Resources from 2024
Creativity flows from the fact that we are made in the image of God our Creator. To image him is to be creative, or as Tolkien coined, to subcreate. It is a great gift to us and others to be able to reorganize the ingredients God has given us into something new that is true, good, and beautiful. [...]
In 1994, a Fuller Seminary professor studying church growth coined a term for a movement he believed encapsulated the most radical development in church history since the Reformation. In his telling, this movement reached further back than the Reformation. Its roots lay in the age of the New Testament apostles [...]
I’m telling you: Everything on Ardnamurchan Peninsula is dramatic and remote. The most westerly point of mainland Britain, perched on Scotland’s coast, has seemingly eluded time. Vast moorlands, deserted beaches, fjord-like lochs compete only with otters, whales, and white-tailed sea eagles for the attention of guests at romantic isolated inns such as Kilcamb Lodge Hotel. [...]
We simply cannot know which direction we should go unless we have some idea of where we’re going. For more than thirty years, by the grace of God, this magazine has been charting our course toward one destination summed up in our oft-used motto: For a modern reformation. [...]
Integrating Intellect and Emotions for the Sake of the Church: A Conversation with Joseph Byamukama
At the risk of overgeneralization, let me say that Ugandan Christians who are passionate about their faith tend to stress emotions over the life of the mind. It is not uncommon to hear a faithful Ugandan preacher or lay Christian say, “The things of God are to be believed, not reasoned.” Reason, many feel, puts God in a box. [...]
In the Bible, the heart is not just where people have emotions. It’s also where they think. In a good translation of Scripture, you will often hear about the thoughts of the heart. It’s a holistic way of talking: it unites thoughts and feelings in a single whole by putting them together in the same place [...]
There is a now and not yet,
you see, let us not forget
that we are counted as sheep.
Be stoic? No, freely weep
and cry, yet hold our only
hope to be completely free. [...]
“And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Dan. 12:2). As with many quotations from the later half of the book of Daniel, this verse sounds like it could have been taken straight from the book of Revelation instead. What great resurrection hope this must have provided Old Testament believers! [...]
"Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice." [...]
“Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. / You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! / For your dew is a dew of light, / and the earth will give birth to the dead” (Isa. 26:19). This series seeks to demonstrate that Old Testament saints (like those in the New Testament) showed a conscious hope of resurrection—a hope that they received from the pages of Scripture. [...]
Throughout church history, many have tried to identify the one mysterious thing within us that makes us truly human. Often, that special thing has been identified as our soul or even a specific capacity of the soul. Medieval schools debated which capacity [...]
“If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:19). New Testament believers are blessed with the hope of resurrection, but what of Old Testament saints? Were such blessings theirs? Did they have a conscious hope for the next life as well? According to the New Testament, the answer is yes. [...]
The following books deal with the heart in various ways. Those by Jerry Bridges, Murray Capill, Elyse Fitzpatrick, and Kris Lundgaard feature extended sections on a biblical view of the heart. They build on John Owen and explain his insights in easily understood terms. [...]
Dirt kicked up with folly, laughter, and play;
ignorance was bliss as we played board games.
“He’s gone,” we overheard our mother say.
There was no response as we called his name. [...]
