Is God calling you into vocational ministry? How do you know? How can you be sure? The English puritan William Perkins gives us a very helpful answer to this question in his book “The Calling of Ministry.” To know that one is being calling into ministry requires three things: a genuine desire (affirmed by your […]
Category: Writings on Christianity
Here are more quotes from Charles Bridges’ “Christian Ministry”: 11. Need to pursue life with the eyes of faith: “Daily experience reminds us the extreme difficulty of maintaining spiritual perceptions of eternal things. The surrounding objects of time and sense spread a thick film over the organs of spiritual vision, and the indistinct haziness, in […]
As mentioned in my previous post, here are some of my favorite quotes from Charles Bridges’ “Christian Ministry” 1. Summary of Christian ministry: “the sum of our whole labor in this kind is to honor God, and to save men” (8). 2. What our task is not: “It is not our province to prescribe what […]
For the past several months I have been working my way through a stack of pastoral theology books. Recently, I finished Charles Bridges’ “The Christian Ministry—with An Inquiry into the Causes of its Inefficiency.” First published in 1830, the work has managed to remain surprising relevant for all who wish to consider the task of […]
This Friday July 5th from 6-8 PM at Kimmer’s Ice Cream in Downtown St. Charles (1 W Illinois St), I’ll be playing an acoustic show with my friend Dan Alcanatra. Dan is an excellent song-writer and it will be a real joy not only to share the stage with him, but also to play some […]
Must I Have a Dramatic Conversion Experience To Know That I Am Saved? The church is not a mere building, but the people of God who are redeemed by Christ. Yet not everyone who attends worship services or even claims to be a Christian actually is a Christian; the terrifying reality is that on the […]
A Mental and Emotional Wellness that Endures Ice cream, relationships, Stanley Cup victories, a job promotion, financial security, the reassurance of a friend–all things which bring us mental and emotional joy and wellness. While wonderful as these things may be, there is a greater mental and emotional wellness that our hearts were made for: being […]
Ed Clowney’s “The Church” is a thoroughly helpful, biblical, theological portrait of the Christian church. The book helps you understand questions like, ‘What is the Church? Why is it relevant today? What is the mission of the church? What is the relation of the church to Israel?’ Although written nearly twenty years ago (1995), the […]
I wrote a new song this past month called “Why are you downcast O my soul?” based on Ps 42-43. Here it is: [youtube height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtIfVfK9yWk[/youtube] Why Are You Downcast O My Soul? (Ps 42-3) All of your waves and your breakers wash over me, Deep calls to deep, at the roar of your waterfalls. […]
The other day I was tasked with preaching Eph 2:11-22 at Christian Fellowship Church in Chicago (My sermon can be found here and was entitled “How To Get Along“). To help me preach the tone and content of the text, I completed a sentence diagram. Once again, diagramming the text truly helped me understand the […]
