It fascinates me how the most beautiful thing can also be the most offensive thing. The world knows nothing more beautiful than grace, than favor that is undeserved, unmerited, and freely granted. Yet so often the world responds to grace with spite and anger, with revulsion and unbelief.
No visit to Edinburgh is complete until you’ve walked to the top of the Royal Mile to tour Edinburgh Castle. The castle has been remarkably well maintained and is as splendid now as it was in its heyday. You can stand on the battlements high above the city and see all the landmarks—the Firth of…
Until the land was expropriated to make way for new developments, Oakville was home to an exceptional tropical fish store. At its center was a massive circular aquarium filled with sharks and other predatory fish, and once each week the employees would host a feeding frenzy that was open to the public. One of them…
Early on a Saturday morning a young girl is told by her mother to dust the house. She dutifully goes about her chore, dusting the tables, the shelves, the mantelpieces, and all the other surfaces. Later in the day her mother inspects the work and expresses some concern. “Look at all the dust,” she says,…
At one of the many shipyards dotting Canada’s East Coast, another great oceangoing vessel is very nearly complete, and in just a few weeks it will begin to transport containers across the Atlantic. But before it can embark on its maiden voyage, it must endure a strict regimen of tests. Waters flood the dry dock…
Nothing in this world is haphazard. There is nothing random or unplanned about the circumstances you are in right now, even if those circumstances seem very hard. Rather, God is leading you by the way he deems most appropriate, the way he has determined is most fitting for your spiritual growth. Just as one tree…
Few authors alive or dead speak to me the way J.R. Miller does. In his book Self-Control, now long out of print, he has his readers imagine life without Christ. It’s a passage worth reading and worth reflecting on. The relation between Christ and his friends is closer than any human relation. No one can…
We like to whitewash our historical heroes. As we look to the great men and women of faith who lived and died before us, we face the temptation to rejoice in their strengths and to ignore their weaknesses. The same is true of our contemporary heroes. Though it is right and good to have human…
It is a display of God’s wisdom that he binds us together in local church communities. We know it is a mark of his wisdom, yet sometimes it can feel so much like folly. Sometimes we grow weary of being around people who are sinful, who are selfish, who still have so far to go.…
One of the hardest tasks for every Christian is to deeply believe and forever remember that we’ve been saved by grace. This is a lifelong challenge because our natural tendency is always to veer back to merit, to assume that we’ve been saved by something we are, something we’ve got, or something we’ve accomplished. Grace—unmerited…
I have friends who like to ensure that they are constantly reminding themselves and others about the grace of God. The way they do this is to append a simple phrase to many of their sentences. What was at one time a deliberate decision has, over time, become a habit. A good habit, I think.…
This morning I am thrilled to bring you a guest article from my friend Tim Keesee of Frontline Missions and the excellent DVDs Dispatches from the Front. This is an article he prepared in honor of John Bunyan’s birthday on November 28. On the Rail near Bedford, England Beads of rain race along my window…
Airport Security – This article takes a look at the unexpected costs of all the TSA is doing. “These days, the TSA’s major role appears to be to make plane trips more unpleasant. And by doing so, it’s encouraging people to take the considerably more dangerous option of traveling by road.” Victory for Tyndale House…
An Unparalyzed Faith – This is an amazing article to find in a mainstream newspaper. Pastor Robert Shelby was paralyzed in a diving accident. Here is what happened when he realized he was drowning: “I began praising him for his grace, for saving me, sending his son, those type things, praising him for the privilege…
This week’s Free Stuff Friday is sponsored by Reformation Heritage Books. They have a great prize for you this week–or for five of you, really. They are offering five prizes, each of which will contain: A Puritan Theology is a brand new, massive, $60 work. that “offers a groundbreaking treatment of the Puritans’ teaching on…
Jerry Bridges says that God disciplines Christians by grace. It may strike us as an oxymoronic statement that discipline is grace, that it may be done out of grace. After all, “Discipline suggests restraint and legalism, rules and regulations, and a God who frowns on anyone who has fun. Grace, on the other hand, seems…
The Puritan writer Matthew Henry must be one of the most quotable of all the Christian authors. He had an amazing ability to grab ahold of a great text or a great doctrine and to reduce it to a few sentences that beautifully sum it all up. Recently I went looking for what he said…
While doing some research this week I came across this wonderful little quote from Thomas Chalmers. Here he discusses the central role of the very ordinary means of God’s grace. In bygone days when God’s covenant people sought to strengthen their piety, to sharpen their effectual intercessions, and give passion to their supplications, they partook…
Guidance – Paul Tautges has been posting a series of articles on the subject of guidance. He goes into subjective and non-subjective means of guidance. If you went through my recent series, you’ll know that my emphasis is a bit different, but I think the series are largely complementary. Church and Technology – “Tyndale University…
William Tyndale – Glen remembers the death of William Tyndale. “This year I have marvelled at the beauty of so many ‘King James phrases’. Yet on closer examination the great majority turn out to be Tyndale phrases. Only around 20 of the 365 phrases I have been considering this year are original to the King…