Last week I solicited questions from the readers of this site, looking for good ideas for future blog posts. I received almost 100 responses, many of which asked really good questions. In the coming weeks and months I will attempt to answer many of them. I begin today with this one: “How do you discern…
It was a couple of years ago now that I read George Marsden’s great biography of Jonathan Edwards. As I read it I was often stopped short by Edwards’ wisdom. Constantly surrounded by conflict, and often facing people who sought to undermine his ministry, Edwards had every opportunity to reflect on the task of a…
Every believer carries a measure of the guilt for Jesus’ death. Was it not for our willful disobedience to God’s perfect Law, we would have no need of a Savior. We acknowledge in song that it was our hands that drove the spikes into His and sometimes speak about driving the nails into Jesus’ hands…
Last week I spent an evening reading Rick Warren’s soon-to-be-published book The Purpose of Christmas. It is a mostly-original work that, while it draws heavily from The Purpose Driven Life is at least not entirely derived from it. An evangelistic gift book, it is meant to be given as a Christmas gift. I have written…
Over the weekend I read Michael Horton’s new book Christless Christianity. I greatly enjoyed reading it (despite chapters that were slightly longer than my attention span) and found that it gave me a lot to think about. A few days earlier I had read a new book by Rick Warren, The Purpose of Christmas. What…
The best defense is a good offense. You’ve probably heard that phrase before. As far as I can tell, it was coined by the Prussian military historian, theorist and tactician Carl von Clausewitz (a name I’m quite sure I haven’t written since military history classes way back in my college days). Since then it has…
I woke up early this morning, a long time before my alarm was set to start buzzing. I woke up with a phrase bouncing through my mind–a phrase I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Some time ago I was thinking about children who have the privilege of growing up in Christian homes but…
There is a profound truth that every Christian must face: the Bible is an inexhaustible treasure. Talk to a pastor who has spent a lifetime reading, studying and explaining the Bible and he will tell you, I’m sure, that the more he comes to understand, the more he realizes he does not understand. I have…
So Ray Boltz, a once-prominent figure in the world of Christian Contemporary Music, is gay. He came out to his family–he is the father of four grown children–in December of 2004 but only recently has the news trickled beyond that inner circle. Just a few days ago his story was featured in an article in…
I wanted to post a brief follow-up to Monday’s article in which I asked Who Shapes Your World? I think the issue of celebrity and heroism was a fascinating component of the James Bradley’s book Flags of our Fathers. In the book he described the infamous battle of Iwo Jima, but he did so within…
Every now and again TIME Magazine features “The People Who Shape Our World.” A couple of years ago, they created a list of 100 men and women whose power, talent or moral example, they feel, is transforming our world. It is important to note, before we take a peek at this list, that it is…
Some time ago I read an article (which, alas, I can no longer find) that described a time that a crew from the BBC went in search of the Loch Ness Monster. I thought of this yesterday while watching the movie The Water Horse with the kids. The corporation hired a team of experts to…
As I read my way through the works of David McCullough, I have come to Brave Companions, a book that offers “Portraits in History”—brief glimpses of people and incidents that helped make America what she is today. One of the chapters deals with “The American Adventure of Louis Agassiz.” Agassiz was a French zoologist and…
We, as human beings, love underdog stories. Yesterday I watched a couple of episodes of Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided, a six-part series that aired as part of the “American Experience” program. As with any bio of Lincoln, it contrasts his early years with those of his wife. Where Mary Todd was raised…
The Westminister Shorter Catechism asks the question, “What is the chief end of man?” Many of us know the answer. “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” While this is not a phrase drawn directly from Scripture, the wisdom behind it surely is. The Bible tells us with great clarity…
A few years ago I went to Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, a Desiring God National Conference, and subsequently read the book drawn from those conference messages. I can’t deny that the speech given by Joni Eareckson Tada was not my favorite, at least in the live setting. Maybe it was her style of…
A newcomer to the Reformed faith sent me an email. He wrote, “I am beginning to learn that the protestant world has catechisms. Do you recommend their reading and study? If yes, which one?” I thought I’d answer this today, relying in large part on an article I wrote a few years ago. Catechisms were…
This morning I read with joy an account of God’s abundant grace in the life of my friend Stacey. On her blog she wrote about God’s grace despite her long-lingering doubts about His goodness. “For the past couple of years, until not long ago actually, I was constantly plagued by doubts and uncertainty in the…
Have you ever noticed how, when a person is looking for a house, driving slowly down a darkened street straining to see the numbers on the fronts of the homes or on the mailboxes at the end of the driveways, he automatically turns down the car radio? He does so because he instinctively knows that…
At four o’clock in the afternoon of August 2, 2005, I was just a few minutes into a long online training session with a software manufacturer. As we spoke, and as the technician showed me the features of this software, I suddenly noticed that it had gotten very dark in my office. I looked outside…