As we gather on Sundays, we preach the Bible, read the Bible, pray the Bible, and sing the Bible. But that is not all, for we also “see” the Bible. Here’s how Mark Dever expresses it: “The ordinances are the dramatic presentations of the gospel. They are the moving pictures that represent the spiritual realities…
As another year draws to a close, I wanted to take some time to consider the books I read in 2025 and to assemble a list of my top picks. Apart from the first book, which I consider the best I read this year, the rest are in no particular order. In each case I’ve…
I don’t often write trip reports after I travel, except, of course, in the form of books and documentary projects like Epic and From the Rising of the Sun. Yet, I thought I would make a rare exception after returning from my recent journey to Southern Africa (and, strangely, Northern California). While I am accustomed…
We often hear these days of “AI slop,” a term that’s used to refer to the massive amounts of poor-quality AI-created material that is churned out and unceremoniously dumped onto the internet. This was once primarily artistless artwork and authorless articles, but has now advanced to much bigger and more substantial forms of content.
God commands us to sing. Yet while some of God’s people are gifted singers, the plain fact is that others are not. In any congregation, it’s likely that some have near-perfect pitch while others are functionally tone-deaf. Those who struggle to sing may be self-conscious, tempted to stay quiet or to do no more than…
Each of us is familiar with the experience of being tempted to sin. Sometimes these temptations arise from outside of us and sometimes they arise from within. Each of our three sworn enemies—the world, the flesh, and the devil—has the ability to tempt us to do what God forbids or fail to do what God…
I can be prone to self-loathing. Sometimes this takes the form of thinking about things I’ve done or recounting words I’ve said and detesting myself for them. Sometimes it takes the form of thinking about who I am and hating who God has made me to be, or thinking about the way God has gifted…
While it may be rare to find a church that dedicates a substantial portion of the service to prayers and Scripture reading, it would be rare to find a church that fails to dedicate a substantial portion of the service to singing. Christians love to sing, and we have always regarded it as an essential…
Black Friday is upon us and with it the opportunity to save a bit of money as we shop for the holidays or build out our libraries. I have listed hundreds of deals below and will be adding to it throughout the course of the weekend. Note that I will update this list throughout the…
Though the year is coming to its end, it’s not over yet! That means publishers still have some books to release—books we would not wish to overlook before 2025 gives way to 2026. Here are some of the ones I consider especially noteworthy. In each case, I’ve included the editorial description to give you a…
I have been blogging at Challies.com on a daily basis for well over 22 years now. That long commitment has allowed me to write thousands of articles and hundreds of book reviews while also sending millions of visitors to other sites through the daily A La Carte feature. While I’ve also written a number of books, through…
There is a certain kind of sober-mindedness that seems to come over Christians as they age. It can flow from many sources, I’m sure, but I think it often arises from a kind of fear—a fear that they may not finish their race without some kind of a major stumble. After living the Christian life…
Sometimes humor accomplishes what soberness cannot, as an old quote from D.L. Moody illustrates. “Some people’s prayers need to be cut off at both ends and set on fire in the middle.” After all, we have all had to endure prayers that were a little too long (or perhaps a lot too long) or that…
I think each one of us has probably had a kind of disquieting experience in which we’ve suddenly realized that a lot of Christian publishing is bunk. While we are undoubtedly blessed with far more truthful and edifying books than ever before, we are also cursed with far more untruthful and unedifying books.
Canada has gained a lot of attention in recent years due to its commitment to Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), its preferred idiom for euthanasia. Some honor Canada as groundbreaking in its commitment to bringing dignity to death while others abhor it as taking advantage of the weak, the elderly, and the vulnerable. Already euthanasia…
Christians have long compared prayer to a thermometer that measures spiritual heat. When we grow complacent in our relationship with the Lord, that thermometer almost invariably registers cool, for in such times we pray seldom and we pray without fervor.
It often surprises me how inadvertently selfish we human beings can be and how obliviously self-centered our behavior can become. I see this in many ways, but one has stood out to me over the past little stretch of time.
No Christian tradition is perfect, which means that every Christian tradition has its own strengths and weaknesses. Every tradition has areas in which it presses hard to understand and live according to biblical truth, but then also areas in which it inevitably fails to completely match Scripture’s teaching and emphases. Since every tradition is the…
When we think of worship, our thoughts almost always gravitate to singing—the two have become inseparable and almost synonymous in our minds and in our church services. Yet singing is actually just one component of worship. We worship when we sing, but we also worship when we read Scripture, when we listen to a sermon,…
Christians can often have a strange relationship with the body. Certain Christian traditions have treated the body as if it is no more than a shell for the soul, a material self that is of little importance when compared to the immaterial self. Other Christian traditions have treated the body as if it is of…