Much of what makes the Internet powerful is tied up in the word “cyberspace.” Oddly, much of what makes the Internet dangerous is tied up in that same word. The word was coined by William Gibson and appeared first in his novel Neuromancer. Whatever its original meaning, cyberspace has come to refer to what happens…
Christin Ditchfield and I have this in common: we are both on Crossway’s roster of authors. Crossway published my book The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment and has published several of Christin’s including A Way With Words and A Family Guide to Narnia. But just this weekend we discovered that we have something else in common.…
This is the 23rd installment in a series on theological terms. See previous posts on the terms theology, Trinity, creation, man, Fall, common grace, sin, righteousness, faith, pride, election, revelation, atonement, adoption, sanctification, incarnation, idolatry, the church, holiness, salvation, judgment, and heaven. The Bible warns us that those who do not accept the gospel of…
This is the 22nd installment in a series on theological terms. See previous posts on the terms theology, Trinity, creation, man, Fall, common grace, sin, righteousness, faith, pride, election, revelation, atonement, adoption, sanctification, incarnation, idolatry, the church, holiness, salvation, and judgment. “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place…
On one of those evenings when I was too tired to read but not tired enough to sleep, I began to browse the documentary section on Netflix. I came across Monica & David, a documentary about, well, Monica and David. The film traces their relationship from dating, to their wedding, to the early days of…
This is the 21st installment in a series on theological terms. See previous posts on the terms theology, Trinity, creation, man, Fall, common grace, sin, righteousness, faith, pride, election, revelation, atonement, adoption, sanctification, incarnation, idolatry, the church, holiness, and salvation. Meditate much upon the day of judgment. Feathers swim upon the water, but gold sinks…
What Is Family Integrated Church? At the most basic level, the family integrated church is one intentionally designed to eliminate unnecessary age-segregated structures from the church’s ministry. Children typically attend all of the corporate worship gatherings with their parents rather than attending a separate children’s ministry or, in some cases, even a nursery. Intergenerational discipleship…
Pornography has traditionally been an industry that caters almost entirely to men. There have always been exceptions, of course, but it was predominantly men who bought the magazines and videos in a pre-digital age and it has been men who have made pornography a multi-billion dollar industry in the Internet age. If the industry has…
A few months ago I shared a few lessons I’ve learned along the way–a few things I’ve learned about preaching since I rather unexpectedly found myself regularly standing in the pulpit. I learned that preaching can be discouraging, that preachers are fragile, that success in preaching is difficult to measure, and that preaching is a…
This is the 20th installment in a series on common theological terms. See previous posts on the terms theology, Trinity, creation, man, Fall, common grace, sin, righteousness, faith, pride, election, revelation, atonement, adoption, sanctification, incarnation, idolatry, the church, and holiness. In the 9th sermon of John Piper’s epic series on the book of Romans he…
More than once I have been accused of being a bibliolater, a person who idolizes the Bible, who has excessive reverence for the letter of the Bible. I’m sure many other Christians have been accused of this as well. In my experience, this charge tends to be leveled against those who affirm the infallibility or…
This is the nineteenth installment in a series on theological terms. See previous posts on the terms theology, Trinity, creation, man, Fall, common grace, sin, righteousness, faith, pride, election, revelation, atonement, adoption, sanctification, incarnation, idolatry, and the church. In a lecture titled “The Meaning of Holiness” (video), R. C. Sproul identifies two major scriptural meanings…
This blog has introduced a challenge to my life that I hadn’t expected. It demands that at least part of my life–or thought life, at any rate–is lived out in public. This blog, like most others, is a place where I am able to think out loud in public and this affords every reader the…
This is the seventeenth installment in a series on theological terms. See previous posts on the terms theology, Trinity, creation, man, Fall, common grace, sin, righteousness, faith, pride, election, revelation, atonement, adoption, sanctification, incarnation, and idolatry. Wayne Grudem says it simply and well: “The church is the community of all true believers for all time.“…
While I’ve always been an avid reader of books, in the past twelve months or so I’ve also become an avid listener. After seeing hundreds of Audible ads advertising “Download a Free Audiobook Today!” I finally went ahead and signed up and downloaded my free audiobook (and yes, you actually can join, get that free…
This is the seventeenth installment in a series on theological terms. See previous posts on the terms theology, Trinity, creation, man, Fall, common grace, sin, righteousness, faith, pride, election, revelation, atonement, adoption, sanctification and incarnation. “For what is idolatry if not this: to worship the gifts in place of the giver himself?” (John Calvin, Institutes…
Let me allow you in to a little secret of the blogosphere: The week between Christmas and New Years is the slowest week of the year for site visits. We are all busy and distracted and otherwise out of our routines, so traffic to blogs plummets to a mere forty or fifty percent of the…
This is the sixteenth installment in a series on theological terms. See previous posts on the terms theology, Trinity, creation, man, Fall, common grace, sin, righteousness, faith, pride, election, revelation, atonement, adoption, and sanctification. We sing joy to the world at Christmas, says Spurgeon, “because it is evermore a joyous fact that God should be…
If you’re a regular reader of the site, you’ve probably noticed that it has had a lot of problems in recent weeks. It holds steady for a few days, then crashes hard. After some emergency surgery—the virtual equivalent of keeping a car together with Bondo and duct tape—it comes back to life for a while.…
This is the fifteenth installment in a series on theological terms. See previous posts on the terms theology, Trinity, creation, man, Fall, common grace, sin, righteousness, faith, pride, election, revelation, atonement, and adoption. The concept of sanctification is found throughout Scripture and in reference to a variety of subjects. For example, God sanctifies the seventh…