Self-salvation is sinful man’s most natural inclination. We all know there is something wrong with us, that we are not all we want to be and not all we were meant to be. And left to ourselves we look for that salvation anywhere and everywhere except in the place it can be found–in Jesus Christ.…
I am often asked how I organize my books and how I maintain my library. Because I am a book reviewer I receive new books nearly every day and this has forced me to discover a few principles I might otherwise have missed. I have found that the key to organizing and maintaining a library…
I did not set out to be a preacher. Ten years ago I would have laughed out loud if someone had told me that a decade hence I would be a regular in the pulpit. As I’ve slowly acclimated to preaching, I have found myself thinking very differently about sermons. I’ve been listening to sermons…
I love to receive challenges and lessons from unexpected places. Lately God has been teaching me so much through the book of Jonah. Yes, Jonah. Jonah is a book that ends in an unorthodox way. Where most books end with a satisfying conclusion, this one ends with a question mark. Where most books end with…
I am convinced that some day we will all have a really good laugh at ourselves for ever using a form of communication as ridiculous as email. We will laugh that we ever tried to make it do the things we make it do. It is my hope that we will soon move to more…
We Evangelicals are known for our obsession with virginity. Now don’t get me wrong–I affirm that it is good and God-honoring to remain sexually pure before marriage (and within marriage and after marriage). As a pastor I want to teach the people in my care the value of having their first sexual experiences with their…
So you want to sin, do you? I get that. I’ve been there. I’ve been there today. And yesterday. And the day before. Can I beg just four or five minutes of your time? Then you can go and sin all you want. But first I want you to read just a few words and…
Later this week I am going to have the opportunity to interview Paul Washer. You probably know him as the man who preached the Shocking Youth Message, but there is much more to him than that. He was a missionary in Peru for ten years and in that time he founded the HeartCry Missionary Society…
A dear friend is one of life’s greatest gifts, one of life’s greatest blessings. I can chart so much of my life, my personal growth, through these precious relationships, these precious friendships. So many times these faithful friends have given wisdom at a moment of weakness, help in a time of trial, strength that is…
It is a visual age. Cameras are ubiquitous, software is cheap, computers are powerful, and together they give us a video for every occasion. We, as Christians, have a video for every occasion. I love to watch the ones that tell the story of a husband and wife who had been on the verge of…
No one enriches hell more than false teachers. No one finds greater joy in drawing people away from truth and leading them into error. False teachers have been present in every era of human history, they have always been a plague and have always been in the business of providing counterfeit truth. While their circumstances…
One of the great privileges of being a pastor is always having a good reason to speak to the children of the church. I love getting down to their level (i.e. sitting on the floor), talking to them, and hearing about their lives. A question I love to ask them is this: How can I…
There is much debate and much concern today about redefining marriage. Where it hasn’t happened already, it seems very nearly inevitable that the definition will soon be expanded to include homosexual unions. And once marriage has been redefined away from the union of one man to one woman, it seems almost impossible not to see…
Every analogy breaks down at some point which is why it is unwise to push an illustration too far. In the past I have written about the data each of us creates on a daily basis and have illustrated with airplanes and bloodhounds. We create data all the time and just as airplanes leave contrails…
Getting things done has always been difficult. Whether it is more difficult today than in days past is a matter of speculation and hardly worth the effort. What is clear, though, is that we have many things, some good and some bad, competing for our time and attention. I believe a key to productivity today…
It began with a young man and his simple question: What’s in “the look?” He wanted to know why he looks and, even more pressingly, why it is so difficult not to look. Why would he look at what he cannot have? What’s going on in his heart when he takes that peek? Not every…
The software and format was excellent. I’ve done online learning before and it involved lots of downloading of material from this place and that place, lots of opening Word documents and MP3 files, and all the rest. Ligonier packages it all up very nicely and makes it very intuitive. It was a great learning experience.…
Pornography is ubiquitous today; addiction to pornography, especially among men, is equally widespread. Young men are often introduced to pornography long before they are able to understand what it is and what it means. Many a young man’s first awakening to sex and sexuality is by exposure to pornographic sex and nudity. This is sadly,…
I want to do the right things. I want to do the right things for the right reasons. In fact, I want to do the best things for the best reasons, the highest things for the highest reasons. Sometimes I know I do this. Sometimes I know I don’t. Most of the time I’m just…
I went to the Blue Jay game last week. The Rays were in town and I like to go and cheer/jeer for my buddy Ben who plays for the bad guys. “You stink! And thanks for the tickets!” Don’t mention it to him, but at the end of the game he represented the winning run…and…