Articles

How We Worshipped on One Sunday in April

Every now and again I like to share one of our worship services from Grace Fellowship Church. I do this to provide just one example of how a church applies the principles of Scripture to its public worship. If there is something you see here that would bless your church, you have permission to pilfer freely! This service’s cast of characters included Patrick as our service leader, Dwight as the elder who prayed the pastoral prayer and read the Scripture, …

All, Every, and Not One

We live out our Christian lives in a place between Egypt and the Promised Land. We have been justified but not yet glorified—we have been delivered safely through the Red Sea but have not yet forded the Jordan and arrived on its far bank. We may not physically wander as did the Israelites of old and we may not actually follow pillars of fire and cloud, but we no less make a pilgrimage and we are no less dependent upon …

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Ask Me Anything (Habitual Sin, Women Taking the Initiative, Drag Shows, Escaping Laziness)

Every now and again I like to publicly reply to some of the questions that come my way via email (or, as is largely the case today, through events I have attended). Here are my answers to a selection of questions I thought were particularly interesting. How can you encourage someone who is struggling with habitual sin? In different areas and to different degrees we all struggle with habitual sins. And we will continue to do so until we are …

Behind-the-Scenes: Conference Speaking

A short time ago I shared a behind-the-scenes look at book endorsements—why publishers and readers demand them and how they come to be. I did this to simply tell people how they work and to address some of the critiques of the system. Today I’d like to do something similar with conferences—to tell what comes with being a speaker at Christian events. Before I do anything else, let me say that it’s a tremendous honor to be invited to speak …

A La Carte (April 17)

Good morning from Sydney, Australia, where I’ve stopped for just one night before heading back across the Pacific. It has been a good and successful journey, but I’m ready to be home! Today’s Kindle deals include a substantial collection from Crossway. (Yesterday on the blog: Trusting God with Creation But Not Providence) Martyn Lloyd-Jones, April Witkowski & the Myth of the Wasted Ministry This is a sweet reflection by Peter Witkowski. “Our lives today will not be defined by our …

Trusting God with Creation But Not Providence

Each of us is prone at times to lose our confidence in God’s wisdom and to assume that he would benefit from a bit of our own. How often do we grumble and complain against God’s will? How often in prayer do we attempt to direct God according to our own limited knowledge, our own limited wisdom? Yet God’s creation has a way of redirecting our thoughts, for it displays the greatness of his wisdom. God created it without the …

Beauty in the Whole and the Parts

I once had a friend who was only ever confident he understood something when he had taken it down to its component parts. If he bought a new tool or device, he would take it from its box and begin to pull it apart, eager to know how it worked before ever actually using it. If his wife brought flowers into the home, you might find him dismantling one on the kitchen table, separating stamen from petals and leaves from …

Where Did All This Expository Preaching Come From?

There’s no doubt that, at least within Reformed churches, this is an age of expository preaching—of preaching sequentially through books of the Bible while always ensuring that the point of the text is the point of the sermon. Yet you do not need to look far into history to find that it was not always so and that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries such preaching was rare. I was intrigued by Bob Fyall’s explanation of how expository …

Follow Without Seeing, Die Without Receiving

What is it like to be a Christian? What is it like to submit your life to the Lord? What is it like to live for the glory of an unseen God? There is a lot bound up in the questions. But an answer comes to mind as I scour the hall of heroes we find in Hebrews 11. To be a Christian is to follow God without knowing exactly where he is leading and to die without having received …

Banksy and Beauty from Ashes

Not too long ago I read that the mysterious artist Banksy had created several new murals in Ukraine. Going to locations that had experienced the fury of war, he found broken and damaged buildings and used them as his canvas. In one a gymnast practices a handstand upon shattered walls and in another a woman who is wearing a bathrobe and who has curlers in her hair and a gas mask on her face holds a fire extinguisher next to …