The Plodding Preacher

You Cannot Raise Snowflakes in Jesus’ Name David Prince “What you are describing is not a crisis; it is life.” I find myself making that assertion often as I talk to parents. The parent will describe a situation where someone teased their child, or spoke a harsh word to them, and then ask me, “How should we respond?” Usually, what they are describing is normal stuff that happens between children in a fallen world. I tell them what they are describing it is not a crisis; it is life. Their responsibility is to coach their child on how to appropriately respond. Typically, the parent responds to me with shock and I hear phrases like: “But it hurts their feelings.” “They are a sensitive child.” It doesn’t dawn on them that their child’s sensitivity could be the major problem. Frequently, parents place the blame on other children for their child’s reaction. They position their child as a victim. Focusing on the child a parent has no control over while neglecting and opportunity to t...

The Worst Consequence of Skipping Church We are a culture of convenience, of personalization, of individualism. We have a million ways of customizing our lives to perfectly suit our every preference. When things are difficult, we think little of pulling away from responsibilities, of reorienting our lives away from whatever causes inconvenience. This can even extend to something as good and as central as our commitment to the local church. All of us who are involved in local churches have seen people waver and wander in their commitment. Most of us have had to extend the call to someone, to urge them back to participation, back to the worship services. When we do this, we often turn to our go-to text, Hebrews 10:24-25, to warn of the danger of “neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some…” We insist that those who neglect to participate in the local church will encounter spiritual temptation, spiritual decline, and even spiritual death. And while all of this is true...

At this March for Science, were unborn babies still considered polyps and biological men with gender dysphoria considered women? Ben Shapiro

An observation: God very rarely answers my prayers in the way I anticipate that they will be answered. One of the great unspoken sins in my life and, I suspect, in the lives of many believers is the sin of putting God in our box.  Our expectations unconsciously become the standard against which we judge the work of God.  Not only did God answer our prayer, but did He answer it in the fashion we were expecting? When I say that, I am not saying that God answers in a way that is contrary to His Word or to His character revealed in His Word.  There are certain expectations that we can hold with great certainty because God has revealed Himself in the Bible.  When I pray, I can expect that God will be consistent with His good, just, holy, loving character because the Bible tells me He will. I am talking about the times we pray and in our hearts we not only have the request that we are making but also the manner in which we expect the answer to come.  We pray "Go...

Aaron Denlinger shows the absurdity of saying that we love Jesus, but hate His Church: Forgive my bluntness, but claiming to love Jesus while wanting nothing to do with the church is just stupid. If the “Jesus” we’re talking about is the God-man whose life, death, resurrection, and ascension is described and defined for us by the inspired writings of those he commissioned to disciple the nations, then the “church” we’re talking about must be the entity described and defined for us by those same writings. The “church,” according to those writings, is Christ’s bride, whom he loves, whom he nourishes, whom he died for (see Eph. 5:25-32). As the hymnist puts it: “From Heaven he came and sought her, to be his holy bride. With his own blood he bought her, and for her life he died.” Professing love for Christ but little for the church makes about as much sense as saying you like me and want to spend time with me, but really can’t stand my wife and would prefer not to have her around. You can...

Never let your hearers have to ask the question, "What has this sermon to do with the text?" Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”” (Matt. 26:39) The object of Christ’s attention here is this cup. What is the cup? What’s in it? In Scripture the cup refers to God’s wrath or judgment (Isaiah 51:17; Jeremiah 25:15). Here in this foreboding vessel before Jesus is the fully fermented, undiluted, cup of divine wrath. It is God’s impending judgment that has him sweating drops of blood and in deep agony. Christ is looking down the barrel of heaven’s infinite wrath, and his heart is shredded in agony. As barbaric as the human suffering was, it was not the chief agony of the cross. This was reserved for his assignment to drink the cup. It wasn’t the prospect of martyrdom—wrath at the hands of men—that weighed so heavily upon Jesus, it was wrath of God. Erik Redmond in the article The Dreadful Cup and Our Faithful Savior .

Tim Keller: Cross of Christ Is Offensive in All Sorts of Ways Michael Gryboski During a lecture at the annual Gospel Coalition Conference in Indianapolis, the outgoing senior pastor of the New York-based Redeemer Presbyterian Church spoke about the Bible passage of   Galatians 6 , namely boasting in the cross. In order to accept the central importance of the cross, Keller told those gathered at the conference on Wednesday morning that they must accept "the offense of the cross." "You don't understand the doctrine of the cross, you never truly come to grips with it unless you feel the offense of it,"   said Keller . Read the Whole Article at Christian Post .

Milan Schipper, who is a student in the Netherlands, ended up finding a really great deal on a flight to Sydney, and decided it was just too good to pass up. Schipper boarded the flight, only to find out hours later that he had inadvertently flown to Nova Scotia’s Sydney airport not Australia. This story turns out well because Milan has subsequently been offered free tickets to the other Sydney. It does beg the spiritual question:  Are we booked for the right eternal destination?

Some works of art are, well,   works of art   and more readily provoke theological, philosophical, and spiritual reflection. Some works of art are mere frivolities, which can be simply enjoyed by Christians in moderation but don’t lend themselves easily to philosophical rumination except at the viewer’s most eisogetical of stretches. Still others of these frivolous fragments of pop-cultural detritus should simply be   ignored , and an ever-growing number should be openly rejected and even repudiated. But some works are so dumb, so vapid, so insipid that the contemporary Christian impulse to extract something of redemption from them actually reveals how dumb, vapid, and insipid highbrow evangelicals can be. Jared C. Wilson