A Day’s Journey: Stories of Hope and Death-Defying Joy Tim Keesee In January of 2023, Tim Keesee and I set out on a journey—a journey that has since taken us around the world. Together we have visited twenty-odd countries spread across all six inhabited continents. But before we embarked on that journey, Tim had found…
Does God Care About Gender Identity? Samuel Ferguson It’s hard to believe, but it was just a very short time ago that nobody believed in gender identity. At least, nobody believed in what the term has come to encompass today. As with so many social phenomena, it came slowly and then all at once. Suddenly it…
We make a lot of all the distractions that come with life in the modern, always-on, electronic world. And certainly it can be hard to have minds that remain focused for any significant stretch of time before the next beep, the next buzz, the next little burst of dopamine. Yet we do not need to…
There are books you may be drawn to, but probably do not actually need to read. (Seriously, at some point you need to stop reading books about methods of prayer and just pray!) Then there are other books you may not be particularly drawn to but probably ought to read. Among these are books on…
I have benefited a lot from Greg Koukl’s books Tactics and The Story of Reality. And while I have undoubtedly forgotten much of their content, there are a number of takeaways that have stuck with me. The foremost is that when we speak to people who are not Christians, we have not failed if they…
Every now and again I sit down to write a review for a book and realize I am really under-equipped to review it well. I might have read it, enjoyed it, and benefitted from it, but lack the knowledge or expertise to confidently analyze it. This is exactly the case with Andrew Wilson’s Remaking the…
Has anyone ever lived in times that were normal? Probably not, I suppose. Every time and every context has its peculiarities, I’m sure. Regardless, there’s no doubt that we are currently living in unusual times—in what seems like a transitionary phase during which old traditions, old morals, and old ways of understanding the world are…
When I enrolled in university, I quickly learned that it was considered wise to take one or two “bird courses” as they were called back then—courses that were known to be an easy credit. These would counter-balance the much more difficult courses I was taking like Greek and French. One of the easy options was…
Though we fear it, we must all face it. Though we hate it, we must all meet it. Though we dread it, we cannot avoid it. It is, of course, death. In this broken and battered world, death always looms over life, death always stands hauntingly in the distance. Death is the subject of a…
There are some historical figures whose every sin seems to get overlooked and whose every virtue seems to get amplified. Conversely, there are other historical figures whose every virtue seems to get overlooked and whose every sin seems to get amplified. I would place the modern understanding of David Livingstone squarely in the latter category.…
Sometimes I enjoy a book, but still find myself scratching my head about certain elements of it. Sometimes I genuinely appreciate what an author has to say, yet find myself wondering about some of his claims. And this is exactly the case with Passport to Heaven: The True Story of a Zealous Mormon Missionary Who…
I love a good biography. I love a good biography when it’s a “standard” or “pure” biography that simply describes a person’s life from beginning to end. But I also love a good biography when it is written purposefully or thematically—when instead of chronologically detailing all the events of a person’s life it provides selective…
We have access to some amazing resources meant to help us better understand the Bible. From commentaries to lexicons to systematic theologies, we of all people are most blessed. One especially helpful resource that will help devotional Bible readers as much as pastors or theologians is a harmonized narrative of the life of Jesus. God…
There are three ways to read a good and growing number of the classics of the Christian faith. The first is to read the original work. This is usually the most rewarding option, but it can pose difficulties when the author’s language is either foreign or antiquated. The second is to read a modernized version…
Sometimes a book obscures its subject behind a clever or even misleading title. Sometimes, though, it just goes out and says it. And that’s very much the case with Bob Fyall’s Why Are We Often So Boring?. Having dedicated his life to both preaching and training others to preach, he has collected his thoughts and…
There have been times in the history of the Christian faith in which poetry played a key role in believers’ devotion to the Lord. There were eras in which the work of Christian poets was respected and even lauded. But that was then and this is now. While we still value poetry in the form…
I suppose I should probably preface what follows by saying that I have never watched as much as a moment of any show by or about the Duggar family. I once had a very cordial chat with Jinger Vuolo (formerly Duggar) at a conference without knowing she was a reality TV personality and probably the…
Sometimes it’s simple enough to know what a book is, but a little more difficult to know what it’s meant for. Understanding a book’s contents is sometimes a bit simpler than knowing how to use it. And I’d say that’s exactly the case for A Divine Tapestry by Ryan McGraw. A Divine Tapestry is simply…
It is no small feat to build a strong marriage. It is no easy thing to maintain a strong marriage through years of trials and temptations, through decades of sinning and being sinned against. It is not something any of us can take for granted and it is for this reason that there are so…
Earlier this year I was in Sydney, Australia over a weekend. I wanted to go to church of course, so visited TGC’s site to scour its handy church directory. I found that within walking distance was a little Anglican church that worshipped in a nearby college of the arts. I arrived to find that the…