Resources by Charlie Wingard
From a speech at Hillsdale College by former Congressman Mike Pence. Mr. Pence was elected governor of Indiana last year: There is no finer, more moving, or more profound understanding of the nature of the presidency and the command of humility placed upon it than that expressed by President [Calvin] Coolidge. He, like Lincoln, lost a child while he was president, a son of sixteen. “The day I became president,” Coolidge wrote, “[Calvin, Jr.] had just started to work in a tobacco field. When one of his fellow laborers said to him, ‘If my father was president I would not work in a tobacco field,’ Calvin replied, ‘If my father were your father you would.”‘ His admiration for the boy…
Read More“Divorced from the holiness of God, sin is merely self-defeating behavior or a breach in etiquette. Divorced from the holiness of God, grace is merely empty rhetoric, pious window dressing for the modern technique by which sinners work out their own salvation. Divorced from the holiness of God, our gospel becomes indistinguishable from any of a host of alternative self-help doctrines. Divorced from the holiness of God, our public morality is reduced to little more than an accumulation of trade-offs between competing private interests. Divorced from the holiness of God, our worship becomes mere entertainment. The holiness of God is the very cornerstone of Christian faith, for it is the foundation of reality. Sin is defiance of God’s holiness, the…
Read MoreNo fiction writer could have created the story of Englishman James Holman (1786-1857). At age thirteen, Holman joined the British Royal Navy and traveled to North America. For much of the remainder of his life he was on the move, never more happy and healthy than when traveling, even after he went blind In his mid-twenties. Disability did not dampen his enthusiasm for life. He studied medicine and literature at the University of Edinburgh, committing large bodies of materials to his capacious memory. Obtaining a machine used by British soldiers to write in complete darkness, he cultivated his considerable skills as a writer. Eventually, Holman set off to explore the world. By his death he was the most traveled man…
Read More“Bring everything you have and are to your ministry – your best craftsmanship, your most concentrated study, your truest technique, your uttermost of self-consecration, your toil and sweat of brain and heart – bring it all without reserve. But when you have brought it, something else remains: Stand back, and see the salvation of God.” – James S. Stewart, Heralds of God: A Practical Book on Preaching (Vancouver: Regent, 2001; originally published 1946), 189.
Read MoreBless and Do Not Curse (2)
“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them” (Romans 12:14). When we bless, we pray and behave in hope that God will bless our enemy with his favor. Seeking our enemy’s highest good puts the Christian to one of faith’s greatest tests. Victory is only won by trusting God in earnest prayer. Examples are few, so we should note them carefully. Two from the New Testament: At his crucifixion Jesus prays: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 24:34). Numbered among his killers stand men who on the day of Pentecost will hear the gospel, believe, and be saved. They will taste the very blessing of divine pardon our dying Savior sought for…
Read MoreThe Fourth Commandment “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.” 103. What does God require in the fourth Commandment? In the first place, God wills that the ministry of…
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