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
22/12/2016 0

10 Ideas and 10 Tips for Family Devotions in 2017

With a new year dawning, many Christian families will resolve to approach family devotions with greater faithfulness in the year ahead, or perhaps even to begin family devotions for the first time. These are great resolutions! Here are 10 ideas and 10 tips that may help.

Ten Ideas for Family Devotions
Read the Narratives. Read through the big picture of the Bible by focusing on the narrative (story) parts. In the Old Testament, read Genesis, parts of Exodus (you might skip the building of the tabernacle, for example, and the giving of the ceremonial law), parts of Joshua (perhaps skipping the division of the land), Judges, Ruth, 1-2 Samuel, Esther, and so on. For the New Testament, focus on a couple of gospels and Acts. Read the passages aloud, one section or one chapter at a time. Ensure that each day you read enough for it to be significant but not so much that you lose the attention of the children. Over the course of a year you should be able to make your way through much of the B..

By micoots
22/12/2016 0

A La Carte (December 22)

Every day I comb through long lists of Kindle books to try to find a few that are discounted (and high quality and not rank heresy). Today I came up empty! Here’s hoping for better things tomorrow. Here’s the list updated through yesterday.

5 Inputs To Grow, Grow, Grow
“Even once we establish our need for the Bible, a practical question arises: How do we best feed upon God’s Word? What is our strategy, our dietary plan?” Colin Adams borrows from Rico Tice to answer the questions.

#AskRC Live Twitter Event
A couple of days ago Ligonier Ministries hosted an #AskRC event on Twitter. You can read the questions and Sproul’s answers at the link. A favorite: “Given arguments against Christmas from the reformers, should protestants celebrate Christmas?” Sproul’s Answer: “I think the Grinch who stole Christmas was an evangelical.” And this one: “Was Jesus killed or did he release his self to death.” The answer: “Yes.”

When in Babylon…
Adam Parker laments the Christian context in which a chur..

By micoots
21/12/2016 0

6 Practical Ways to Honor Your Parents

God’s commandments are perfectly clear in what they say and, broadly, in what they require. Yet implementing those commandments in practical ways and in the nitty-gritty of life can pose a challenge. It can take thought, prayer, creativity. This is exactly the case with the fifth commandment—“honor your father and your mother”—and especially so for adult children. Young children honor their parents through their obedience, but what about adults? How do we honor our parents in ways that are fitting?

I’ve taken a long time to get to this point in my series The Commandment We Forgot, and this has been deliberate. Our tendency is to skip over foundational matters to get straight to the practical stuff. Just give me the list of things to do and I’ll do them! But the deepest change to ourselves as well as the most appropriate honor to our parents will come when we first ensure we understand God’s commandment—what it means, why he gives it, why it matters so much. I trust you’ve tracked with..

By micoots
20/12/2016 0

A Christmas Quiz: How Well Do You Know the Nativity Story?

How well do you know the nativity story? This short quiz is designed to help you find out! It poses 25 quick questions based on the Bible’s accounts of Jesus’ birth. Take the quiz, share the quiz, enjoy the quiz! Best of all, let the quiz take you to the Bible to read more about this miraculous story.

By micoots
20/12/2016 0

Humble Roots

Over the years I have read quite a few books on the subject of humility. To be frank, this is an area in which I need all the help I can get (and I am quite certain that I am not alone in this need). As I read the latest, Hannah Anderson’s Humble Roots, a thought occurred to me: All of the others have been written by men. I don’t mean to read any particular significance into this observation, but did find myself especially challenged and refreshed to read one that comes from a different perspective—a female perspective. This is just one of the many reasons I found Humble Roots a tremendously enjoyable read.

The book’s starting point is anxiety, being overwhelmed, feeling “heavy laden.” “For years,” she says, “I’ve heard that the solution to such stress comes from setting up boundaries, finding ways to be more productive, cultivating gratitude, and scheduling ‘me-time.’ For years, I’ve believed that finding rest comes from both simultaneously learning to let go and keeping your act tog..

