I have been meaning to write a review of the latest book by my friend Leonardo De Chirico: Same Words, Different Worlds: Do Roman Catholics and Evangelicals Believe the Same Gospel? Leonardo is a pastor and scholar in Rome whose primary area of expertise is a Protestant perspective on Roman Catholicism. In this review, written…
You know as well as I do that you are a finite being. Yet you know as well as I do that at times you fight against your finitude, you battle against your inevitable limits and boundaries as if they are a problem to be overcome or even a sin to be repented of. Yet…
These are confusing times, aren’t they? These are confusing times for those who wish to live according to God’s Word and unto God’s glory. There is a host of questions we need to wrestle with, a host of ethical dilemmas we need to consider. Is abortion permissible? Is it permissible in cases of rape or…
Most of us are familiar with the term “means of grace.” Means of grace are the ways in which the Holy Spirit works in our lives to lead us into holiness. You might think of them as the “channels” through which sanctifying grace flows from God to his people. Most prominently he does this through…
Every generation of Christians faces the very same challenge: To learn the Bible for themselves and to teach it to those who follow in their footsteps. This task cannot be willed, it cannot be inherited, it cannot be passed down. Rather, each generation must accept afresh the challenge to honor, to know, and to obey…
I’ve come to the conclusion that Aileen and I parent weirdly. But I’ve also come to the conclusion that so does everyone else. When each of us looks at other parents, there are almost invariably some components of their parenting we would love to imitate, but others that strike us as, well, a little bit…
There is perhaps no book of the Bible that offers as many interpretive challenges as the book of Revelation. I sometimes debate whether the book is actually perfectly clear while we are pathetically thick or whether the book is extremely difficult to understand because God intended it to be. Either way, though the intent and…
I once sat at George Müller’s desk and read James 1:27 from his Bible. I once visited a library that contained artifacts from William Carey’s life and leafed through a Bible that he had owned and studied. I have pondered the color-coded notes in Amy Carmichael’s Bible and have paged through a first-edition King James.…
Christians are known for being people of the cross—people who rightly focus a great deal of attention on the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. But while the cross stands at the very center of the gospel, it does not stand alone. Rather, it is surrounded, as it were, by the wider context of Jesus’s…
Of all the pursuits that come with the Christian life, is any more constant, any more consuming, and any more difficult than the pursuit of humility? Surely nothing cuts harder against the grain of our natural, sinful humanity than to be humble before God and humble before our fellow man. Yet God calls us to…
Sometimes one person’s story can stand in for that of millions. Sometimes one person can explain a situation that affects not only themselves but also countless others. Those of us who were blessed to grow up with fathers who were present, active, and engaged may struggle to understand the particular sorrows and challenges that come…
There is much that is expected of pastors and church leaders, much for which they have often been inadequately prepared. At various points most will find themselves having to respond to situations that involve domestic abuse. This could be a woman coming to them and pleading for protection from her husband, it could be an…
There was a time, and it was not so very long ago, when the Christian world was tragically under-resourced when it came to books confronting pornography and the men who indulge in it. At that time just about any resource was better than nothing if only it would help men make headway against their addiction.*…
If you could go back in time and insert yourself into any point in history, even if only to be a proverbial fly on the wall, what would you choose? What moment would you wish to observe, or what event would you wish to witness? Would you want to watch God create the world? Would…
I expect every Christian would agree that there are times when prayer is a struggle. Though we experience blessed seasons when prayer is the easiest and most natural thing in the world, we also experience seasons when prayer is difficult and when it feels awkward or even ineffective. And for this reason we all sometimes…
I have been reviewing books for a long time now—long enough that some books I reviewed shortly after their release are now being re-released in anniversary editions. Such is the case with Donald Whitney’s Ten Questions To Diagnose Your Spiritual Health. First published in 2001, it has now been released in an updated edition for…
Would it be strange to say that my favorite part of Robert Wolgemuth’s Gun Lap is the dedication? I think you’ll understand if you allow me to explain. Several months ago Robert sent me a note to say he was writing a book about a man’s “gun lap,” the final lap of a man’s race…
If someone were to ask me, “Should I read Marvin Olasky’s Lament for a Father?,” the answer would be simple: Yes. But if someone were to ask me, “What is Lament for a Father?,” I’m not sure I could as easily answer the question. It is not quite a biography and not quite an autobiography.…
There is no doubt that the times are changing, no doubt that Western society is undergoing a great transformation in which those who hold to the Christian faith, or those who even respect it, are becoming a bare minority. Countries like the UK, Australia, and Canada are already quite far along in this process and,…
Over the years, Jared Wilson has written quite a collection of books that deal with the nature of the church and with ministry within the church. The latest, Gospel-Driven Ministry is, according to the subtitle, “An Introduction to the Calling and Work of a Pastor.” “This book,” he says, “is about the ways in which…