In his new book, Kevin DeYoung writes, "It may sound boring or out-of-date, but it just happens to be true: the way to grow in your relationship with Jesus is to pray, read your Bible, and go to a church where you’ll get good preaching, good fellowship, and receive the sacraments" (134). It sounds ordinary, and it is, as Kevin explains in the following clip (4 minutes):

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Kevin DeYoung is a plenary speaker at our National Conference (coming up later this week). Visit the event page to learn more and register while there’s still time.

Here’s a full list of clips from our 7-part interview series with Kevin DeYoung on The Hole In Our Holiness —

• What’s the Hole in Our Holiness?
  
• My Sanct…

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The Lord has given his children a variety of motivations for how and why we pursue personal holiness, a point that Kevin DeYoung makes in our recent discussion over his new book The Hole in Our Holiness: Filling the Gap Between Gospel Passion and the Pursuit of Godliness (Crossway, 2012). I began by asking Kevin about one model of sanctification that builds almost exclusively from justification in this 4-minute clip:

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Kevin DeYoung is a plenary speaker at our National Conference (coming up later this week). Visit the event page to learn more and register while there’s still time.

Here’s a full list of clips from our 7-part interview series with Kevin DeYoung on The Hole In Our Holiness…

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What's the most neglected theme related to personal sanctification? Kevin DeYoung says it's our union with Christ. In our recent discussion over his new book, The Hole In Our Holiness: Filling the Gap Between Gospel Passion and the Pursuit of Godliness (Crossway, 2012), he explained (6 minutes):

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Kevin DeYoung is a plenary speaker at our National Conference in Minneapolis (next week!). Visit the event page to learn more and register while there’s still time.

Here’s a full list of clips from our 7-part interview series with Kevin DeYoung on The Hole In Our Holiness —

• What’s the Hole in Our Holiness?
  
• My Sanctification in Redemptive History
  
• The Imitation of Christ
  
• The Most Neglect…

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What would Jesus do?

The pop phrase has worn out, but there’s enduring truth in it. “We see in Jesus the best, most practical, most human example of what it means to be holy,” writes Kevin DeYoung in his new book The Hole In Our Holiness: Filling the Gap Between Gospel Passion and the Pursuit of Godliness (Crossway, 2012).

We asked Kevin to speak about Jesus as our moral example in the following clip, and we started with a clear definition of sanctification and justification (7 minutes):

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Kevin DeYoung is a plenary speaker at our National Conference in Minneapolis (next week!). Visit the event page to learn more and register while there’s still time.

Here’s a full list of clips fro…

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Even if we take personal holiness seriously as believers (and we should), we often lose sight of how our personal sanctification fits into a much larger redemptive storyline that stretches all the way back to creation and stretches forward into eternity.

One of the strengths of Kevin’s new book The Hole In Our Holiness is a focus on this storyline (see pages 38–47). I asked him to summarize it, and explain why it matters, in the following clip (6 minutes):

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Kevin DeYoung is a plenary speaker at our National Conference in Minneapolis (next week!). Visit the event page to learn more and register while there’s still time.

Here’s a full list of clips from our 7-part interview series with…

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Kevin DeYoung is the author of the new book The Hole In Our Holiness: Filling the Gap Between Gospel Passion and the Pursuit of Godliness (Crossway, 2012). During a recent trip to Minneapolis, we pulled Kevin into the studio to ask him about a number of key themes from his book. In this first clip from the interview, Kevin talks about his family, his church in Michigan, why he hates camping so much, and of course why he thinks our holiness has a big hole in it (8 minutes):

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Kevin DeYoung is a plenary speaker at our National Conference in Minneapolis (next week!). Visit the event page to learn more and register while there’s still time.

Here’s a full list of clips from our 7-part interv…

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In his new book Gospel Deeps, Jared Wilson writes, “If holiness makes you a sourpuss, you’re doing it wrong.” (Wouldn’t that make a nice slogan on a changeable letter church billboard?)

Wilson’s line is pointed and poignant. But why? What is the fundamental connection between joy and obedience?

One biblical text that gets at this dynamic is 1 John 5:3–4,

For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith.

In his book Finally Alive, John Piper draws out three links within this text:

• Link One: “Love for God i…

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Our heavenly Father encourages his children to put off sin by delivering strong warnings in Scripture (Hebrews 6:4–8; 10:26–31). But he also motivates us to put on holiness by drawing from our assurances, like in 1 John 3:2a–3:

we know that when he [Christ] appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.

This assurance takes root in the life of a believer that is convinced that his or her future is bound inseparably to the presence of Christ. When we know that our personal future is wholly bound up in Christ, we strive to make purity a habit now.

And the passage is written to those who will purify thems…

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If we are called to battle depression together as brothers and sisters in Christ, we must all strive for understanding and compassion. We recently asked Ed Welch, a biblical counselor at CCEF who specializes in these matters, what role antidepressant medications can and should play. In the following clip he answers the question and concludes with a challenge to pastors (and really to everyone in the church who seeks to care for those suffering from depression) to magnify Christ and to maintain focus on the life and hope we have in him. Here's what he said:

Ed Welch is a speaker at our upcoming National Conference. Visit the event page to learn more and register.

For more on the theme …

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In 1954, speaking of spiritual depression, Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, "I have no hesitation in asserting that one of the reasons why the Christian Church counts for so little in the modern world is that so many Christians are in this condition."

It's striking to hear of how common the struggle was in his day. Depression is no stranger to the great leaders in church history (in fact, it affected quite a lot of them), but neither is depression uncommon in the church today.

So what do we, as a church, do about it? We recently asked biblical counselor Ed Welch. Here's what he said.

Ed Welch is a speaker at our upcoming National Conference. Visit the event page to learn more and register.

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