Posts from 2016
One Big Tip to Make Your Resolutions Stick
“‘Tis the season to begin to consider those annual New Year’s resolutions. ’Tis the season to first evaluate whether such resolutions are a good idea or a bad one. Speaking personally, I am a believer in New Year’s resolutions. I believe our lives benefit when we take time to think, evaluate, and dream a little, to consider how we are doing and how we have been living, and to compare it to how we want and ought to live. The…
Purchasing Joy
With the gift giving of Christmas just around the corner, can we purchase joy? “But here’s the thing. I look at those pictures, the pictures of the presents, and realize that they are almost all long gone. They’ve all been forgotten and thrown away. Most of them, anyway. The Playmobil fell apart, the kids grew tired of it, and eventually we freecycled it. My son got bored of the trucks and we gave them to a friend. Or maybe they’re…
Worship Interrupted – Sunday Morning with Little Ones
“Attending worship with small children in tow can feel like trying to sleep with a helicopter hovering over your bed. What you want is refreshment and inspiration; what you get is low-level tension, discomfort, and distraction as you brace yourself for what might happen next. Those who have attended worship with small children for a period of years, as I have, might begin to feel that the effort expended in the fight for focus isn’t worth the seemingly small return…
Here comes Santa Claus
From an author who recently wrote a book on St. Nicholas – “I don’t remember ever ‘believing in Santa’. I never found out Santa wasn’t real. There was never a conversation in which our parents ‘told us the truth’. Instead, something about how we celebrated Christmas in our home allowed me to hold the character of Santa in an amiable tension with the Christmas story. When I tiptoed into the living room on Christmas mornings as a girl, some of our…
The Common Sin of Middle Age Believers
“Each stage of adult life presents its own unique challenges. Young adults worry about finding work and getting married. Older folks have increasing health problems and the loss of independent living. And those in their middle age years, with their own set of struggles, often find themselves “caught in the middle” trying to help aging parents while guiding their children into adulthood. In the midst of these challenges, it might be helpful to be aware that there are also…
One Question to Unlock Your Evangelism
“Your neighbour asks what you did over the weekend. You think to yourself, Should I mention church? If I do, am I ready to share the gospel? If I am, how do I get there? You know you should say something to your barber, or to the barista at your favourite coffee shop — something about Jesus, something about the gospel — but you feel stuck. Palms are getting sweaty. Guilt is circling like a bird of prey. You feel…
The Best of the Boring Parts of the Bible
“Let’s admit it, there are certain parts of the Bible we skim because . . . well . . . because we think they’re boring. They’re repetitive, overly detailed, full of names and places we can’t pronounce. So why bother with them? There are many reasons — not the least of which is that even the parts of the Bible we deem to be boring are significant because they are God’s word to us. Here’s my top ten list of…
Don’t Keep the Gospel to Yourself
Our article this week helps us think about what’s of vital importance in friendship evangelism. “We want to live with urgency. We want to stop frittering away our lives with inconsequential and meaningless activities. Life and death hangs in the balance. Those who have been reconciled to God have a ministry of reconciliation to help others get right with him (2 Cor 5:19). This means we ought to consider our activities, priorities, and passions. Jonathan Edwards captured it well in…
A Few Tips for Raising Boys
We have lots of boys (and I’m speaking both personally and in terms of our church family!). Our article of the week this week is from David Murray, who gives A Few Tips for Raising Boys. He writes, “I’ve had a few conversations with fathers recently about the challenge of raising teenage boys. Similar to my own past experience, these Christian Dads have been struggling to get their boys to study, to do homework, to respect their mother, and do…
Simple Ways to Spark a Lukewarm Devotional Life
“It happens to all of us at one time or another. There are times when we wake up eager to get into God’s Word, when our times in the Bible are an absolute joy and thrill. We hope, we wish, we pray that these times will never end. But they do. At times we wake up with no desire to open the Word. We find to our sorrow that the joy and thrill have given way to cold duty. I…