologize for the lengthy site outage. I had the site host do some work on the server yesterday and I guess they didn’t do it quite right. Somehow they managed to redirect www.challies.com to a blank page. Since I no longer check emails in the evening, I was happily oblivious to this…
And here we are, in the last reading from John Murray’s classic book Redemption Accomplished and Applied. This week brings us to the glorious subject of glorification. SummaryGlorification is the final phase of this long application of the redemption to God’s elect. “It is that which brings to completion the process which begins in effectual…
Mystery WorshipersAn article at the Seattle Times deals with mystery worshipers and online church ratings. Jim Henderson, a Seattle evangelical Christian, came up with the idea to launch ChurchRater, a site that allows people to rate the churches they have visited. In some instances they pay people to rate churches and in other instances they…
Last spring I received an email from a reader of this site who asked if I would be able to send an inscribed copy of The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment to a young man who was just graduating high school. This would serve as a small graduation gift. I was glad to do so and…
Stop the WorldIn this article in the New Yorker George Packer (presumably no relation to J.I.) writes about Twitter and, in so doing, writes about other social media. He says “The truth is, I feel like yelling Stop quite a bit these days. Every time I hear about Twitter I want to yell Stop. The…
Note: This is a sponsored post. Learn about sponsored posts. In survey after survey, singles rank marriage as one of their most important life goals. So why, according to Dr. Leon Kass, do they marry “later, less frequently, more hesitantly and by and large, less successfully?” Because they no longer have a clear path to…
Yesterday I wrote about my desire to be a doer when it comes to the convergence of technology and theology, media and Christian living. I do not want to write a book full of prescriptions that I choose to ignore. And so, as I’ve dedicated increasing amounts of time to research, I’ve begun to examine…
I graduated from college in 1997 (Or so. To be honest, I don’t even remember exactly what year it was and didn’t bother attending the graduation ceremony or picking up my diploma which undoubtedly recorded the date). My history degree did not open up the world of possibilities I had obviously thought it might when…
Every now and again I like to post a song we’ve sung at church that may not be widely-known. Here is one we sing quite frequently. Titled “Wide Open Are Your Hands,” it was written by Bernard of Clairvaux back in the 10th century and translated from Latin in the 1800’s. The chorus was added…
One of the strange things that happens when you write a book is that other authors begin to ask you if you would endorse their own book. There is a strange little economy whereby people in a particular genre all endorse one another’s books. This is true in the Christian world as it’s true for…
It’s Friday morning, which means that I’ve got some free stuff to give away. For this week’s contest I cajoled my buddy Josh Harris into giving up ten copies of his new book Dug Down Deep. So there will be ten prizes, each of which will be an autographed copy of the book. Here is…
Recently a reader of this wrote me to ask if I had ever written anything dealing with believers and the final judgment. I quickly realized that I had not and thought that today would be a good opportunity to remedy that. So here is a brief look at what believers can expect in the final…
Beneath the SunYou might cry, but this is definitely worth the read. Most Influential Living Preachers“In telephone interviews conducted in November 2009, Protestant pastors were asked to ‘name the top three living Christian preachers that most influence you.’ Twenty-one percent of pastors surveyed said Graham – that’s nearly three times the number who named Charles…
Another round of Reading Classics Together is swiftly drawing to its close. We have one more chapter to read in John Murray’s Redemption Accomplished and Applied and then we will have reached the end. But before we do that, let’s talk about this week’s chapter which dealt with the doctrine of Union with Christ. SummaryI’ll…
Social NetworksThe Economist has a special report dealing with social networking sites like Facebook. While generally positive in tone, the article does raise a few concerns. It’s Not Just a “Guy Problem”“My life changed forever when I was 21. I’d been curious for years to see what the big deal was about pornography. One afternoon…
It seems that as human beings we are naturally drawn to underdog stories. Recently I watched a couple of episodes of Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided, a six-part series that aired as part of the “American Experience” program. As with any biography of Lincoln, it contrasts his early years with those of his…