Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law. Psalm 119:18 The thorniest issues, once sorted out, always reveal profitable truths. One such issue is whether to include younger children in corporate worship. Several competing interests and questions intersect here: the desire for parents and those nearby the kids to listen to a sermon uninterrupted; ...

"OK, wow, I'll pray for you." Fewer words are more powerful, and are spoken more often so tritely. "I'll pray for you." What do we mean by "for"? I'll pray FOR you? Our default is to think that praying FOR another means praying ALONGSIDE them - essentially repeating what the other person has asked for, longing for, etc. This is not wrong, in and of itself. But the most po...

Today the Work + Faith Forum hosted its first Seminar, to dig deeper into some of the bigger issues of work: We find ourselves compelled towards work, because of the "deep character" of the world, because of how it's been made. We feel within ourselves that work is good. And we see it - it's the means by which we are provided what we need and desire. From our work, we pur...

Productivity is one of those subjects that we are very interested in, but we are not sure that the Bible has much to say about it. So we turn to secular sources for insight. But I would argue the Bible says the most profound truths about true productivity. I list here four: We are freed for productivity by the gospel producing in us humble love. Biblical humility is self-...

Last week in this space I referred you to Jon Bloom's article, "Cut Off Your Hand". I invite you to read it, if you haven't. Then I have some further comments here: In the context of Matthew 18, it's clear that a) sin is really, really serious, because b) God is really, really worth not missing out on, due to sin. Heaven is at stake, yes, and that's important because heav...