Welcome to the online home of Tim Challies, blogger, author, and book reviewer.
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So much of what life brings is beyond my skills, beyond my experience, beyond my comfort zone. In many ways I could tell the story of my life through the times I have been forced into action, forced to confront my fears, forced to do things that make my natural disposition scream out in fear. Left on my own and living by my own preferences, my life would look very different than it does today. This is true in my …
Who would have guessed that introversion would become such a popular subject? Who would have guessed it would even carry a book to the New York Times list of bestsellers in Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking? Her book brought into the public eye a personality type that is both common and misunderstood. While I cannot agree with all she wrote, I was glad to see her open up what has become a fascinating …
One of the great joys of being a Christian is the ability we gain to look at the Bible and, through the Bible, to see the world in the way God sees it. It is like the Bible is a pair of glasses through which we gain God’s vision and God’s perspective. The Holy Spirit illumines our minds so that suddenly we see God as He really is and we see ourselves as we really are. We see God and …
It is our duty to reflect on life’s circumstances and to look for God’s hand in them. It is our duty because God works in and through our circumstances and, by his providence, matures and strengthens us in them. In his work The Mystery of Providence, John Flavel writes about the importance of doing this very thing: reflecting upon God’s performance of providence. He offers 7 reasons that this is our duty. God commands it. God expressly commands that we …
I knew next to nothing about my wife on the day I married her. We had dated for a few years, we had spent countless evenings talking on the phone, we had attended church, we had organized events, and even run a business together. But despite all that, we still barely knew one another. The knowledge we had was genuine, but it was shallow. Still, that small amount of knowledge was enough to compel us to invite our friends and family …
I am a bad blogger. The good bloggers know exactly who reads their articles, how many pageviews they get each day, how people found their way to the articles, who their average visitor is, and on and on. But statistics and I just don’t get along, so most of the time I don’t know any of those things. However, last weekend I put in a bit of effort into generating some year-reports and thought I would share a bit of what happened …
My family celebrates two very different kinds of Christmas. Some years we head down to the South, to Chattanooga, Tennessee, to spend Christmas with my parents, my siblings, and their families. Other years we stay right here at home and keep things smaller and quieter. It is one of those stay-at-home years–we are at home and following our usual, treasured Christmas morning rituals: The kids woke up early, but managed to contain themselves until 7. The girls, that is. My …
You have heard the distinction as often as I have—the distinction between head knowledge and heart knowledge. We learn facts about God, about his character, about his Word, but it is not until those facts reach the heart that they become spiritually beneficial. They say the journey from the head to the heart is the longest journey of all. I’ve never been too comfortable with this distinction between head knowledge and heart knowledge, and recently Andrew Davis helped me sharpen …
I have often heard my mother say that women have a near-infinite capacity for guilt and that husbands and children intuitively know this and are adept at exploiting it. Not surprisingly, a common theme in books and blogs is the mommy guilt, the weight of unrealistic expectations. So many women, and mothers especially, believe they are meant to be so much more than they actually are. It can prove a life-long burden. Of course guilt is not the exclusive domain …
I don’t know that even the greatest theologian could ever plumb the depths of all it means that humanity was created in the image of God. But whatever else it means, we know that because we are made in God’s image, we are like God in certain ways and for a certain purpose. John Piper gets at the heart of it when he says “the image of God in man is man’s ineffably profound fitness to image forth Christ’s glory …