As I mentor and coach leaders in North American churches, I find a common theme among many pastors: They live and lead in such a way so as to disqualify themselves as an elder in their own church.

Living “Among” the Flock

First of all, they are not living and leading “among.” First Peter 5:2–4 exhorts the elders to “shepherd the flock of God that is among you . . . being an example to the flock.” When meeting with a leader, I will often ask, “Are you living in such a way that people can see your life and follow your example?” In other words, is your daily life visible, accessible, and reproducible? Not visible and accessible to everyone, of course — your life and home are just not that b…

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Dear Friends,

I’m excited to tell you about a new free eBook for Advent from Desiring God. It’s called Good News of Great Joy, organized specifically for this Advent, 2012.

Advent is just around the corner. It starts the fourth Sunday before Christmas — this year, that’s December 2 — and is a season of preparation for Christmas Day.

The team here at Desiring God did a deep dive into our thirty-plus-year reservoir of sermons and articles, and selected brief devotional readings for each day of Advent. Our hope is that God would use these readings to deepen and sweeten your adoration of Jesus this Advent.

These daily devotionals correspond to the daily readings in our devotiona…

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Most people don’t feel the need to struggle with Descartes over how they can be sure that they exist. And most don’t doubt the existence of the sun. These things are self-authenticating when one sees them.

And so is Jesus Christ.

He is the supreme I am (John 8:58). He is the “sunrise from on high” (Luke 1:78). He is the most self-authenticating Reality that exists.

But he must be seen. And he must be seen with true eyes, for which the eyes in our heads are but copies and shadows. Paul calls them the eyes of the heart in Ephesians 1:18 or the eyes of the mind in 2 Corinthians 4:4. These eyes are designed to see reality, what we call the truth. And they either see truth or, if the god…

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It was a stretch you might say. A 19th century British preacher apprehended a 3,000-year-old psalm for peace and courage in the midst of dire circumstances. Andree Seu Peterson tells the story in a recent article:

In the middle of a cholera epidemic in 1854, Charles Spurgeon was returning home from yet another funeral when a shard of paper wedged in a shoemaker's window caught his eye. It said, "Because thou hast made the Lord … thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling." Surgeon subsequently wrote:

"The effect upon my heart was immediate. Faith appropriated the passage as her own. I felt secure, refreshed, girt with immortality. I wen…

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If somebody reads my last blog, “Brothers, the Ministry Is Supernatural” (not professional), and says, “So, then, you think it doesn’t matter if we sing off key, preach incompetently, and don’t provide parking?” my answer is, “That’s just stupid.”

It matters whether you think the only alternative to tacky is “professional.” If the only way you have for urging excellence in your church is to urge “professionalism,” I suggest you need a bigger vocabulary.

The baggage attached to the word “professionalism” is not helpful, if you are trying to be a supernatural people of God. And that is what we want to be: Body of Christ, chosen race, royal priesthood, holy nation, people of God’s own posse…

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If I take my glasses off the world becomes blurry. In fact, things begin to diffuse at about six inches from my nose and grow more distorted the further away they are. I am very dependent on my corrective lenses to see correctly.

Richard Dawkins believes that this is evidence that there is no Designer. What Designer would make such a crucial organ as the eye so prone to defection?

What about a Designer who designed this defection so that we might see better in a much more important way? There’s more in myopia than meets the eye. I think our defective sight is a parable of a spiritual reality: we must have help to see right.

I think this because of the Designer’s parable of the eye:

Y…

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Come Thanksgiving Day each year, many of us give the nod to Pilgrims and Indians and talk of making ready for a harsh first Winter in the New World.

But for the Christian, the deepest roots of our thanksgiving go back to the Old World, way back before the Pilgrims, to a story as old as creation, with a two-millennia-old climax. It’s a story that keeps going right on into the present and gives meaning to our little lives, even when we’re a half a globe removed from history’s ground zero at a place called Golgotha.

You could call it the true story of thanksgiving — or you could call it the Christian gospel viewed through the lens of that often undervalued virtue known as “gratitude.” It op…

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The full media from our recent conference on disability is now available!

"The Works of God: God's Good Design in Disability," hosted Novemeber 8, featured four messages, a speaker panel, and a special testimony on God's sovereignty and goodness in disability. The audio and video of each resource can be streamed or downloaded by going to the respective links:

John Piper
"When Jesus Meets Disability: How a Christian Hedonist Handles Deep Disappointment"

Nancy Guthrie
"Thinking Like Jesus About Disability"

Mark Talbot
"Longing for Wholeness: Chronic Suffering and Christian Hope"

Greg Lucas
"Parenting When Your Heart Is Continually Crushed"

John Piper, Nancy Guthrie, Greg Lucas, Mark Talb…

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Disability is real and difficult. This is true. The recent "Works of God" conference featured several voices who met in agreement on this point. But they also agreed that God is sovereign and good.

This truth was seen most vividly in Krista Horning's unforgettable testimony. While each message expounded key biblical texts and their relevance to disability, Krista modeled it as she described what God says to her over and against the lies of disability.

She shared, from memory, 13 beautiful things God tells her:

1. God tells me he is in control of everything, even my disability (Exodus 4:11).
2. God tells me I'm not alone (Isaiah 43:1–3).
3. God tells me he will always help me (Psalm 121:1–…

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While there may be many Christians in the world truly qualified to speak on suffering for the gospel, few of them are Westerners. One with some qualification is Zane Pratt, who lived and ministered in Central Asia for 20 years and is now dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions and Evangelism at Southern Seminary. For two decades, he sought to reach Muslims for Jesus in some of the regions most resistant to the gospel.

In Theology and Practice of Mission: God, the Church, and the Nations (B&H, 2011), a valuable volume edited by Bruce Ashford, Pratt writes that affluent Christians in the West “need to cultivate the mindset of readiness to lose anything and everything at a moment’s notic…

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