There is no shortage of sympathizing authenticity available to help moms absorb the impact of life in the trenches. Strangers, friends, blogs, and books freely offer their candid encouragements. I remember one occasion years ago when I was buying a package of preschooler underpants. The store clerk smiled and said, “When you start their toilet training you’re going to feel like there’s urine everywhere. But don’t worry, you’re not alone.” The woman behind me in line echoed her. “Ain’t that the truth!” There’s no doubt about the fact that we receive a special kind of encouragement knowing we’re not alone.

Believers in Christ are surrounded by “so great a cloud of witnesses” who walk by fait…

Continue Reading →

Few have written with such passion and economy of expression. Rarely does one turn such manifest angst to articulation and channel such blood-earnestness into precise words.

Blaise Pascal burned with the kind of intensity and aggression uncharacteristic of those who have long, peaceful lives. He was a fierce flame with a short wick.

It was June 19, 1623 — 390 years ago today — that Pascal was born in Clermont, France, to a mother who would die when he was only a toddler. He himself would live a sickly and painful life and wouldn’t even see his fortieth birthday — though he left an indelible impression. While the world had him for less than four decades, the church only had him for eight ye…

Continue Reading →

This is a gentle pushback on a popular slogan.

There is truth in saying, “love is a choice” or “love is a decision.” It is true that if you don’t feel like doing good to your neighbor love will incline you to “choose” to do it anyway. If you feel like getting a divorce, love will incline you to “choose” to stay married and work it out.

If you shrink back from the pain of nails being driven through your hands, love will incline you to say, “Not my will but yours be done.” That’s the truth I hear in the statements: “Love is a choice,” or “Love is a decision.”

But I don’t prefer to use these statements. Too many people hear three tendencies in them that those who use the statements may not i…

Continue Reading →

Max McLean, the lead actor and director of the theatrical adaptation of The Screwtape Letters, has performed the role of Screwtape hundreds of times since the play debuted in 2010. This means that beyond reading C.S. Lewis, McLean has absorbed his thought.

We recently had the chance to ask him about any enduring lessons he’s learned from so much attention to Lewis’s work. He explains in this three-minute video:

Learn more about our upcoming conference, “The Romantic Rationalist: God, Life, & Imagination in the Work of C.S. Lewis,” and download our ebook from John Piper on C.S. Lewis, Alive to Wonder: Celebrating the Influence of C.S. Lewis.

Whether you are in your twenties or sixties, you probably have some long-standing heart-responses you don’t like. These are like reflexes. You don’t choose them. They spring up unintentionally from your heart, usually in response to the people around you.

It may be anger, anxiety, envy, resentment, self-pity, disgust, frustration, discouragement, lust, irritability, impatience, hard-heartedness, brusqueness, unkindness, withdrawnness.

When any one of these attitudes springs up unbidden, you hate it. You have fought it for years with gospel-faithfulness, trusting in the blood of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit to cover it and conquer it.

Still it returns. You weep over it, and ask …

Continue Reading →