Hank Williams recorded an old song called “Dust on the Bible.” It’s a song of lament in which he has gone to a friend’s home and asked to see their Bible. When they bring it to him, he realizes it has obviously not been read for a very long time, for it is covered in…
Though this omniscient, eternal, and holy God has given us his writings, and though through the Bible he has revealed the way we can be saved, few take the time to give it a fair reading, and few bother to read it all the way through. Christian, receive this book as a gift and commit…
The promised Spirit has come, and one of the great helps this Helper performs is a kind of tutoring. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth says it well: “Unlike any other book that has ever been written, the Bible is alive; and it comes with a personal tutor—the Holy Spirit, who lives in us.”
God calls us to live lives marked by holiness. God could have arranged the world in such a way that when we put our faith in Christ, he immediately “zaps” us with the full measure of holy character. He could have arranged it this way, but in his wisdom he didn’t.
Tozer once said that “an honest man with an open Bible and a pad and pencil is sure to find out what is wrong with him very quickly,” and Psalm 19 provides a clear example from the life of David. His closing words are a prayer for each of us…
Nowhere does the Bible command a daily “quiet time.” Yet often does the Bible commend an earnest commitment to reading the Bible, meditating upon it, and diligently applying its truths. Often does it commend those who lived according to it.
Sometimes in life we puzzle over God’s will for us. Sometimes we have to make momentous decisions that may alter the course of our lives and the course of other people’s. In those moments we may scour the Bible looking for something, anything, to direct our way; something, anything, to give us confidence that we…
We have entered into an age in which many people are leaving behind their printed Bibles in favor of digital equivalents. Any new technology introduces both benefits and drawbacks, and while there are many wonderful features that come with our digital Bibles, there is this downside: Our Bibles are no longer a visible demonstration of…
The Bible is, by its very nature, a collection—a collection of histories, biographies, letters, prophecies, and poetry written across about 1,500 years in many different settings and many different cultures. You might wonder, why these books and why not others? What binds together the sixty-six books that together make up the book is that they…
The Bible has life and the Bible brings life because it has been spoken by God. The Bible’s life, its voice, its feet, and hands are the life, voice, feet, and hands of God extended toward his people. For that reason among others it is always worthy of our time, our attention, and our dedication.
The Bible has proven its value as weaponry in the battle against spiritual foes, as a laboratory researching cures for spiritual maladies, and as a rich source of treasure in the accumulating of wisdom. It has proven itself a guide to the pathways of life and a chart to navigate the stormy seas of trial…
There can be a subtle danger that comes with a long focus on the spiritual disciplines and the building of good habits. If we are not careful, we can begin to take a kind of comfort in our habits that makes us think they are what makes us acceptable to God. Even though we know…
“Beware of idleness,” Thomas Watson once warned, for “Satan sows most of his seed in fallow ground.” Watson’s warning about idleness is relevant to any area of life, and most Christians quickly come to observe the intimate relationship between idleness and temptation. Charles Spurgeon, who was devoted to the writings of Watson, echoed his mentor…
There is a crucial distinction between means and ends. Ends are the goals we have set our hearts on, while means represent the habits or disciplines through which we can realistically hope to attain those goals.
Just as Olympic athletes cannot realistically expect to win a gold medal unless they strictly discipline themselves toward victory, Christians cannot hope to prevail in the Christian life unless they take a serious, disciplined approach to it. Yet lurking in the background is always the temptation to hope that we can have the result of…
As we live out the Christian life and cooperate with the Holy Spirit through the precious means of grace, we face a number of foes, a number of enemies that mean to derail us from our pursuit of God. Of all those enemies, none may be more prevalent and none more deadly than complacency.
God initiates his grace in our lives by his Holy Spirit and invites us to cooperate with it as we grow in our relationship with him. But what is that grace meant to accomplish in our lives? And how do we sustain a relationship with a Being we cannot see and with whom we cannot…
When it comes to our growth as Christians, there are two related truths we need to understand and keep constantly in mind: Advance in the Christian life, which is to say advance in our relationship with God and advance in being like God, comes by a combination of God’s work and our work.
Part of the joy of reading biography is having the opportunity to learn about a person who lived before us. An exceptional biography makes us feel as if we have actually come to know its subject, so that we rejoice in that person’s triumphs, grieve over his failures, and weep at his death.
General revelation serves exactly the purpose God intended for it—it reveals his power and divine nature. But, its message, while important, is insufficient—insufficient by design. Though general revelation tells us about the existence of God, it does not tell us about how to be reconciled to God.