Tedd Tripp:

If the goal of parenting is no more profound than securing appropriate behavior, we will never help our children understand the internal things, the heart issues, that push and pull behavior. Those internal issues: self-love, rebellion, anger, bitterness, envy, and pride of the heart show our children how profoundly they need grace. If the problem with children is deeper than inappropriate behavior, if the problem is the overflow of the heart, then the need for grace is established. Jesus came to earth, lived a perfect life and died as an infinite sacrifice so that children (and their parents) can be forgiven, transformed, liberated and empowered to love God and love others.

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Do you want to hear the voice of Jesus? So do I. The Father certainly wants us to. “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!” (Luke 9:35).

To which we cry, “Yes, Lord. Yes! We want to listen to him.”

Does he speak today? He does.

Every word of the Bible is the voice of Jesus.

How do we know this? By inference. And better, by experience.

First, by Inference

We believe that “all Scripture is inspired by God” (2 Timothy 3:16). And we know that “whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise” (John 5:19). When the Father, by the Spirit (2 Peter 1:21) was guiding the writing of Scripture, the will and heart of the Son was in perfect concert.

Not only were all things made …

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Psalm 23:2,

He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.

Jonathan Edwards:

In Christ you shall have glorious objects for the eye of your soul to behold in which you shall find rest. You shall have glorious objects of your understanding and contemplation. The glory of God and beauty of Christ shall be the objects of your view.

The way of salvation by Christ will be like a green pasture for your soul to feed on, and the glorious gospel with its various excellent doctrines and divine truths shall be as a garden to your soul set with a variety of pleasant plants, flowers, and fruits that are ravishing to the eye. In the pleasure that you will have in …

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Writing in 1972, J. I. Packer sheds light on the contemporary debate over how to translate the term “Son of God” in Muslim contexts. A common Muslim misconception is that Christians believe Jesus was God’s Son by procreation with Mary, so that there are at least two gods — the Son and the Father.

Motivated by a desire to remove unnecessary stumbling blocks for Muslims, some have advocated translating the Greek behind “Son of God” in a way that does not carry such biological connotations. That means avoiding such Father and Son language. But historically, the problem of ambiguity in Jesus’ Sonship has been solved by context and teaching, not translation.

What Packer contributes to the de…

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As I did last year, here's another call for your Bible app to threaten the use of every other app out there.

Olive Tree BibleReader is my default mobile Bible. I use it for devotions every day, usually from my iPad. 

The McCheyne Yearly Reading Plan has buttons after each chapter that take you directly to the next assigned chapter. The split window lets me keep a Greek and Hebrew window open as I read, and the pop-up lexicons fill in the gaps in my memory. The copy-and-paste features let me copy and paste easily to Twitter if I want to create a tweet out of something moving from my devotions. 

Periodically I will call Calvin or some other commentary up into one of those split window…

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God is for your everlasting joy. Real joy and really everlasting. Nothing can impede it, not even the simultaneous reality of hell. Pastor John writes in Future Grace,

When God's patience has run its long-suffering course, and this age is over, and judgment comes on the enemies of God's people, the saints will not disapprove of God's justice. They will not cry out against him. On the contrary, the apostle John calls on them to "rejoice" and to shout "hallelujah!" This means that the final destruction of the unrepentant will not be experienced as a misery for God's people. The unwillingness of others to repent will not hold the affections of the saints hostage. Hell will not be able to bla…

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You can't speak of God's wrath the same way you speak of his love.

But why not?

In this 12-minute interview, Don Carson explains the wrath of God and counsels pastors in how to minister its truth:

Stream or download the audio and video of the podcast.

Recommended resources on the wrath of God:

• Sinners in the Hands of a Good God, David Clotfelter
• Chapter 15, "The Wrath of God" in Knowing God, J. I. Packer
• The Unbeliever's Unhappy Position, by Charles Spurgeon, Sermon #1012
• “Vengeance Is Mine, I Will Repay,” Says the Lord, Sermon from John Piper (2005)
• "The Wrath of God" by D. A. Carson, in Engaging the Doctrine of God: Contemporary Protestant Perspectives, edited by Br…

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Have you ever been paralyzed with indecision? I have. It is not a good trait of leadership.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer breathed the air of crisis most of his adult life. This would eventually make the issue of decisiveness a matter of life and death. And even before that moment it was an issue of love.

Everywhere Bonhoeffer looked in the Europe of 1934 he saw Christian indecisiveness. The “deutsche Christen,” the global ecumenical movement — everyone but Hitler. Nazism’s strangle hold on the church in Germany was almost complete, and no one seemed willing to act.

Bonhoeffer and his friends soon would. A “Confessing Church” would emerge free from the coercions of the Third Reich. A “Barmen D…

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Gerald Bray:

The lamb that was sacrificed for the sins of the people became sin for them, but it was not covered in blotches representing sins. On the contrary, it had to be completely free of blemish in order to be able to bear the burden of the people’s sins [Exodus 12:5]. If the lamb were less than perfect, someone might say that it was being sacrificed because of its own defects, but that was not true. It was not the lamb that was the problem but those for whom the lamb was dying. Exactly the same principle applies in the case of Jesus. He was not put to death for anything he had done wrong, but for the sins of those for whom he died [1 Peter 3:18]. His sinlessness exempted him from…

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Lent or no Lent, not doing some things you feel like doing is the daily pattern for the disciples of Jesus. Yes, daily. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

In the resurrection there will be no self-denial because none of our desires will be sinful or foolish. Till then we have sinful and foolish desires daily. Hence, “Let him deny himself and take up his cross daily.”

What Paul Says

This is so essential in Christian living that Paul made it part of his one-time sermon to Felix (“he reasoned about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment,” Acts 24:25); he made it part of the fruit of the Spirit (“fait…

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