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.

Letters to the Editor (Honoring the Dishonorable, Complementarian Readers, Big and Little Sins)

15/01/2017 0 Comment

Letters to the Editor is an opportunity for readers of this site to respond to things I have written. Here are a few of the top letters from the past couple of weeks.

Comments on Honoring the Dishonorable
As a wife who experienced ongoing domestic abuse at the hand of a professed Christian husband and struggled in raising children within that environment for many years even as I pleaded for help from my church leadership, I read this article with much trepidation and expectation. I was pleased ..

God Hates Hypocrisy

14/01/2017 0 Comment

God hates. Those words may sound foreign to us. They may sound improper. But the God who loves what is good must hate what is evil. The God who loves what honors his name must despise what dishonors it. The God who loves what blesses his people must hate what harms them. It could not be any other way and we would not want it any other way. Over the course of a few articles, we have been looking at what God hates by examining passages that use words like “hate,” “abomination,” and “detestable.” W..

Final Call (January 13)

13/01/2017 0 Comment

Welcome to Final Call, a brief, hand-picked selection of news, articles, videos, and curiosities from the Internet and beyond.

Separated and Reunited
Audrey and Gracie were both born in China and adopted into American families. Until recently, neither of them knew they had a twin sister. Grab some tissues and watch them meet one another for the first time. It does a soul good.

Ordinary Time
Ordinary Time is a band I’ve been enjoying for a number of years. Their focus is simple: discovering, reviving, and celebrating old songs through folk-acoustic music. While they’ve released several albums now, my favorite remains one of their older ones, At The Table.

At The Table by Ordinary Time

If you are interested in their arrangements, they share lyrics, chord charts, and other material at their site.

New & Notable
Enjoy by Trillia Newbell (Release date December 20, 2016). New from Trillia Newbell is Enjoy: Finding the Freedom to Delight Daily in God’s Good Gifts. The publisher says this:..

Who Is the Greatest?

13/01/2017 0 Comment

It’s fun to laugh at the disciples sometimes, isn’t it? Read the gospels and you’ll find them providing us plenty of opportunity. Like in Mark 9 when they have arrived in Capernaum and have settled into a home for a meal and a rest. Jesus asks a simple question: “What were you discussing on the way?” They had obviously been in deep debate during that long walk and Jesus is interested to know what it was all about. But there is no response. “They kept silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest.” Ouch.

This argument sounds absurd to Western ears. Who would actually debate their own status? Who would actually have the chutzpah to say, “I’m greater than you and here’s why”? But in that culture, this kind of ranking was important, a means of ensuring social hierarchy. Literature from the time was full of explanations of who should enter rooms first, second, third, and last. Other literature predicted who would be be closest to God in Paradise. Status..

How Well Do You Know Your Hymns? (A Quiz)

12/01/2017 0 Comment

As Christians, we are blessed with a long legacy of great hymns. As contemporary Christians, we are blessed with many modern-day hymn writers who are carrying on the art. So how well do you know your hymns and their authors? This little quiz is designed to find out!

Be a Parent Worthy of Honor

12/01/2017 0 Comment

For a number of weeks, I have been exploring the fifth commandment and, in particular, how adult children are to obey it. “Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.” While heeding this command is relatively straightforward to the young child under the authority of his parents, it is much more difficult to know what it entails for adult children. Through this series, we have begun to learn some ways such honor can take shape. We have seen that all children owe their parents a debt of honor that continues past childhood. All children of all ages are to honor their parents. We have explored this from many angles and now, as we conclude, I want to explore it from just one more.

Children do not bear the full responsibility of the fifth commandment. If children are to extend honor to their parents, parents are to make it easy for them by living honorabl..

A La Carte (January 12)

12/01/2017 0 Comment

I wasn’t able to track down any new Kindle Kindle deals today, but I guess you can always catch up on past days!

Why the Ark of the Covenant Will Never Be Found
Here’s why the Ark of the Covenant will never be found. (Also, the scene from Indiana Jones where they found it and lifted the lid caused me lie awake in fear many nights when I was a child!)

Raw Tears and Holy Fury
Dai Hankey discusses human trafficking and the real-life story that made him aware of it. “Indeed it propelled me onto a gut-wrenching, faith-stretching journey of discovery. It is a journey that, as I have been confronted by the brutal realities of human trafficking, has been marked by raw tears and holy fury.”

Colorado 2016 (Video)
Colorado 2016 is a stunning video of Colorado. It will make you want to visit (or, if you already live there, to head outdoors). It’s even got a nice bit of Scripture woven in.

An Appeal to the Church to Resist ‘Death With Dignity’
Also from Colorado is this appeal to Christians to ..

All My Ways Are Known To You

11/01/2017 0 Comment

It’s one of my favorite tracks from Only a Holy God, the new album by CityAlight. It celebrates God’s omniscience, his complete knowledge. It celebrates God’s omnipotence, his complete power. It celebrates God’s omnipresence, his constant presence in this world. It celebrates the joy of knowing that these attributes make a difference to the life of the Christian. It’s called “All My Ways Are Known To You” and says, “And oh what peace that I have found / Wherever I may be / For all my ways are known to You / Hallelujah, they are known to You!”

I have found myself reflecting on two meanings of “all my ways are known to you,” one that is intended by the songwriters and one that is outside the scope of their song. Both have brought me comfort.

The first is the meaning they intend. All my ways are known to God. He has planned my life. He sees its beginning and its end, its peaks and its valleys, its brightest hours and its darkest days. “No trial has come beyond Your hand / No step I walk..

Final Call (January 10)

10/01/2017 0 Comment

Welcome to Final Call, a brief, hand-picked selection of news, articles, videos, and curiosities from the Internet and beyond.

Mini-Q&A
Q: Have you ever considered doing a series on the “hard things” of Scripture? Here are a few examples: Who are the sons of God in Genesis 6:2? What is meant by Psalm 82:6 where it says, “I said, ‘You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you'”? Who are the spirits in prison Peter refers to in 1 Peter 3?

A: Yes, I actually got as far as mapping one out once upon a time. But I ended up abandoning it because I began to consider the benefit of “staying in my lane.” I don’t think that series would be playing to my particular strengths. There are people out there who are far better equipped to do serious studies of seriously tricky texts, and I am happy enough to leave the work to them. In particular, I’d direct you to the Word Matters podcast with Trevin Wax and Brandon Smith. “Each episode takes a contested or puzzling passage of the Bible, walks ..

The Story of Reality

10/01/2017 0 Comment

I was wrong. I read the opening words of The Story of Reality and thought, “Here we go again.” Over the past few years we’ve been inundated with books that tell the story of the world, the story of history, through what we might call a biblical-theology lens. You are probably familiar with the standard categories: creation, fall, redemption, consummation, and new creation. Through these headings we can trace and tell the story of what God is accomplishing in this world. It’s helpful, it’s good, and it’s been done a lot recently to the benefit of the church. But this book is not that book. Not quite.

Greg Koukl’s The Story of Reality is, indeed, a telling of the story of the world through a five-part wide-angle lens. The subtitle nicely fills it out: “How the World Began, How it Ends, and Everything Important that Happens in Between.” But what sets his book apart is that instead of serving primarily as a theology text, it serves primarily as an apologetic text. Koukl tells this big sto..