Rachel Pieh Jones is a wife, mom, writer, and DG blog contributor who has lived in East Africa for the past 10 years. One of her pieces that has generated the most attention, you may remember, was published as a response to the Mommy Wars debate stirred up by a Time Magazine cover article published back in May. Rachel’s response post was titled “Are You Mom Enough?” What Rachel brings to the debate is both a helpful international perspective, and more importantly, a gospel perspective. We recently asked Rachel to share on camera her perspective of these so-called mommy wars, which she did in this 3-minute video.

You can read her original post here, and you will find an index to the en…

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From Kevin DeYoung's forthcoming book, The Hole in Our Holiness: Filling the Gap Between Gospel Passion and the Pursuit of Godliness (Crossway; August 31, 2012), page 145:

Holiness is the sum of a million little things — the avoidance of little evils and little foibles, the setting aside of little bits of worldliness and little acts of compromise, the putting to death of little inconsistencies and little indiscretions, the attention to little duties and little dealings, the hard work of little self-denials and little self-restraints, the cultivation of little benevolences and little forbearances. Are you trustworthy? Are you kind? Are you patient? Are you joyful? Do you love? These qual…

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From Kevin DeYoung's forthcoming book, The Hole in Our Holiness: Filling the Gap Between Gospel Passion and the Pursuit of Godliness (Crossway; August 31, 2012), page 123:

We must always remember that in seeking after holiness we are not so much seeking after a thing as we are seeking a person. The blessings of the gospel — election, justification, sanctification, glorification, and all the rest — have been deposited in no other treasury but Christ. We don’t just want holiness. We want the Holy One in whom we have been counted holy and are now being made holy. To run hard after holiness is another way of running hard after God. Just as a once-for-all, objective justification leads to a …

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What is union with Christ? And how does this union help us advance in personal holiness?

We asked J. I. Packer recently, and he answered in this rich 9-minute video:

Transcribed Excerpt

“[As a Christian] you have to face a great deal of opposition from the world, the flesh, and the devil. But as the new creatures that you are in Christ — risen with him, with the power of his resurrection mediated through the Holy Spirit into the actual living of your life — you can stand fast. You pray for power to stand fast. You set yourself to stand fast. And you find that you are standing fast. In his strength you can do it. And this is one of the secrets of sanctification, the secret which I wo…

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J. I. Packer will turn 86 on Sunday. He is a skillful writer, a fruitful author, and many of his works have become classics, none more than Knowing God. Recently in our interviews with him in Vancouver we asked him for writing advice, or more specifically, what he would say to a budding writer of Christian nonfiction.

He offered three pieces of advice:

1. Go deep in personal worship.
2. Write to hit hearts.
3. Write from a sense of calling.

He explains and expands these points in this 9-minute video clip:

Transcribed Excerpts

"There are writers who think that simply by crisp, orthodox formulations of Bible truth and wisdom, without any searching application to the reader, they are fu…

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Slate recently reported that spanking children may not be such a bad form of discipline after all. Surprisingly, the reporter pushed past a lot of the cultural anti-spanking prejudice to ask some reasonable questions about what the studies indicate. Although it appears she has not been persuaded to spank her own child, and she chooses to end the piece with a touch of doomsday, she maintains a level of clearheadedness in much of the article.

But I suspected at some point the article would get awkward, because discussions on discipline always do. There comes a point when you must define spanking, you must explain what spanking is and that can only be done by explaining what it looks like in…

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Psalm 51:4 —

Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight

Said Rick Gamache, in his sermon “Whiter Than Snow” —

I believe what David is saying in verse 4 [Psalm 51:4] is that all sin is a preference for the fleeting pleasures of the world and the flesh over the everlasting joy of God’s fellowship. This is why the Christian life is a life of repentance (like Martin Luther said), not because every time we sin we lose our status as God’s children and have to get saved all over again. Our status never changes. We are always God’s children, we are still declared to be holy even when we sin, we are still the heirs of his Kingdom.

But our sin affects our rel…

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1 John 2:1 —

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

Sinclair Ferguson, in his sermon "Sin: Prevention and Cure" (May 6, 2012) —

The essential exhortation John is giving to us rocks us back on our heels. He is saying this: If you desire anything less for yourself than absolute obedience to God, a life of total devotion to the Lord, a life of absolute sin-less-ness — if you desire anything less, you are fighting against God's desire for you.

It is overwhelming.

But you see, he can issue such an exhortation because he knows that there is sufficient gra…

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John Piper, in his message "The Ultimate Meaning of True Womanhood" (2008) —

Wimpy theology makes wimpy women. Wimpy theology simply does not give a woman a God that is big enough, strong enough, wise enough, and good enough to handle the realities of life in a way that magnifies the infinite worth of Jesus Christ.

(Design submitted by Jennifer Knight.)

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Previous quote images —

• The Essence of Christian Hedonism (Jennifer Knight)
• Holy Women Who Hope in God (Jennifer Knight)
• The Rock-Solid Foundation of Christian Hedonism (Jacob Abshire)
• Motivating Joy (Jennifer Knight)

(The following post has been transcribed and edited from Tim Keller’s sermon “Sin as Slavery,” which can be downloaded for free here.)

Every one of our sinful actions has a suicidal power on the faculties that put that action forth. When you sin with the mind, that sin shrivels the rationality. When you sin with the heart or the emotions, that sin shrivels the emotions. When you sin with the will, that sin destroys and dissolves your willpower and your self-control. Sin is the suicidal action of the self against itself. Sin destroys freedom because sin is an enslaving power.

In other words, sin has a powerful effect in which your own freedom, your freedom to want the good, to will the g…

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