Those who preach or lead during corporate worship services will probably be familiar with the strange phenomenon of having multiple “tracks” playing in your mind at once. Even as you preach the sermon or lead the songs, your mind may be flitting about from the distraction of a crying baby to the fear that you…
Today’s Kindle deals are from Crossway and include a top biography on Martin Luther as well as one of those books that helped change my life: Whatever Happened to The Gospel of Grace? by James Montgomery Boice. Once again, Logos 9 released this week and includes some solid new features. It’s currently at least 15%…
This week the blog is sponsored by Bethlehem College & Seminary where John Piper is Chancellor. Learn more, then take the 30 seconds required to either start an application or refer a student. “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.” (Colossians 1:28) Bethlehem…
I have often shared examples of our Sunday morning services at Grace Fellowship Church. Yet are one of those rare churches that also has an evening service, so I thought you might be interested in seeing an example of how we structure them. First, the answer to the question I know you’re asking: Do people…
I want to hear God’s voice. I want him to speak to me in a personal way. I want to know that it’s really and truly him. Is that too much to ask? It’s not too much to ask. In fact, it is God’s joy to communicate to each one of his children in the…
One of my lifelong struggles has been finding freedom in the most basic part of the Christian life–personal devotions. It’s not that I don’t do them, of course, but that they rarely seem to come easily and naturally. I want to wake up longing to read the Bible and eager to pray. I want to…
The iPad, and other tablets around it, are coming into their own. As the medium matures, we are discovering new ways to exploit their abilities. One of the encouraging developments is the rise of the premium app. We all love the free or $0.99 app, but there is only so much we can expect for…
John Piper Quotes – Here’s another round-up of funny quotes from John Piper. Here’s a favorite (dealing with memorizing Scripture): “Which means you’ve gotta fight to learn these [verses] and memorize these things and have these verses tumbling around in your fore-frontal lobal brain part. Whatever that is.” Why They Cheat at Harvard – It’s…
On February 14, 1990, the space craft Voyager 1 was on the very fringe of our solar system. Before it drifted away to wander the galaxy, engineers turned the cameras around and pointed them toward earth, 6.4 billion kilometers away. This historic photograph captured earth as just the tiniest point of light in a vast…
The exquisite star Sirius is the premier gem of our sparkling winter skies [that’s it at the top-right of the photo]. Its name means “the Sparkling or Scorching One,” although it is commonly called the Dog Star because of its location in the constellation of Canis Major, the Big Dog. Sirius is the brightest star…
The name Ryan Ferguson may be familiar to some of the readers of this site. Ryan has appeared at a couple of conferences where he has recited long passages of Scripture. I first saw him at WorshipGod ’06 where he dramatically recited all of Hebrews 9 and 10 (though he had memorized the entire book).…
Here is a quote sent to me by a reader of this site. It is drawn from Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices by Thomas Brooks. It is well worth pondering (and, in a case of good timing, was something I was pondering this morning as I opened the Bible to Psalm 19). Remember, it is…
Yesterday Andrew Sullivan saw fit to link to my article on Biblical Inerrancy. Sullivan writes The Daily Dish for The Atlantic and is one of the most widely-read bloggers out there with at least 150,000 daily readers. You will not be surprised to hear that he did not like my article and linked to it…
David, whom the Bible tells us is a man after God’s own heart, seems to have had a special awe of the cosmos. In Psalm 19 he writes, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). He goes on to speak of the rising of the sun…
For some reason the whole family woke up early this morning. By 7 AM we were all out of bed and sitting in the living room, waiting for something to happen. Naturally nothing did happen, so I decided I’d catch up on some DVD reviews. After watching an episode in a 6-part history of Christianity,…
In the first article of this brief series we examined Total Depravity, as a prerequisite to evaluating the following statement: “Those who believe in total depravity have more confidence in the possibility of humans having divine knowledge- detailed, down to the footnotes knowledge- than many who don’t call themselves Calvinists.” I indicated that I did…