The Plodding Preacher

I am driving a rental car during my holidays this week. Yesterday, the warning light on the dashboard came on to tell me that I had low tire pressure.  Sure enough, when we checked, the front right tire was low.  We immediately stopped at a service station and put air in all the tires.  Still the light remained lit.  So this morning we went to a tire service centre and had tem check the tires again.  This time we removed the front right tire and resealed it.  The attendant then filled the tire, checked the pressure on the other tires and sent us on our way.  Guess what?  The warning light is still on.  After checking the car manufacturer's website, I discovered that if the sensor doesn't reset itself, the only option is to take it to a dealer who has the special tool necessary to recalibrate the sensor. Now most of us in life blow through the warning lights that come our way with way too little thought.  But what do you do with a warni...

Today I drove from Portavogie, Northern Ireland to Templeglantine, south of Limerick city in the south of Ireland.  That is pretty close to crossing the whole of the island of Ireland on the diagonal.  It took just less than six hours.  For a Canadian like myself, that seems absolutely amazing.  Six hours of driving from my home in Ontario will barely get me to the edge of the next province.  Crossing the country takes days.  How small Ireland seems by comparison. As I sit here recovering from the drive, it occurs to me how small the universe is to our God.  He doesn't take 6 hours to get anywhere.  He traverses the billions of light years of space in an instance.  He is present everywhere at once.  There is nowhere one can go from His presence. Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the mo...

Gary Millar 13 years ago, I made my first trip to Sydney. I came at the invitation of John Chapman and David Mansfield to spend a month working with the Dept. of Evangelism in the Sydney Diocese. It was a real eye-opener for me. Everywhere I went, it seemed like people were doing evangelism. Guest events in church. Dialogue dinners, evangelistic barbecues, men’s events, women’s events. You name it, it was happening. Everyone was learning Two Ways to Live, and new courses were coming out regularly. I went back to Dublin humbled, challenged and refocused on getting the gospel out more courageously and effectively. But 13 years on? It could just be me, but I’m pretty sure that evangelism has slipped down our agenda. Church planting has, it seems, taken up the headspace that was once occupied by evangelism. And much as I love church planting (it’s what we did in Ireland), it does provide more places for people to hide who don’t want to talk about Jesus to their friends. Similarly...

Be assured, there is nothing new in theology except that which is false. C. H. Spurgeon

JESUS LOVES THE LITTLE CHILDREN By Kevin Deyoung Oddly enough, it’s sometimes progressives who are most eager to move the culture backward. As we reflect in horror at the utter callousness with which some persons and organizations speak of (not to mention crush) the tiniest humans, it’s worth remembering that the ancient world was unabashedly open to the killing of children. For starters, they had almost none of the sentimentality we have towards kids. There was no Disney, no summer camps, no play dates. Family life–even if there was such a thing–certainly did not revolve around children. In general, children, were useful at best, burdens at worst, and almost never coddled. If there was one dominant fact regarding children in the ancient world it was their high mortality rates, especially among infants. Many newborns were stillborn or died in labor. Those who made it safely out of the womb often went hungry. There were too many mouths to feed and too little food. As a result...

Planned Parenthood: "Unborn babies aren't human. . ." ". . .but their body parts are."

I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I want to be. I am not what I hope to be. But still, I am not what I used to be. And by the grace of God, I am what I am. John Newton