A simple, four-step process to spiritual growth by Francis Schaeffer
May 15, 2009
Video: Mike Foster and Anne Jackson talk about porn
May 15, 2009
Stuff Christians Like: Doubting Doubt
May 14, 2009
By Jon Acuff
Real Christians don’t doubt. Everyone knows that. If you’ve got doubt in your heart, even a smidge, well then, I’m sorry, you’re still a “baby Christian.” I’ll pray for you, I’ll pray that someday you’ll be an “on fire Christian” and not be so wracked with doubt, because us real Christians never feel doubt.
We wake up in the morning and instantly remember all the other times God has come through. When we are faced with challenges, we don’t fear. We don’t worry. We certainly don’t doubt. You know what I do when I run into a difficult time? I giggle. I pick up that challenge in my hands and tickle it’s belly like an adorable little kitten. Because I live a doubt free life. Like every Christian should.
Because otherwise, if you do find doubt in your heart, you better hide that under the bed. Or between your mattresses, God never thinks to look there. But if He does, if He does find doubt in your heart, I hope, for your sake, you’ll be thrown in the regular lake of fire instead of the lake of fire where you have to spend all of eternity noodlin’ for alligator gar. (Noodlin’ is the “sport” where you walk in lakes/rivers and jam your hands down holes in the ground with the hope that a giant catfish will bite you, allowing you to pull it out and capture it. In Africa they have a version of this that involves lions but instead of “noodlin’” it’s called “dyin’”. An alligator gar is some crazy type of fish I just saw on a show called “River Monsters” in which a biologist spends an entire hour trying to catch, you guessed it, a “river monster.” Whole show should take 7 minutes. I think I just broke the legal length limits of parenthesis.)
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Seeds Family Worship - Cast Your Cares
May 13, 2009
Seeds Family Worship site (HT: Reformation Theology)
To Do You Good in the End
May 11, 2009
By Mark Altrogge
Who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock, who fed you in the wilderness with manna that your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end (DT 8.15-16).
A few years ago, our family took a vacation out west. The hardest part of the trip was Kansas (no offense, Kansans). When you drive through Kansas, for what seems like weeks the scenery never varies. Nothing but farmland, farmland, and more farmland starboard, lee, fore and aft. The highway is monotonously straight. After a few hours you enter a state of suspended animation. To stay awake you slap your face and pound your thighs and turn the AC to subarctic. You play “I spy”, with the kids, but you’re finished in 45 seconds after they guess “sky” and “wheat.” You’re so desperate to entertain yourself you start singing Barry Manilow songs.
Sometimes life feels like a drive through Kansas.
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How to Gripe in the Spirit
May 5, 2009
By Sandra Glahn
As a new Christian, I read guides that told me to pray using the acrostic “ACTS”: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. And years later when my husband and I experienced seven pregnancy losses and three failed adoptions, I found myself continually drawn to the psalms. New phrases such “How long, O Lord? (6:3) and “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (22:1) filled my prayers. And while echoing these spiritual gripes, I discovered to my surprise that the ACTS formula had left out the most common form of psalm in The Bible—the lament.
We find the psalms of lament in 6, 13, 22, 27, 44, 69, 70, 74, 102, and 142.
In these prayers of complaint I found some frequently recurring elements: (1) an introductory appeal (2) a description of what’s wrong (the lament itself) and (3) a formal request. Sometimes I’d also see evidence that the psalmist received (4) an oracle from God in response. And finally, following such an oracle, the lament usually ended in (5) an expression of confidence or praise.
Consider Psalm 12, a lament from a victim of slander:
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“Why ‘Follower of Jesus’ is Weak”
May 4, 2009
Bank on Him
May 4, 2009
By Greg Atkinson
God will do whatever it takes to get your eyes on Him - to get your focus, desire, trust and hope in Him; in that way, He is relentless and can go to extremes (as Scripture, myself and countless others can attest to) to get our attention.
In light of our recent economic situation, it occurred to me that God may be at work all around. I travel the country speaking on innovation. One of the ways that I teach innovation is birthed is by desperation, but I go on to say that “it’s a desperation that leads to a dependence upon the Holy Spirit.”
When you hit the bottom in your own way: maybe lose your job, your retirement, your house, your savings, your stock portfolio, your (you fill in the blank)… Could it be that it’s by design by our Creator to bring us back to trusting in Him alone? To quote two spiritual giants and long distance mentors: “God is most satisfied in us, when we are most satisfied in Him.” – John Piper. In The Problem of Pain, CS Lewis says, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
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Ministers from several traditions interpret Matthew 5:48 (’You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect’)
April 30, 2009
What is the spiritual gift of wisdom?
April 28, 2009
De-cluttering your house and your mind
April 27, 2009
Watch the Gospel Coalition Conference sessions live
April 21, 2009
‘Don’t Waste Your Life,’ by Lecrae
April 20, 2009
(Video HT: Justin Taylor)
‘Should a Christian Become Good Friends (Not Just an Acquaintance) with Pagans?’
April 20, 2009
If God dictated notes to you, would you pay attention?
April 18, 2009
As I continue my year-long journey through my ESV Study Bible, I continue to find amazement.
I am currently in the thirteenth chapter of Leviticus. I have never read this book, and my only recollection of it, is of complaining people trying to muddle their way through.
Frankly, I am finding it fascinating. I think we have to step back and remember what is happening here. Holy God is physically speaking to Moses, and Moses is feverishly writing down every word.
Moses is actually in the presence of God! That all by itself stuns the daylights out of me.
