One of the things I love to do for fun is read, ponder, and memorize poetry. One of my favorites is “I Wish I Could Remember That First Day” by the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti. In this poem she gives voice to a woman thinking back to the first time she met the man she…
Not too long ago I was speaking to a friend who was lamenting the way he had spent his time the day before. He had become convicted that his prayer life was languishing and that it would benefit from a measure of organization. A couple of hours later he had to move on to other…
I spent last weekend at a pair of conferences, each of which dealt in some way with matters of human sexuality. Such conferences are common today as Christians attempt to understand, interpret, and respond to the moral revolution raging around us. It struck me that just three or four years ago these events were discussing…
When I look back on life, one of my real regrets is not making more of my college experience. Those years offered unique opportunities to grow in knowledge and wisdom but also to grow in character and godliness. Unfortunately, I was unfocused and immature. I wasted many golden opportunities and excelled only at euchre and…
Over the course of my years of parenting, I have picked up advice from a hundred different sources. Like most parents I have read a few books on parenting, some of them general works and some of them targeted at specific joys or challenges. I have read a lot of blog posts and other articles…
Every parent has the responsibility of eventually having “the talk” with their children. You know the talk I mean—the one that finally tells the children where babies come from. I don’t think there are too many parents who look forward to the conversation or too many that are confident with their handling of it. But…
Several years ago our church experienced an unexpected surge of growth. The majority of those who arrived in that surge were young adults who loved the Lord but had not received consistent teaching on how to live as Christians. As one of their pastors, I longed to see them grow in their knowledge of God…
I love to read and ponder the biblical account of creation. So much makes sense and so much comes into focus only as we understand God as the creator of all that is. As I read the creation account I find myself coming to a series of conclusions about the relationship of man and the…
Today is the day! Today is the official launch day for my new book Visual Theology: Seeing and Understanding the Truth About God. This book is the result of a collaboration between me, a writer, and Josh Byers, a graphic designer. We worked together to create a book that brings together two great media–words and…
I’m no fan of most forms of racing. Cars, horses, drones, people—none of them do much for me. I find bicycle racing especially drab, except for those Olympic sprint events that suddenly grab my attention every four years. I do not know a whole lot about racing (which may well be why I don’t enjoy…
There are some things I just can’t forget. There are some wrongs done to me that I cannot erase from my mind. I try, I pray. I don’t want to remember them. I don’t want them to remain in my memory or to come back to my mind. But somehow I can’t forget them. Somehow,…
My friend Bryan DeWire is like me in that he loves to read. He loves to read and loves to share his love of reading with others. While I’m finishing up my stint at Together for the Gospel, he put together this article for me–an article of tips on how to finish more books. Happy…
Maybe we are growing too accustomed to these Reformed mega-conferences. If that’s the case, we should think back to the time—it was only a few years ago–when there appeared to be an inverse relationship between a conference’s attendance and its doctrinal soundness. For many years it was true that the conferences that held to Reformed…
Surely you’ve had the filthy-rich daydream before, right? Maybe you heard about the latest tech billionaire who turned a little app into gold by selling it to Facebook or Google. Or maybe you heard of lotteries with their prizes stretching into the hundreds of millions or the guy who made the little investment in just…
A few years ago I was at a conference to lead a breakout session and perhaps to do some writing about the event. There were a couple of keynote speakers there, John Piper among them, and they were carrying a much heavier load. If I remember correctly, the first day ended with an informal Q&A…
It happened again. A popular preacher said something in a sermon, it made its way to social media, and lots of people got upset. This happens quite often, doesn’t it? I rarely pay attention to these things and comment on them infrequently. However, I am making an exception for the latest one because I suspect…
Yesterday I began to share some thoughts on diversity and uniformity within this Reformed resurgence. I concluded by asking why there appears to be such a distance between our desire for diversity and the reality as we observe it at our big conferences. There are many possibilities that would be worth exploring, but today I…
Whatever else is true about this modern-day Reformed resurgence, this much is indisputable: We love our conferences. We love the experience of gathering together and hearing from our favorite authors, pastors, and theologians as they lead us to God through his Word. Many of us can attest to the innumerable blessings we have received by…
God has seen fit to bring significant diversity to Grace Fellowship Church. Every Sunday we worship as a community of Christians that spans the world, its continents, and its cultures. Yet for all this diversity, we remain a young church that has consistently had trouble drawing and keeping older believers. While we do have some…
A recent article from the New York Times says, rightly I’m sure, that We’re More Honest With Our Phones Than With Our Doctors. Writing from the confluence of medicine and technology, Jenna Wortham explains that “in recent years, mobile technology has granted me and countless others the ability to collect an unprecedented amount of information…