Topic Archives: Christian Living

The first meeting our church had more than thirty years ago was a Saturday night prayer meeting. A core group of several individuals met to pray for the infant mission work that was in due time to become Immanuel Presbyterian Church. Yet, the group prayed not only for embryonic Immanuel but also for their brethren […]

The Puritan Richard Sibbes has been called ‘the heavenly doctor’ because his messages show such a deep understanding of the human soul. Believing that there is more grace in Christ than sin in us his aim was to woo sinners to Christ. He was so gently persuasive that hardened sinners deliberately avoided his sermons for […]

The England riots are not just a breakdown of law and order, they are the consequences of a breakdown of morality in our society. We have all been appalled to see the shocking absence of respect for human life, for lawful authority and for private property. Why are these values so absent? In what social […]

Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? (John 21:15) One of the more glorious promises in Scripture is John 10:28-30, And I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish. No one shall snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater […]

Some verses in the Bible are deeply disturbing, and unexpected. As Paul commends Timothy to the church in Philippi, he tells them, ‘I have no one like him (of like soul), who will be genuinely concerned for your welfare (Phil. 2:20). So far, so good. But then Paul continues, ‘For they all seek their own […]

Be miserable and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and he will exalt you. (James 4:9-10) I am presently reading the history of Operation Mobilization, the ministry begun by George Verwer in 1958 while he attended Moody Bible […]

Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. (James 4:8) I regularly marvel at the Apostle Paul’s devotion and zeal for the gospel in light of the myriad of discouragements and disappointments he encountered. Shortly after his conversion on the road to Damascus the Jewish believers were uncertain about this former persecutor. […]

25 years ago I stumbled across the writings of the Puritan Thomas Brooks when I found five volumes of his works for sale at £2 each in a Christian bookshop. I soon discovered that I had purchased a gold mine of Biblical truth for a pittance. Thomas Brooks writes in a rich and warm way, […]

Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John, and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were marvelling, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus. (Acts 4:13) We all know that Peter had been an abject coward. While Peter was standing by the fire, as Jesus was on […]

Our Lord Jesus’ teaching is always deeply searching, sometimes almost unbearably so. Few statements of our Lord are more calculated to search out our hearts than what he says about ‘specks’ and ‘planks’ (Matt. 7:1-5). The picture conveyed by our Lord is almost comical. A man with a huge plank of wood sticking out of […]

If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most to be pitied. (1 Cor. 15:19)1 So think of it like this – if the disciples and these three women were travelling around the countryside telling people that Jesus had been raised from the dead, when he really had […]

It was a turn of events from God. (2 Chronicles 10:15). In his book, Already Gone: Why your kids will quit church and what you can do to stop it, author Ken Ham cites a survey that says two-thirds of evangelical young people will leave church by their early twenties.1 Surprisingly, Ham has found that […]

You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God. (James 4:4) For good or ill, without question our children imitate us. What they see in us – our values, actions, and speech – significantly influence them. After giving four reasons for the quarrels and conflicts we face in our […]

Extracts from ‘Definitive Sanctification,’ (pp. 277-280, 284) and ‘Progressive Sanctification,’ (pp. 294-296, 299), in The Collected Writings of John Murray, Volume 2.1 When we speak of sanctification, we generally think of it as that process by which the believer is gradually transformed in heart, mind, will, and conduct, and conformed more and more to the […]

You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. (James 4:2a-3) In the context of our ministry here in West Hartford, I live with a constant two-fold state of desperation and hope. At least […]