Good morning from Sydney, Australia, where I’ve stopped for just one night before heading back across the Pacific. It has been a good and successful journey, but I’m ready to be home! Today’s Kindle deals include a substantial collection from Crossway. (Yesterday on the blog: Trusting God with Creation But Not Providence) Martyn Lloyd-Jones, April…
Each of us is prone at times to lose our confidence in God’s wisdom and to assume that he would benefit from a bit of our own. How often do we grumble and complain against God’s will? How often in prayer do we attempt to direct God according to our own limited knowledge, our own…
I once had a friend who was only ever confident he understood something when he had taken it down to its component parts. If he bought a new tool or device, he would take it from its box and begin to pull it apart, eager to know how it worked before ever actually using it.…
There’s no doubt that, at least within Reformed churches, this is an age of expository preaching—of preaching sequentially through books of the Bible while always ensuring that the point of the text is the point of the sermon. Yet you do not need to look far into history to find that it was not always…
What is it like to be a Christian? What is it like to submit your life to the Lord? What is it like to live for the glory of an unseen God? There is a lot bound up in the questions. But an answer comes to mind as I scour the hall of heroes we…
Not too long ago I read that the mysterious artist Banksy had created several new murals in Ukraine. Going to locations that had experienced the fury of war, he found broken and damaged buildings and used them as his canvas. In one a gymnast practices a handstand upon shattered walls and in another a woman…
My heart has often been gripped by one of the stories Luke tells from the life of Jesus. He tells of Jesus arriving in the town of Nain just as a funeral procession is making its way toward the tombs nearby. This was an especially tragic funeral, for the man who had died was “the…
In the past few weeks I have seen a fair bit of discussion about book endorsements—about those little blurbs you so often find inside the first few pages or on the back cover of a newly-published book. There seems to be some consensus that the entire endorsement system is faulty, but little consensus about what…
If you’ve ever preached as much as a single sermon, if you’ve ever delivered as much as a single conference address, if you’ve ever led as much as a single Bible study, then I expect you know the temptation. I expect you have longed to make much of Jesus, but have also felt the desire…
I want you to imagine that, at least for a time, the Lord would see fit to involve us in selecting the providences we would receive from his hand. I want you to imagine that through one of his deputies—an angel perhaps—he would approach us to ask how we would prefer to serve him. In…
A friend and I recently realized that we have not been spending as much time together as we would like. We agreed it is high time to do something about it. But what to do? We put our heads together and determined that we will deliberately build time for one another into our schedules. But…
Before I set fingers to keyboard, I asked my wife if I should write this article—one requested by Ligonier’s Tabletalk magazine. Before I so much as typed a single word, I asked her if I was at all qualified. She pondered this for a few moments and said, “Yes, I think you are.” I was…
My annual journey through Scripture has once again taken me to the early books of the Old Testament and those long passages in which God lays out the laws that are meant to govern his covenant people as they come into their promised land. Among the laws are a whole host that describe the system…
The revival at Asbury has already come to an end. What began as a brief and simple chapel service turned into a weeks-long worship event that drew tens of thousands of participants and elicited tens of millions of opinions. Only now have I gathered my thoughts and bundled them into this “cold take.” I trust…
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.…