Informing the Reforming

Blog can be found on:

www.challies.com

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.

Free Stuff Fridays (Explore Truth)

29/07/2016 0 Comment

This week’s Free Stuff Fridays is sponsored by Impact 360 Institute who also sponsored the blog this week. They are giving away their Explore Truth audiobook to anyone who would like to have it.

Explore Truth is a 7-part course offered by the Impact 360 Institute and taught by Jonathan Morrow. The course focuses on the topic of absolute truth in the modern age and forming a biblical response to cultural relativism. The content features several interviews with prominent speakers and authors including John Stonestreet, Del Tackett, J.P. Moreland, and Sean McDowell. In the course you can expect to learn more about these common issues

Whatever Happened to Truth?
What Is Truth?
How Moral Relativism Hurts Everyone
Is Jesus Really the Only Way to God?
The Tyranny of Tolerance
How to Talk about Truth
Why Truth Matters
This audiobook contains the full-length study in mp3 format. It is free for the taking right here.

Our Caveat Emptor Vacation

29/07/2016 0 Comment

Every couple of summers my whole family vacations together. When I say “my whole family,” I mean my parents, their 5 children, their 4 children-in-law, and a small hoard of grandchildren. That’s a crowd of 26 people all told. Needless to say, we have to search far and wide to find accommodations for that many people—accommodations that offer the right balance of luxury versus economy, community versus privacy, and so on. Typically our search leads us to an American state park where we can each rent a cabin of our own while still setting up in the same vicinity. This year, though, we decided to meet up here in Canada and found a collection of cottages clustered together on one property. It seemed a near-perfect solution. It turned out to be, well, far from perfect. While I will never actually post this review, merely writing it over the course of the week has proven its own form of therapy. Here goes…

This week we rented all 5 cottages to host a family-wide vacation. Our experienc..

A La Carte (July 29)

29/07/2016 0 Comment

Today’s Kindle deals include 3 books I highly recommend: The Gospel by Ray Ortlund; Core Christianity by Michael Horton; and Church History 101 by Sinclair Ferguson, Joel Beeke, and Michael Haykin. You can find the deals right here.

On the print book side, Westminster Books has a great sale on the venerable NICNT commentary series. You can build yourself a commentary collection in a hurry with these volumes. (For specific commentary recommendations, you can visit my Best Commentaries page.

Godly Compassion for Hurting People
John MacArthur describes “a wonderful, practical, real-life illustration of God’s compassion.”

The Word of God and the Academy
Tim Grant: “I have noticed that those from the academy give the impression that the Bible belongs to them—that they have a special claim on it and that they have a special claim to understand it, due to their great learning, general smartness, or a PhD they completed at some point in the past. They are, at this point, deeply mistaken.”

A La Carte (July 28)

28/07/2016 0 Comment

Today’s Kindle deals include: Andrew Murray: Christ’s Anointed Minister to South Africa by Vance Christie; Patrick of Ireland: The Boy Who Forgave by Karen Murdarasi;Foundations by Peter Mead; As It Is Written by Kenneth Gentry; An All-Round Ministry by Charles Spurgeon. Find them all (and others!) here.

A Little Gem in Job
James Faris says and shows that “One of the beautiful but subtle gems of Scripture is found in the book of Job.”

Missionaries are Supposed to Suffer
Amy Medina: “I’m going to let you in on one of missionaries’ biggest secrets: They are terrified to tell you about their vacations.” In other words, missionaries are supposed to suffer…so are they allowed to eat lobster?

5 Reasons to Host a Q&A After Your Worship Service
Tim Keller explains why he used to host a Q&A after his services and why you may wish to consider one as well. At Grace Fellowship Church we have a brief, moderated Q&A related to the morning service at the very beginning of our evening service. We f..

Eight Women of Faith

27/07/2016 0 Comment

Last week I spent a couple of days at Muskoka Bible Centre, a Christian camp north of Toronto where we love to spend time in the summer. While there I cracked open a new book by Michael Haykin and saw that, fittingly enough, he had dedicated it to the staff and guests of MBC. I took it as a sign that I ought to keep reading. I’m glad I did.

Eight Women of Faith is a collection of brief historical vignettes, each of which introduces a Christian woman from days gone by and reveals some of her unique contributions during her life and times. Haykin’s goal is “to remind contemporary Christians, especially evangelicals, of the vital role that women have played in the history of our faith.”

In some ways the book divides neatly into two parts. Haykin explains: “The first two chapters, those on Lady Jane Grey and Margaret Charlton Baxter, explore women’s lives in the church prior to the significant changes of the eighteenth century. Jane speaks to the way that women made the faith of the Refo..

