Welcome to the online home of Tim Challies, blogger, author, and book reviewer.
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We had a child who was afraid of the darkness. When night fell, when the lights went out, when the house got quiet, she would lie in her bed terrified of every noise and petrified of every shadow. For a time she would even take certain objects out of her room before she went to bed—objects she had come to fear because of the scary shadows they would cast upon her floor and upon her walls. Often she would cry …
The young boy had a privileged upbringing and spent his childhood on a fine estate that boasted a large and carefully-tended garden with bright flowers, cobbled paths, high walls, trimmed lawns. He spent hours of every day playing in this garden, exploring it, and delighting in its many wonders. But there was one part where he never ventured to go. At the very end of the garden stood a grove of trees that grew tall and full and cast dark …
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Not only that, but the fear of the Lord is the beginning of the Christian life. The Bible makes it clear that to love God, to honor God, to obey God, we must fear God. But “fear” is a word with many dimensions, many definitions. In what ways are we to fear God? Much of what I know about fearing God I learned from R.C. Sproul. Looking back to Luther, …
A few days ago the Prime Minister of Canada held a televised press conference to speak to Canadian citizens traveling overseas. He looked directly into the camera as if to make eye contact with each of them and said earnestly, “It’s time to come home.” On any given day hundreds of thousands of Canadians are traveling outside the bounds of their own country and he had a crucial message for them—come back to Canada now, before it’s too late. For …
I am not, by nature, a person who has a lot of self-confidence. Quite the opposite, really. I care far too much about what other people think about me and concern myself far too much with looking good in their eyes. I can torment myself with shame and regret for little foibles and miscues, imagining what people are thinking, what they are saying to one another. For that reason I have spent much of my life trying to be unnoticed. …
The disciples were afraid. Terrified, even. The wind was howling, the waves pounding. Several of them were fishermen by trade and they knew this water, they knew of colleagues who had been swept away and lost in these sudden, vicious squalls. They knew the situation was fast becoming perilous. Yet Jesus slept, resting contentedly at the bottom of the boat. How could he be so callous? Didn’t he know the danger? Didn’t he care? Finally they could take it no …
Albert Martin’s The Forgotten Fear is a very good book on a much neglected topic. I reviewed my notes for it this week and was struck again by the urgency of the subject. In the book’s opening chapter Martin examines a series of texts related to the fear of God and, having looked at each of them, draws three important conclusions. What can we conclude in light of these pivotal texts found in both the Old and the New Testaments? …
In his book The Forgotten Fear, Albert Martin lists eight “specific directives for maintaining and increasing the fear of God in our hearts.” What follows are his eight directives along with summaries of each point in his own words (lightly tweaked). Consider following these strategies for your own growth in Christlikeness. 1) Be certain that you have an interest in the new covenant. The argument you ought to press before God should be that Jesus Christ has died as the …
So here’s the challenge: “At every point in my Christian life, from the moment I breathe my first breath as a new creature in Christ to the moment when I take my last breath, the entire time of my sojourning—all of this is to be marked by the fear of God.” So says Albert Martin in his new book The Forgotten Fear. By that standard, how are you doing? Do you fear God? The problem is that you may not …
While John Newton will always be known as the man who wrote “Amazing Grace,” that is just one of hundreds of hymns he penned. Another beautiful and powerful hymn of comfort and assurance is “Pensive, Doubting, Fearful Heart.” I have it on good authority that it will be on the next album by Indelible Grace; it was also on one of Red Mountain Music’s albums (you can hear it below). Read these lyrics as a poem or read them as …