This post comes from within the Feedback Files. The Feedback Files are the questions I receive from readers via the Contact page. I thought it would be informative to open some of these questions and answers to the community. Recently a self-professed “Baby Calvinist” wrote to ask, “If a person is “a child of wrath”…
Having collected Christian music since the early nineties, I have amassed a very extensive collection. A couple of years ago I began moving it all to my computer and now have some 5,200 songs in MP3 format. This respresents the bulk of the collection with the exception of sixty or eighty cassettes. I have some…
This morning I spent a good bit of time reading through some of my old journal entries. Sadly my journalling has tailed off as my blogging has increased. This is sad because journalling was an important spiritual discipline for me. While I often wrote about the same things I write about on this site, journalling…
I assume that almost no one reading this needs to be persuaded to attend church. Beyond your good habit of church attendance, however, how do you decide what else you should or should not do on Sunday? When it comes to making such decisions, I understand there to be three major views among Christians, One…
I still remember the day I bought my very first CD player. I had been saving my pennies and dimes for some time and convinced my father to drive me to Future Shop, which is Canada’s answer to Best Buy. Just a couple of days before my previous stereo had gone up in a flash…
I often struggle with my decision to continually defend Calvinism. And more than defending it, I also “evangelize” it, explaining to others why I consider it to be nothing more or less than the Bible’s teaching on the doctrines of redemption. I find my mind wondering if it really is important enough to dedicate such…
Yesterday I posted an article that was formed around my apparently uninteresting personal testimony. It seems I am not the only one who has been deluded into thinking that my testimony, which is one of God’s grace early in life rather than one of God saving me when I was an adult and deeply entrenched…
I often feel that I have a ridiculously boring testimony. I can’t count the number of times I have sat through courses, seminars and Bible studies and have heard the value of a good testimony in evangelizing the lost. And like any long-time believer, I have heard some incredible ones. I have heard about women…
There are times in life when various “threads” seem to converge – times where I have been thinking about a few things and suddenly they all just come together. Yesterday I was thinking and writing about whether God loves everyone, believer and unbeliever alike. Tuesday evenings I lead a Bible study and this topic came…
When I was in the eleventh grade I decided to study Latin. I don’t remember what it was that compelled me to study the language, but I suspect it had something to do with the small class size. Where most classes in my high school had twenty five or thirty students, Latin usually had only…
Suppose you were facing the darkest hour of your life. You had been accused of false charges and there was no doubt that you would be found guilty. The punishment for your crime would be a brutal, torturous death. But suppose that for just a few moments you were allowed a visit from another person.…
Last month I read two books which exposed some of the New Age influences in today’s evangelical churches. Deceived on Purpose and A Time of Departing each showed some different areas where the New Age has had great influence in evangelicalism. Both authors, to no one’s great surprise, singled out Robert Schuller as being one…
James White’s book Scripture Alone, contains a chapter entitled “Definitions: More Than Half The Battle.” He begins the chapter with these words: “After engaging hundreds, possibly thousands of individuals over the sufficiency of Scripture, I have come to realize that 85 percent of the battle is fought over definitions.” Later he warns against arguing against…
I have once again dipped into my site’s archives to update and refresh an article I posted in the past. In the past few days there has been much discussion in the forum and in my inbox about how we can define “Calvinist” and “Reformed.” I covered this very topic last year, but since that…
I would like to make some further comments on the topic I wrote about yesterday. First, thank you to all the readers who pointed out that “Biblical Theology” is in reality something of a “reserved term” as it has a definable theological meaning. Biblical Theology is considered an alternative to Systematic Theology and to Historical…
Writing for a forum as public as the internet provides ample opportunity to receive criticism. While I rarely take the time to respond to people who post on other sites long, drawn-out criticisms of myself and what I write, I always respond to those critcisms when they are directed at me through the forums or…
In the past few days I have been going back and reading some articles I wrote months or years ago and have been updating a few of them. Last night I had my weekly home church meeting (AKA small group Bible study) and we discussed the importance of confession among Protestants. I realized I had…
Quite a while ago I wrote an article about spiritual gift assessments. Today I am hauling that article out of storage and am going to update it. At the time I first wrote about spiritual gift assessments I was responding to a question a friend had asked me. He was interested in knowing my opinion…
Several months ago I wrote an article where I outlined the difference between evangelism and outreach. These are terms that many people treat as being synonymous, yet they are distinct and need to be treated as such. This morning I was thinking about the idea of “successful evangelism.” What makes one evangelistic effort successful and…
Doilies, Bagel Blankets and Princess Lace. That has been my life over the past couple of weeks. Sometimes web design can be glamorous. As designers we have the ability to create great-looking sites, to watch our sites win awards and to really push the boundaries of good design. We sometimes have people pat us on…