Category: Informing the Reforming

Blog can be found on:

www.challies.com

Brief Biography

Proper introductions begin with names, so let me tell you how to pronounce mine. It’s pronounced CHALL-eez and rhymes with “valleys” and “rallies.” It’s quite simple, really, but is almost always the first question I’m asked.

I am a Christian, a husband to Aileen and a father to three children aged 10 to 16. I worship and serve as an elder at Grace Fellowship Church in Toronto, Ontario. I am a book reviewer, co-founder of Cruciform Press, and have written five books:

The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment (Crossway, 2007)
Sexual Detox: A Guide For Guys Who Are Sick of Porn (Cruciform Press, 2010)
The Next Story: Life and Faith After the Digital Explosion (Zondervan, 2011)
Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity (Cruciform Press, 2015)
Visual Theology: Seeing and Understanding the Truth About God (Zondervan, 2016)

I began this web site in 2002 and have been writing here daily since 2003. It is my place to think out loud and in public while also sharing some of the interesting things I’ve discovered in my online travels.

By micoots
24/11/2016 0

Unjust, Unkind, Unfair, Un-humble?

It is a bold claim we Christians make, a claim that puts us at odds with the great majority of people on this earth. Our claim is that, by the grace of God, we’ve got it right and they’ve got it wrong, that we know the way to be made right with God and they do not. This grand claim is not built upon anything we are or anything we’ve done but solely upon who God is and what God has done.

Some charge that this exclusive claim is unjust, unkind, unfair, un-humble. We insist it represents reality as God has revealed it. This bold claim is built upon several others, all of them exclusive in their own way.

One God
There is one God. This is the most foundational claim, that in all the universe there is but one God, one supreme, uppercase God who created this world, owns this world, and who maintains supremacy over it. “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4). There are many competitors, many pretenders, but they are, at best, lowercase gods, perversions of what ..

By micoots
24/11/2016 0

A La Carte (November 24)

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my American friends and family! I trust you will enjoy the day giving thanks with friends and family. And don’t worry about a thing out here on the Internet—I’ll hold down the fort.

Ligonier Ministries has a two-part Thanksgiving message from R.C. Sproul you can download for free today.

Today’s Kindle deals include several from Reformation Heritage Books: A Puritan Theology by Joel Beeke & Mark Jones, The Reformation Heritage KJV Study Bible edited by Joel Beeke, The Forgotten Fear by Albert Martin, One Man and One Woman by Joel Beeke, The Gospel’s Power and Message by Paul Washer. Also consider Take Words With You by Tim Kerr and Christian History Made Easy by Timothy Paul Jones.

Thanksgiving as Theological Act
Al Mohler: “Thanksgiving is a deeply theological act, rightly understood. As a matter of fact, thankfulness is a theology in microcosm — a key to understanding what we really believe about God, ourselves, and the world we experience.”

32 Reasons..

By micoots
23/11/2016 0

The Hidden Power in Every Idol

We were made to mimic. God made us in such a way that we learn many of life’s skills by way of imitation. For good or for ill we also learn character, or lack of character, by imitation. Parents who routinely blow up in anger cannot be surprised when they raise a brood of children who respond to conflict with screaming, yelling, slapping. Teachers who constantly grumble and complain cannot be surprised when they find themselves in front of a classroom of grumblers and complainers. It’s just how it works, how we were made.

Who do you want to be? What do you want to become? Even as you grow older, you remain an imitator—you mimic what you revere so that in some important ways you actually become what you revere. As Greg Beale says, “What people revere, they resemble, either for ruin or restoration.” This is a call for care, a call to pay close attention to who or what you honor, who or what you worship.

Recently, my morning devotions took me to Psalm 115 which mocks man-made idols. Why..

By micoots
22/11/2016 0

That Dragon, Cancer

Oh my. I had no idea. I had heard of it and even read reviews praising it and describing it as exceptional. But I didn’t know it would be this good, this powerful. I opened it up on my iPad during a long flight over the Atlantic, then sat physically transfixed and emotionally moved as it played out. It was unlike anything else I’ve ever tried or experienced. It was amazing.

It’s called That Dragon, Cancer. Some say it’s a video game, but that’s not quite right. As it comes to the end it says, “Thanks for Playing,” but you haven’t really played it, not in the way you might play Tetris or Angry Birds. Is it an app? A simulation? An experience? Maybe it’s all of them. Whatever it is, it’s powerful and exceptional.

Let me back up. In 2014, little Joel Green died of cancer at just 5 years of age. It was a tragedy that came after a long battle full of advances, retreats, and, at last, the terrible words, “It’s fatal.” He left behind heartbroken siblings and parents. In their sorrow, many g..

By micoots
21/11/2016 0

Engaging Children with Reformed Doctrine … In Indonesia!

This sponsored post was prepared by Simonetta Carr on behalf of Reformation Heritage Books.

Of all the countries in the world, Indonesia became the first and most faithful translator of my books—which I never expected. And yet in 2009, in view of the five-hundredth anniversary of John Calvin’s birth, Momentum Christian Literature, a publishing house based in Surabaya, published my children’s biography of Calvin in their language. Soon after, they committed to publishing the rest of my series.

