Christian Living Archive

The Incident of the Fish (08/27/08 - 13 Comments)
As I read my way through the works of David McCullough, I have come to Brave Companions, a book that offers “Portraits in History”—brief glimpses of people and incidents that helped make America what she is today. One of the chapters deals with “The American Adventure of Louis Agassiz.” Agassiz was a French zoologist and geologist who settled in the United States in the mid nineteenth century. He began a distinguished career as a professor...

Everything to Nothing (08/25/08 - 7 Comments)
We, as human beings, love underdog stories. Yesterday I watched a couple of episodes of Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided, a six-part series that aired as part of the “American Experience” program. As with any bio of Lincoln, it contrasts his early years with those of his wife. Where Mary Todd was raised in a huge home filled with servants and slaves, Abraham Lincoln was raised in a one-room cabin far from civilization;...

The Highest Aim (08/18/08 - 26 Comments)
The Westminister Shorter Catechism asks the question, “What is the chief end of man?” Many of us know the answer. “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” While this is not a phrase drawn directly from Scripture, the wisdom behind it surely is. The Bible tells us with great clarity that man was created primarily to bring glory to God. Thus the chief end, the overwhelming purpose, of Christians and...

Joy Comes with the Morning (08/11/08 - 6 Comments)
A few years ago I went to Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, a Desiring God National Conference, and subsequently read the book drawn from those conference messages. I can’t deny that the speech given by Joni Eareckson Tada was not my favorite, at least in the live setting. Maybe it was her style of delivery or maybe it was just that the session came at the end of a long day but, while I...

Catechetical Instruction (08/02/08 - 33 Comments)
A newcomer to the Reformed faith sent me an email. He wrote, “I am beginning to learn that the protestant world has catechisms. Do you recommend their reading and study? If yes, which one?” I thought I’d answer this today, relying in large part on an article I wrote a few years ago. Catechisms were an important part of my life when I was a child. I grew up in a Reformed tradition that placed...

The Filth of Human Hands (07/30/08 - 10 Comments)
This morning I read with joy an account of God’s abundant grace in the life of my friend Stacey. On her blog she wrote about God’s grace despite her long-lingering doubts about His goodness. “For the past couple of years, until not long ago actually, I was constantly plagued by doubts and uncertainty in the goodness of my God. I was confused and always questioning God, unable to read my Bible without doubting and virtually...

Who Is In Control? (07/28/08 - 30 Comments)
Have you ever noticed how, when a person is looking for a house, driving slowly down a darkened street straining to see the numbers on the fronts of the homes or on the mailboxes at the end of the driveways, he automatically turns down the car radio? He does so because he instinctively knows that music or voices can be a distraction. A person cannot focus as well on the task at-hand when there is...

Data Smog and the Christian Life (07/16/08 - 24 Comments)
We are at a strange and unique stage of human history. The combination of the Internet, electronic storage media, the rapid rate of technological progress and the fast-pace of our society, has given us unparalleled access to unparalleled amounts of information. Never in history have people had access to so much information. Consider just a few examples: Google currently indexes billions upon billions of web pages and adds hundreds of thousands more every day (I...

Sandbox Devotions (07/14/08 - 18 Comments)
There was a period in my life where I spent a good bit of time playing computer games. I developed a fascination with certain games and gained a lot of pleasure from playing them. Truth be told, if I was able to find a way of extending my days from 24 to 48 hours I might take up the hobby again. Unfortunately, as it stands now, I just have too many other responsibilities in life...

The Heaviest Obligation (06/30/08 - 11 Comments)
A.W. Tozer has been in the news lately (or in the blogosphere at any rate) following the release of A Passion for God, a biography of the man written by Lyle Dorsett. Dorsett dealt honestly with some shortcomings in Tozer’s character and I, like many readers, was surprised (and perhaps even shocked) by some of what I learned. Yet even as I’ve thought about these things, I’ve found that my high respect for Tozer remains....

Betraying God in Worship (06/23/08 - 21 Comments)
Only on rare occasions can I bring myself to buy greeting cards. When it is Aileen’s birthday or when it is our anniversary, I either tell her how I feel (not something I’m particularly good at most of the time) or I buy a blank card and fill it with my own words. Or occasionally, to my shame, I forgo to card altogether. For some reason it just seems fake, disingenuous, to give her a...

Proverbs 31 2K1 (06/20/08 - 32 Comments)
"An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels." So begins what is undoubtedly the most famous (or most notorious) chapter of Proverbs. Written by King Lemuel, this chapter, the thirty-first, includes a poem praising the excellent wife. It has provided fodder for shelves of books and for countless sermons. You know it well, I am sure. Though the verses are most often preached and applied to women, within the context...

The Priority of Practicing (06/11/08 - 8 Comments)
The term “planned neglect” is one I first encountered around the time that Hurricane Katrina swept over the Gulf Coast. It came to the fore for a time in the media when locals, dismayed at the way the disaster was handled, charged various levels of government with planned neglect, insisting that the city had not been merely killed but had been murdered. Neglect, planned by the government, had led to the death of the city....

You Have Seen Him (06/09/08 - 7 Comments)
For the past few months our pastor has been using Sunday mornings to lead us through the gospel of John. It has been some time since I’ve been able to sit through an expositional series on one of the gospels and I am enjoying learning ever-more about the life and ministry of Jesus. Yesterday we came to John 9, the chapter which is often under a heading such as “Jesus Heals a Man Born Blind.”...

Six Ways to Hinder Your Prayers (05/23/08 - 9 Comments)
It is the Lord’s delight to give us what we ask of Him in prayer. Like David, we should all pray, “O God, hear my prayer; give ear to the words of my mouth” (Psalm 54:2). If Christians did not believe in the efficacy of prayer, there would be no reason for us to ask anything of God. He is the one who tells us that we can have confidence that our prayers ascend to...