Tim Challies (Page 3)

“Nothing in this world is haphazard. There is nothing random or unplanned about the circumstances you are in right now, even if those circumstances seem very hard. Rather, God is leading you by the way he deems most appropriate, the way he has determined is most fitting for your spiritual growth. Just as one tree grows best in a sheltered valley and one by the edge of a gentle stream, another grows best on a bleak mountaintop where it is…

“Some parents embark on the great task of raising a child already convinced of a particular parenting method. They’ve done the research, read the books, scoured the forums, and have made up their minds. Other parents embark on the great task of raising a child without having put any substantial thought into methodology. They haven’t completed the hours of research, haven’t read the books, haven’t scoured the forums, and basically intend to learn as they go. What’s remarkable to me…

“And even today, each of us must consider what it costs to be a Christian. This is not the question of what it costs to save a Christian’s soul—Jesus would show us that through his crucifixion. It’s the question of what a person must be willing to give up to be saved. And to answer, I want to track with J.C. Ryle who provided a brilliant answer many years ago. It costs very little to maintain the outward appearance of…

“When my youngest turned 10 and graduated from the little kid stage, I wrote 10 Lessons on Parenting Little Ones. Now, with my oldest turning 18, I thought it would be fun to compile some thoughts on parenting bigger ones. So here are a few things we’ve been learning along the way (all of which we pilfered from the parents we have admired and did our best to imitate).” Read more…

Simon, his brother, and their business partners were fisherman whom Jesus called to a very different kind of fishing. “Follow me,” he told them. “From now on you will be catching men.” They were caught by Jesus so they could catch others. And in much the same way, we have been caught by Jesus so we can catch others for Jesus. We ought to see this as a tremendous privilege. Not just that we have been caught—we know that’s a…

“The relation between Christ and his friends is closer than any human relation. No one can say to any friend, “Without me you can do nothing.” The mother cannot say it to her child. It is a sore loss when the mother of a baby is taken away—but how sore a loss no words can explain. Even God cannot twice give a mother. No other one, however loving and tender in spirit, however gentle in care, however wise in guiding…

“Those nights when you lie awake, restless and tossing and turning, your mind churning over a future that is uncertain and unknown. Those days when your heart is heavy and your spirit is sorrowful while you imagine what will befall you or that person you love. There isn’t a human being alive who doesn’t know the agony of worry. There isn’t a human being alive who hasn’t allowed legitimate concern to devolve into illegitimate anxiety. But just because worry is…

“It’s remarkable how often the Bible describes the Christian life as a shared life. We become Christians through a personal commitment to Christ, then immediately bind ourselves in a corporate commitment to Christ’s people. There are so many biblical commands we can fulfil and examples we can imitate only if we are involved in one of these Christian communities we call “church.” The notion we can be friends to Christ but strangers to his church is completely foreign to scripture.”…

We care called by God to serve him in ordinary work. “There will be some who are called to full-time church ministry as their vocation. There will be some who will put aside manual labor in order to be trained and tasked as full-time pastors, dependent on the support of others. There will be some who will stop working with their hands to go into the mission field. This is good, and it honours God. But it is not a…

“Over the years we have had a couple of dogs. Like most people, we planned to train our dogs until they were perfectly behaved, until they could go head-to-head with a police dog and perform just as well. For a little while we made good progress. We taught the dog to do its doggie business outdoors instead of indoors—that took only a week or two. We taught the dog to sit, which was simple enough because all we needed to…