Have you ever behaved as if you are the center of reality? As if all of your wants and desires and ideas are better than everyone else’s and as if everyone needs to reorient their lives and priorities around your priorities? Have you ever found yourself relating to God that way? Such that your prayers shift subtly from Thy will be done to My will be done. Your kids or your spouse does something that irritates you, and so you fly off the handle in a self-righteous rage because the little people around you disturbed your comfort and tranquility in some way? The basis for that anger is the subtle…
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Why the pro-life cause is a political liability to the GOP
I just read the following observation in an Axios newsletter: “Abortion rights have yet to lose since the end of Roe when the decision has been up to voters instead of legislators or courts.” This is a sobering reality that pro-lifers need to come to terms with. It’s why many Republican politicians are now treating the pro-life cause as a political liability. See Donald Trump’s statement yesterday, and Kari Lake’s statement today. And of course, we know where the Democrats stand. They are even worse by supporting abortion rights through all nine months of a woman’s pregnancy. The politicians are simply reflecting public opinion at this point. The majority of…
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Resurrection Hymn
O Jesus, Savior of my life, My hope, my joy, my sacrifice, I’ve searched and found no other one Who loves me more than you have done. So I denounce my lingering sin Whose power You have broke within My ever weak and faithless frame. Its vigor’s crushed in Jesus name. For your death did at once proclaim, The Godhead’s glory and my shame. And you did seize my cup of guilt And drank all that the chalice spilled. No condemnation now I dread Because you went for me instead To bear the curse and wrath and rage, To pay the debt I would have paid. Yet your work finished…
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The Left Is Colonizing the Calendar
The Left is colonizing the calendar. The most recent evidence of this is President Biden declaring tomorrow, Easter Sunday, to be “Transgender Visibility Day.” For Biden, I suspect this is a political calculation—a sop to the Left and indifferent contempt for faithful Christians everywhere. I have seen little evidence that his Catholic faith is anything more than a meaningless tradition. He publicly dishonors his church’s teaching about abortion, homosexuality, and marriage. And now he defiles the holiest day on the Christian calendar with transgender abomination. But Biden aside, we would all do well to recognize the larger conflict within which “Transgender Visibility Day” is simply a single skirmish. For the…
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The Ground of All Human Assurance before God
Source: This is an excerpt from Don Carson’s message at the Bethlehem 2016 Conference for Pastors and Church Leaders in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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The Innermost Meaning of the Cross
“But the LORD was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.” -Isaiah 53:10 “God put [Christ] forward as a propitiation in His blood through faith, in order to demonstrate His righteousness.” -Romans 3:25 “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us– for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.’” -Galatians 3:13 “It is those who cannot come to terms with any concept of the wrath of God…
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A Brief Review of Abigail Shrier’s “Bad Therapy”
I finished Abigail Shrier’s book Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up about two or three weeks ago. I’ve had a lot of time to ruminate on it, and I think it will be one of the most important books of the year. It really is a bit of a barn-burner. Her reporting gathers evidence against some of the sacrosanct totems of our age: 1. Trauma-informed therapy 2. Gentle parenting 3. Hyper-medicalization of children 4. Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score 5. Empathy run amok Shrier begins the book with a giant disclaimer that she’s not writing this book about kids with actual serious, debilitating trauma.…
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This Is the Judgment: That Light Has Come into the World – John 3:17-21
? Last Saturday morning, I Googled the following question: “What happens to us after we die?” Before I finished typing the sentence, Google autocompleted the words. I assume that means the question has been asked so many times that Google “knows” what’s coming. It occurred to me that this fact all by itself is sad. Can you imagine someone being gripped by such a question and then resorting to a Google search? After I entered the question, the top result was this paragraph from Quora.com: Your consciousness ends (we know this because all detectable signs of it stop) and your cells cease to function. Your body begins to decay until…
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For God So Loved the World – John 3:16
Love is only love if it seeks out the good and the flourishing of the loved. If in the name of love, you simply affirm what will destroy another person, it will not ultimately feel like love to them. It will eventually feel to them something more like hate. Why? Because if love doesn’t seek out the good and flourishing of the beloved, then it isn’t love at all. It is cowardice and capitulation to evil. How do we know this? We know what love is because we know how God has loved us. [Hear the rest of the sermon below.]
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Responding to Opposition to the Law Amendment
Pastor Steven Bezner has published an article arguing “Against the Law Amendment” in which he urges messengers to to vote against the measure at the upcoming SBC meeting in Indianapolis. Interestingly, Bezner doesn’t really argue against what the amendment actually says but against what he perceives as ulterior motives on the part of those who support the amendment. He writes: The Law Amendment seeks to clarify the extent of complementarian commitments within the SBC, answering this question: can a church remain in good standing with the Southern Baptist Convention if they have women staff members holding the title of pastor? If the question stopped there, the conversation around the Law…
