Yesterday morning I was in despair. In the morning paper I had read about a new health curriculum that was to be introduced to the public schools here in Ontario. Beginning next school year, students were to receive a thorough indoctrination in sex education. And as you probably know, my wife and I have chosen…
Is error in doctrine always sin? It’s a question I’ve reflected on in the past and one that I think is well worth considering, even if just for a few moments. While this may seem like a petty issue, a petty question, I believe it is an issue of some consequence since it will necessarily…
My memory isn’t what it used to be. Or maybe I’m kidding myself and my memory has always been awful. Out of necessity I allow Aileen to be my memory and she’s always saying things like, “Do you remember when we had to rush Abby to the hospital for that operation and I ended up…
My friend Tim Kerr, pastor of Sovereign Grace Church in Toronto has given me permission to post the manual for prayer he has titled Take Words With You. It is a small book that contains 1600+ scripture promises & prayers to help God’s people pray more effectively. The promises are arranged around the cross–it’s purposes…
This Sunday evening I will be driving out to Heritage College and Seminary in Cambridge and will be talking to a group of young men. I’ve been asked to share with them some of what I discussed in my book Sexual Detox (which will eventually be available as a printed book, honest). Yesterday I began…
You know the words of Genesis 2:18. There God, having completed his work of Creation, having declared the excellence of all that he has made, says “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” It is useful to consider the context of the creation…
Yesterday I received an email from a reader of this site and today I’d like to answer it (with the permission of the person who sent it). Here is what he wrote: Thank you so much for your booklet, “Sexual Detox.” I have read it over and over, and am still very much challenged by…
We don’t fully understand the Lord’s Supper. Yes, there is a lot we do know and understand about it; we know that it is a means of grace by which we are drawn closer together as a body of believers and, more importantly, drawn closer to the Savior whose death is signified in it. We…
I woke up this morning feeling just a bit discouraged. I guess there’s a fair bit of uncertainty in certain parts of life right now, the kind of uncertainty that tends to be on my mind late at night or early in the morning (or, worst of all, smack dab between the two). I’m facing…
As anyone knows who has studied the life of Jonathan Edwards, he dedicated a large portion of his ministry to thinking, writing and teaching about the freedom of the will. And, of course, he eventually published a classic work dealing with the subject. In writing the book he thought back to the days when revival…
Aileen and I were once members of a church that, after a few years of existence, began to de-emphasize doctrine. Some of the pastors seemed to reach the conclusion that “doctrine divides” and that the church really just needed to focus on evangelism and on “action.” They seemed to determine that a sound theological foundation…
In 2006, AOL made an epic misjudgment. As part of a research project headed by Dr. Abdur Chowdhury, AOL made available to the public a massive amount of search data, releasing the search history of 650,000 users over a 3-month period. That totaled some twenty one million searches. Before releasing the data they anonymized it,…
Jerry Bridges’ The Discipline of Grace is one of those books that is worth reading slowly and meditatively, pausing often to reflect and journal. I rarely dwell too long on a single book, but because of the sheer quantity and quality of Bible-based teaching within this book, I felt compelled to read it slowly and…
Today is Family Day here in Canada (or in Ontario at least–each province celebrates the day a little differently), so I’ll be mixing my time between work and hanging out with the family. A La Carte will return tomorrow. For now, here’s a short reflection on the nature of temptation. In Bruce Walke’s Old Testament…
It seems that as human beings we are naturally drawn to underdog stories. Recently I watched a couple of episodes of Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided, a six-part series that aired as part of the “American Experience” program. As with any biography of Lincoln, it contrasts his early years with those of his…
“A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined” (David Hume). That quote, taken from the Scottish philosopher David…
I think it’s safe to assume that most of the people who read this site do not read the content of the “Reading Classics Together” posts. While I don’t blame you for that (it’s difficult to be interested in a project in which you are not participating), you are missing out on some great content.…
Do you remember learning to do long division back when you were in grade school? It was probably fourth or fifth grade when we learned to do it. It was a long and laborious process and one that, even in my day, seemed irrelevant. After all, we all had calculators and we knew that they…
It was quite a while ago now that a little article on an obscure web site caught my eye. It was one I had to file away. For some reason, that now escapes my mind, I found myself at the web site of The Peninsula, which describes itself as “Qatar’s Leading English Daily.” I hadn’t…
Shortly after Aileen and I were married we moved to the small town of Dundas, Ontario. A historic and picturesque town, Dundas has made its way into a few movies. When we lived there, a movie called Haven (starring Natasha Richardson) was shot in its streets. We lived just half a block from the action…