Welcome to the online home of Tim Challies, blogger, author, and book reviewer.
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Early on a Saturday morning a young girl is told by her mother to dust the house. She dutifully goes about her chore, dusting the tables, the shelves, the mantelpieces, and all the other surfaces. Later in the day her mother inspects the work and expresses some concern. “Look at all the dust,” she says, while running her finger over a side table. The daughter immediately realizes what has happened and offers an explanation: “I dusted in the morning when …
At one of the many shipyards dotting Canada’s East Coast, another great oceangoing vessel is very nearly complete, and in just a few weeks it will begin to transport containers across the Atlantic. But before it can embark on its maiden voyage, it must endure a strict regimen of tests. Waters flood the dry dock and, for the first time, the great ship floats. Its propellors rumble to life and it slowly steers into deep waters where it can test …
Nothing in this world is haphazard. There is nothing random or unplanned about the circumstances you are in right now, even if those circumstances seem very hard. Rather, God is leading you by the way he deems most appropriate, the way he has determined is most fitting for your spiritual growth. Just as one tree grows best in a sheltered valley and one by the edge of a gentle stream, another grows best on a bleak mountaintop where it is …
Few authors alive or dead speak to me the way J.R. Miller does. In his book Self-Control, now long out of print, he has his readers imagine life without Christ. It’s a passage worth reading and worth reflecting on. *** The relation between Christ and his friends is closer than any human relation. No one can say to any friend, “Without me you can do nothing.” The mother cannot say it to her child. It is a sore loss when …
We like to whitewash our historical heroes. As we look to the great men and women of faith who lived and died before us, we face the temptation to rejoice in their strengths and to ignore their weaknesses. The same is true of our contemporary heroes. Though it is right and good to have human heroes, we soon learn they all have flaws. There is not one who has lived and died without sin. A thorough study of any person …
It is a display of God’s wisdom that he binds us together in local church communities. We know it is a mark of his wisdom, yet sometimes it can feel so much like folly. Sometimes we grow weary of being around people who are sinful, who are selfish, who still have so far to go. In other words, sometimes we grow weary of being around people who are just like us. At times like these, we can benefit from a …
One of the hardest tasks for every Christian is to deeply believe and forever remember that we’ve been saved by grace. This is a lifelong challenge because our natural tendency is always to veer back to merit, to assume that we’ve been saved by something we are, something we’ve got, or something we’ve accomplished. Grace—unmerited favor—is too much for our sinful minds to accept and for our sinful hearts to embrace. The reason we need to hear the gospel again …
I have friends who like to ensure that they are constantly reminding themselves and others about the grace of God. The way they do this is to append a simple phrase to many of their sentences. What was at one time a deliberate decision has, over time, become a habit. A good habit, I think. “How have you been lately?” “I’ve been doing well, by God’s grace.” “How did you do with your personal devotions this week?” “By God’s grace, …
This morning I am thrilled to bring you a guest article from my friend Tim Keesee of Frontline Missions and the excellent DVDs Dispatches from the Front. This is an article he prepared in honor of John Bunyan’s birthday on November 28. On the Rail near Bedford, England Beads of rain race along my window as my express train speeds through the mist back to London. My mind and pen are racing, too—I have seen and heard so much in …
Airport Security – This article takes a look at the unexpected costs of all the TSA is doing. “These days, the TSA’s major role appears to be to make plane trips more unpleasant. And by doing so, it’s encouraging people to take the considerably more dangerous option of traveling by road.” Victory for Tyndale House – The headline from WORLD pretty much sums it up: “Judge temporarily exempts the Christian book publisher from the HHS contraceptive mandate, allowing it to …