The Plan of God |
Discipleship |
Faith |
Sin |
Perseverence |
Prayer |
Communion With God |
Pursuing God |
Devotion |
Following Jesus |
Time With God |
Sanctification |
Spiritual Warfare |
Trust |
The Word of God |
View All Categories
When Isaiah had his vision of God, he was impacted by the purity of God. "Woe is me," he cried, because he knew he was a sinner standing before a holy God. That understanding is being tossed over the side in our day, and the loss is profound.
Recent Entries
God? Who Needs Him?May 31, 2013
Self-sufficient humanism. Paul saw it coming – “lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.”
Imago Dei
September 12, 2012
So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
Why Can't I Pray?
August 18, 2012
The bible gives us several reasons, but according to Jeremy Taylor, a deceitful heart is at the root of prayerlessness.
It's Not Rocket Science
July 23, 2012
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
April 10, 2012
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?
Why God's Holiness Matters
October 15, 2008
When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do? Psalm 11:3
David Wells, at the end of the 20th Century, warned us of the danger of losing sight of God's holiness....
"Because of our therapeutic culture, we favor relational matters over those that are moral, the consequence of which is that God’s holiness is pushed into the background and His love is brought into the foreground.
Mysticism then flourishes and cognitive conviction retreats.
Self-surrender is devalued and self-fulfillment is prized.
Preoccupation with character fades and fascination with personality and self-image advances.
The God in whom love has replaced wrath produces a Christianity that is appealing for its civility, but one that has no serious Word for a world which is racked by evil. It is a form of belief that is sympathetic but not searching, that lends its ear but not its revelation of the Holy One.
Without the holiness of God, sin is just failure—but not failure before God! It is failure without the presumption of guilt, without retribution, indeed without any serious moral meaning at all.
And without the holiness of God, grace is no longer grace. It is not grace from God, grace from the God who, against His own holy nature, has reconciled sinners to Himself in Christ.
And without justification there is no gospel, and with out the gospel, there is no Christianity. So if we lose sight of the holiness of God, we lose sight of entire faith and we lose the right to call ourselves Protestants in any recognizably historical sense.
Until this is seen afresh, until it enters the very innermost fibers of our being,
our virtue is going to be without seriousness,
our believing without gravity,
our practice without moral pungency,
our worship without joyful seriousness,
and our preaching without power.
And without these virtues, these virtues of an historic Protestant faith, the Church today is simply going to become just one more special interest in a world that is awash with special interests.
Modernity will not have its power to rearrange our inner lives destroyed. What is most lost is what most needs to be recovered. It is the unsettling, disconcerting, moral presence of God in our midst. He can no longer be the junior partner in our religious enterprises and He can never be just an ornamental decoration upon our Church life.
It is because God now rests so inconsequentially upon the Church that the Church is free to plot and devise its success in its own way. That is why so many of our forebears in the faith would scarcely even recognize us as their children today.
..... may God give us the willingness to repent where we must and may He give us again the desire to think large thoughts of Him and His truth. And may He enable us to disengage our faith from the culture in order that we might freshly re-engage the culture out of a passionate concern for truth and righteousness.
This is a time when we can seek again the grace of God to these ends. Let us seek His grace so that the evangelicalism that we leave behind, that which the coming generation sees, is one that is filled with the excellence of the knowledge of God. Amen."
Excerpted from THE BLEEDING OF THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH by David Wells
David Wells, at the end of the 20th Century, warned us of the danger of losing sight of God's holiness....
"Because of our therapeutic culture, we favor relational matters over those that are moral, the consequence of which is that God’s holiness is pushed into the background and His love is brought into the foreground.
Mysticism then flourishes and cognitive conviction retreats.
Self-surrender is devalued and self-fulfillment is prized.
Preoccupation with character fades and fascination with personality and self-image advances.
The God in whom love has replaced wrath produces a Christianity that is appealing for its civility, but one that has no serious Word for a world which is racked by evil. It is a form of belief that is sympathetic but not searching, that lends its ear but not its revelation of the Holy One.
Without the holiness of God, sin is just failure—but not failure before God! It is failure without the presumption of guilt, without retribution, indeed without any serious moral meaning at all.
And without the holiness of God, grace is no longer grace. It is not grace from God, grace from the God who, against His own holy nature, has reconciled sinners to Himself in Christ.
And without justification there is no gospel, and with out the gospel, there is no Christianity. So if we lose sight of the holiness of God, we lose sight of entire faith and we lose the right to call ourselves Protestants in any recognizably historical sense.
Until this is seen afresh, until it enters the very innermost fibers of our being,
our virtue is going to be without seriousness,
our believing without gravity,
our practice without moral pungency,
our worship without joyful seriousness,
and our preaching without power.
And without these virtues, these virtues of an historic Protestant faith, the Church today is simply going to become just one more special interest in a world that is awash with special interests.
Modernity will not have its power to rearrange our inner lives destroyed. What is most lost is what most needs to be recovered. It is the unsettling, disconcerting, moral presence of God in our midst. He can no longer be the junior partner in our religious enterprises and He can never be just an ornamental decoration upon our Church life.
It is because God now rests so inconsequentially upon the Church that the Church is free to plot and devise its success in its own way. That is why so many of our forebears in the faith would scarcely even recognize us as their children today.
..... may God give us the willingness to repent where we must and may He give us again the desire to think large thoughts of Him and His truth. And may He enable us to disengage our faith from the culture in order that we might freshly re-engage the culture out of a passionate concern for truth and righteousness.
This is a time when we can seek again the grace of God to these ends. Let us seek His grace so that the evangelicalism that we leave behind, that which the coming generation sees, is one that is filled with the excellence of the knowledge of God. Amen."
Excerpted from THE BLEEDING OF THE EVANGELICAL CHURCH by David Wells
