This is a gentle pushback on a popular slogan.

There is truth in saying, “love is a choice” or “ love is a decision.” It is true that if you don’t feel like doing good to your neighbor love will incline you to “choose” to do it anyway. If you feel like getting a divorce, love will incline you to “choose” to stay married and work it out.

If you shrink back from the pain of nails being driven through your hands, love will incline you to say, “Not my will but yours be done.” That’s the truth I hear in the statements: “Love is a choice,” or “Love is a decision.”

But I don’t prefer to use these statements. Too many people hear three tendencies in them that those who use the statements may not …

Continue Reading →

Whether you are in your twenties or sixties, you probably have some long-standing heart-responses you don’t like. These are like reflexes. You don’t choose them. They spring up unintentionally from your heart, usually in response to the people around you.

It may be anger, anxiety, envy, resentment, self-pity, disgust, frustration, discouragement, lust, irritability, impatience, hard-heartedness, brusqueness, unkindness, withdrawnness.

When any one of these attitudes springs up unbidden, you hate it. You have fought it for years with gospel-faithfulness, trusting in the blood of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit to cover it and conquer it.

Still it returns. You weep over it, and ask …

Continue Reading →

The Book of Acts profiles a people living bold.

The theme of boldness takes center-stage in Acts 4 with the story of Peter’s and John’s trial before the Sanhedrin. We learn that what astonishes the Jewish leaders pertains mainly to the apostles’ content, not their emotions. The bewildering reality at work in Peter’s and John’s testimony is what they say about Jesus.

These two fishermen had become messengers of God’s salvation, heralds for a new age in human history. They were now spokesmen of the risen and reigning Lord over all. So yes, they spoke with passion. But the point Luke drives home is not their style, but their substance. Not their homiletics, but their hermeneutics. It was all …

Continue Reading →

All around the world, dads are special today. Father’s Day is the third Sunday of June in the United States and more than 80 nations. It is fitting that we not only annually honor moms on Mother’s Day, but our fathers as well.

God’s good design is for both moms and dads, and for their appreciation and honor, whether old covenant (Exodus 20:12) or new (Ephesians 6:2). It takes man and woman, father and mother, to image God to a child. “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).

Beyond Precise Description

Having just one or the other isn’t God’s ideal, though we greatly revere those who give such valiant effort to l…

Continue Reading →

Much has happened in the past two weeks. The Ask Pastor John podcast recently reached the 1 millionth play milestone. Pastor John and his family moved temporarily from the lakes of Minnesota to the hills of Tennessee (see episodes 111 and 112 for the details). And over the past two weeks, we have released 10 new episodes of the podcast. What follows are transcribed excerpts from these new episodes (click the hyperlinked titles to listen).

On Pastors Who Use Churches as Studios (Episode 103):

It seems to me there’s a profound inauthenticity about preaching past your people in front of you. And that inauthenticity may get a crowd in the short run, but will not be blessed by God in the w…

Continue Reading →

Is it possible for a woman to exercise leadership in the workplace while still retaining her femininity?

In this video, Mary Kassian talks about a misconception among some Christians that holds that women shouldn’t do anything or have any interests outside the home. But the Bible doesn't teach that. The portrait of complementarity put forth in the Scriptures includes women who fruitfully participate in the civic realm.

Recent videos from Mary Kassian:

• How Are Women Fulfilled?

How might Isaac have explained to his young sons, Jacob and Esau, why God had commanded his father, Abraham, to offer him as a burnt offering (Genesis 22)?

Eight year-old Esau sat on his bed-mat firing imaginary arrows in the dark at his younger twin, Jacob, who could hear him making his “pheoo” sound with each shot. They were hitting the target.

“Esau, stop!” pheoo. “I said, stop!” pheoo. “Stoooooop!” Jacob’s protests were aimed at his Father’s ears. They were hitting the target. Soon the familiar scraping footsteps approached the tent. Esau lay down quickly, pretending to sleep. Father Isaac swept the flap aside, “Sons of mine, that’s enough. You’re disturbing the whole camp. It’s late. …

Continue Reading →

Lying in his bed, with tears running down his face, my son tried to calm down after an emotional outburst. I came into the room to talk to him about it. Snuggling up next to him, we discussed what had happened.

“But Mom, you don’t understand. It’s because you and brother irritate me so much. You make me angry. If you leave me alone, I won't be angry.”

My son has been engaged in an intense battle with anger lately. The littlest thing sets him off and I’m brought in as referee.

“Buddy, we don't make you angry. The anger comes from within you. It comes from your own sin inside your heart."

I recited Jesus’s words in Matthew 15:18, “But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, an…

Continue Reading →

Margaret Magdalen Jasper (1752–1789) doesn’t have a Wikipedia page. Google her name and you’ll find almost nothing about her life. What she looked like is a mystery. She wasn’t famous in her day, and she’s still not famous in our day. Her ordinary life was filled with disappointments, the kind of life history tends to forget.

But her story is worth telling.

Margaret lived in England, and there she was acquainted with loss. Her father died when she was only two years old. Her only brother later died in war and was buried in foreign soil. And her mother died in Margaret’s 30th year, at which point she writes in her diary that she was “left an orphan in this perplexing world of sin and sor…

Continue Reading →

Since launching the Ask Pastor John podcast in mid-January, we have released 112 episodes. And last weekend the podcast surpassed one million plays, which is a great time to hit pause and thank everyone who has been listening to the daily podcast either via Soundcloud, Twitter, Facebook, iTunes, or through the iPhone or Android apps.

Thank you!

The stats are meaningful to us in as much as they represent a lot of real, thoughtful, inquisitive friends who are committed to living under God’s good authority in his revealed word. And while Pastor John may be perceived as something of a modern day Yoda (as one Twitter follower humorously suggested), he’s not infallible, and certainly doesn’t c…

Continue Reading →