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…
We are regularly exposed to tragedy. Sometimes these are tragedies played out on a television screen thousands or tens of thousands of miles away and other times they are tragedies in our neighborhoods or our local churches. Strangely, some tragedies on the far side of the world make indelible impressions upon us while tragedies next…
We all know that the story of Jonah is really the story of Jonah and his whale, right? Every childrens’ Bible majors on that whale and its role in miraculously delivering Jonah from the depths of the sea. The whale is the hero of the story, the knight in shining blubber who comes to the…
God spoke to me on Sunday morning. It was clear. It was undeniable. God spoke to me in a moment of need, he brought me a word of comfort, and gave me exactly the message I needed to hear. Preaching a sermon is one of the most difficult things I do. It is a good…
As I survey the contemporary church, one of my gravest concerns is the power and prevalence of mysticism. It appears in pulpits, books, and conversation. It is at the heart of Sarah Young’s bestselling Jesus Calling, it is in all the much-loved books by John Eldredge, it fills the pages of so many books on…
Have you ever seen one of those videos on YouTube that shows you how something you’ve been doing for your whole life has actually been all wrong? How you’re better off eating an apple from the bottom up instead of wrapping around the sides or how those little ketchup cups are meant to fan out…
I am too young to remember much about Margaret Thatcher and to know a lot about her role in world history. I will definitely read a biography of her at some point in the future and learn more about her life and times. (Writer’s note: I am trying to establish that I’m not interested in…
One of the significant difficulties many husbands and wives encounter is the place of sexual desire and pleasure in marriage. I want to speak to this today by answering a representative question, one of many I’ve received. “You speak of sex like it is a pure and holy thing. Yet when my husband wants to…
If you know anything at all about the new Pope, Pope Francis, you must know this: he is the humble Pope. From the day of his election he has been widely praised for his humility. A recent article from The Washington Post is representative, lauding him for his humble deeds. Over the past two weeks,…
I have spent the past few days in Orlando at the Gospel Coalition Conference. As it always the case when I am at a major conference, I have spent a lot of my time in the bookstore. There is something therapeutic about wading through a massive bookstore, and especially so when the bookstore is so…
Over the past few weeks I have found myself thinking a lot about love. C.S. Lewis told us that according to the Bible there are four kinds of love: phileo, eros, agape, and storge. But I haven’t been thinking of love in such neat categories and under such clear headings. (Plus, D.A. Carson declared the…
The Internet has forever changed the way Christians relate to one another. In giving us a common medium and allowing all of us to participate in it, it has made the church feel so much smaller. Local communities based on common geography have given way to a global community based on common interest. But at…
Edith Schaeffer (nee Seville) has gone to be with the Lord at the age of 98. She was born on November 3, 1914 in Wenzhou, China, the child of missionaries associated with China Inland Missions. As a young adult she attended Beaver College in Glenside, Pennsylvania and it was there that she met Francis Schaeffer.…
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