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Remember how we used to ask that question, "If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you. In the case of John Paton's father James, his devotional life caught the attention of his eventual wife Mary.
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Self-sufficient humanism. Paul saw it coming – “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.”
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So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
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The bible gives us several reasons, but according to Jeremy Taylor, a deceitful heart is at the root of prayerlessness.
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To keep in step with the Spirit should be our daily quest. And if we are successful at that, all of life falls into place.
Theological Steak
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These words by P. T. Forsythe on the magnificence of Christ's work are to theology what Ruth's Chris is to a good steak.
Describing the Indescribable
February 11, 2012
What we have in Christ will take all eternity to describe. But for one segment of one sermon, a great preacher made a mighty attempt.
Making Sense Of It All
January 30, 2012
Where are things headed? Is there rhyme and reason to the endless cycle of summer, fall, winter and spring? Is there a plan in place, or is randomness the explanation?
Guys, A Potential Wife Is Watching
January 16, 2009
Has not the Lord made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his. And why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring. Malachi 2:15
In the early part of the 19th Century in Scotland, young Mary Rogerson was a "bright-hearted, high-spirited, patient-toiling and altogether heroic little woman." So says her missionary son John Paton in the story of his time in the New Hebrides.
"For 43 years, she made and kept such a wholesome, independent, God-fearing, and self-reliant life for her family of five sons and six daughters, as constrains me, when I look back on it now, in the light of all I have since seen and known of others far differently situated, almost to worship her memory."
"She had gone with her high spirits and breezy disposition to gladden as their companion, the quiet abode of some grand or great-grand-uncle and aunt, familiarly refered to by all their neighbors as "Old Adam and Eve."
"Their house was on the outskirts of the moor, and life for the young girl there had not probably too much excitement. But one thing had arrested her attention. She had noticed that a young stocking-maker from the "Brig End, "James Paton, the son of William and Janet there, was in the habit of stealing alone into the quiet wood, book in hand, day after day, at certain hours, as if for private study and meditation."
"It was a very excusable curiosity that led the young bright heart of the girl to watch him devoutly reading and hear him reverently reciting (though she knew not then, it was Ralph Erskine's GOSPEL SONNETS, which he could say by heart 60 years afterwards, as he lay on his bed of death); and finally that curiousity awed itself into a holy respect, when she saw him lay aside his broad Scotch bonnet, kneel down under the sheltering wings of some tree, and pour out all his soul in daily prayers to God."
What a way to fall in love! Of course, they eventually married. And that marriage union produced in their oldest child John a man who stood tall under the most extreme of circumstances. Under constant threat of death, he persevered, until eventually a cannibalistic island in the South Pacific was converted to the One True God, being transformed from darkness into light.
Godly offspring indeed.
In the early part of the 19th Century in Scotland, young Mary Rogerson was a "bright-hearted, high-spirited, patient-toiling and altogether heroic little woman." So says her missionary son John Paton in the story of his time in the New Hebrides.
"For 43 years, she made and kept such a wholesome, independent, God-fearing, and self-reliant life for her family of five sons and six daughters, as constrains me, when I look back on it now, in the light of all I have since seen and known of others far differently situated, almost to worship her memory."
"She had gone with her high spirits and breezy disposition to gladden as their companion, the quiet abode of some grand or great-grand-uncle and aunt, familiarly refered to by all their neighbors as "Old Adam and Eve."
"Their house was on the outskirts of the moor, and life for the young girl there had not probably too much excitement. But one thing had arrested her attention. She had noticed that a young stocking-maker from the "Brig End, "James Paton, the son of William and Janet there, was in the habit of stealing alone into the quiet wood, book in hand, day after day, at certain hours, as if for private study and meditation."
"It was a very excusable curiosity that led the young bright heart of the girl to watch him devoutly reading and hear him reverently reciting (though she knew not then, it was Ralph Erskine's GOSPEL SONNETS, which he could say by heart 60 years afterwards, as he lay on his bed of death); and finally that curiousity awed itself into a holy respect, when she saw him lay aside his broad Scotch bonnet, kneel down under the sheltering wings of some tree, and pour out all his soul in daily prayers to God."
What a way to fall in love! Of course, they eventually married. And that marriage union produced in their oldest child John a man who stood tall under the most extreme of circumstances. Under constant threat of death, he persevered, until eventually a cannibalistic island in the South Pacific was converted to the One True God, being transformed from darkness into light.
Godly offspring indeed.
