#john macarthur

Death and Life and Your Tongue

Just about every blogger can identify with the frustration. You write an article that is kind and well-reasoned and, at least in your estimation, displays the fruit of the Spirit’s work in your life. With some excitement you share this article with the world and, yet, within minutes, you face a barrage of comments that immediately turn it into a battlefield. The entire tone changes from kindness to all-out warfare. While bloggers have rightly been criticized for being too negative …

Unintended Consequences

Last week, as this site ticked by its tenth anniversary, I reflected a little bit on unintended consequences. This has been a theme in my thinking lately: the unexpected providence of a sovereign God. Today I was looking through my little book Sexual Detox and at the end found a short essay I wrote with Kevin Meath; I wrote it but then completely forgot about it. There we explained another unintended consequence–how a series of blog posts somehow turned into …

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Are You a Friend of the Blog?

Every now and again I like to remind people of one of the programs I offer at this site. It is called Friends of the Blog. Friends of the Blog is primarily a means of supporting this site, but it offers a unique incentive to do so. Friends receive all kinds of great things–books, gift certificates, music, magazines and so on. So here is some of what Friends of the Blog receive: A gift certificate for Westminster Books A gift …

A Bit of Tech Help

Cruciform Press is looking for a bit of tech help. On September 1 we plan to release a book by John Ensor, a pastor who has published a couple of fine books with Crossway and who has been active in the trenches of the pro-life movement for many years. As his pro-life ministry expands into China and Africa, he’s releasing an important little book called Innocent Blood: Challenging the Powers of Death with the Gospel of Life. The book addresses …

4 Remarkable Things about John MacArthur

One of the many gifts my parents bequeathed to me is a love of history. I have not seen my parents read many Christian living or spiritual growth books, but I have seen them read countless biographies and histories. One of my great joys is to buy them books for birthdays and Christmas (and any other occasion I can think of) and then to talk with them about what they’ve read. My mother recently read the new biography of John …

What It Takes To Be An Evangelical Leader

This is an interesting little excerpt from Iain Murray’s recent biography of John MacArthur. In his Introduction Murray seeks to show what makes a man a leader among evangelicals. He offers a five-point answer: In brief, an evangelical is a person who believes the ‘three rs’: ruin by the Fall, redemption through Jesus Christ, and regeneration by the Holy Spirit. It follows that an ‘evangelical leader’ is a person who stands out in the advancement and defence of those truths. …

Owning Your Social Media Habit

Social media: can’t live with it, can’t live without it. Or that’s how it feels. Facebook, Twitter, blogs–I think most of us have a bit of a love/hate relationship with them. While we enjoy the benefits they bring to us, we also see how they seek to dominate our lives. Many of us now live much of life through the lens of our social media, as if we haven’t actually experienced something until we’ve tweeted it or blogged about it …

Weekend A La Carte (4/30)

One more A La Carte to finish up another month. I believe I have done something like 1,300 A La Carte posts over the years. Turns out there is lots of interesting stuff to make note of! Here are a few more examples of this. An Interview with Newton – This is kind of cool. Tony Reinke has reformatted one of Newton’s letters on spiritual depression into a kind of interview. What Is a Library? – Be sure to read …

Friends of the Blog 2

In April of 2010 I announced a program called Friends of the Blog. With the costs of maintaining this blog on the rise, Friends of the Blog allowed readers to support the site while receiving tangible benefits. The program worked out very well and for that reason I have renewed it for 2011. And that leads me to announce Friends of the Blog 2. This year is the same but different. It is the same in that Friends of the …

5 More Questions with John MacArthur

Yesterday I shared the first part of a two-part interview with John MacArthur. Yesterday’s questions revolved around Dr. MacArthur’s new book Slave, the best Bible translations, avoiding scandal, the challenges he has faced in ministry, and the advice he would give himself if he could go back to the early days of his ministry. Today the interview continues… You are obviously a busy man. What advice would you give to pastors on loving their wives and children amidst the many …