Welcome to the online home of Tim Challies, blogger, author, and book reviewer.
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Yes, I know it’s Father’s Day today, but I’m posting a poem for a mother. I’ve recently been discovering and enjoying the poetry of Henry Kirke White whose work was written in the opening years of the nineteenth century. Though he died at just 21, he left behind some wonderful poems. The one that has most caught my attention so far is “Sonnet to My Mother.” In recent months I have spent a lot of time studying and writing about the …
Sometimes it does us good to consider the sheer sinfulness of our sin. Sometimes it does us good to consider what our sin has cost. Perhaps these words from Isaac Ambrose will challenge you as they did me. When I but think of those bleeding veins, bruised shoulders, scourged sides, furrowed back, harrowed temples, nailed hands and feet, and then consider that my sins were the cause of all, methinks I should need no more arguments for self-abhorring! Christians, would …
I was blessed to read this short article from Charles Spurgeon. He explains why God sometimes delays in answering prayer. Here goes… God often delays in answering prayer. We have several instances of this in sacred Scripture. Jacob did not get the blessing from the angel until near the dawn of day—he had to wrestle all night for it. The poor woman of Syrophenicia was answered not a word for a long while. Paul besought the Lord thrice that “the …
I will keep the intro short: You ought to read and consider this brief excerpt from Derek Thomas’s commentary on Acts in which he shows how our expectations of pastors—and perhaps their expectations for themselves—are often far removed from God’s. If you’re in a huge hurry or have a microscopic attention span, skim right down to the second paragraph. Paul preached Jesus. Had you spent a month in Thessalonica at the time of Paul’s visit, you could not have failed …
So much of the beauty of poetry is finding words that express your soul. Poetry has a way of expressing both our conscious thoughts and our unconscious desires. Such is the case with this little poem I dug up recently. It’s an old one, written many years ago by John Newton. He expresses the universal experience of the Christian in our searching, our wondering, our perplexity, and, eventually, our confidence. The poem is titled “’Tis a Point I Long to …
Most people—most English-speaking people, at least—know the name Jane Austen. But what few people know is that she was a woman with deep Christian convictions. Michael Haykin makes this clear in his new book Eight Women of Faith. There he shares a prayer was composed by Austen. It is not a particularly great prayer (whatever that means). It is not a particularly original prayer and was clearly inspired by the Anglican prayer book. But it is sincere and personal and …
Last week I was in England and spent a fair bit of time touring sites related to church history. As we passed by a church building in Cambridge, our host said as an aside, “That was Charles Simeons’ church.” I immediately took note because lately I’ve been so enjoying Simeons’ work. I purchased his strangely-titled Horae Homileticae for Logos and have found it a brilliant resource for Bible study and preaching preparation—one of my new favorites. In this work, a …
The Eric Liddell story is well known. We all know the broad outline: He was one of Great Britain’s great hopes at the 1924 Olympics, he refused to race because of his Christian convictions, he switched races and won an event he had barely trained for, he left it all behind to travel to China to serve as a missionary, he died there in a Japanese prison camp. It’s an amazing story, really. I was recently reading For the Glory, …
Shortly after I heard that Jerry Bridges had died, I sat down to write about the ways he had impacted me through his life and ministry. In a too-weak tribute, I outlined five big lessons I had learned from him. Recently I read his memoir God Took Me by the Hand: A Story of God’s Unusual Providence and came to a section where he outlines seven big lessons he learned over the course of his sixty-plus years of being a …
Today I’m handing the reins to A.W. Tozer. In his book That Incredible Christian he has an extended look at the futility of regret. I read and re-read it this week and found it too sweet not to share. The essence of legalism is self-atonement. The seeker tries to make himself acceptable to God by some act of restitution or by self-punishment or the feeling of regret. The desire to be pleasing to God is commendable, certainly, but the effort …