What might inspire a family to move across the world for the sake of the gospel? I live with my wife and two children in Cameroon, where we planted a church and established an extension site for Bethlehem College and Seminary. Before leaving the Western world, we consistently returned to Psalm 22:27–28 as the primary…
Category: Health
Christ in Me? Three Wonders of Life in the Spirit
Talk about the Holy Spirit? That’s always been tricky. After all, he is the Spirit, the Wind, the great unseen Enigma, that most mysterious and hidden Person of the ineffable Godhead. Also, we live in times that can make thinking and speaking about the Spirit all the more difficult. For one, pervasive secular influences pressure…
Does Free Will Exist?
Audio Transcript Welcome back to the podcast on this Monday. Today in our Bible reading, we read Jeremiah 23–25 together. It included a beautiful new-covenant text that one listener wants you to explain more. The listener is Matthew. He wrote, “Pastor John, hello to you. I find myself often in debates with friends and family…
The World Needs Happy Pastors: An Interview with John Piper
Thank you, Dr. Piper. A lot to think about, a lot to pray about. I feel like I have 35 things to process, but man, the concept of kept — amazing. I think about the early days of Acts 29, when so many of us that are older planted churches, and then in the early…
Though Earth Gives Way: Meditations of Immovable People
We all desire stability. Like toddlers learning to walk, however, stability often proves elusive. Unexpected disruptions threaten to knock us off balance. Relational wounds from loved ones introduce insecurity and uncertainty. Changes that we neither sought nor asked for throw us out of routine. Before we know it, a perfectly good day can crumble beneath…
Lost in the Maze of Me: How Introspection Goes Wrong
Christian introspection can feel a little like walking into a broad and intricate maze. Entering the maze is easy enough, but so is getting lost within it. Your sense of direction slips. Promising paths of thought take unexpected and distressing turns. Dead ends abound. If we want to live safely in this world, then we…
Do Christian Hedonists Deny Self-Denial?
Audio Transcript We talked about Christian Hedonism last week. And we’re back to it today. We are pleasure-seekers. We are in pursuit of our own highest happiness. Or as you said it last time, Pastor John, “We zealously seek to maximize, in every way we can, our joy in God now and forever.” And such…
A New Kind of Kirk: The Story of Baptists in Scotland
ABSTRACT: Since 1690, the history of Christianity in Scotland has been, by and large, a history of Presbyterianism. But beginning in 1750, and especially in the early nineteenth century, Baptist churches began spreading through the land of Knox. The movement multiplied under the leadership of brothers Robert and James Haldane, former Presbyterians who preached, evangelized,…
No Condemnation: A Dream Before God’s Judgment Seat
My evening reading that night was Romans 1–8. As the final page fell, sleep seized me, and I drifted into a dream. I stood outside of a courtroom called Judgment Seat. August and austere, that courthouse appeared to me as the one great destination of all the earth. I entered willingly, though I later wondered…
The marvel that is sanctification!
The marvel that is sanctification! Posted by appolus on October 5, 2024 The process of sanctification is monumental and entirely underrated. God takes the ashes of our lives and begins the process of making something spectacular out of them for His own will and His own good pleasure. From the depths of who we are tectonic…