'Practical Christianity' Tagged Posts (Page 4)
An Appeal to Churches to Use Bibles
I’ll never forget my shock the first time I attended a Bible-less church. My kind of church was a Bible-teaching one and Bibles were standard operating equipment. The last word I heard as I got in the car to drive to church was, “Jimmy, do you have your Bible?” A child might forget his belt or socks, but never his Bible. Just as dutifully, the church children found their mothers after the church meeting to load her up with their…
The Heart of Family Reformation
When our children were younger we began the day with the hymn we are currently memorizing. When Laura was five, she sang for all of us the second verse of “I Love Thy Kingdom, Lord” by the Yale president of the late 1700s, Timothy Dwight. With a determined look, she sang out, I love Thy church, O God. Her walls before Thee stand. Dear as the apple of Thine eye, And gravy on Thy hand. My boys collapsed on the…
A 12 Point Cure for Complaining
Complaining is unbecoming of the true Christian and yet we are proficient at it. The cure is found in these verses. In Christ we are never hopeless or forsaken. Every trial has meaning. Meditate on this cure in order to change both your language and your heart. 1. GOD COMMANDS ME NEVER TO COMPLAIN. Do all things without complaining and disputing. Philippians 2:14(NAS) 2. GOD COMMANDS ME TO GIVE THANKS IN EVERY CIRCUMSTANCE. In everything give thanks, for this is…
Our Parents Should Have Told Us: Manners for Social Media in Polarized Times
1. Describing others with demeaning epithets is arrogant and unbecoming. Let’s run as far from it as we possibly can. Calling a person “stupid,” or “an idiot,” for instance, tells us more about our character than theirs. 2. Making uninvited humorous comments about physical characteristics of others is childish at best, but also rude and condescending. It often shows disrespect for God as creator. Even in jest, it should be cut out of our speech repertoire. It would help to…
The Riots: What’s Obvious
What has become obvious in the riots is that the old evolutionary hope in the innate goodness of mankind and its gradual improvement over time is entirely unfounded, just as the Bible states, and that there is no answer therefore except in Christ who was sent to us to deliver us— again, just as he has said. We should not hold any vestige of remaining hope in religious rituals to save us, or yet other social constructs or programs but…
God Doesn’t Need You
“He is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.” Acts 17 Paul on Mars Hill in Athens proclaimed the entire self-sufficiency of God. We are his body, it is true, which is the fullness or completion of the Head. He uses us. But he needs nothing from us. Let that sink in. We do not add to him in any way, but rather, he gives…
Don’t Just Tweet Your Proverbs: Lessons from Solomon
I don’t quite understand it. Everyone knows that King Solomon was the wisest man in the Old Testament. Yet, he had the most precipitous moral freefall of all the kings. The early Solomon loved God. “Now Solomon loved the Lord” (1 Kings 3:3). But the later Solomon was out of control morally: “Now Solomon loved many foreign women.” “Solomon held fast to these in love” (1 Kings 11:1,2). What went wrong? In fact, the marital alliances he made with the…
The Surpassing Worth of KNOWING Christ
Most do not understand the implications and ramifications of KNOWING Christ. It has a comparative value. Notice what one like Paul will forfeit to know Christ. I’m quoting only part of the long sentence, but it conveys what I want you to see: “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered…
The Guarantee of Holiness
“Say not that thou hast royal blood in thy veins and art born of God,” said puritan William Gurnall, “unless thou canst prove thy pedigree by daring to be holy.” There is no such thing as an unholy Christian (at least in any ongoing sense.) Can Christians commit any sort of sin? Yes. Can Christians repeatedly commit sin? Yes. Can Christians commit the worst of sins? Yes. But it is inconceivable that a person could be a Christian without holiness…
Disinterestedness
Disinterestedness. This compelling word is not about what you might expect. We have all seen (and been) the disinterested student, expressionless, gazing into some unknown blank space outside the classroom, waiting out the final eternal moments of the professor’s pedantic, sleep-inducing hum. That describes a use of the word, but not our use. What we wish to say with this word is immensely desirable; it was once employed to describe the best of conditions of the believer. The following intriguing…
Christian, Rethink Your Public Speech
Believer, if you truly relish a life of turmoil, public anger, boiling arguments, caustic debates and throwing out verbal darts like porcupine quills, you will genuinely help the cause of Christ by not identifying publicly as a Christian. I’m serious. We are in desperate need of Christian wisdom, but not barbaric untamed and undignified rhetoric. It’s doing us no good. Try this test of your speech first: “The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of…
Frustration, Dadgumit
“Dadgumit,” my dad used to say. I have no idea what it meant, except that it was an indicator of frustration over something not working right. “Dingbusted” might also be heard. My father didn’t curse, but these might well be white-washed substitutes. We all know what frustration feels like. Something is just not working right, or is at least not going according to our plan. Some turn of events makes life more complicated than bargained for, or takes away something more…