I have a goal of reading 100 books this year. Undoubtedly some of those books will be biographies, but in reality there are few people that I desire to know so much about that I would be willing to read a 400 page biography. However, there are many people that I want to know a …
Mental illness and the church, not many people are talking about this issue, but it is real and it is affecting individuals and churches all across the landscape of Christianity. In my own church, mental illness is a normal reality with which we wrestle on a regular basis. We have many young people and adults …
I have good friends, the kinds of friends that will recommend good books and occasionally mail me a book without solicitation. This month represents the first time that a friend mailed me a book and assigned me homework. The enclosed note: “read this and write a review.” Well, I have completed the reading part and …
I admit that in the last few months, my reading diet has been slim. I’ve been lazy. Several weeks ago I decided to get serious about my reading and recommitted myself. I’m glad that part of that recommitment led me to Dangerous Calling by Paul David Tripp. This is a book on pastoral ministry unlike others. …
The Fault in our Stars— I had no idea about this book or the movie until the teenage girls in our church started talking about it. Here’s a review of the book by Tim Challies. Build a Pastor’s Theological Library— LifeWay gives you the chance to build a “fantasy library” and be registered to win …
If you have a new revelation from the scriptures, you are probably wrong. I’m not sure who said that to me first, but it is true. If you believe you have a new revelation, you are wrong in at least one of two ways. Either your revelation is not new at all or it is …
As a kid I remember hearing the rumors of others doing prank calls (emphasis here on others, the fifth amendment is my right). Caller ID has made prank calling more difficult, but one of the all time favorites for prank calling was the classic, “Is your refrigerator running?” bit. In the days before caller ID, …
Sometimes making sense of the world is difficult. We have questions and we do not always have answers. However, sometimes our greatest problem is that we focus more on our questions than on our answers. This is akin to materialism in our western world today. We find ourselves wealthy and surrounded by more things than …
Do people invite themselves to your home? I was encouraged by this because just this weekend, Angela and I invited ourselves to the new home of some friends. Tim Challies examines the inconvenience of being inconvenienced. Do people feel they can come to your home only for formal Bible studies or can they come to …
The nature and question of true conversion is a hot topic in the church today. At the Southern Baptist Convention this year, David Platt found himself in a bit of hot water by questioning the validity of the “sinner’s prayer.” The debate there hinges on the exact usefulness of a canned prayer to bring about …