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Happier Elsewhere: Singing ‘Happy Trails’ to … Some
I appreciate the practical wisdom Ed Stetzer provides in a post titled: Why I Have No Difficulty Helping “Issue Christians” to Move On. Few seem to think this way in our consumerist church culture, where numbers are the only measuring stick of success, and faithfulness is but a tool to… well, numerical success – so…
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The Paradox of God’s Intentions
A paradox of the Christian faith worth pondering, from John Flavel: When God intends to fill a soul, he first makes it empty. When God intends to enrich a soul, he first makes it poor. When he intends to exalt a soul, he first makes it sensible to it’s own miseries, wants, and nothingness.
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Myopic World Vision
I was quite disappointed yesterday by World Vision president Richard Stearns’ announcement that the mamouth mercy ministry “will no longer require its more than 1,100 employees to restrict their sexual activity to marriage between one man and one woman”. While I do not agree with the decision World Vision to cave on the issue of marriage, it…
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Evangelistic Worship
by Tim Keller THE WORSHIP WARS One of the basic features of church life in the U.S. today is the proliferation of worship and music forms. This in turn has caused many severe conflicts both within individual congregations and whole denominations. Most books and articles about recent worship trends tend to fall into one of…
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Evidences of a Backslidden Condition
Through the prophet Jeremiah the Lord dispenses a treasury of wisdom and insight. Perhaps among the most valuable of those insights, at least to my thinking, is found in Jeremiah 17.9: The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? The Lord also reminds us, through Jeremiah and scores of…
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REAL Christians Waltz
Listen to how Bob Flayhart, Senior Pator at Oak Mountain Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, AL, describes a Gospel-centered Christian Life: A Gospel-centered life is the Christian Waltz. A waltz is a dance made up of three steps. Christians need to consider the Christian three step when it comes to growth. In the first step, we…
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Ministering to Missing Millennials
Why are Millennials walking away from our churches? Why are a number of our own kids walking out the doors? Why does the church seem impotent to change the direction of this rising tide? While my wife and I are blessed to have all of our kids active in church, including our two college aged…
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Pursuing Prodigals
by Barry York Many Christian parents have had the sad experience of seeing a covenant child grow up and wander from the faith. To see one whom you joyfully brought into the world, baptized in the name of the Triune God, sacrificed in love to nurture and provide for, and trained to love Christ and His…
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Generic Prayer Request Generator
Sad. Funny. Too often true. But still sad. Sad mostly because this seems reflective of too much of contemporary prayer and the common substance of too many prayer meetings.
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Four Streams of Worship
Worship involves action and response. God’s Action: God graciously invites us into his presence. (Isaiah 55; Matthew 11.28) Our Response: We come reverently, aware of God’s holiness and significance; and we express humility by confessing our sins. (see Isaiah 6) God’s Action: God speaks the gospel of forgiveness and reconciliation to us. Our Response: We…
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6 Types of Athiests
Can an atheist qualify as a “minister of the gospel”? Oxymoronic as it may be, this is apparently fodder for discussion, at least in the U.S. courts. In what seems a peculiar story in the news recently, both Forbes and Christianity Today report that there is a case being made to include athiest leaders under the…
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God-Centered Worship
by Robert Hartmann I recently listened to a preacher instructing other preachers on how to deliver God-centered sermons. The speaker pointed out that of the many things that people would like to hear in a sermon, and the many things that we think they should hear, a sermon is really achieving its purpose only when it…
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What Did You Expect?
Here is a preview and overview of one of the best books on marriage I have read: What Did You Expect?. In this video, the author, Paul Tripp, introduces the root of almost any marriage conflict or emotional distancing: The heart. This is not a book I recommend for pre-marital counseling – not that…
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Growing People for Service
by Daniel Radmacher Have you ever wondered why we are not born as adults? Probably not, I would wager. Seriously, though, have you ever considered the fact that God could very easily birth us as grown-ups? We could come out of the womb fully formed intellectually and spiritually, with only our physical dimensions to catch…
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5 Reasons to Recover the Practice of Confession
Is confession something that Evangelical Christians should practice regularly? or Is confession a practice rooted in the superstition of some by-gone tradition? Joe Thorn gives a handful of good reasons why Confession should be part of the regular Christian practice: 1. Confession Acknowledges God’s Place and Authority In our Lives By a sincere and hearty…
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