Christian Church

After Jesus called the twelve disciples they travelled together throughout Galilee while he taught the crowds and healed many suffering from a variety of diseases. Word of his miraculous ministry drew onlookers along with others seeking his healing power. He made paralytics walk. He loosed those...

The Presbyterian church in which I was converted over 20 years ago began in the United Presbyterian Church in North America (UPCNA) in the early 1950s, became a UPCUSA congregation when the UPCNA merged with the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA) in 1958, then stayed in the...

Every Place is a Place to Talk about Jehovah Several weeks ago, I had a very embarrassing interaction at a small Asian restaurant in my town. I was grabbing lunch with one of the elders from Christ Presbyterian Church to have a time of fellowship. After we prayed for the meal, a very kind old lady...

I recently finished Luke Timothy Johnson’s The Mind in Another Place: My Life as a Scholar (Eerdmans, 2022). I was eager to read it. I am always eager to read an autobiography about the intellectual and scholarly life of a person so accomplished and prolific as Johnson. The author provides a list...

We are approaching a once-every-four-year phenomenon. No, not the Olympics or the pageantry of elections, but the Bitcoin-halving (due in April). Monetary rewards for mining new bitcoins (which happens through computers solving complex math problems) get cut in half. Prior halvings coincided with...

Review: “God loves us even though we are spiritual failures.” True, or false? We would all agree that God loves us, His children, who have been saved and reconciled to Him through faith in Christ. Certainly, we do fail in many ways by doing what we should not and failing to do what we ought. But...

Your training program is now in place. You have identified places in your life that need special focus in pursuing godliness and purity. At least one coach motivates you to keep at it. You even have an accountability partner, running right alongside you. Success at this “Christian life” marathon...

Ever since the garden of Eden, sin has been cast as freeing and God’s law as enslaving. Today it’s endemic; sin is glamourized in sitcoms, on magazine covers, on YouTube, in Hollywood, by the influence of peers, and of course, in our own hearts—idol factories as they are (as John Calvin put it)...

You have been entered into the marathon. You have been given a number. You have taken your mark. The starting gun has been fired. Uh oh. This particular marathon will prove to be much harder and longer than the norm. Twenty-six miles, shortness of breath, leg cramps, and moments of regret somewhere...

The qualifications for elders in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 mention that for a man to be a minister he must be a one-woman man, be sober-minded, and be self-controlled. In my experience, these and other qualifications are commonly noted in letters of reference for potential pastors. And this makes...