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  • A Prayer About Brokenness

    A Prayer About Brokenness

    Every now and again I like to share an example of a pastoral prayer from Grace Fellowship Church. I do this because there are few examples of pastoral prayers online and I thought these may serve to inspire themes, passages, or ideas as other pastors and elders prepare to lead their churches in prayer. Here…

  • Waiting with Faith

    Waiting with Faith

    Have you ever bitten into a green tomato? Have you ever sunk your teeth into a fall apple during the heat of summer or into a summer strawberry during the cool of spring? Have you ever listened to a choir’s first rehearsal, read a book’s first draft, gazed at an artist’s initial sketches? Have you…

  • Would It Be Okay For Me To Be Angry With God

    Would It Be Okay For Me To Be Angry With God?

    It felt like a test—a test of my faith, a test of my convictions, a test of my love for God. Soon, very soon, after I learned that my son had died, I received a message from an old acquaintance. Her intentions were good—she wanted to offer consolation. But her instructions were suspect—she wanted me…

  • Grief Should Always Make Us Better

    Grief Should Always Make Us Better

    Death is the great interrupter. Death is the great interrupter because, far more often than not, it strikes when it’s least expected. When death comes it invariably interrupts plans, dreams, projects, goals. One author observes how very sad, how very pathetic it is, when a man dies suddenly and we go into his home or…

  • When All Seems To Be Gain Plan For Loss

    When All Seems To Be Gain, Plan For Loss

    A friend of mine was part of a rapid deployment unit in the military. The task of his division was to be in a perpetual state of readiness, able to be deployed at a moment’s notice. When a need for their services arose, those soldiers were to be geared up, loaded up, and wheels up…

  • Nick Challies

    The Funeral for My Son, Nick Challies

    On Saturday, November 21, 2020, we will be holding the funeral service for my dear son, Nick. Because the entirety of my family and the majority of Nick’s friends are in America, and because the borders between our two countries are functionally closed, we will be live-streaming the service. Those who did not know him…

  • If God Did It It Must Be Good Right

    If God Did It, It Must Be Good. Right?

    “The sovereignty of God is the pillow upon which the child of God rests his head at night, giving perfect peace.” So said the inimitable Charles Spurgeon. Or did he? He might have said, “When you go through a trial, the sovereignty of God is the pillow upon which you lay your head.” Or maybe…

  • The Cruelty of Quarantine A Lament

    The Cruelty of Quarantine: A Lament

    Today was to be a day of great rejoicing. On August 14 I dropped my son and daughter at their college in Louisville, Kentucky, knowing that with all the border restrictions and quarantine requirements it was unlikely I would see them again before the close of the semester. We booked their return flights for today,…

  • On Running a Short Race Well

    On Running a Short Race Well

    Each of us is given a race to run. Some are called to run a long race. Some are called to run a short race. What matters is not how long our race is, but how well we run it. It’s God’s business to determine how long we run; it’s our business to determine how…

  • My Son My Dear Son Has Gone To Be With the Lord

    My Son, My Dear Son, Has Gone To Be With the Lord

    In all the years I’ve been writing I have never had to type words more difficult, more devastating than these: Yesterday the Lord called my son to himself—my dear son, my sweet son, my kind son, my godly son, my only son. Nick was playing a game with his sister and fiancée and many other…

  • gentian

    A Side Of Perfect Beauty in Every Providence

    Corrie Ten Boom famously compared God’s providence to a tapestry which, as it is being woven, seems to be little more than a mess of threads and knots. But when finished it is turned over to reveal its beauty. You can read this in a poem she popularized titled “Life Is But a Weaving.” But…

  • No Hand But His Ever Holds the Shears

    No Hand But His Ever Holds the Shears

    Suffering is never pleasant. We never welcome trials as we do joys, for suffering always brings sorrow, it always brings pain. Sometimes a loved one is taken from us and we experience the aching grief of absence. Sometimes we suffer the loss of money, property, or position and we mourn what has been torn from…

  • Hope When Life Unravels

    Hope When Life Unravels

    Christians are well-resourced when it comes to books on suffering. Such books can typically be divided into two types: Those that are structured around theological themes and those that are structured around lived experiences. So some people begin with an examination of what the Bible has to say about suffering while other people begin with…

  • How To Bear Up Under Your Burdens

    How To Bear Up Under Your Burdens

    We all bear burdens on our pilgrimage through this weary and wearying world. Sometimes these are burdens of temptation, when we feel the world, the flesh, and the devil arrayed against us, luring and enticing us toward some sinful thought or depraved deed. Sometimes these are burdens of guilt as we think back to a…

  • Weakness Strength

    Blessed Are the Weak!

    The Beatitudes of Jesus are meant to shock us in the ways they so consistently counter our instincts and interrupt our inclinations. They commend the meek rather than the assertive; they commend the poor in spirit rather than the self-sufficient; they commend the reproached rather than the praised. The Beatitudes highlight some of the counter-cultural,…

  • Lessons Learned Through Grief

    Lessons Learned Through Grief

    I have, in many ways, lived a very easy life. Sure, I’ve had my share of difficulties—I’ve lived, after all, in this broken world and not some perfect paradise. And while I know there isn’t a lot of value in comparing my little suffering to other people’s greater suffering, still I understand I have had…

  • 8 Ways God Works Suffering for Our Good

    How Is God Present in Our Pain?

    In our pain we know God is not absent, but in our pain we also wonder whether God is present. Or perhaps more correctly we wonder how God is present. In times of great grief or dark uncertainty we cling to the reality that God is a loving Father who has welcomed us into his…

  • Between Life and Death

    Between Life and Death

    We’ve all heard the witticisms about death and taxes as the world’s only inevitabilities and about humanity’s mortality rate continuing to stick stubbornly at exactly one hundred percent. We all know we are going to die and that we ought to prepare ourselves accordingly. But what’s equally inevitable and perhaps even more painful, is that…

  • Broken Pieces and the God Who Mends Them

    Broken Pieces and the God Who Mends Them

    We all suffer in this messy, sin-stained world. Sometimes our suffering is the direct result of our own sin and sinfulness. Sometimes it’s because others sin against us. And then sometimes we suffer through the suffering of those we love. And while it can be difficult or even gruelling to walk alongside a loved one’s…

  • Comforting Quotes for Those Who Are Suffering

    Comforting Quotes for Those Who Are Suffering

    Without a doubt, the most impactful book I read last year was A Book of Comfort for Those in Sickness. I’m sure its significance was partly due to some medical struggles I’ve been having recently, but also simply because life is full of difficulties. We all go through difficult times in these difficult lives in…