Topic Archives: Christian Living

Let no unwholesome word proceed out of your mouth, but only such a word that is good for edification, according to the need of the moment, that it may give grace to those who hear. [Ephesians 4:29] In January 1932, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany and within seven years had plunged the world […]

A moral outrage is being perpetrated in this country and it seems that hardly anyone is interested. Under new legislation, human embryos will be created for the sole purpose of being used in scientific experiments. These embryos will have no chance of growing and developing into normal life. Some Roman Catholic bishops have protested. But […]

Let him who steals steal no longer, but rather let him work with his hands, performing what is good, in order that he may have something to share with him who had need. [Ephesians 4:28] Max Weber, the German sociologist and scholar, in his 1904 classic The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, noted […]

The life of faith is not immune from the disappointments and heartaches of what Paul calls ‘the sufferings of this present age’ (Romans 8:18). God does not exempt his children from unexpected, sorely wounding providences. In 2 Corinthians 1:8, Paul tells us that the hardships and pressures he and his friends were experiencing were so […]

The pure in heart are blessed by their seeing God (Matt. 5:8), and those who see God see all things rightly in his perfect light (Psa. 36:9). It is therefore no wonder that the Word of God emphasizes the vital necessity of men having pure hearts, while those who believe the divine testimony of Scripture […]

. . . the Lord has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion, and your wife by covenant. [Malachi 2:14] Every Christian man knows pornography is sinful and that it will rob his soul of vitality, destroying his marriage and […]

What is the use of a prayer meeting? There are many uses. Believers are encouraged and strengthened; the cause of God is maintained; the truth of God is watered after it is sown; and prosperity is rained down through the opened windows of heaven, according to the Lord’s promise. In the beginning of the year […]

Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbour, for we are members of one another. [Ephesians 4:25] I suggested in the previous article1 that we are prone to listen to the lie of the devil, namely that worshipping the creation rather than the Creator Redeemer brings Shalom, well being, prosperity, […]

Sin is a corrupting, spoiling, God-dishonouring disease. It manifests itself in a defiance of God’s Law, a rejection of God’s Son, and a dismissal of God’s church. Sin is multi-faceted. It betrays itself essentially by its self-oriented, earth-bound perspective on life. Its horizon is the stars, not the Creator of the stars. Its desire is […]

Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbour, for we are members of one another. [Ephesians 4:25] I had the privilege recently of speaking with Dr. Peter Jones at the Connecticut Valley Conference on Reformed Theology and the topic was modern paganism. My job was simply to prepare the way […]

Over the past weeks I have been reading through The Letter to the Hebrews. It has, as ever, been a fascinating, sobering and richly encouraging read. The Letter, as you will know, was written to Hebrew Christians who had become influenced by false teaching and were under pressure to give up on Christ and return […]

The Apostle Paul writes, “But to each one of us grace was given, according to the measure of Christ’s gift” (Ephesians 4:7). William Farel became a true follower of Christ in the early 1520s, during the time the Reformation, under the leadership of Martin Luther, was raging like a wild-fire throughout Europe. Farel had a […]

John Owen’s classic work ‘On Temptation’ has recently been published by Banner of Truth in an updated edition as Temptation Resisted and Repulsed.1 The church which I serve used this newer version as the basis for a series of adult Sunday School classes over a course of months. It became quickly apparent that the material […]

‘Stand firm in the faith’ 1 Corinthians 16:13. Ann Douglas, the feminist Harvard professor, in her book, The Feminization of the American Culture has observed that by the late 18th century America was jettisoning her God-centred, strong, objective Calvinism for a man-centred, emotional, subjective Arminianism which paved the way for feminism in our culture. In […]

This year is the two hundredth anniversary of the passing of the ‘Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade’. It was the culmination of a long period of agitation against a trade which ran strongly in the face of every claim that Britain was a Christian nation. Many of the leaders of the campaign […]

The Bible is essentially a practical book. Its principles and teachings are never merely academic, philosophical, or speculative, but are always anchored in and aimed at the living God and the daily living of his people. That is one reason why there is so little in the Bible about heaven. The focus of the Word […]

Paul described himself to Titus as ‘a servant of God’. And that was how he imagined himself in his pre-conversion days. He was, so he thought, blameless as ‘touching the righteousness which is in the law’ (Phil. 3:6); he was, in his own eyes, a marvellously-faithful servant of God. But when he met the risen […]

Definition, Indications and Motivations Surrogate gestational motherhood1 can be defined as an arrangement where one woman carries a pregnancy to term for another woman who is either unable or unwilling to do so. There are two types of surrogate mothers. The one type is ‘partial surrogacy,’ in which the surrogate mother is also the genetic […]

David Brainerd,1 the great missionary to the American Indians, was born in April, 1718 at Haddam, Connecticut. His father, a legislator in Connecticut, died when David was nine years old and his mother died when he was fourteen. He lived with a godly aunt and uncle until he was eighteen and then tried farming for […]

Therefore I ask you not to lose heart at my tribulations on your behalf, for they are your glory. Ephesians 3:13. My wife Wini was recently engaged in a service project where she was asked what was our church’s position on homosexuality. Wini responded by saying that we have had an extensive ministry with HIV […]

Pastor Conrad Murrell of Louisiana helped one man who came to him in this unusual manner. This is how he reported it. A few years ago a pastor brought a troubled man to me for counselling. When I asked him about his problem, he replied, ‘I want to serve the Lord but I am having […]

A Christian farmer had two small boys named John and Tom. He called into the bedroom to see them before they went to sleep, and he asked them had they prayed. They hadn’t, and one of them – John – complained that he wasn’t feeling well. They said that they didn’t know how to pray. […]

We live in a world where sorrow repeatedly enters. Indeed, at any given moment, multitudes all over the world are experiencing sadness for all sorts of reasons. Death follows illness, accidents and disasters into families and leaves sorrow behind. And death, however unexpected – however unwelcome – is irreversible; no one returns from the eternal […]

For years, modern readers of the Bible have shunned the food laws found in Leviticus and Deuteronomy about as religiously as the ancient Israelites shunned pork and shrimp. A recent New York Times bestseller, however, touts the benefits of the biblical food laws for obese and unhealthy North Americans. In his book, The Maker’s Diet,1 […]

Alexander Whyte, an eminent Scottish minister in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, wrote of Christians who lived as if sanctification were by vinegar. I was reminded of this when preparing recently to preach on Philip’s encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8. As Luke concludes his account of this eunuch’s conversion, he […]