Featured Posts
The Fight for Life: Why We Keep Standing
Preparing for the Future in the Age of Facebook
Every Calvary Step Was Love
Today is Palm Sunday, and so begins our journey with Jesus from Jerusalem’s gate to Golgotha’s cross to Easter’s triumph.
In this Holy Week, we begin with “Hosanna,” walk solemnly toward “Crucify him,” and finish elatedly with, “He is risen!”
Here we see Jesus’s love for us in every intentional step. In one sense, every step he ever took was for us. He was born to die. He came to give his life. His public ministry was ever a steady drumbeat toward Calvary. But in his last week, the quickly moving story begins to run in slow motion. Roughly half the Gospel accounts are dedicated to chronicle these final days.
Five years ago, John Piper wrote a memorable Holy Week meditation on Jesus’s inte…
John Piper’s Gestures
John Piper’s preaching gestures are quickly becoming legendary. There’s now a whole website dedicated to animated clips of his best preaching gestures. So this week we asked Pastor John two gesture questions.
In episode 49, we asked him about when he started using them in the pulpit.
It is possible to leap and wave and holler and entertain and say nothing and be useless. And I don’t want to do that. Therefore gestures in my mind are not of the essence of the demonstration of the Spirit and power. That is just not what they are, because people can listen to sheer audio of messages and have their lives changed. They can’t see you at all when that is happening. …
Whatever I do in the p…
Dads, Let’s Learn from the Dying Edwards
Today in 1758 Jonathan Edwards died. He was 54 years old.
It was a fever he had contracted from a small-pox inoculation just a month before. After weeks of worsening weakness and the recognition of his immanent death, he spoke his last words to his daughter, Lucy, who attended him. Toward the end he said,
As to my children, you are now to be left fatherless, which I hope will be an inducement to you all to seek a Father who will never fail you.
There is so much to say of Edwards, of his vision of God, of his shortened life, of his influence. But consider for a moment this scene just before he died — a scene that took place this very day 255 years ago.
We would think that Edwards, with th…
When Jesus Makes You Wait in Pain
The reason there was a “Palm Sunday” was because Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead (John 12:17–18). It was perhaps the most powerful, hope-giving miracle Jesus ever performed during his pre-cross ministry; the capstone sign of who he was (John 5:21–25).
That’s why the Apostle John wrote, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was” (John 11:5–6).
The word “so” connecting those two sentences is stunning. The most loving thing Jesus could do at that moment was to let Lazarus die. But it didn’t look or feel like love to Martha.
“Martha, the Teacher has come. He’s near the village.”
Martha’s …
From Rubble to Restoration
But you are God, ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abundant in kindness, and did not forsake them. (Nehemiah 9:17)
Jerusalem, the city meant to declare God’s name, lies in rubble on the ground. The glory of Solomon’s era has passed. Now it stands bare, lifeless, stripped, and unprotected, a shameful shadow of its former splendor. A powerhouse brought low. A chosen people scattered. A city desecrated.
Nehemiah, having heard news from afar about the beloved city, mourns over the reproach of his people. He knows that the pride and hard-heartedness of his people have caused their own destruction. Previously, God warned them of this, that if they haughtily turned away from …
A Theater Called Holy Week
How did C. S. Lewis bungle The Chronicles of Narnia?
For some critics, a major flaw is the way he interrupts the flow of the story by butting into the story as the narrator. You may remember it is Lewis who tells us (twice!) that no sensible person ever shut oneself up in a wardrobe. It’s a simple line, but Lewis breaks into the story to speak a direct lesson for young readers.
Or you may remember the dizzying scene in The Silver Chair when Jill steps up to a cliff edge far above the clouds. She grows faint and wobbly, and readers wonder if Jill is about to plunge to her death. Here's how Lewis describes it: “She was too frightened and dizzy to know quite what she was doing, but two th…
Behind the Blog: An Interview with Jerry Bridges
Jerry Bridges’ first book, The Pursuit of Holiness, was published in 1978 and came as the fruit of his own sanctification struggles as a young Christian many years before. It is a fascinating story, which Mr. Bridges recently sat down to tell us in a short interview. We found the interview so rich and helpful that we’ve divided it up into two parts.
In part one, Mr. Bridges tells the story about how he navigated his walk early on through some unhealthy views of God’s role and ours in sanctification. He also gives a brief overview of our union with Christ and an example of how the gospel plays out in the life of a believer. At one point Mr. Bridges quotes from a favorite hymn, “My hope is bu…
Ten Big, Daily Reminders
I wake up lost every morning. At least that’s what it feels like. Perhaps something similar is true of you.
Somehow during the night I’ve forgotten the big realities about God and the universe and myself and the gospel. I desperately need to steady myself with biblical truth rather than stumbling forward to live from unbelief.
I tend to forget the big realities during the day as well. I regularly catch myself living on the idiotic assumption that I will constantly remember the things that really matter — and that I will act in line with them. I assume that the realm of the seen and touched will not overwhelm the realm of the unseen and hoped for.
But in reality, whether it’s night or day,…
Young, Restless, and Reformed — Five Years Later
Five years ago this month journalist Collin Hansen published his first book: Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists (Crossway, 2008). True to its title, the book is a travelogue of Collin’s journey across the country documenting a surging movement called New Calvinism by some, and Young, Restless and Reformed (YRR) by others, a title he coined himself. Collin’s hunches about the new movement were confirmed in 2009 when Time Magazine named “New Calvinism” as one of its “10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now.”
But it’s been five years since the release of his book, and YRR has undergone quite a lot of change in those years. What have been the biggest change…
A Vision for Holy Week
Word pictures have power to put familiar wonders back where they belong — in the heart of worship. Isaiah pictured the Messiah as so tender he would not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick (Isaiah 42:3). Yet he will be so mighty that he will bring justice to victory over all the evil of the world (Isaiah 42:1, 3).
Some years ago God wakened a word picture in my mind for Holy Week. Then and now the effect was to put the familiar wonder of the tender mercy and terrible might of Jesus back where they belong—in my worshipping heart. I pray it will have a similar effect on you.
A little lamb was born all wooly-white with skinny legs and a wet nose, pretty much like all the other …
