Welcome to the online home of Tim Challies, blogger, author, and book reviewer.
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There are few things more sobering than praying for someone who is dying, and few things more humbling than praying with someone whose time on earth is drawing to a close. In his book Facing the Last Enemy, Guy Prentiss Waters offers wise counsel to those who have the responsibility and even the privilege of this task. Here is his simple guidance on praying for those who are dying. First, we should pray that the person would have a sure …
Though we fear it, we must all face it. Though we hate it, we must all meet it. Though we dread it, we cannot avoid it. It is, of course, death. In this broken and battered world, death always looms over life, death always stands hauntingly in the distance. Death is the subject of a new book by Guy Prentiss Waters. Facing the Last Enemy is meant to acquaint Christians with death so they might think about it rightly and …
It is engraved on many tombstones, inscribed in many cards, expressed in many obituaries: He died too soon. She was taken before her time. Of all the mysteries in this universe, few are more perplexing than the mystery of God’s sovereignty over life and death. Why do some live to so advanced an age while others barely live at all? Why are some who display such promise taken before they can deploy their gifts? Why does God call some early …
I was once told the story of a child who had been invited to spend a sunny summer day playing with his friends. He lived in a rural area and it took him a good bit of time to make the trek. But the child made his way toward his friends as they made their way toward him and eventually they came upon one another halfway. Soon they were climbing trees and jumping creeks and skipping rocks and generally having …
The old adage may be trite, but that makes it no less true: Absence makes the heart grow fonder. There is something about being apart that stirs our affections, that causes us to understand and articulate what we might otherwise have taken for granted. It is often only through a time of separation that we come to understand how much another person means to us. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” is true when our loved ones leave us for …
The history of warfare has provided some shocking defeats. There’s the infamous battle of Cannae, of course, in which Hannibal routed the Roman forces, despite being significantly outnumbered. There’s the battle of Agincourt in which the English had a force just one-third the size of the French, yet inflicted vastly more casualties. There’s the utter destruction of the Spanish Armada in which the English navy and the wind and waves conspired to crush the Spanish forces. For every great military …
What is it like to be a Christian? What is it like to submit your life to the Lord? What is it like to live for the glory of an unseen God? There is a lot bound up in the questions. But an answer comes to mind as I scour the hall of heroes we find in Hebrews 11. To be a Christian is to follow God without knowing exactly where he is leading and to die without having received …
I don’t know what it is like to lose a spouse. I don’t know what it is like to bid farewell to the person with whom I’ve built a home and had a family and shared a life. I don’t know the unique griefs, the unique sorrows, the unique traumas that come with so devastating a separation. On the one hand I can’t know without actually enduring it myself, but on the other hand, I can learn from those who …
We can tell a lot about ourselves by what we long for, by what we desire, by what we dream about, by what consumes our thoughts when we lie in the quiet darkness of night. You can tell a lot because what consumes our thoughts is a good indication of what consumes our hearts which is, in turn, a good indication of what we value most. If we dream of riches it shows that we have set our hope on …
A new year has dawned. And while we tend to face a new year with energy and enthusiasm, excited by all the possibilities it will bring, perhaps we ought to pause for just a few moments to consider the reality that is set before us. Octavius Winslow would have you consider that this world and all that is in it is but a shadow. And if we simply acknowledge this, we are prepared to live this year well—to live it …