Welcome to the online home of Tim Challies, blogger, author, and book reviewer.
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What can a heart do? What actions do we associate with the human heart? A heart can beat; a heart can race; a heart can stop. That’s all very literal and speaks to the heart as a physical part of our bodies. But we also speak of the heart metaphorically as the place of our emotions. And so we say that a heart can long and love, it can hurt and break. We even say that a heart can be …
The Bible can be an intimidating book. I suppose any book of the Bible’s size can be intimidating merely by virtue of its page count. But then there’s also the claims people make about the Bible—that it’s a book that transforms lives, that it’s a book that reveals the mind of God himself, that it’s a book that is without error. And beyond that, there’s the nature of the Bible as a collection of writings that span centuries, peoples, cultures, …
If you pay attention to Christian publishing, you’ll observe that certain themes come and go, rise and fall. One author will write a book on a subject and that may ignite interest so that several others follow up to challenge that person’s view, to affirm it, or to pursue it from a different angle. A recent theme, at least in one little corner of the Christian world, has been the notion of “home.” And now Ian K. Smith has added …
For years now, I have made it my goal to release something every day that will encourage people, or challenge them, or instruct them, or otherwise bring them some kind of spiritual benefit. Not surprisingly, I receive all sorts of feedback, and there are a couple of kinds that, more than any other, discourage and dismay me. It’s when people who have been Christians for a long time reveal that they have only the smallest amount of theological knowledge or, …
I was recently privileged to speak at a conference in Quezon City, Philippines. The question and answer session yielded some interesting questions like this one: “If forgiveness is guaranteed and there is no longer any condemnation for me, why not sin?” This was my answer in the context of the sermon I had just preached. Transcript If forgiveness is guaranteed and there is no longer any condemnation for me, why not sin? I think Paul anticipated this in the book of …
The movement called the New Calvinism has been around for quite a long time now, but still hasn’t solved one of its most basic questions: Do the miraculous or revelatory gifts of the Holy Spirit continue to the present time or have they ceased (positions that are generally labeled “continuationism” and “cessationism” respectively)? And is there room within the movement for people who hold to opposite positions? At the beginning of 2018 I suggested this would be one of the …
Search through the long history of the Christian church and you’ll see that false teachers have been present at every time and in every era. They were in the early church, the medieval church, the Reformation church, the Puritan church, and of course they are in today’s church. They’ve been a plague since the beginning and they are a plague today. But what’s interesting is that while the times and circumstances may have changed, their methods really haven’t. Whether you’re …
It’s a funny little story that could only have happened during the church’s earliest days. Paul has been on one of his missionary journeys and, while traveling through Asia Minor, stumbles upon a little group of believers. But there’s something unusual about them, something missing. Here’s how Luke describes it: And it happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the inland country and came to Ephesus. There he found some disciples. And he said to them, “Did …
If Isaac Watts is known as the father of English hymnody, William Williams (1717-1791) is considered by many to be the father of Welsh hymnody. In 1738 Williams heard a sermon by the revivalist preacher Howell Harris, a fiery Welsh layman who had been influenced by the Methodist movement in England. It was through this sermon that Williams discerned his calling to go into the ministry. Williams first pursued becoming an Anglican priest (in the Church of Wales) and entered …
Stuff Christians Say obviously struck a nerve; it has racked up tens of thousands of views on YouTube and hundreds of thousands on GodTube. Two guys hop between various locations while offering a long list of “stuff Christians say,” those words and phrases distinct to Christianity. “God thing,” “secular music,” “my testimony,” “traveling mercies”–they are all here. It’s appropriate satire because it rings true. As Christians we can become oblivious to the fact that we have developed a lexicon all …