Welcome to the online home of Tim Challies, blogger, author, and book reviewer.
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My assistant put me up to this. She does a first pass on most of the emails I receive and recently called to say, “There’s a book out there called Girl, Wash Your Face, and you’re getting multiple emails about it every day. You need to review it.” I looked it up on Amazon and noticed it has accumulated nearly 6,000 reviews averaging 5 stars. That is no small feat for a book authored by a professed Christian (Rachel Hollis), …
This is an article I’ve prepared with no small amount of trepidation. In the past I’ve written frequently and confidently about the role of a husband within his marriage, and especially about how it is tersely and perfectly summarized in Ephesians 5:33: “Let each one of you love his wife as himself.” But the last time I wrote about this, a woman replied with a request: “I’ve read many female perspectives on the second half of that verse, but never …
Life is too difficult for us to do it on our own. We are too weak, too unwise, too full of sin. Thankfully, God does not intend for us to carry out the Christian life independently. Instead, he gives us the strength, the wisdom, and the godliness of other Christians so they can bear our burdens, address our folly, and model what it means to be holy. Some of us depend upon friends, pastors, or spouses to be our dearest …
The great desire of Christian parents is that our children will grow into godliness. While they are under our care, we pray that they will come to confess Jesus as Lord, treasure his Word, and be ever-more conformed to the image of that great Savior. And as we pray, we work hard to train them in sound doctrine, to deepen their roots into Scripture, and to discipline them for their good. Yet every Christian parent also knows that there comes …
You may have heard the phrase before: Behind every great man there’s a great woman. Like most maxims, it is generally true, even if not universally true. But here’s the surprise: Sometimes that great woman is not behind the man, but before him. Sometimes that great woman is not his wife but his mother. In this new series, “Christian Men and Their Godly Moms,” we are looking at noteworthy Christian leaders whose most formative spiritual influence was a godly mother. …
Boys thrive under the love and leadership of an attentive father. Boys need their dads to model godliness and masculinity, to display patterns of love and respect within marriage, to teach skills necessary to grow into mature manhood. Much has been written to encourage fathers to embrace these responsibilities, to be the example their sons need. Well and good. But with all the attention given to a father and his son, I fear that too little has been given to …
Lin Bian, a psychologist at the University of Illinois, wanted to understand how and when gender stereotypes develop, and especially the old stereotype that boys are smarter than girls. The results of her study were stark. “Among the 5-year-olds, both boys and girls associated brilliance with their own gender. But among those aged 6 or 7, only the boys still held to that view. At an age when girls tend to outperform boys at school, and when children in general …
This book begins with a wedding. It kind of has to, doesn’t it? After writing so many books as a single woman, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth (formerly Nancy Leigh DeMoss) has now written her first major work as a married woman. Not that it’s a book about marriage, of course. Not yet. Rather, it’s about adornment, about living out the beauty of the gospel. Adorned is a lengthy exposition and application of the second chapter of Titus and, in particular, the …
Many years ago, I was part of a church that developed a particularly troubling women’s ministry. It had been founded with noble intentions and was meant to address the unique concerns of women. Before long, though, the leaders became enamored with a problematic author, and their theology began to diverge from that of the pastors. Soon they were functioning almost as a church within a church, even occasionally holding their own worship services and performing their own baptisms. The ministry …
Let me first tell you how None Like Him begins, then make two brief observations. “If you had told me five years ago that I would one day write a book for Christian women that led off with a quote from Proverbs 31, I probably would have punched you in the face.” The first observation: You know this book is going to be interesting when it begins with face-punching. Second, while Wilkin says she has written a book for Christian …