Every book contract—at least, every book contract I’ve ever seen—includes a word count. When the author finally submits a manuscript, it cannot be a discretionary number of words but must be within the range the publisher has set. This is good and helpful for an author because it makes it simple to set goals and…
Of all the issues related to Christian living, few receive greater attention than knowing God’s will for our lives. Many believers, and especially younger ones, agonize over knowing what God means for them to do and how he means for them to live out their days. Many end up leaning toward a low-grade form of…
It would be a strange man who would meet a woman, pursue her, marry her, and then immediately establish a pattern of ignoring her. It would make little sense for him to marry someone he has little intention of continuing to get to know, of continuing to build relationship with. It would make for many…
How long have you been battling that sin? How long have you been struggling to find peace with that trauma? How long have you been enduring that sorrow? In some way each of us carries a heavy load through this life. In some way each of us finds it a long marathon more than a…
My dad sometimes got exasperated with me. He sometimes got exasperated with me and, looking back, I can’t say I blame him. After all, while his passion was to nurture life within his precious gardens, mine was to kick back with a good book. While his burden was to do things well, mine was to…
There is a sense in which we are less familiar with death than our forebears, more insulated from its horrors. Of course the death rate in the twenty-first century is identical to every century before and every century to come—“it is appointed for [each and every] man to die once, and after that comes judgment.”…
There are a number of childhood vacations that stand out in my mind, but none quite as clearly as our family trip to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. I may have been 10 or 12 at the time and was a young enthusiast of all things military. I knew little of the Civil War, but did know that…
The great general had led his troops to a hard-fought but resounding triumph on the field of battle. With the enemy army now vanquished and scattered, he rallied his regiments to press on toward the capital where they would secure the final victory. And though the men marched briskly, he urged them to still greater…
We’ve all heard that marriage was designed to make us holy more than to make us happy. And though it’s a bit of a trite phrase that threatens to force a false dichotomy between holiness and happiness, there is a measure of truth to it. At its best, marriage does, indeed, help us grow in…
It would be a strange thing for a mother to set her daughter loose in a mud pit, but warn her that she must not let her clothes get dirty. It would be a strange thing for a father to instruct his son to ford a river, but warn him that he must not let…
The Israelites had sojourned in the wilderness until the last of an entire rebellious generation had died and been buried. They had walked to the banks of the Jordan and had seen its waters before them. They had crossed the river and entered the Promised Land. And now the true work and the true challenge…
A devotional writer from a bygone era believed it was crucial to carefully distinguish faultlessness from blamelessness, for while we cannot live faultlessly in this world, we may live blamelessly. Even the best deeds we do cannot be faultless when we ourselves are so very imperfect and when this world is so firmly arrayed against…
There is a longing in all of us—or most of us at least—to rise above obscurity and to be known for our greatness. Even Christians can long to be among the great. This is the subject of this little excerpt from Matthew Redmond’s The God of the Mundane. There are two kinds of pastors, in…
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,…
I have been reviewing books for a long time now—long enough that some books I reviewed shortly after their release are now being re-released in anniversary editions. Such is the case with Donald Whitney’s Ten Questions To Diagnose Your Spiritual Health. First published in 2001, it has now been released in an updated edition for…
Sunflower fields trampled, pumpkin patches trod under, apple orchards pillaged and wrecked. It has become a phenomenon of the Instagram era that fields ripe for harvest are also fields perfect for selfies. When the flowers are at their brightest, the pumpkins at their biggest, the apples at their reddest, word gets out, and crowds descend.…
The bridge was drawn, the gates were barred, the watchmen were posted to the walls. From their vantage point they observed the enemy armies draw close, they watched as the officers divided their force into ranks and regiments. They heard the great shout and looked on in trepidation as the enemy units surged forward. And…
It is said of Michelangelo that when he was carving his best-known masterpiece he began with a block of marble and simply removed whatever was not David. This is the task of any sculptor—to begin with raw material and to work with it until nothing is left but the subject itself. Under the hand of…
The road is narrow. The path is long. The way is rough. Yet God has called each one of us to run the race of the Christian life. Our every step in this great race is taken in the presence of deadly enemies, our every stride opposed by the world, the flesh, and the devil.…
An elderly man, bedridden through a long and terminal illness, wished to see the Rocky Mountains before he died. Unable to travel, yet being a man of some means, he hired a number of skilled artists and dispatched them to the West. To each he gave orders to bring him a painting that would display…