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National Conference 2013: Celebrating the Work of C.S. Lewis
The Fight for Life: Why We Keep Standing
Make It Free
The vision that we follow for our website is this: Post everything online, for free, without requiring registration, in a maximally usable interface. I've just written an article setting forth this vision in more detail. It is called Make it Free: Improving Online Effectiveness by Removing All Barriers to Accessing and Sharing Content.
We love the way this vision serves others through the internet and commend it to all media ministries. We make no claims to have everything figured out. We offer this article as a service to any other organizations that think the same or are considering whether to pursue a similar approach.
Update: Read answers to some common objections.
Goodbye to Matt Perman
It is with a mixture of sadness, deep gratitude, and joyful trust in the sovereignty of God that I inform you that Matt Perman, our Director of Internet Strategies, is leaving the staff of Desiring God.
Matt first joined the staff of DG in 1998 as a Resource Consultant and was, along with Justin Taylor and others, a part of the remarkable first TBI class. He also ran the bookstore at Bethlehem Baptist Church for a season, which was sort of like giving a junkie the job of a drug store manager. In 2001-2002, Matt worked for DG remotely from Louisville while, in typical Permanesque fashion, cramming a 3-year MDiv degree from Southern Seminary into 2 years. In 2002, he came back on staff full-…
Sheep, Wolves, Snakes, and Doves
When Jesus sends us to bear witness to him in the world, he does not send us out as dominant and strong, but as weak and seemingly defenseless in ourselves. The only reason I say “seemingly” defenseless is that it is possible that, since “all authority” belongs to Jesus, he might intervene and shut the mouths of the wolves, like he did the mouths of the lions that surrounded Daniel.
But that does not appear to be his intention...
Read the whole article.
Valuing Biblical Manhood
Last week at a lunch for pastors, I gave a message you can listen to called "Some Sweet Blessings of Masculine Christianity." I drew out eleven benefits of valuing biblical manhood. Here is my outline:
By “masculine Christianity,” I mean (though words are inadequate):
The theology and the church and the mission are marked by over-arching male leadership and an ethos of tender-hearted strength and contrite courage and risk-taking decisiveness and readiness to sacrifice to protect and provide for the community—the feel of a great, majestic God making the men lovingly strong and the women intelligently secure.
In this ethos…
1. Men are freed to have feminine traits w…
Tragically Widening the Grounds of Legitimate Divorce
The October issue of Christianity Today carried an astonishing article on divorce and remarriage by David Instone-Brewer. What makes it especially amazing is that CT simply published it as if it were faithful to Scripture, with no counterpoint, and used the phrase on the cover “when to separate,” not “whether to separate”—even though Jesus said, “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Mark 10:9).
To put it bluntly, the implication of this article is that every marriage I am aware of could already have legitimately ended in divorce. I knew I disagreed with Instone-Brewer’s position. I wrote three chapters on marriage and divorce and remarriage in What Jesus Demand…
Trinity 101
Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology defines the Trinity as follows: “God eternally exists as three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and each person is fully God, and there is one God” (p. 226).
Broken down, this amounts to three propositions:
- God is three persons.
- Each person is fully God.
- There is one God.
In addition, it’s helpful to elaborate on the fact that when we say “God is three persons,” we mean that he is not just one person, and that the persons of the Trinity are not to be confused. So we can also say:
- The Father is God.
- The Son is God.
- The Holy Spirit is God.
- The Father is not the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Fathe…
Atlas Shrugged Fifty Years Later
Today, October 10, 2007, is the 50th anniversary of the publication of the novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. As I write this on October 9, 2007, the book is ranked 237 at Amazon. That is phenomenal for a 1,200-page novel that contains philosophical speeches, one of which stretches to 90 uninterrupted pages. The book has sold over six million copies. In one survey from 16 years ago, Atlas Shrugged was ranked second only to the Bible as the book that influenced people most.
My Ayn Rand craze was in the late seventies when I was a professor of Biblical Studies at Bethel College. I read most of what she wrote both fiction and non-fiction. I was attracted and repulsed. I admired and cri…
When Does God Become 100% For Us?
I have asked the question in public, “When does God become 100% for us?” And I have given an answer that rightly troubles thoughtful, biblical people. So this article is an effort to answer their question.
In my message to the Desiring God National Conference on Sunday, September 30, I answered the question like this:
What the Bible teaches is that God becomes 100% irrevocably for us at the moment of justification, that is, the moment when we see Christ as a beautiful Savior and receive him as our substitute punishment and our substitute perfection. All of God’s wrath, all of the condemnation we deserve, was poured out on Jesus. All of God’s demands f…
Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer
Jesus’ “high priestly prayer” (John 17) is only about 650 words. It takes only 3 minutes and 30 seconds to read it aloud. But it will take all eternity for us to fully understand it!
I recently found it helpful to break down Jesus’ petitions and propositions into the following categories:
| The Father Gave the Son... | John 17 |
|---|---|
| authority to give eternal life | v. 2 |
| people out of this world | vv. 2, 6, 9, 24 |
| work to accomplish | v. 4 |
| words | v. 8 |
| his name | vv. 11, 12 |
Thank God for Matt Lund
Thank God for one of Desiring God's least thanked.
Matt Lund pours himself out to make the Desiring God Conference Bookstore the life-giving source of bargain-priced books it is.
Matt's been working faithfully for DG since 2002. Two years ago, he moved into his present bookstore role.
During a normal week, he stays almost invisible ordering, cataloguing, and shelving books at the Bethlehem bookstore--a mile from the DG offices and four thick floors from the Bethlehem offices where most of the weekday activity is.
Even at one of our Desiring God events, he's almost invisible--except to the trained eye who knows that this man runs the bookstore show, in the most holy …