By micoots
19/12/2016 0

4 Times In Life You Should Expect To Face Temptation

Temptation is a mysterious thing. There must be method to the madness, there must be patterns of how and when we are tempted by specific sins. If there are, I’ve never quite been able to hack or solve the system. But at the very least we can observe this: There are some times in life when you should be especially wary, when temptation is especially likely. Here are four times you should expect to face temptation.

During Times of Prosperity
Prosperity and temptation often go hand-in-hand. You need to be careful, though—prosperity is not a curse and you do not need to dread it or be suspicious of it. Rather, you need to have an awareness that prosperity carries with it fuel that feeds temptation. Agur knew this and wrote in Proverbs, “Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’” Guard yourself in times of abundance and prepare yourself for the likelihood of an onslaught of temptation. Look espe..

By micoots
18/12/2016 0

Ask Me Anything (Jesus Calling, Family Integrated Church, Family Devotions, and More)

Today I am kicking off a new “mailbag” feature. A year ago I introduced Letters to the Editor, a means for readers of this site to provide input and feedback. Now I am adding a complementary feature, an opportunity for me to answer questions you have asked. Today’s questions concern Sarah Young and her books, family devotions, family integrated churches, personal devotions, and reading.

Sarah Young and Jesus Calling
Have you ever considered contacting Sarah Young and finding out her perspective on her books personally? The Bible says that no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3). Ask her if Jesus is Lord. In Galatians 6:1 it says if anyone is overtaken in a trespass you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. If you are concerned with God’s Kingdom then for the sake of His kingdom shouldn’t you find out from her mouth personally if she is a heretic and then do a review based on your own personal research.

In a word, no. No to..

By micoots
17/12/2016 0

Hate What God Hates

God is love. We love that God is love, that he is the never-ending source of love, that he is the one who always acts in loving ways. Even those who reject the Christian faith still like to imagine and believe in a God who is love.

But God is not only love. The God who loves must also hate. The God who loves all that is good and pure and holy must hate all that is evil and defiled and perverse. And, not surprisingly, the Bible tells us of many things that ignite the wrath of God. Sometimes he tells us plainly as in Proverbs 6:16: “There are six things the LORD hates…” Sometimes he tells us of things that are an abomination to him or things that are detestable in his sight. As we compile them we arrive at a list of more than 40 things that God expressly hates. They range from abhorrent sexual practices to pagan forms of worship to acts of grave injustice.

Today I am kicking off a series that will examine the things God hates, for what God hates we must hate as well. I have distilled t..

By micoots
16/12/2016 0

The Collected Best Christian Books of 2016

For the past couple of weeks my RSS feeder has been humming with list after list of the best books of 2016. It seems that just about every avid reader I follow is eager to share his or her picks for the year that was. I love these lists and decided I’d compile them to look for patterns and repeats. Here, then, are the collected best Christian books of 2016. Each one of these is from a blog or web site I read regularly.

We will begin with 7 titles that found their way onto at least 3 best-0f lists:

None Like Him by Jen Wilkin (5)
A Peculiar Glory by John Piper (4)
You Are What You Love by James K.A. Smith (4)
Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance (3)
Making Sense of God by Tim Keller (3)
The Fractured Republic by Yuval Levin (3)
The Whole Christ by Sinclair B. Ferguson (3)
If you are looking for something to read or something to buy for a gift, you probably can’t go wrong with any of them!

And now here are each of lists of the best Christian books of 2016. You can visit the sites to read the..

By micoots
15/12/2016 0

One Man’s Honor Is Another Man’s Shame

I wonder if you remember a viral video from a few years ago titled “Asian Parents React To I Love You.” It featured a number of Asian young adults telling their parents “I love you” and recording their parents’ response. Why did this video go viral? Because saying and hearing “I love you” is uncommon in many Asian cultures. It’s not that Asian parents and children don’t love one another, of course, but that love and honor are displayed in other ways. These children were surprising their parents by something that would seem wholly unremarkable in many other parts of the world.

I have been sharing a series of articles on the fifth commandment—“honor your father and your mother”—and have come to the place where we need to speak about culture. We have already seen that children owe their parents a life-long debt of honor. But what we have only hinted at is that honor is displayed in different ways across different contexts or cultures. Our goal is to find ways that each of us can express ..