This past Sunday a missionary couple visited our church to share with us about their lives and work in the place where the Lord has sent them to labor for the cause of Christ. Because this couple serves in a country whose government persecutes Christians, and because this oppression has intensified in recent months, I…
A Reformed Church in Wasilla, Alaska
Though we grown-ups tend to forget it, being a kid is sometimes tough. Children can feel unimportant when they are overlooked or dismissed by the grown-ups around them. How often as parents have we told our children, “Not now, I’m too busy,” or “Sorry, I don’t have time right now; I’m working on something very…
Robert Murray M’Cheyne said this about prayer: “What a man is alone on his knees before God, that he is, and no more.” Jesus’ parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9-14) shows us the true character of two men – what they are, and no more – through their respective prayers in…
Martyn Lloyd Jones wrote, “Everything we do in the Christian life is easier than prayer.” How true that is! Prayer not only requires time and sustained attention, precious commodities in our distracted age, but it is a work of faith, a spiritual exertion of the heart. The biggest challenge to prayer is not that we’re…
Many people object to Christianity not so much on the basis of the Christian message or biblical doctrine, but because it is a religion and religion in general is objectionable. Here are three common reasons people give for rejecting religion. One, religion is no longer necessary in our modern, scientific world. In the past, when…
As a society, we are suffering an identity crisis. Not only do many people struggle to know their place in the world, but more fundamentally, we’ve lost sight of how we are to discover our identity in the first place. In our post-modern, individualistic culture, we’ve come to think that a person doesn’t just accept…
The French observer of American society Alexis de Tocqueville recorded his astonishment at the typical American’s “futile pursuit of that complete felicity which always escapes him.” He wrote that in the 1830’s. Has much changed since then? Though social scientists tell us that, in general, most people seem to be relatively content, there are too…
As Americans, we pride ourselves on being a freedom-loving people. But what is this freedom we cherish? Our secular age has interpreted liberty to mean a radical moral and spiritual autonomy, the unfettered freedom to live by one’s own self-determined meaning, morality, truth, and identity. This notion of freedom was virtually codified as law when…
The Scriptures have much to say – though not always as clearly as we might wish – about the return of Christ. Christians will continue to debate the timing and circumstances of his Second Coming, probably up to the day he does return. But the Bible’s testimony is unambiguous about this: Jesus is coming again.…
The Good Samaritan of Jesus’ parable in Luke 10 enjoys the fame and prestige of the honor attached to his name. Though in the minds of first-century Israelites, “good” and “Samaritan” were two words that couldn’t possibly belong in the same sentence, the Samaritan who helped the beaten and left-for-dead Jewish man lives on as…