If a twelve-year-old makes A’s in school and generally makes wise choices, how would you help her apply this verse to herself?

Never be wise in your own sight. (Romans 12:16)

You might say:

1. It means that you gladly admit that all true wisdom is from God. It is his, and not finally ours.
2. It means that you recognize that any sense of superiority comes from comparing yourself only with your inferiors. But the most important person to compare yourself with is God, and he is infinitely wiser than you. Not only that, there are a lot of people in the world wiser than you.
3. It means that you feel humbled by the fact that you are a sinner deserving of God’s wrath, and t…

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There are saving works that God will only do through small churches and ordinary people, not through large churches and more sophisticated people.

The Lord said to Gideon, "The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying, 'My own hand has saved me.’” (Judges 7:2)

Beware of missing your appointed fruit by envying bigger trees.

Sometimes I'm asked how I explain the disproportion between the size of the universe and the smallness of man created as the crown of God’s creation. The tension is felt in Psalm 8:3-5.

“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.”

My answer is that the magnitude of the universe is not meant to correlate with the image, but with the Original. The heavens are not designed to declare the glory of man. “The heavens declare the gl…

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If in your morning devotions you open God’s word to the book of Judges and find that the strings of your inner instrument are not in tune, it is not blasphemy to excuse yourself for a few moments from the King’s library and turn to a paragraph from one of his unflinchingly faithful, broken-hearted, happy servants. Should we find it surprising that the King should appoint some of his closest friends to be especially good at tuning the strings of our soul so that we may play His music when he puts the bow of his Word on our soul?

At least for me, this is how it is from time to time. And I am thankful for Satan’s folly in throwing Samuel Rutherford into prison in Aberdeen for seventeen months…

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One of the reasons pursuing a passion for Christ (or if you prefer the old word, “zeal” for Christ) is so important is the good effects it has on others.

This is not the decisive reason for wanting passion. Passion is not like that. It is not utilitarian. Passion for Christ exists because Christ is magnificent, not because passion is useful. If the only reason you try to have passion is to help others have passion, your so-called passion will become manipulative and will prove in the end to be hypocrisy.

Nevertheless, if you have it, and if it is really a passion for Christ, then it will have a God-designed effect on others. This is part of why passion is so good. It is an honor to…

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Every Christian should want to be a “fountain of life” for others. How does that happen?

Here is a group of passages that answer this question. The answer is in the order.

Psalm 36:9, For with You is the fountain of life; In Your light we see light.

Proverbs 16:22, Understanding is a fountain of life to one who has it, But the discipline of fools is folly.

Proverbs 14:27, The fear of the LORD is a fountain of life, That one may avoid the snares of death.

Proverbs 10:11, The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, But the mouth of the wicked conceals violence.

Proverbs 13:14, The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life, To turn aside from the snares of

…

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For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise he who was free when called is a slave of Christ. (1Corinthians 7:22-24).

I would have expected Paul to switch the places of “Lord” and “Christ.” He correlates our liberation with Jesus being our Master (“a freedman of the Lord”). And he correlates our new slavery with Jesus being our Messiah (“a slave of Christ”).

But in fact the Messiah came to liberate his people from their captors; and masters take control of people’s lives. Why does he say it this way?

Suggestion. The switch has two effects on our new liberty and two effects on our new slavery.

In calling us “the liberated o…

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Jesus never wrote anything. He hung out, and talked, and healed. But if his followers had only done that, we wouldn’t know even that about him. Both-And, not Either-Or. And some people more one than the other.

As we think seriously about contextualizing the message of the Bible, let’s remember that we must also labor to bring about, in the minds of our listeners, conceptual categories that may be missing from their mental framework. If we only use the thought structures they already have, some crucial biblical truths will remain unintelligible, no matter how much contextualizing we do. This work of concept creation is harder than contextualization, but just as important...

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C. S. Lewis’ advice to children on writing is good advice to pastors on preaching, or anybody on talking.

1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn't mean anything else.
2. Always prefer the clean direct word to the long, vague one. Don't implement promises, but keep them.
3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean "More people died" don't say "Mortality rose."
4. In writing, don't use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the things you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us the thing is "terrible," describe it so that we'll be terrified. Don't say it was "deli…

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