My heart is burdened with a sense of my shortcomings! Every duty I perform is so imperfect. Every purpose I form is so soon frustrated. Every hope of seeing better days is so soon beclouded. My heart is so fearfully depraved. My life is so unlike the life of Jesus. My temper is so unholy. My prayers are so brief and heartless. My praises are so... Click to Read More
Sometimes God calls us to suffer, believers to suffer, to show the world his glory. How can you have cancer and still have joy? It is easy to have joy when everything is going right. How can you be broke and still have hope? Because Christ is bearing witness in my spirit that I am a child of God, and this world is not all there is; stop looking to it. Our life becomes a beacon to tell the world that there is more, and they are focused on the wrong things when we suffer. Charles Spurgeon said it well. He used to suffer from depression. . CLICK TO READ MORE
The following is a post by Pastor Rob Golding of First Artesia Christian Reformed Church. He also writes for the Westminster Theological Seminary Magazine. A fish swallowed the recalcitrant prophet Jonah, but what happens when the obstinate Christian similarly buries his feet in the sand? Is the Christian’s fish only for cars, or does God appoint fish … Continue reading We Are Jonah
Matthew Henry once suggested we can sometimes neglect to obey God because we misinterpret trials and challenges as permission to shirk our responsibility when, instead, God allowed these hardships to test and exercise our courage and faith. Here is an example. Imagine you are a pastor the Holy Spirit has called to preach the whole … Continue reading Misreading Providence for Personal Gain
Why did God allow humans to fall into sin? To answer that question, we need to think of redemption. If our redemption (and glorification) is merely a return to the garden-of-Eden-state, then the fall makes little sense (hardly the felix culpa it's known to be). On the other hand, if our redemption eventually brings us to a state that is better than our original state in Eden, the fall begins to make sense. In that way, the fall is a tool in the hands of the Redeemer... CLICK TO READ MORE.
In the Christian life, there are times of rest and times of struggle, and what we do when the sun is shining will often determine how well we will fare when the rains fall and the winds blow. It is usually the pleasant times when self-confidence becomes exaggerated that many professing Christians tend to chip … Continue reading Chipping Away Our Confidence in Christ
The following is a guest post by my son, Mark Eaton. When it comes to seeing the love of Christ in the Song of Songs, errors can be made in two opposite extremes. Often, every word is presented as part of an allegory of Jesus and the Church, or Jesus is removed altogether and is … Continue reading The Love of Christ in the Song of Solomon
It is not God's will that we know everything about him or his plan. He has given us everything we need to know pertaining to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3), but he has not given us everything. At one point in Revelation, John sees a mighty Angel. He is so large that he has … Continue reading The Knowledge God Keeps From Us
Remember from where you have fallen (Revelation 2:4). Wake up and strengthen what remains and is about to die (Revelation 3:2). These two phrases, the first spoken to the church in Ephesus, and the second spoken to the church in Sardis, summarize the condition of our spiritual lives from time to time. For countless Christians, it is easy to reflect … Continue reading Strengthen What Remains
We all tend to examine others more quickly than we examine ourselves. How many sermons have we sat through only to critique the pastor afterward without ever considering how we measure up to the text he was preaching? Below is the second sermon I had the privilege of preaching this weekend, addressing this tendency. CLICK TO READ MORE...
The Fight of Faith 