Data Smog and the Christian Life

We are at a strange and unique stage of human history. The combination of the Internet, electronic storage media, the rapid rate of technological progress and the fast-pace of our society, has given us unparalleled access to unparalleled amounts of information. Never in history have people had access to so much information. Consider just a few examples: Google currently indexes billions upon billions of web pages and adds hundreds of thousands more every day (I was not able to find …

Sandbox Devotions

There was a period in my life where I spent a good bit of time playing computer games. I developed a fascination with certain games and gained a lot of pleasure from playing them. Truth be told, if I was able to find a way of extending my days from 24 to 48 hours I might take up the hobby again. Unfortunately, as it stands now, I just have too many other responsibilities in life to be able to dedicate …

Become a Patron

The Heaviest Obligation

A.W. Tozer has been in the news lately (or in the blogosphere at any rate) following the release of A Passion for God, a biography of the man written by Lyle Dorsett. Dorsett dealt honestly with some shortcomings in Tozer’s character and I, like many readers, was surprised (and perhaps even shocked) by some of what I learned. Yet even as I’ve thought about these things, I’ve found that my high respect for Tozer remains. Much of what he taught …

Betraying God in Worship

Only on rare occasions can I bring myself to buy greeting cards. When it is Aileen’s birthday or when it is our anniversary, I either tell her how I feel (not something I’m particularly good at most of the time) or I buy a blank card and fill it with my own words. Or occasionally, to my shame, I forgo to card altogether. For some reason it just seems fake, disingenuous, to give her a card with a little poetic …

Proverbs 31 2K1

“An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels.” So begins what is undoubtedly the most famous (or most notorious) chapter of Proverbs. Written by King Lemuel, this chapter, the thirty-first, includes a poem praising the excellent wife. It has provided fodder for shelves of books and for countless sermons. You know it well, I am sure. Though the verses are most often preached and applied to women, within the context of the book it seems …

The Priority of Practicing

The term “planned neglect” is one I first encountered around the time that Hurricane Katrina swept over the Gulf Coast. It came to the fore for a time in the media when locals, dismayed at the way the disaster was handled, charged various levels of government with planned neglect, insisting that the city had not been merely killed but had been murdered. Neglect, planned by the government, had led to the death of the city. But there is more to …

You Have Seen Him

For the past few months our pastor has been using Sunday mornings to lead us through the gospel of John. It has been some time since I’ve been able to sit through an expositional series on one of the gospels and I am enjoying learning ever-more about the life and ministry of Jesus. Yesterday we came to John 9, the chapter which is often under a heading such as “Jesus Heals a Man Born Blind.” You know the story, I’m …

Six Ways to Hinder Your Prayers

It is the Lord’s delight to give us what we ask of Him in prayer. Like David, we should all pray, “O God, hear my prayer; give ear to the words of my mouth” (Psalm 54:2). If Christians did not believe in the efficacy of prayer, there would be no reason for us to ask anything of God. He is the one who tells us that we can have confidence that our prayers ascend to Him. “And this is the …

Glorying in Humiliation

Over the past few days I’ve been reading Girls Gone Mild, the new book by Wendy Shalit. Shalit’s first book, A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue was published seven years ago and caused quite a stir. Shalit, an orthodox Jew, made the audacious claim that the sexual revolution may not have been entirely beneficial for women. She decried the lack of modesty this revolution has brought about and, according to TIME defended “compellingly, shame, privacy, gallantry, and sexual …