Tried With Fire

Great Kings of the Bible: How Jesus is greater than Saul, David, and Solomon , Deepak Reju, CF4Kids , January 2014, 48 pages. Read to me: 5-7, Read myself:8-11. Great Kings of the Bible recounts the lives of Saul, David, and Solomon. Each account sticks very close to the biblical text, giving an overview of each king. Unlike many children's books, their triumphs as well as grievous sins are included. So this does  not  teach a "Dare to be a Daniel" sort of moralism. Rather the author weaves Jesus into the kings' stories by showing how He is greater. Where these human rulers failed, Jesus was perfect. Each of these men died. Jesus rose from the dead, and His kingdom is forever. After growing up reading very moralistic Bible stories, I appreciated that these characters were not held up as paragons of virtue but human beings who fall. I thought David's sin with Bathsheba was handled in an age-appropriate manner and yet stayed true to 2 Samuel 11-12. Also the ...

Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves,‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Luke 3:8 A man that has truly repented is truly regenerated… there is, as it were, a new creation wrought in your hearts. If your repentance is true; you are renewed throughout, both in soul and body; your understandings are enlightened with the knowledge of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ; and your wills, which were stubborn, obstinate, and hated all good, are obedient and conformable to the will of God. Indeed, our deists tell us that man now has a free will to do good, to love God, and to repent when he will; but indeed there is no free will of any kind in any of you but to sin; no, your free will leads you so far that you would, if possible, pull God from the throne… But when you are turned to the Lord by evangelical repentance, you will is changed; your obedience, now hardened and benumbed...

Gospel Assurance & Warnings , Paul Washer, Reformation Heritage Books, April 2014, 252 pages. Gospel Assurance & Warnings is the third book in the Recovering the Gospel series by Paul Washer. This series addresses the need to recover the biblical gospel in a day of easy believism, cheap grace, and man-centered preaching. Divided into two parts, this latest book addresses scriptural assurance of salvation and the warnings to those with false assurance. In the first part, the author uses the 1st epistle of John to answers the questions, "How can I know I have born again, that I am truly a child of God? How can I know that I have believed unto eternal life?" Washer makes it very clear that we are saved by faith alone, by grace alone, through Christ alone. But because of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, we have been made new creatures, given new hearts, and new affections. This should result in visible fruit in our lives even though we still sin and do not...

Let Them Go/Let Us Go, a Frozen parody...

In a recent conversation with my daughter, she reminded me of the importance of context when we read God's Word: "Sometimes we think the Bible is just a PowerPoint presentation. The verses get turned into bullet points. We're interested in getting the answer to a question, so we cherry-pick the "bullet point" and forget that the verse is part of a chapter that's part of a whole book that's part of God's revelation." This got me thinking and resulted in this post at Out of the Ordinary . Read more here. ..

"Are Women Human?" is the title of an address given by Dorothy L. Sayers in 1938 to the Women's Society. If this essay was in the public domain, I would reproduce it on the spot and let you read it for yourself. But alas it is not, so I will try to distill some of Sayers' insights. Sayers believed that an aspect of humanity is being an individual and being respected as such. We have tastes and preferences, strengths and weaknesses. The danger arises when categories dictate who we must be, leaving no room for our individuality. Consequently she felt that men and the feminists of her era fell into this error. On the one side, all girls must like dolls. On the opposite side, all girls can be mechanical geniuses if they are properly trained. Neither idea is sound because all humans are not the same, and if girls allowed to be human, they are not the same either. 1 In addition, the idea of women copying men for that sake alone was simply absurd to Sayers. "Is it ...

We believe that the very best attested fact in all history is the Resurrection of Christ. Historical doubts concerning the existence of Napoleon Bonaparte, or the stabbing of Julius Caesar, or the Norman Conquest, would be quite as reasonable as doubts concerning the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus! None of these matters have such witnesses as those who testify of Him—witnesses who were manifestly truthful, since they suffered for their testimony, and most of them died ignominious and painful deaths as the results of their belief. We have more and better evidence for this fact than for anything else which is written in history, either sacred or profane! Oh, how should we rejoice, we who hang our salvation wholly upon Christ, that beyond a doubt it is established that, “now is Christ risen from the dead.”  But you may ask the question at the outset, “Why is it that the Resurrection of Christ is of so much importance?” Upon it we have said that the whole system of Christianity rest...