Reflections on God … Man … Life
Reflections on living as a disciple of Christ.
How appropriate, a day after writing about my visit to Wheaton’s Wade Center and researching C. S. Lewis that I would offer you some more of his insights. I’ve been doing this every Saturday and don’t see any reason to stop—his spiritual wisdom shines through everything he wrote. As with last week, I’m going to share more of his famous sermon The Weight of Glory. In it, as in a number of his works, he explains the inner longing within… Read more »
The Pilgrims survived the voyage to the New World. They avoided civil disorder by establishing the Mayflower Compact. But they weren’t able to escape the specter of disease and death. How did they handle this new challenge? First, they had to search out a place to call home. They sent out a party of men to try to find an opportune piece of land, but the Cape Cod area wasn’t hospitable to farming, and they also had their first encounter… Read more »
A couple of Sundays ago, I offered an excerpt from Winkie Pratney’s book The Thomas Factor: Dealing with Doubt. As I’ve been steadily reading it, using it as a devotional, I keep coming across passages that make things so crystal clear, I want everyone to read them. So I have another section of the book to give you today. It’s in a chapter where Pratney is talking about how every Christian experiences, for want of a better phrase, “the dark… Read more »
I’m not going to say much today, except to draw attention to the plight of Christians in the Middle East. Latest reports are that even children are being beheaded by radical Islamists. They have no mercy. Please devote at least a few minutes to praying for those suffering this persecution. We need to remember those who are standing for our Lord. Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as… Read more »
Probably everyone has heard of the Mayflower Compact, but I wonder how many really know its significance? I’ll address that today as we continue our trek through American history. As I noted in my last Pilgrim post, getting to America was a major trial in itself. The preparations put this small band deeply in debt and the voyage was memorable, to say the least. They wouldn’t soon forget the storms and the cramped living conditions. Yet, up to this point,… Read more »
In my last post about the Pilgrims, I laid out their rationale for leaving Holland and resettling in America. I hinted at some of the problems they were going to face. First, only a minority of the Separatist congregation would be able to make the trip initially, and their pastor, John Robinson, would have to stay behind with the majority. It turns out he never made it to the New World; he died before he could make the trip. But… Read more »
Charles Finney, in his autobiography, provides excellent details on the many revivals that followed him as he ministered in New York in his early years as an evangelist. Yet while he does credit the message itself, he never falls into the trap of thinking the results came purely through man’s efforts. Prayer, he asserts, is the key to success: If anything occurred that threatened to mar the work, if there was any appearance of any root of bitterness springing up,… Read more »