Thursday morning’s chapel at SBTS was a memorable one for a number of reasons—not the least of which was Tom Schreiner’s excellent exposition of Acts 20:17-38 (see above). Before Tom preached, however, Dr. Mohler recognized and prayed for someone special in the room—Tom’s wife, Dianne. Many of you know about the severe head injury that Dianne suffered in an bike accident last August (her son Patrick wrote about it here). When I visited her in the hospital after the accident, she could not walk. She could not talk. It wasn’t clear that she could even recognize friends and acquaintances. The situation was dire. Yet when I greeted her this morning,…
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I Am the God of Wine
I have always believed it to be a great irony that a Baptist minister should be named after the Greek “god of wine,” but I am. I will never forget as a young man stumbling across a “baby names” book in my house and flipping quickly to the D‘s to find out what my name meant. And before I knew it, there it was: “Dennis: the Greek god of wine.” I was gobsmacked. I was only ten years old, but I had been Baptist long enough to know that something was terribly amiss. As far as I knew, my teetotaling parents had given me my name, but this just wasn’t…
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A Special Message
Happy Birthday to Tom Schreiner–my doctorvater, mentor, and exemplar of mad hip-hop skills! If you doubt me, listen below.
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Main Take-away from T4G 2012
My main take-away from T4G 2012 is nothing new or earth-shattering. It’s not even something that I didn’t already know. It’s something I’ve known and believed my whole life but which needed to be reinvigorated. The pursuit of holiness won’t happen by accident. I’m not going to be conformed to the image of Christ by osmosis. If I am to be sanctified, it will be a fight to the death. And that means much work, labor, and effort. Fie on passivity and quietism. The effect of God’s grace in me will be effort on my part. Where that effort is absent, so also is grace. You would benefit from all…
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The Ultimate Writing Studio
I am on writing leave this year, but I’m thinking I’ll probably not be affording this. See above. What do you reckon one of these costs? (HT: Alex Medina)
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Must We Preach with Passion?
The first time I heard John Piper preach I didn’t like it. It was about sixteen years ago. Someone had given me a cassette tape of Piper speaking on the topic of the supremacy of God in preaching, and in this particular message he stressed that the preacher’s delivery must be done with great passion and feeling. I disagreed with Piper. As far as I was concerned, the Bible was the point of preaching not the preacher’s delivery. I thought that Piper was promoting an anthropocentric view of the preacher’s task. I didn’t understand how Piper could be so wrong.
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Sermon Notes from a Seven Year Old
Jim Hamilton is my pastor and fellow elder at Kenwood Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. Jim just shared his 7-year old son’s sermon notes from last week’s sermon, and it is classic. I think he’s about ready to preach. Here’s the photo and transcription below. Read Jim’s post here.
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Texting Mom
I really appreciated this one from the guys at Igniter Media, and I’ll bet many of you will too. I love you, mom and dad, and am always happy to be your tech support!
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The Nigerian Witness
I flew to Chicago Tuesday morning to attend The Gospel Coalition conference, and I took a cab from the airport to my hotel. As I was sitting in the backseat formulating my strategy for sharing the gospel with my Nigerian driver, the driver starts singing. “What are you singing,” I asked. He replied, “I’m singing to my God. I must always sing to my God!” It turns out that this was his strategy for sharing the gospel with me! The rest of the trip was a delight. We talked about life, the gospel, and the nature of true Christianity. We prayed for each other, and then he gave one final…
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Happy Thanksgiving!
Here’s the Psalm that we read in family worship last night. Happy Thanksgiving!