Resources on Sanctification
John Calvin was right when he pegged the human heart an idol factory. We can manufacture a stream of objects in which we put our trust instead of the true and living God. Matthew Henry shows us just how easy it is to multiply our idols: “Pride makes a god of self, covetousness makes a god of money, sensuality makes a god of the belly; whatever is esteemed or loved, feared or served, delighted in or depended on, more than God, that (whatever it is) we do in effect make a god of.”* ______ *Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, vol. 1 (Macdonald, orig. published 1706), 358-359.
Read MoreDay of all the week the best, Emblem of eternal rest.* Preparing for the Lord’s Day is the obligation of every Christian, and especially gospel ministers. A part of that preparation means cultivating the right attitude toward Sunday. Yes, it is the best day of the week! Francis Grimké has just the attitude we need: Sunday is a great day for the minister; and if he is the right kind of a minister, it will also be a great day for his flock. Sunday is the day particularly on which he is to meet his flock, on which he is to feed them, to lead them into green pastures and beside still waters. It is the day particularly in which he…
Read MoreMy first attempt to become a candidate for ministry stalled in the early 80s. I was a member of a rural church in Middle Tennessee, and my session enthusiastically recommended me to Presbytery. We were an evangelical congregation in a theologically liberal Presbyterian denomination and that was a problem. Far from home, studying at Princeton Theological Seminary, the Presbytery informed me that my candidacy would not move forward. I was so disappointed. Soon, notes and letters began arriving from members of my congregation telling me how proud they were of me, assuring me of their prayers, and urging me to persevere. Notes and letters from caring people were God’s gift to me – just at the right moment when I…
Read MoreI am thrilled about the forthcoming publication of Francis J.Grimké’s “Meditations on Preaching” by Log College Press. In the third volume of his collected works, Grimké (1852-1937) spoke frankly about the minister’s moral character: A minister who is but poorly equipped intellectually, educationally, but who is of good moral character, and of real piety, is greatly to be preferred to the man, however well equipped intellectually and educationally, but who is of questionable character, whose ways are crooked. The one may have to be tolerated, the other should never be: the ministry of the one may result in good, of the other only harm can come. Such a minister discredits the gospel, and becomes an obstacle in the way of…
Read MoreThe difference between speaking out against sin and abhorring sin, from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress: Talkative: “What difference is there between crying out against, and abhorring of Sin? Faithful: Oh! a great deal: A man may cry out against Sin, of Policy, but he cannot abhor it but by virtue of a godly antipathy against it: I have heard many cry out again Sin in the Pulpit, who yet can abide it well enough in the Heart, House, and Conversation. – John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress. 1678 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2005), 89-90
Read More“There’s a word missing from the presentation of our modern gospel. It’s the word repent . . . If we want to give people a message that saves, instead of one that only soothes, we must preach more like Jesus and less like our pop stars.” Good words from Kevin DeYoung.
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