I don’t remember a whole lot about my twenty-third birthday. Twenty-three is a “neither here nor there” age so it’s rarely the most memorable of occasions. It sits between coming into full adulthood at 21 and the milestone looming at 30. These are decisive years in any life. They were certainly decisive in my life.…
Though we would never wish for a scandal to take place and make its way into the headlines, and while we should always regret the circumstances that bring one about, a scandal does offer the opportunity for personal introspection. A wise man will heed its lessons, for it inevitably provides the context to consider whether…
A couple of weeks ago I read a story about Tesla. The reporter had written a long piece about the company’s declining share prices and what it might mean for its future. He had written about its eccentric founder and some of his perplexing public comments. At the end of the article he included a…
It has been a long time since I shared an “Ask Me Anything” article—which is to say, since I publicly answered a selection of the questions that have come my way in the past while. But here, at long last, is my attempt to remedy this. Can a believer take communion at another Bible-believing church…
I have been building an ongoing relationship with a person who adheres to a very different religion than my own. He is as committed to his faith as I am to mine and is as eager to speak to me as I am to him. It makes for some engaging and enjoyable conversation. I recently…
As I share this update I am just setting off to begin the project I have titled Worship Round the World. The premise of Worship Round the World is that I will visit 12 different churches in 12 very different places to get to know those congregations and to join them for a Sunday service.…
One matter that constantly perplexes me is just how difficult it is for young Christians today to figure out dating and romantic relationships. What was quite straightforward in my day seems to have become much more complicated in these days. But as I study the cultural ethos, it begins to make sense, for in my…
I have been saying it for years: there is still a place for blogs. Even while many new forms of communication have come our way in the past 10 or 15 years, and while each of them may have its own place in the media ecosystem, none can exactly duplicate the unique strengths of blogging.…
I might have thought that the long, steady march of sanctification would mean I’d only see progress against sins, struggles, and temptations. But I am learning that there may be some areas where I actually experience a kind of regress. One of these is anxiety, for the older I get, the more I find myself…
It was a long time ago now that I wrote a book on pornography. And in a way it was a very different time. Back then the problem was just as pervasive as it is today, but that pervasiveness was still quite new and poorly understood. There were relatively few resources meant to help those…
At different times in their lives, the children of a particular family were summoned to their father’s office. He called them in and sat them down and told them that he was going to give them something precious. What he gave them might be different from what he had given their siblings, but it would…
Do you ever find yourself wondering just how much the Lord loves us? Do you ever find yourself wondering just how good his purposes can be and just how glorious his plans? Do you ever find yourself wondering if God really cares? I found myself pondering these matters the other day after a friend sent…
We have come to one of those rare weeks in which I collected so much good material for A La Carte that I couldn’t use it all. Instead, I chose some to add to this Sunday edition. The Kind Providence of God Jacob recounts ways in which he has been able to see God’s kind…
I won’t ever forget the day we dropped Nick at college. We had driven him down to Louisville, Kentucky where he had enrolled in pre-seminary studies at Boyce College. We had helped get his little dorm room all set up. We had dropped by the bookstore and picked up the last of his textbooks. We…
It is good to be a man or woman of faith. It is good to be a man or woman who regularly attends church, who faithfully studies the Scriptures, who diligently puts sin to death and who joyfully comes alive to righteousness. This is all good and very good. But every now and again it…
I messed up over the Christmas holidays. I made a simple but silly mistake—a mistake that left me entering the new year feeling weary instead of rested, feeling drained instead of energized. It was a failure to plan, a failure to remember a simple truth about work and rest. Like so many other people, I…
It’s hard to remember or even believe, but there was a time when social media consisted solely of blogs. Blogs were the way writers escaped the gatekeepers of old media to gain a voice of their own on the marvelous new medium we called the World Wide Web. Blogs were an interactive form of communication…
NPR recently ran an article about the future of the Christian church. Church attendance is in decline, they said, but some creative leaders are finding ways to keep it relevant in a new cultural context. Pastor Chris Battle has walked away from traditional church because it “was not connecting with people” and now leads a…
Christians have a complex relationship to suffering. We do not wish to experience suffering. It is not our desire, preference, or longing to go through times of pain and persecution, times of sorrow and loss. Yet we also know that God uses such experiences to accomplish significant and meaningful things within us. We know there…
There is something morbidly fascinating about watching dictionaries slowly but surely change their definitions of common words. It raises some questions, not the least of which strike to the very purpose of a dictionary. Is a dictionary meant to be an objective arbiter of the meaning of words? Or is a dictionary meant to subjectively…