I’m a bit of a Scrooge when it comes to Christmas time gift giving. Sometimes I feel like if you’re going to spend $25 on me and I’m going to spend $25 on you, then let’s just do nothing and call it even, save the effort.

But when it comes to my wife, it’s a different story. I love buying presents for her, because I think I know exactly what’ll make her tear up with happiness on Christmas morning. Granted, she cries easily, but she’s going to love what I got her. So I spend my days leading up to Christmas making up silly songs about her present to torment her with the fact that I know what it is and she doesn’t. Maybe that’s mean, but I can hardly help it. I’m excited.

So what’s the…

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Today is the 200th anniversary of John Newton’s death.

• John Newton wrote the hymn ‘Amazing Grace.” (The words, not the music.)
• He counseled William Wilberforce to stay in politics to fight the slave trade.
• He never gave up on the suicidal William Cowper who gave us “There Is A Fountain Filled with Blood” and “God Moves in a Mysterious Way” and “O For a Closer Walk with God.”
• He partnered with Cowper in writing a collection of Olney Hymns for their people. Cowper could not carry it through. Of the 300 hymns we have today 233 are from Newton.
• When Henry Martyn came to him for counsel before entering on his mission to Persia (a…

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Just before the first service at the north campus last Sunday, the little band of praying saints was hard at work fighting for the faith of our people and for the churches of the Twin Cities and for the nations as they prayed. At one point Jim Tomaszewski prayed the words of John 1:14-16:

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. . . . And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

It was one of those epiphany moments for me...

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This is part 3 of 4 on the Incarnation

• Part 1: Advent and the Incarnation
• Part 2: Jesus Is Fully Human

The term hypostatic union is much easier than it sounds, but the concept is as profound as anything in theology.

The English adjective hypostatic comes from the Greek word hupostasis. The word only appears four times in the New Testament—maybe most memorably in Hebrews 1:3, where Jesus is said to be “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.” Here the author of Hebrews uses the word in reference to the oneness of God. Both the Father and the Son are of the same “nature.” Jesus is “the exact imprint of his nature.”

However, in early church discuss…

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In my final Advent Poem on Nicodemus, I concluded with lines about Christian courage in the face of the Colorado shootings:

So, Bethlehem, with candle three,
Are you afraid? Or are you free?
Do Christian-killers in the news
Make you a slave? Or do you choose
With Christ that they will make you brave?
What do you fear the most? The grave?
Did Jesus die and rise for this?
Or that the certain hope of bliss
Beyond the bullets and the blood
Would bless this planet with a flood
Of fearless sacrifice? What gun
Can cut us off from Jesus? None!
Nor tribulation or distress,
Nor danger, sword, or nakedness.
Though we were killed like…

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This morning my assistant, Bryan DeWire, found out his father, who 24 hours ago seemed in fine health, didn’t make it through emergency heart surgery. This afternoon, my wife called me in tears to update me on a very difficult day trying to raise and teach 5 young children. Very different, yet real and painful experiences of God’s providential reign in lives of Christians I love.

Also this morning I read this sentence in a pamphlet titled, “Honey Out of the Rock,” by Puritan Thomas Wilcox,

“Judge not Christ’s love by providences, but by promises.”

Experiences are very powerful. They often feel more powerful than promises. So it's tempting to interpret prosperity and e…

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The likelihood of dying because you are a Christian is closer than it used to be for Americans. The freedom from such threats has generally existed in this country for a tiny portion of history (about 400 years). We have gotten used to it. It seems like the way things must be. So our first reaction to the threat that things might be otherwise is often anger.

But that anger may be a sign that we have lost our sense of being aliens and exiles (“Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles . . .” 1 Peter 2:11). Perhaps we have settled in too much to this world and this country in particular. We don’t feel as homesick for Christ as Paul did:

“But our citizenship is in heaven…

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As long as I am lingering over the value of Jonathan Edwards’ essay on the Divine Decrees, here is one more quote that is worthy of extended biblical reflection. It comes from Section 19.

Objectors may say, God cannot always prevent men’s sins, unless he act contrary to the free nature of the subject, or without destroying men’s liberty. But will they deny, that an omnipotent and infinitely wise God could not possibly invent, and set before men, such strong motives to obedience, and have kept them before them in such a manner, as should have influenced all mankind to continue in their obedience, as the elect angels have done, without destroying their liberty? God will order it so, th

…

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Oshea Davis just published in a self-standing volume (for the first time that I am aware of ) Jonathan Edwards’ Dissertation Concerning the Divine Decrees in General and Election in Particular. I am thankful for this service to the church. This 75 -page essay (in Davis’s work) proved enormously helpful to me along the way in my thinking about God’s sovereignty.

Here is one excerpt from that essay (quoted from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library to save me having to type the excerpt from Davis’s book). It will give you a taste for the depth and complexity of Edwards' book, and the seriousness of his effort to tackle the hardest questions.

It is a proper and excellent …

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Here are 5 “Ds” that I have made part of my daily prayers:

Whatever it takes, Lord, give me...

• Delight in you as the greatest treasure of my heart.
  
  Delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4)
  
  
• Desire to know you, be with you, and seek your kingdom above all else.
  
  Delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:4)
  
  
• Discernment that comes from a renewed mind that I might know your will.
  
  But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:14)
  
  
• Discipline to plan for what I discern as your will.
  
  Look careful…

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