Audio Transcript Thinking is essential in the Christian life. It’s essential to Bible reading. And we’ve spent time looking at how much we need to focus our minds to trace the logic flow of Paul’s thought as we read his letters — a dynamic you have shown us, Pastor John, using Romans 1:15–17 and 1…
Category: Health
Teens and Screens: A Parent’s Guide to Tech-Stewardship
Interview Transcript Mike Andrews, hello and thank you for the invitation to appear on The Narrative Podcast, from the Center for Christian Virtue, by recording. My name is Tony Reinke, a nonprofit journalist and teacher based in Phoenix. I have sought to serve the church by writing on tech and media for a decade now.…
Life Is Too Brief to Waste: Learning to Number Our Days
As I write, I’m sitting outside my home, basking in a verdant, cloudless midsummer day in Minnesota. The sun-drenched landscape around me is lush and green, except for the colorful interruptions of flowers in full bloom that draw the eye as well as the bees and hummingbirds. And from the trees, a virtuoso wren leads…
Take Your Worst to the Table: Reclaiming the Heart of Communion
The Lord’s Supper reveals that Jesus takes the worst we can do and makes it a sign of the best he does for us. Within hours of that meal in the upper room, Jesus’s body would indeed be given and his blood poured out. This dreadful tragedy accomplished our glorious salvation. From the beginning, the…
Strangers to Sin: How Heaven Makes Us Holy
Then it came burning hot into my mind, whatever he said, and however he flattered, when he got me home to his house, he would sell me for a slave. (The Pilgrim’s Progress) These words from Faithful still expose the sweet talk of the old self. We need the Holy Spirit to bring it hot…
On Hoarding
Audio Transcript Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast. Here we talk every so often about wartime living. And we talk about minimalism, too. But those are not the same thing. The Christian life is not simply about decluttering our closets and living a simpler life. No. We aim at wartime simplicity, which is…
You are my resting place.
You are my resting place. Posted by appolus on September 4, 2024 I wrote this today from my meditations on the Lord and my great desire to stay in that quiet place with Him. This is where eternal life is, no matter what storms we find ourselves in. You are my resting placeAnd deep within these…
Jars of Clay: Pastoral Grit for the Glory of Christ
Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. But we have renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if…
God’s ‘Excellent Work’: The Reformation’s Defense of Woman
ABSTRACT: Throughout church history, some theologians have followed Aristotle’s description of woman as a “deformed” or “malformed” man. The Reformers, however, celebrated woman as “a most excellent work” of God, equally capable of virtue and worthy of love, respect, and justice. Together with their doctrine of male headship, the Reformers’ defense of woman offers a…
Christ in Foreign Clothes: Crossing Cultures Like an Apostle
Were you to frequent the streets of Shanghai in the mid-1850s, you may have encountered a curious sight: a young British man sporting a pigtail, wearing the clothing of a poor local schoolteacher and speaking in Mandarin to whoever would give him a hearing. The man’s name was Hudson Taylor (1832–1905), the future founder of…