Resources by Campbell, David

The disciples once asked Jesus that very question. A storm was raging, their boat was in danger of sinking, and Jesus, of all things, was asleep! Shouldn’t he have been awake and helping them? Didn’t he care if they drowned? These men are not the only disciples to have questioned Jesus’ care. Many others have […]

Psalm 119 is a large collection of very short prayers, most of which we only pray as we read the Psalm itself. Some of them, however, have so woven themselves into our memories and experiences that we frequently find ourselves praying them at other times. A fine example is the prayer of verse 18: ‘Open […]

‘There is no danger,’ writes Albert Barnes, ‘that more constantly besets Christians, and even eminent Christians, than pride. There is no sin that is more subtle, insinuating, deceptive; none that lurks more constantly around the heart and that finds a more ready entrance than pride.’ In a remarkable section in one of his letters, one […]

What do people look like who look like Jesus? One part of the answer is this: they bear what is described by the Apostle Paul as the ‘fruit of the Spirit’, namely, ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control’ (Gal. 5:22-23). In the days of his flesh our Saviour exhibited this fruit […]

The man who wrote the one hundred and nineteenth Psalm was as human as you and me. Consequently, affliction for him was no different from what it is for any of us: painful. Yet he speaks so positively about it. He says in fact that it was good for him to be afflicted (verse 71). […]

The message of the angel Gabriel to Zechariah in the temple was that his wife Elizabeth would bear him a son, that this son was to be called John, and that he would be ‘great in the sight of the Lord’ (Luke 1:13-15). There is a right use and a wrong use to which these […]

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. Paul declares them to be the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22, 23). The reason they appear in the life of the believer is because the Spirit is in the life of the believer. They are wholly the fruit of his gracious presence and […]

Christianity teaches us to look to the past as we seek for help in the present. It has laid the foundations of our faith deep in historical events and invites us to build on those foundations all the days of our lives. As believers we unashamedly take our inspiration from days gone by confident that […]

I had a fellow elder in Darlington, Clifford Scurr, who often expressed the conviction that living Christianity reflected itself in people’s very faces. It was something I was occasionally struck with myself – at least by force of contrast. A duty that fell to me to fulfil from time to time was to take funerals […]

The Apostle Paul winds up one of the closing sections of his letter to the Galatians with the following exhortation: ‘as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith’ (Gal. 6:10). Our particular interest lies with this ‘opportunity’ of which he speaks at […]

The Apostle Paul was a very great Christian indeed. He was also very human, a fact that is memorably brought home to us in a story that comes from his own pen. Writing to the church in Corinth he says, ‘When we came into Macedonia, this body of ours had no rest, but we were […]

In one of the great promises of the Old Testament, God assures his people, ‘even to your old age I am he, and to grey hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save’ (Isa. 46:4). It is, in the first instance, a promise to the […]

It ranks as one of the wickedest acts of a Jewish king, it has had many parallels, and the end result of them all is a failure to destroy the Word of God. Here’s the story. King Jehoiakim of Judah was listening as the words of a scroll were read to him – a scroll […]

Are you blessed? Psalm 1 says that if you do not walk in the counsel of the wicked, or stand in the way of sinners, or sit in the seat of mockers, but delight yourself instead in God’s law, you are! And here is part of the reason. Such a person ‘is like a tree […]

The allusion would be lost on most. ‘Here I raise my Ebenezer …’ Who or what is Ebenezer? Those of a more literary turn might remember the infamous Ebenezer Scrooge of Dickens’ Christmas Carol. But the action itself – raising my Ebenezer – would leave just about everyone these days scratching their head. The words […]

I wonder if it has ever struck you in reading the New Testament how often faith and love are mentioned in the same breath. Again and again you find that where the one is the other is as well. Let me give you some examples. In one place, Paul declares that ‘we ought always to […]

A number of you possess and have read a small selection of John Newton’s1 letters published in paperback by the Banner of Truth. The Letters of John Newton reviewed here is not the same book. This is a much larger and quite separate selection. It was first published in 1869 and was edited by Josiah […]