A La Carte (July 27)

27/07/2016 0 Comment

There are a couple of new Kindle deals today: Introducing Covenant Theology by Michael Horton and the NIV Lifehacks Bible by Joe Carter. Or if you are into printed books…

9Marks’ Building Healthy Churches is a great series meant to, well, build healthy churches. Westminster Books has discounted the whole series and the discounts increase as you buy more of them. A lot of other 9Marks books are also on sale. Buy them for yourself, for your pastor, or for your church.

Marriage Manifesto for Men
Ed Welch’s article is pretty short as manifestos go, but a good read. He talks about responsibility in marriage and, despite the title, it applies to both husbands and wives.

The Bug With the Great Big Eyes
It has been a long time since I’ve linked to a collection of photos. Here are some quality ones from the BBC. “From the macro to the massive, deserts to underwater worlds, here is a selection of our favourite photographs from the Earth Capture community this week.”

14 Rules for Being a Godl..

A La Carte (July 26)

26/07/2016 0 Comment

As mentioned yesterday, Amazon is updating the ways sites like mine may or may not link to their Kindle deals and remain in compliance with their affiliate program. For that reason I am trying some new options. I apologize for the inconvenience as I try to navigate this.

Today’s Kindle deals include: Set Free by Stephen Owens; Evidence for God by William Dembski; Preaching to a Post-Everything World by Zack Eswine. You can learn more and buy them right here.

A Beginner’s Guide to ‘Free Will’
John Piper has put together a short guide to free will.

Died: Tim LaHaye
Christianity Today writes about Tim LaHaye who died yesterday. “The founder and president of Tim LaHaye Ministries and founder of the PreTrib Research Center, LaHaye sold 80 million copies of the series with Jenkins. ‘In terms of its impact on Christianity it’s probably greater than that of any other book in modern times, outside the Bible,’ the late Jerry Falwell, a friend of LaHaye’s, told Time magazine in 2005.” (Alterna..

Working Well

25/07/2016 0 Comment

It seems appropriate that during a season when so many of us—myself included—are enjoying times of vacation, we should pause to consider matters of work and vocation. I was recently brushing up on some of these things myself, especially as they are laid out in the book of Ephesians. There we find Paul addressing the relationships of slave to master and master to slave and from that point we are but a short step away from drawing applications for all of us who work.

Slavery was simply a fact of life in that day and time. Today we look back with horror when we imagine all of these people who were masters and slaves—even Christian masters and slaves in the same church. Better theologians than I have told how the Bible views slavery, what it meant in that context, and how the gospel undermines slavery and destroys it from within. But for our purposes we are going to bypass that discussion and move straight to applications for why and how we work.

Here’s what the text says:

Bondservants..

Falling Stars

24/07/2016 0 Comment

Last week I was in England and spent a fair bit of time touring sites related to church history. As we passed by a church building in Cambridge, our host said as an aside, “That was Charles Simeons’ church.” I immediately took note because lately I’ve been so enjoying Simeons’ work. I purchased his strangely-titled Horae Homileticae for Logos and have found it a brilliant resource for Bible study and preaching preparation—one of my new favorites. In this work, a commentary on large swaths of Scripture, he shows an amazing ability to explain and apply the text. Here is an example from Matthew 5:14-16 (“Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid…). Be sure to read the second part since there’s gold there—a serious challenge to every Christian.

How we may become lights to the world. Simple as this question may appear, there are few who would answer it aright. Almost all would propose to attain this distinction by doing; and would be shocked at being told ..

Free Stuff Fridays (Living Word Edition)

22/07/2016 0 Comment

This week’s Free Stuff Fridays is sponsored by P&R Publishing who also sponsored the blog this week. They are giving away 5 sets of 5 book from their Living Word Bible Studies by Kathleen Nielson. The Living Word Bible Studies offer a guide into deeper study of God’s Word, one whole book at a time. Five days of questions in each lesson lead the way to careful textual study, with helpful context and commentary woven throughout. The aim is to read the Scriptures—and to learn to read the Scriptures—with ever increasing discernment, delight, and conviction.

Each of the winners will receive:

Isaiah. “Sometimes called the ‘Romans of the Old Testament,’ the book of Isaiah is a theological masterpiece. Not only does it deliver some of the most beautiful poetry in the Bible, but it also gives us a glimpse into God’s perspective on human history and his magnificent redemptive plan. Kathleen Nielson helps us apply this book to ourselves as the people of God and points us to our Savior, the prom..