This week I received Heart Cries to Heaven, a new book from DayOne that is a compilation of prayers composed by David Campell, pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle, PA. One of those prayers stood out to me as I considered the week to come in which Americans will head to the polls and…
I receive a lot of books in the mail. If I were to go through them and categorize them, I suspect I’d find that one topic stands apart from the rest–prayer. I’d be surprised if any topic receives as much attention as this one. I suppose this shows that we Christians struggle with prayer–that we…
It’s another Friday which means I’ve got another edition of Free Stuff Fridays for you. And, as it happens, I’ve got another great giveaway for you. This week’s sponsor is CBD Reformed, a company you know well by now. They are offering 5 prizes, each of which will consist of the following 3 books: Generous…
I have nothing (absolutely nothing!) to say today. So let’s get straight to the links. Underrepresented at Capetown – I missed this article when it was posted last week. Andy Crouch reports on the conspicuous absence of megachurch pastors at the Lausanne Congress. “For megapastors, platform time is the price of participation. Entrepreneurial pastors live…
Last week I spent a day in Grand Rapids and most of that day was taken up with meetings at the head office for Zondervan. As you probably know, Zondervan will be publishing my next couple of books, so we had a series of meetings to discuss, among other things, marketing plans (that’s right–we met…
Today, in this effort to read some of the classic works of the Christian faith, we come to chapter three of R.C. Sproul’s The Holiness of God. Sproul introduces the chapter this way: “Here we are, already in the third chapter of this book, and I still have not defined what it means to be…
That was rather an unexpected start to the World Series, wasn’t it? When Cliff Lee faces Tim Lincecum you’re hardly expecting a slugfest. And yet that’s exactly what it turned into. I don’t much care who wins this series, but I’m hoping it can at least remain close enough to be interesting. Is Music Warping…
There are many books out there that describe Reformed theology and that invite people to become part of the Reformed tradition. However, most of these books are a product of the years before the advent of this young, restless, Reformed reality that is all the rage today. Most such books predate the New Calvinism. New…
Yesterday the meteorologists around these parts were talking about a “weather bomb.” In the end we didn’t see anything even close to resembling such a phenomenon. I wouldn’t say we’re disappointed, but, well, maybe we are just a little bit. It sounded exciting. A Detox Review – Here’s a very encouraging review of Sexual Detox.…
I love Bible commentaries and must own a couple hundred of them by now. This may be a bit of an irrational love since I am not a preacher and am only rarely asked to preach. Still, while growing a collection has involved some effort and some expense, there have been many occasions when I’ve…
This blog is full of false starts and dead ends–series I decided to write and gave up on or articles I meant to continue and just plain forgot about. A friend recently pointed out that just about a year ago I discussed Chasing Delight and in that post wrote about Proverbs 11:1: “It is one…
Rarely do I see a clearer manifestation of the pathetic nature of our culture than at Halloween. I’m all for having the kids dress up to go and collect candy. But yesterday I stepped into a store and noticed that the section for adult costumes was bigger than the section for kid’s costumes. Two words:…
One of the happier musical developments in the Christian world over the past few years has been the resurgence of hymns. Though there are many contemporary worship songs that have excellent content and are ideal for congregational worship, we just can’t afford to lose the hymn. There are two different kinds of contemporary hymn. In…
I’ve now written two articles about how I got here (part one and part two). I sat down to write about the background to this site–the events that led to its beginning–and got a little distracted along the way. Today I’ll actually get to the heart of the story. I ended the last article in…
I was sitting in Grand Rapids airport on Saturday morning, about to catch a flight to Cleveland (and from Cleveland I’d catch a second flight to Toronto). It struck me as a little bit cruel that at the time there were two flights leaving from my gate–one going to Cleveland (for which I had a…
Earlier this week I was skimming back through William Farley’s book Gospel-Powered Parenting by (which I reviewed here) and happened across his discussion of “Gospel Fathers.” In this section he discusses the importance of godly, masculine men within a church body. He starts out by quoting a selection of lines from Why Men Hate Going…
Daniel Doriani’s commentary on James is one of the relatively few commentaries I’ve read cover-to-cover. It’s one I enjoyed a lot. In his discussion of the final portion of James 5, I found an interesting story that I thought I’d share with you. As I read it, I though of my continuationist (charismatic) friends. It…
Every week I rack my brain trying to come up with an original introduction to these Free Stuff Fridays posts. Maybe I just need to give up and embrace the formula. I guess the problem is that I’m usually genuinely excited about the stuff I get to give out here so I don’t want it…
As you read this, I’m on my way to Grand Rapids. These short trips can be tough ones. Because I want to be gone for only the day, I need an early flight–7 AM. That means I need to be at the airport at 5 AM (which you’d understand if you’ve ever flown out of…
Yesterday I began writing about How I Got Here in an article that somehow began to turn into a loose autobiography. I got as far as walking into my first day at a new high school and being confronted by a cute girl whose first words to me were “If you ever tell anyone, I’ll…