Today we continue to read through John Bunyan’s classic work The Pilgrim’s Progress, and we come to the ninth stage of Christian’s journey. You may remember that in the last stage Christian and his friend Hopeful encountered the shepherds at the Delectable Mountains. And now they journey on. Discussion A lot happened in this week’s…
Read an outside view on Calvinists or Calvinism, and you are sure to read something about God’s wrath. Every time. The God of Calvinism is a wrathful, vengeful God, boiling over in anger against any part of creation that has turned against him. He is no God of love, this. Sure, he may have some…
The first chapter of Ruth sets the stage for a dramatic reversal. It’s the opening of a story and it immediately draws us into the despair of Naomi. At the end of the book’s opening chapter we are left with a very honest but not-so-pretty portrayal of her. She is a woman who has fallen…
This is not a book review. I will be discussing a book—a rather popular book, at that—but I will not actually review it. Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages is a perpetual bestseller, one that is a near-constant presence on the New York Times list as well as the Christian lists. And, like so many…
As you know, I have been reading a lot of R.C. Sproul’s books lately, as part of a project I am working on. A few days ago I went through an older title, The Character of God. There I found these words, speaking of the depth of God’s love and the fact that it is…
You know that every now and again I like to post a prayer here. Sometimes it is a prayer from long ago, sometimes it is a prayer that is much more recent. This week I was looking at pastor Scotty Smith’s blog and came across a great prayer–one I could fully identify with and one…
I’ve been to my share of conferences in the past few years and quite a few of these have been geared toward pastors. There’s a phenomenon I’ve noticed at the beginning of these events. In many cases these conferences are an opportunity for old friends to reconnect. Many times pastors have been attending the same…
This morning I stumbled across the first few pages of Alexander Strauch’s Leading with Love. He begins this book by telling a story from the life of Dwight L. Moody. He tells of a time that the evangelist Henry Moorhouse was asked to preach at Moody’s church every night for a week. To everyone’s surprise,…
There is a profound truth that every Christian must face: the Bible is an inexhaustible treasure. Talk to a pastor who has spent a lifetime reading, studying and explaining the Bible and he will tell you, I’m sure, that the more he comes to understand, the more he realizes he does not understand. I have…
I tend to agree with those who believe that liberalism is a mental disorder. I can think of no other explanation for those who hold steadfast to a system of beliefs that are self-contradictory, contrary to reason, and entirely Godless. Nor does Ann Coulter. In her latest book, Godless, she attempts to “throw open the…
“May Allah rip out his spine from his back and split his brains in two, and then put them both back, and then do it over and over again. Amen.” Such is the kind of “endorsement” garnered by The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades. In this case, the endorsement was written by…
In this day and age we are presented with book after book telling Christians to embrace the mystery of God, and to emphasize narrative while downplaying exposition. Apparently John Stott never received the memo. Why I Am A Christian is not Blue Like Jazz or a story the Emergent crowd would support. Instead it is…
Until I read this book I never would have considered that God’s love was a difficult doctrine. The Trinity is a difficult doctrine to understand – impossible even. The eternal nature of God – that is another difficult or impossible one. But the love of God? I wouldn’t have believed it. But having read this…