March 25, 2020
The alarm is blaring. Men hit snooze, some cover their ears, others panic, aimlessly running around with anxiety. The alarm continues. The global advent of COVID-19 has arrested the attention of our world. Even those who consider this to be nothing more than fearmongering are unable to ignore this news. It is beyond my calling to comment on the medical side of current illness and its progress. Certainly, I encourage all to observe prudence, love of others, and honor of those in authority—civil, medical, and ecclesiastical. It becomes us to give honor to those above us. But I would like […]
March 4, 2020
In Mark 1:16–20, Jesus approached Peter, Andrew, James and John, and called them from their profession as fishermen to a new task of being “fishers of men.” Jesus would send them to draw people out of the darkness of sin and Satan by throwing out the net of the Gospel to catch men. This should be fundamental to our view of the ministerial calling. God makes ministers “fishers of men.” To change the analogy, they are ambassadors of Christ the King, and in his name they beseech men to be reconciled to God. Christians in general too are to be […]
October 2, 2019
“Thou wilt show me the path of life: in thy presence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16:11). The Bible grounds true happiness in gospel holiness. The most holy people are the most happy people – because they are most like God and live most in his presence. The two stand and fall together; man must have both or neither. Any attempt to sever what God has joined together produces a shallow satisfaction that proves dishonoring to Christ and dismal to the soul. “There is a way which seemeth right unto a […]
August 28, 2019
The following letter was penned by John Brown of Haddington (1722-1787), who served as a Scottish Presbyterian minister in the Associate Synod, to his young children as he lay on his deathbed. It portrays a God-fearing father bequeathing a spiritual inheritance to his sons and daughters – and to us, his spiritual heirs. Let us heed his advice and follow his example. My Dear Children, Believing that God hath made with me, and with my seed after me, his everlasting covenant, to be a God to me and to my seed, I did, in your baptism, and often since, and […]
February 20, 2019
Speed wins the blue ribbon for being the premier virtue of modernity. People will pay high premiums to accelerate the pace of life when using their cell phone, ordering their food, and traveling abroad. Fast is fashionable. The all-consuming lust for speed, however, caters to instant gratification and undermines weighty pursuits. It carries a hidden cost, a price tag that few would be willing to pay in many situations. And we know it. Who would urge a surgeon to cut corners during a critical surgery, or a spouse to abbreviate their words about a life-altering decision, or an engineer to […]
January 9, 2019
Prayer is one of the basic duties of the Christian life and has been described as the breathing of the pious soul. There are many descriptions and examples of prayer in Scripture which provide a clear view of what it is. To pray is to seek God (Dan 9:3), to lift up the soul (Ps 25:1) or to pour out the heart to Him (Ps 62:8), sometimes it is to wrestle with God, yet in the most basic sense prayer is to ask of God (Jam 1:6). Nobody reading this should have a difficultly understanding what prayer is, however, prayer […]