My heart is overflowing with gratitude and thanksgiving for the outpourings of prayer and kind thoughts. Each of you are a treasure to us and have kept us from feeling isolated in our trial. Last night I read comments here and on Facebook and literally hundreds of emails until I could not keep my eyes [...]
Archive for March, 2010
30 Mar
Update on my wife
Dear Precious Friends, We are reminded by James that “you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow, you are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away” (James 5:14–15). On Thursday, March 25th this truth was brought home to our family in a significant way. Julie had [...]
29 Mar
Afflictions help to convince us of our preaching
“Come to a man that hath the world at will, and tell him, This is not your happiness; you have higher things to look after; and how little will he regard you! But when affliction comes, it speaks convincingly, and will be heard when preachers cannot.” Richard Baxter, The Saints’ Everlasting Rest (chap 12, sec. [...]
26 Mar
The importance of heaven
This Sunday morning I’ll preach sermon #61 through the book of Revelation. I can’t wait to dive head first into Revelation 22:1-5 (this Sunday’s text). I love the way in which the old Baptist preacher, B.H. Carroll, began his message covering this very text. Carroll said, “I want to say, as impressively as I know how to say it, that the reason [...]
24 Mar
Are you “burned-out” from ministry?
People-trouble is wearying indeed. It’s easy to grow cold and sarcastic about those particularly difficult people whose afflictions are largely self-induced. When a man takes the role of spiritual leader and comes in with selfish expectations, swift discouragement results when those expectations aren’t met. The church today calls it “burnout,” but in many cases it’s [...]
18 Mar
Is it enough to claim “Christ-centered” in our preaching?
“It is not enough to focus on the great, central, epochal, events in the history of redemption. It is not enough to operate almost exclusively in the indicative mood. It is not enough to reduce the imperatives of the New Testament to the vague generality so often heard, namely, ‘Look to Christ!’ and to leave [...]
17 Mar
Preaching NT Narrative (Narration)
The narrator is the voice of the writer. He informs the reader of specific motives, hidden thoughts, undisclosed actions, private conversations, and God’s perspective. The narrator reveals what we would otherwise never see or hear. Narration is like stitching on a quilt; it binds together the various scenes, plot structure, and characters. Noting the importance [...]
12 Mar
Starbucks Community Church
If you are retooling your church to fit the Starbucks model, try reading Ephesians instead. Surely we can do better than faux community and the illusion of social superiority. See “On Loving Your Coffee and Your Neighbor” here.
11 Mar
Jerry Wragg on Humility:
Humility is forged in the fires of an unmistakably clear vision of God, a biblically rich and abiding perspective of the cross, and a robust sense of man’s desperate sin-condition! When confronted with these realities, our deficiencies are properly magnified and successes are never allowed to take on a life of their own. Jerry Wragg, [...]
4 Mar
A mere repeater of scriptural teaching
Thanks to my “across the pond” friend Doug McMasters who passed on the following quote from Charles Spurgeon: I am content to live and die as the mere repeater of scriptural teaching, as a person who has thought out nothing and invented nothing, as one who never thought invention to be any part of his [...]
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