Just a few days ago I found out that a dear old friend died last week. Though we had not spoken to him for several years, he is a man who, along with his wife, left a deep impression on Aileen and me. When we were young and newly married we held up this man…
A couple of new titles from HarperOne showed up here last night. Both look excellent. As a reader and reviewer who focuses on Christian books, it’s easy to keep an eye on the Christian publishers and neglect to watch the mainstream ones. But Harper sometimes publishes notable volumes that I wouldn’t want to miss. The…
Tim Begs Shamelessly… As of this very moment, The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment (written by yours truly and with a Foreword by John MacArthur) is available for pre-sale through this site. As a bonus I’ll be signing all copies purchased in advance. This is the only place you’ll be able to order a signed copy.…
A few days ago I provided some suggestions for reading more and reading better. I recently dug up this valuable advice from the Puritan Richard Baxter. Centuries ago he wrote some advice on reading that seems as appropriate for us to learn from today as it was for the men and women of the seventeenth…
Yesterday I received a question from a reader of this site. The question was simple: “Is Scripture study required of Christians? Is it actually discussed in the Bible?” As I wrote an answer I felt that it might be valuable to think it through carefully and even to share the answer. I’ll be the first…
Brian McLaren shares two gospels, one new and one old. Those of us who have been keeping a wary eye on the Emerging Church know that to understand the movement we need to understand Brian McLaren. Though it is not quite fair to label him the movement’s leader, he certainly functions as its elder statesman…
The subject of reading has been much on my mind lately. I love to read but often receive emails from people who struggle to read and struggle to enjoy reading. Thus I thought it might be beneficial to piece together a list of tips to read more and to read better. I hope you find…
Yesterday I finished Iain Murray’s biography of theologian John Murray (there is no relation between the two Murrays) and was struck by John Murray’s insistence on the importance of memorizing the catechisms. I was raised on a steady diet of the Heidelberg Catechism at church and the Shorter Catechism at home and can attest to…
How endless choice is making us endlessly miserable. A few weeks ago my cell phone went missing. For a few days we looked for it passively, keeping half an eye out for it as we went about our business in the house. It didn’t show up. So for one morning we tore the house apart,…
Making an impact on the world of social media. On Saturday I had 11,000 unexpected guests drop by. One of my stories got picked up by Reddit and StumbleUpon, two of the big social media sites, and it ended up on the front page of both sites concurrently. This caused about 11,000 people to drop…
Avoiding Kids: How Men Cope With Being Cast as Predators Ted Wallis, a doctor in Austin, Texas, recently came upon a lost child in tears in a mall. His first instinct was to help, but he feared people might consider him a predator. He walked away. ‘Being male,’ he explains, ‘I am guilty until proven…
Misusing the will of God. I dedicate this post to you, the person reading it. Before you were even born, God planned this very moment, the moment you would type the address of this site into your browser or the moment you would click a link from another site to arrive right here, right now.…
What do I do with the gift of discernment? What if I want it? What if I don’t have it? This is the third and final entry in this brief series dealing with the gift of spiritual discernment. The first part is available here: The Gift of Spiritual Discernment. In this first article we looked…
King for a Week is an honor I bestow on blogs that I feel are making a valuable contribution to my faith and the faith of other believers…or sometimes just because I really like them. It is a way of introducing my readers to blogs that they may also find interesting and edifying. Every two…
How can I know how the Holy Spirit has gifted me? This is the second part in what I anticipate will be a brief three-part series examining the spiritual gift of discernment. The first part is available here: The Gift of Spiritual Discernment. In this first article we looked at the question of “What is…
As you well know if you are a regular reader of this site, I’ve written a book called The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment and that book was the result of spending almost a year studying the topic of spiritual discernment. As I hunted down all the references I could to discernment and as I studied…
I thought it would be nice to have a guest blogger for the first time in a long while. Today I’m going to post a wonderful little article excerpted from one of George Whitefield’s sermons. In this sermon he exposited Luke 8:18 where Jesus said, “Therefore consider carefully how you listen.” These pearls of wisdom…
Every book needs a cover and, as luck would have it, my book now has one. Choosing a cover was far more difficult than I would have imagined. Some readers may have noticed a white cover on the Crossway site. It was there for a short time before being replaced. Though I didn’t mind the…
An interview with the editors of the Reformed Expository Commentary series. There have been a few times in the past few months that I’ve mentioned the Reformed Expository Commentary Series. This is a growing series of commentaries written from a distinctly Reformed perspective and targeted at both pastors and laypersons. Having used these commentaries for…
Teaming with Bob Kauflin to encourage you to dedicate yourself to reading. Yesterday Bob Kauflin wrote about reading (What – Me Read?) in response to a question sent to him by a reader. This young man asked: One facet of your site that is always of interest is your list of books you are currently…