I hope this quotation from J. I. Packer will help you prepare for Thanksgiving:

“Appreciate the goodness of God. Count your blessings. Learn not to take natural benefits, endowments and pleasures for granted; learn to thank God for them all. Do not slight the Bible or the gospel of Jesus Christ, by an attitude of casualness toward either. The Bible shows you a Savior who suffered and died in order that we sinners might be reconciled to God; Calvary is the measure the of the goodness of God; lay..

“That God has planned our redemption from all eternity delivers a declaration louder than any thunderclap. It is that he is for us, that he has always been for us. He was for us in the far reaches of eternity. It was there he took thought of us even before we existed. It was there that he planned to act for us. This plan was there from the very beginning. He planned to do this knowing that once we fell into the disorder of sin our fist would be raised against him. But his grace preceded us. It p..

David Wells describes what we all experienced last night watching the coverage of the election:

“Secular writers force us to read the world from within a framework in which God’s moral will and saving intentions, his truth and his Christ, are never the criteria of meaning or importance. The biblical authors see everything from a theocentric viewpoint. The biblical writers compel us to read the world from this perspective, to see it in relation to the moral character of God and the ways in which..

“I have been thinking about that woman all day.”

Someone said this the other day after a sermon I preached Cornerstone Church of Knoxville on Sunday from Mark 7:24-30 titled “Humble Faith.” Who is this woman whose story is so captivating and provoking? In his commentary on the Gospel of Mark, James Edwards informs us:

“Of all the people who approach Jesus in the Gospel of Mark, this individual has the most against her from a Jewish perspective. Even Levi the tax collector must have raised his ..

Jonah’s story is a cautionary tale. This genuine prophet who was theologically orthodox blatantly disobeyed the command of God to evangelize the wicked Ninevites. And not because he was afraid of them but instead because he despised them. Sinclair Ferguson explains:

“How perverse Jonah was. Living in a favored nation where spiritual light had been shone only because of the great mercy of God, he had come to assume that Israel deserved grace, whereas others had ill-deserved it. What a perversion..

“Appreciate the patience of God. Think of how he has borne with you, and still bears with you, when so much of your life is unworthy of him and you have so richly deserved his rejection. Learn to marvel at his patience, and seek grace to imitate it in your dealings with others; and try not to try his patience and more.” J.I. Packer, Knowing God.

“Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy!” Psalm 126:5

If your soul is weary today, then the Psalmist would like to have a word with you.

If you have prayed and worked and served and prayed some more about something or someone—with no apparent fruitful outcome—then the psalmist would like to fortify your soul with a certain hope. He wants to remind you that you are in a season of sowing. Are you acquainted with the agricultural imagery of sowing?

There is nothing romantic about s..

So, what makes you laugh? You can tell a lot about a person by what makes them laugh. As the psalmist reflects on his experience of liberation from captivity by the gracious intervention of God he describes the response of those set free:

“Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.” Psalm 126:2

Why all the laughter? What’s up with these shouts of joy? Laughter and joy was the appropriate response to their sudden and unexpected liberation from captivity. They we..

Key Passage: “All people will hate you because you follow me. But the person that continues strong until the end will be saved.”
— Mark 13:13 ERV (Read Full Text)

Key Thought: Even when our situation makes us feel like everyone is against us, we can endure … we must endure … we will endure. When we are faithful, when we endure, we can be certain that our future is with the Savior and great things await us at his return!

Prayer: Give me strength, O LORD God Almighty, to endure to the end and find y..

“When viewed through the lens of Scripture we will see that sport is more than a game, less than a god, and when transformed by the gospel can be received as a gift.”

So writes Jeremy Treat in his paper titled “More Than A Game: A Theology of Sport.” And that is a theologically informed, well-crafted sentence addressing a topic that has not been written about sufficiently from a biblical perspective.

We need a theology of sports in order to perceive sports as a gift from God and play sports fo..