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We have come to the final day of 2014 and are at the cusp of a new year. I find it only appropriate to close the year with prayer–prayer that thanks God for the year that was, and prayer that looks with joy and expectation to the year that will be. Here is my prayer: My Good and Gracious Father, You have brought me safely through another year. This was a year in which I saw and experienced so much of your goodness. …
We have all heard the statistics: 50% of people make some kind of new year’s resolution, but 88% of those resolutions ultimately fail. That is more than a little discouraging. But I still believe in new year’s resolutions. I believe in them as a convenient opportunity to evaluate life and to make choices about living life better. I have done a fair bit of reading on how to make resolutions work, and it turns out that though there are many …
Forgive Us These Faults – Much has been said of late about “respectable sins,” to borrow Jerry Bridges’ phrase. Here Tim Keller looks to John Newton and describes a list of sins that we prefer to think are mere “foibles.” Texas Bible – This is kind of silly and kind of helpful. This Chrome extension replaces all of the Bible’s second-person plurals (i.e. “you”) with your choice of “y’all,” “youse guys” or some other regional way of distinguishing them. More …
This is the 22nd installment in a series on theological terms. See previous posts on the terms theology, Trinity, creation, man, Fall, common grace, sin, righteousness, faith, pride, election, revelation, atonement, adoption, sanctification, incarnation, idolatry, the church, holiness, salvation, and judgment. “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their …
I guess every preacher has to take on Isaiah 6 (Isaiah’s vision of God’s throne room) at one time or another. My opportunity came this past Sunday. It is such a beautiful and powerful text and it was a great pleasure to just soak in it for an entire week. Don’t worry! I am not going to rehash my sermon in blog form. Before I began studying this text and finding out how I could form a sermon from it, I …
Simply stated, creation refers to everything that exists that has not always existed. It refers to all that God has brought into existence, which is everything apart from God himself—including angels and, eventually, Satan and his demons—since God is the one and only thing that has never been created. There are a variety of ways to understand how creation happened—or at least how it has come to look like it does now. While these views can differ slightly or substantially, …
About a month ago I announced the start of a new series of posts in which I will attempt to define theological terms succinctly and simply (as much as this is possible). I began with a definition of the category itself—theology—and am now finally getting around to the second term. Trinity is a word that, like theology, we do not find in the Bible itself. Nevertheless, like theology, it is no less biblical, because the concept that it summarizes is …
There has been a lot of talk in the blogosphere about James MacDonald inviting T.D. Jakes to round 2 of The Elephant Room, to be held on January 25, 2012. Controversy has centered around the widespread belief that Jakes does not hold to an orthodox understanding of the Trinity. Rather, some claim, he is a modalist, a person who believes that Father, Son and Holy Spirit do not refer to distinct persons, but to different modes of existence of the …
I recently added a feedback and suggestion component to this site that allows readers like you to suggest topics for me to consider writing about. This has generated a lot of fantastic ideas, many of which are going to take a lot of study to adequately answer. One that I wanted to address right away is this: Will we be able to see all three members of the Trinity in heaven? Here is the question as asked by Andrew T: When …
This morning we come to chapter 3 of Gresham Machen’s book Christianity & Liberalism, a chapter titled simply “God & Man.” There was some great discussion based on last week’s reading and I’m hoping we can generate the same today. I found this chapter quite a lot easier to read and digest and trust you found the same. In the chapter’s introductory paragraph Machen sets the scene, looking back and then forward: It has been observed in the last chapter …