I have long prayed for our congregation to be faithful in evangelism. I think that the Lord has given us much grace in this regard. Several members of our congregation are in active conversations with co-workers, family members, friends, and neighbors. I praise God for that. Earlier in the week, I realized that while I was regularly praying for us to be faithful in evangel...

During our initial study of the book of Judges, we spent a little bit of time reflecting on the subject of repentance. The people of Israel in the opening of Judges 2 appear to be broken, but as Sir Richard Baker once said, "Other things may be worse for breaking, yet a heart is never at the best until it is broken." A true brokenness, which may even include weeping, may v...

Just as I do every week, I endeavor to read each day a passage that we'll be studying as a way to prepare my heart for hearing from God when we gather. The passage is a bit longer this week, so I've been digesting it in smaller parts. This morning I read a section of Lamentations which included the two verses that Lamentations is famous for, Lamentations 3:22-23. Consider ...

The Washington DC area is constantly in a battle over revenue and what those funds will be spent on. Let's let Thomas Goodwin change the subject to a more edifying discussion of revenues for a moment: "What shall be the revenues of glory purchased by His death? Think what a large possession the blood of Christ will procure. Think, I say, what a glorious heaven it must b...

This coming Lord's Day, consider how the Lord is able to judge the wicked for their wickedness and rescue the godly from their trials, it strikes me that the Lord's sovereign power in this regard ought to make us humble. What shall we who are worthy of judgment do before our all sovereign and just God? Nothing but implore him for mercy. When we do this, we can be sure and ...

Sometimes I struggle to really pray. Does that ever happen to you? One puritan use to say, "Pray until you pray," but I think we all struggle at times to get going in our prayer. We mumble and fumble and stumble around in our prayers, praying for this and that, changing our minds about what we're praying about. Lists can help direct us. Directories can help direct us! But ...

I've been doing a fair bit of work preparing for our members' meeting this coming Sunday and it has been a real delight. Lord willing, we'll be seeing in our largest membership class in the history of our congregation since its constitution. I've been re-reading the membership interviews that the elders and I have done over the last month and it has been encouraging to thi...

I know that we've come through Thanksgiving and are now clearly looking forward to Christmas, and it is right that we do so, but in reality we should never stop giving thanks. As I was working on a sermon a short while ago I came across an incredibly edifying passage in a commentary, which challenged me to be more thankful for garbage as well as other "mundane" and "ordina...

From time to time in ministry and in my own life, I try to remind myself that though Satan, sin, and death have already been defeated by virtue of Christ's life, death, resurrection, and ascension into heavenly glory, that there is still a cosmic battle going on. If the Apostle John's Revelation proclaims nothing else, it proclaims that. The pronouncement of Satan's great ...

The great puritan minster Thomas Adams once wrote that "Hypocrites are like pictures on a canvas, they show fairest at the farthest." We're all tempted to hold others at an arm's length so that our flaws cannot be so clearly seen. We're tempted to hide behind vague language and allusions to struggles, all the while giving the impression that we've got it all under control....