Category: Devotional
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George Whitefield’s Delight in Scripture and Prayer
When I was a child, I heard a pastor read this section from George Whitefield’s diary. It still stirs me to greater discipline and delight in Scripture and prayer. My mind being now more open and enlarged, I began to read the Holy Scriptures on my knees, laying aside all other books and praying, if…
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Why We Need a Prophet, Priest, and King
I recently finished preaching a three-part sermon series on Christ as our Prophet, Priest, and King. While researching for these sermons, I came across this helpful paragraph in Herman Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics. He had to be a prophet to know and disclose the truth of God; a priest, to devote himself to God and, in our…
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True Love, Genuine Faith
True love springs from genuine faith. That is, in part, what Paul teaches in 1 Timothy 1:5, when he describes the goal of his gospel proclamation. “The aim of our charge,” he insists, “is love that issues from sincere faith.” Does that mean that I must have sincere faith in order to truly love someone?…
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We Judge Others Strictly. Ourselves? Not So Much.
We are usually better judges of others than of ourselves. In fact, it is probably impossible to have an unbiased evaluation of the person whose teeth you brush, whose bills you pay, whose car you drive, whose body you inhabit—your own self. We are simply too heavily vested in ourselves to be impartial judges of our…
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The Pillar and Support of the Truth
Imagine Timothy–the Apostle Paul’s son in the faith, and young pastor of the church in Ephesus–walking through his city on an errand. Maybe he’s paying a tax, or getting supplies to a widow. Wherever he’s going, there’s a sight in Ephesus he couldn’t possibly overlook. Dominating the view of the Ephesus is a massive temple—the Artemision.…
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The God of Ecclesiastes
It is deeply ingrained in our intuition that there is some kind of deity out there—a higher power that is responsible for much of what we see and experience. Recently, a study at the University of Oxford concluded that “human thought processes were ‘rooted’ to religious concepts.” (This study came with a price tag of £1.9 million…
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What We Can Learn from “Vanity” in Ecclesiastes
When interpreting this “vanity of vanities” mantra, it is important to keep in mind both the scope of “vanity” (everything “under the sun”) as well as the final point of the whole book: “fear God and keep his commandments.” By relentlessly emphasizing that nothing in life will yield certain meaning or ultimate satisfaction (“all is vanity”),…
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Seeking. Satisfied.
“O God, you are my God. I will seek you earnestly” (Psalm 63:1). What does it mean to seek God? It is not as if God is lost, or even that he hides himself. Indeed, “the heavens declare the glories of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” (Psalm 19). We must seek…
Jonathan M. Threlfall 