Two years later, Momentum invited me to visit Indonesia to talk about how to teach theology to children. When I told my then sixteen-year-old son, his response was less than encouraging, “I didn’t know you were an expert on that!”

The leaders at Momentum reassured me: I had to speak only as a mother, which I did. I enjoyed the beauty of Indonesia and the warmth of its people. I was especially surprised to see an unpredicted number of people flocking my seminars and asking interesting and weight..

By micoots
21/11/2016 0

Why Christian Kids Leave the Faith

Few things are sadder to witness than people who once professed faith leaving it all behind. This is especially true when those people were raised in Christian homes by God-fearing parents. These children were given every opportunity to put their faith in Jesus but determined instead to turn their backs on him. Why would they make such a tragic choice?

Several years ago Tom Bisset carried out a study of people who had left the faith. Wanting this to be more than a statistical analysis, he actually sat down with people to interview them and ask for detailed information on when, why, and how they abandoned their faith. As he compiled his research he arrived at the four most prominent reasons that people raised in Christian homes eventually leave Christianity behind.

They leave because they have troubling, unanswered questions about the faith. Essentially, they come to doubt that Christianity offers compelling answers to the tough questions—questions related to science, suffering, sexua..

By micoots
21/11/2016 0

A La Carte (November 21)

Today’s Kindle deals include: A Loving Life by Paul Miller, Loving Jesus More and Loving the Way Jesus Loves by Philip Ryken, Loving God with All Your Mind by Gene Edward Veith, For the Love of God by D.A. Carson, and a number of others.

Does God Expect us to Change the World?
Are we responsible to change the world? If so, how?

Parents: It’s Time to Wake
Specifically, according to Randy Alcorn, it’s time to wake up about pornography and sexting and their impact on your children.

How Christianity Flourishes
Jared Wilson: “Many religions, like Islam for example, seem to thrive on conquest and power. Christianity grows best under hardship.”

Should I Rejoice When My Enemy Falls?
“The human heart is a slippery thing. Our rejoicing over the deliverance of God and the display of God’s character and justice can so quickly morph into something unbecoming a saint of God. We can start rejoicing at their fall instead of rejoicing in God’s deliverance and His character being displayed.”

Encour..

By micoots
20/11/2016 0

Letters to the Editor (Leonard Cohen, Cashless Giving, Prayer, Sinning Against Others)

It has been a few weeks since I last shared a collection of letters to the editor. But I’m making up for lost time today by posting quite a few. I hope you enjoy them!

Comments on Seems So Long Ago, Nancy

I read your recent flashback article, “Seems So Long Ago, Nancy” with keen interest. Not because I know this song; in fact, I am not very familiar with much of Cohen’s music. I read with interest though because I was familiar with the story you told, because it was as though you were telling my own story.

My father always kept a frame in his room that held three individual portraits. I knew his, of course, and the one of his youngest sister, the aunt I knew. The third photo, the one in the middle, was a face with only a name, a name that was rarely spoken. She wasn’t a person though, at least not in the sense that I ever had any idea of who she was, of what kind of person she was.

All I knew about her was that she had taken her own life, early in the year she was to be married, th..

By micoots
19/11/2016 0

Here Comes (U.S.) Thanksgiving: The Unbreakable Link between Gratitude and Joy

What are people willing to give for joy? What price are they willing to pay? Consider what people spend on vacations, luxury goods, entertainment, and stimulants and it’s clear the cost is sky-high. And yet all that time, money, and effort never seems to be enough. For so many people, joy remains elusive. And if they do find it, it is fleeting and unsatisfying.

It’s ironic that during the holiday season—when we talk about joy the most—it seems to be the hardest to find. The holidays are stressful. We have a lot to do. We are pressed for time and money. Family conflicts tend to rise to the surface. But even in the midst of these things we can remain genuinely joyful. This sounds paradoxical, but as Bill Farley discusses in his recent book, The Secret of Spiritual Joy (to which this article is indebted), it is a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit.

This means that for Christians, there’s a joy that comes without price—prepaid, as it were. Joy is one of the first three fruits of the Sp..

By micoots
19/11/2016 0

Weekend A La Carte (November 19)

I have received a number on inquiries about Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. So, yes, I will be creating my usual roundup of deals from all across the internet that will be of special interest to Christians. Stay tuned over the holiday weekend and I’ll have them all listed for you.

Sisters, Jesus Is Not Your Cheerleader
Melissa Kruger: “I’m concerned that we’ve reduced Jesus to a spiritual cheerleader. And, in turn, that’s what we’ve become to one another.”

I Believe in the Resurrection of the Dead
Warren Peel responds to a news story: “Isn’t it tragic that the very thing this girl was longing for was exactly what is being held out in the gospel? Isn’t it tragic that she put her trust in a quasi-scientific fairy tale for her hope of resuscitation life rather than the resurrection life the Lord Jesus Christ achieved when he rose from the dead on the third day?”

The Sinner’s Prayer?
In this short video Mike Riccardi gives his thoughts on whether we should use a “sinner’s prayer” w..