Words and phrases come and go. Both within the church and without, they often rise for a while, then quietly slip into decline and disuse. It is an annual tradition for dictionaries to announce the new words they are adding as well as the antiquated ones they are removing. In recent days, I’ve repeatedly heard the phrase “self-care,” or one of its many synonyms. I’ve heard it used in church contexts and in secular ones. I’ve seen Christians and non-Christians …
“I just don’t love her anymore,” he said. Years had passed, circumstances had changed, affection had waned, love had diminished. He recounted a few memories of the early days—the blush of young love, the tentative first dates, the romance, the anticipation, the wedding. But that was then and this is now. “I fell in love with her back then. I’m not in love with her today.” We like to speak of “falling in love” as if love is a state …
I’m doing things a little bit differently today. For now at least, I’ve mostly lost the ability to type, so am going to try my hand at a little bit of video. If you want, you can click play to learn more. Transcript We’ve got lights. We’ve got a camera. We’ve got a microphone. Let’s try this thing. Hello everybody, Tim Challies here. You might have noticed there’s something different about the blog today. The more astute observers among you may …
Christians are called to love. We know this. We’ve been loved by God so we can love in return. We display proof of our salvation when we stop living self-focused lives and begin living others-focused lives. We show our love and appreciation for God in the way we turn our love outward to become “zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14). We are accustomed to thinking about this as individuals, and we know our local churches are meant to be communities …
It happened again. A popular preacher said something in a sermon, it made its way to social media, and lots of people got upset. This happens quite often, doesn’t it? I rarely pay attention to these things and comment on them infrequently. However, I am making an exception for the latest one because I suspect quite a few people who saw it on their Facebook timeline are saying, “Hang on! What’s so wrong with what he said?” It’s one of …
Love is a risky business. In one way or another, at one time or another, we have all suffered because we have loved. We have all been shocked to learn something we didn’t know before, we have all been grieved as we have discovered another person’s hidden actions or behavior. Some of us have even asked: If I had known that before, would I have still loved her? Now that I know that, can I still love him? We love …
Over the past few weeks I have found myself thinking a lot about love. C.S. Lewis told us that according to the Bible there are four kinds of love: phileo, eros, agape, and storge. But I haven’t been thinking of love in such neat categories and under such clear headings. (Plus, D.A. Carson declared the clean boundaries between these four terms to be an exegetical fallacy and I would not dare to contradict him.) I have been thinking about all …
Here Come the Radicals – Matthew Lee Anderson makes some interesting observations about contemporary Christianity. “David Platt, Francis Chan, Shane Claiborne, and now Kyle Idleman are dominating the Christian best-seller lists by attacking our comfortable Christianity. But is ‘radical faith’ enough?” 5 Myths About Bible Translation – Dan Wallace covers five common myths related to translating the Bible. This has been a major area of attack against Christianity in recent years as people have tried to undermine the credibility of the …
Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. It’s the day when every seat in every fancy restaurant will be full and when couples who don’t care for restaurants will be preparing nice meals for one another. Flowers will be delivered to offices, gifts will show up in mailboxes, cards will be exchanged. I am something of a skeptic when it comes to Hallmark holidays, but I do enjoy Valentine’s Day. I have been married to Aileen for fourteen years now and don’t ever …
Today we continue to read through John Bunyan’s classic work The Pilgrim’s Progress, and we come to the ninth stage of Christian’s journey. You may remember that in the last stage Christian and his friend Hopeful encountered the shepherds at the Delectable Mountains. And now they journey on. Discussion A lot happened in this week’s rather long reading–far too much to summarize in any substantial way–so I will pick just a couple of the things I found most interesting and …
