I am stunned at the outcry against the President of the United States speaking to the youth of this nation about the importance of education.

I am embarrassed by the governor of my home state saying that the president’s plan to address them is “disruptive . . . uninvited . . . and number three . . . I don’t think he needs to force it upon the nation’s school children.”

This speech seems, for me, to be an answer to a prayer that I have prayed for the president repeatedly.

Father, the condition of our schools and families is so broken that nothing seems to be working, especially for the poor in our urban centers. Help our president to have the courage to use his amazing…

Continue Reading →

What happened to Demas?

We don’t know. All we know is that some of the last words the Apostle Paul wrote before his Roman execution expressed a heartbreak: “Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica” (2 Timothy 4:10).

Maybe Demas feared being executed with Paul and fled to safety. Or maybe he succumbed to immorality. Or maybe he simply caved in to the relentless temptation of a more comfortable, prosperous life in the large, cosmopolitan, pluralistic, wealthy, culturally interesting city of Thessalonica.

Whatever it was, Paul saw it as embracing the world.

But just a few sentences later in this letter to Timothy, Paul says something …

Continue Reading →

The historic and contemporary reality of slavery is never far away from how we think about the Bible. Instead of a frontal attack on the culturally pervasive institution of slavery in his day, Paul took another approach, for example, in his letter to Philemon.

Onesimus was a slave. His master Philemon was a Christian. Onesimus had evidently run away from Colossae (Colossians 4:9) to Rome where Paul, in prison, had led him to faith in Jesus. Now he was sending Onesimus back to Philemon. This letter tells Philemon how to receive Onesimus.

In the process, Paul does at least 11 things that work together to undermine slavery...

Read the rest of the article.

Here is the answer of the poet Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774), from his poem "The Traveler."

For praise too dearly loved, or warmly sought,
Enfeebles all internal strength of thought;
And the weak soul, within itself unblessed,
Leans for all pleasure on another’s breast.

So close and yet, I fear, so far. For Goldsmith means we are unblessed because we do not bless ourselves.

The mind still turns where shifting fashion draws
Nor weighs the solid worth of self applause.

There is another way to be set free from “praise too dearly loved” and from the power of “shifting fashion.” Our unblessed soul was made for God. Our head was made to …

Continue Reading →

Pastor Tim Smith of Mars Hill church in Seattle did a brief (7.5 minute) interview with me at a recent conference on how Desiring God got started 15 years ago.

Have you ever wondered why “sanctification” is missing from this golden chain in Romans 8:29-30?

Those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

Foreknown, predestined, called, justified, __________, glorified. Shouldn’t “sanctified" fill in that blank space? Romans 6:22 says that believers receive “sanctification and its end, eternal life.” And 2 Thessalonians 2:13 says that we are “saved, through sanctification by the Spirit.”

The an…

Continue Reading →

The Hebrew Scriptures point to Jesus in a myriad of ways. One way is narrative patterns, like the one in Esther 9:1:

On the very day when the enemies of the Jews hoped to gain the mastery over them, the reverse occurred: the Jews gained mastery over those who hated them.

And so it happened at the cross. At the very moment when the Enemy of the True Jew hoped to gain the mastery over Jesus, the reverse occurred: Jesus gained mastery over the one who hated him.

God has innumerable ways of pointing us to his Son—after all, according to Colossians 1:16–17, all the universe is in Jesus, through Jesus, and for Jesus.

If all the universe, then how much more the Scri…

Continue Reading →

Dear Friends,

If you have just stopped by the website or come often, I am writing this to tell you why I am excited about the Desiring God National Conference, September 25-27, 2009, at the Minneapolis Convention Center. I thought my excitement might rub off on you.

So why do I think ordinary Christians should consider coming to the Desiring God National Conference? I can give my answer in five words: Kim, Wilson, Olasky, Talbot, and Storms. They are the reason I want to be there.

Whenever students ask me how to choose a school or how to choose classes, I almost always answer the same: Don’t choose locations, campuses, buildings, libraries, or even courses; choose teachers. That is the…

Continue Reading →

The Gospel of John Calvin in Four Laws:

1. That since God by his Law prescribes what we ought to do, failure in any one respect subjects us to the dreadful judgment of eternal death.
2. Because it is not only difficult, but altogether beyond our strength and ability, to fulfill the demands of the Law, if we look only to ourselves and consider what is due to our merits, no ground of hope remains, but we lie forsaken of God under eternal death.
3. That there is only one method of deliverance which can rescue us from this miserable calamity, viz., when Christ the Redeemer appears, by whose hand our heavenly Father, out of his infinite goodness and mercy, has been pleased to succor us…
…

Continue Reading →

Three years ago God sent the tornado of cancer into my life. It split the steeple of my health and shredded the tents of my sexual life. I wrote an article to myself: Don’t Waste Your Cancer. It could have been titled: Don’t waste your tornado. God’s message to me in my tornado was essentially the same as to the ELCA in theirs. My tornado was

a gentle but firm warning to me and all of us: Turn from every approval of sin in your life. Turn from the justification and promotion of any behaviors in your life that lead to destruction. Reaffirm the great biblical heritage of allegiance to the truth and authority of Scripture. Turn back from your inveterate bent to distort the grace o…

Continue Reading →