What can sickness teach us? Babies cry because they cannot say what is wrong or where it hurts. Crying is thus a visible and audible symptom of an underlying problem. Hunger or wetness can be dealt with easily, but, if crying continues, parents become medical detectives, looking for other general symptoms that may indicate an […]
It’s a popular topic, but what does it really mean? Our starting point in the consideration of the baptism in the Spirit must be the references and terminology of Scripture. For instance, the subject of filling with the Spirit is quite distinct and ought to be dealt with separately; it is not the subject of […]
My wife has never asked me to tell her that I love her or to buy her a Christmas present. (In fact, she regularly insists I needn’t buy her any presents at all. I am not fooled.) I would be a foolish man (in more ways than one) if I were to conclude that her […]
Principle Number Three: The Good Shepherd volunteers to shepherd (Jn. 10:16-18). This third principle is first suggested in John 10:16: “And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring…” The word for “must” (dei) carries the idea of an unavoidable and urgent necessity based on the very nature […]
We have received “grace upon grace,” “manifold” and “unsearchable riches” of His grace. We may ransack every dictionary in the world only to discover that there are no adjectives that adequately describe the grace of God. It is so multifaceted, versatile, all-inclusive, and all-embracing. By this we dare to mean that there is no circumstance […]
Armies call being prepared “a state of readiness.” Here’s our checklist. My dictionary gives the following meaning of “ready”: “in a suitable state for an activity, action or situation; fully prepared.” When I was a little fellow playing Hide and Seek in the fading light between supper and bedtime, I couldn’t have given you the […]
The fledgling saints at Thessalonica show us the way. What makes a local church a model to be admired or even emulated? Most would look at the visible signs of growth. For many Christians, the number of people meeting would be proof that the right things are happening. They would conclude that the programs would […]
Cleanliness is part of godliness. In an unholy world, the Christian gospel stands out for the dramatic change it makes in the lives of its adherents. Like the contemporary world, ancient Thessalonica was a depraved den of iniquity, but the liberating glad tidings of Christ effected a great change in the lives of the first […]
We may be giving ourselves too much credit. In 1735, the Swiss botanist Carl Linnaeus proposed an ingenious, shorthand way to name plants using one Latin word to designate the “genus” group and another to identify a particular “species” within that genus. Used together, the terms make up the unique “binomial” name of each plant […]