A couple of weeks ago I was able to dedicate quite a lot of time to studying Zechariah’s song. This is the song Zechariah sang at the birth of his son John (who would, of course, soon be known as John the Baptist), the song he sang after nine months of being mute. At the…
Last year we added a dog to our lives–a dog we named Lucy. Lucy is a chocolate Labrador Retriever (And yes, I know that all of the dog people just shook their heads in compassionate pity). Some people think that Labs are dogs who are loyal and kind and loving toward their owners. These people…
It is one of my clearest memories of the whole hullabaloo surrounding The Passion of the Christ. I met a man who had just returned from a screening of the movie and with eyes wide he exclaimed, “It changed my life!” It is a phrase we hear all the time. It is a phrase that…
There is a stubbornness to sin that surprises and disappoints. The Christian life is one of increasing triumph over sin, and yet even with the rejoicing there is so much disappointment, even with the victory there is so much failure, even while so much sin is put to death, so much remains. One area of…
Just about every blogger can identify with the frustration. You write an article that is kind and well-reasoned and, at least in your estimation, displays the fruit of the Spirit’s work in your life. With some excitement you share this article with the world and, yet, within minutes, you face a barrage of comments that…
Mayday is one of the few television shows that I really enjoy (I believe it may be called Air Disasters in the United States and Air Crash Investigations elsewhere in the world). It is a docudrama series about plane crashes, of all things. It sounds morbid, I admit, but I find it fascinating. One of…
Last summer I traveled to Prince Edward Island on Canada’s east coast to speak at a Gospel Coalition event. I was there with Mike Bullmore and Kevin DeYoung for the “Magnificent Holiness” conference. Mike spoke three times on the gospel and sanctification and used Romans 6 as his text. Of all he said, there is…
Doug Nichols is a friend of mine through the Internet. He is the Founder and Director of Action International Ministries and in that role he travels all over the world promoting missions and evangelism. He emails me often and from all parts of the world with words of encouragement. He closes almost every email by…
Through the weekend that follows Thanksgiving I have been maintaining a page that provides a round-up of Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals that are of particular interest to Christians. This is something I have done for several years now, yet every year I do it with a bit of a guilty conscience. There are…
The current issue of The New Yorker has a long and unsettling feature on Rob Bell (that, unfortunately, I cannot link to as it is available to subscribers only). Written by Kelefa Sanneh and titled “The Hell-Raiser,” the article portrays Bell as a Christian leader who found himself searching for a “more forgiving faith.” Russell…
I have written often on the subject of knowing and doing the will of God. Sometimes, though, particular situations arise in which we need very specific applications of those general principles. A reader of this site recently asked me about how to think about how many children to have. Here is what he wrote: The…
One of these is unlike the others: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, niceness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. According to Paul’s letter to the church at Galatia, all but one of these is what he refers to as the fruit of the Spirit, which is to say, visible evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit…
I’ve said it often: I have a fascination with good writing that explores common issues or current events from a secular perspective. Time and again I find myself reading articles of this nature and enjoying the author’s perspective, but wanting him to go just a little bit farther, a little bit deeper, and to introduce…
Love the sinner, hate the sin.” That’s a well-worn Christian mantra, an expression of conviction that even while we stand firm on what constitutes right and wrong, we will continue to love those who do what is sinful. We use the expression to affirm love for others even while expressing that their sin is really,…
Last week my wife and I sat down and watched C.J. Mahaney’s keynote address from the Strengthening Your Marriage in Ministry event at Southern Seminary. His talk was titled “Marriage and Pastoral Ministry” and in it he shares with future pastors some of the lessons he has learned along the way and some of the…
I’m so busy. You’re so busy. We’re all so busy–so busy that we can’t possibly fit one more thing into our schedules, or one more relationship into our lives. That’s life in North America, or perhaps just life in the twenty-first century. In an article in the New York Times, Tim Kreider says that we…
One of the interesting and significant new realities of life in a digital world is that we are finding new and original ways of building community. There was a time when community was largely related to and dependent upon geography. Community was based on shared space, so our sense of belonging was tied to the…
As Christians we are adept at looking at the culture around us and seeing how it is violating God’s good standards when it comes to sexuality. Not too long ago, though, I was asked to reflect on the ways in which Christians may compromise God’s standards for sexuality–some of those hidden or sanctified sins in…
So many Christians live their lives racked with guilt and shame. They think back to the things they did, the sins they committed, whether two days ago or two decades, and they live under a cloud of shame. This shame hurts, it burns, it incapacitates. It raises this question: What is the place of guilt,…
It is Labor Day today, and we anticipate spending the day with friends. We will be spending the day with these particular friends because a few weeks ago they emailed and said, “We want to do something on Labor Day. With you. At your house.” They just went ahead and invited themselves over and invited…