A Big, Big House with a City View
We need for our home to be restored. We need to be brought back into the presence of God. So, God became like us to take us back to himself.
We need for our home to be restored. We need to be brought back into the presence of God. So, God became like us to take us back to himself.
I propose a new church-growth model: Preach in such a way where you try to offend as many peoples’ sensibilities as possible. Throw as many stumbling blocks in front of religious people as you can. Unashamedly hold out the apparent foolishness of Christian dogma to the skeptical.
Numbers 16:41–50 serves as a warning to myself and those who would be tempted to cast off God’s commands, chart their own path, and then grumble about the consequences.
A lot of us did not grow up in homes where our parents made concerted efforts at discipling us (largely because no one had done the same for them!) and we struggle to know what discipleship looks like in a Christian home. Richard Baxter helps us with this through 25 directions for family discipleship, which are doable, freeing, and helpful. You’ll find that he prescribes faithful plodding and not heroic conquest.
I really debated whether to enter the fray on Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast. Between mommy blogs and Christian commentators, what could I add to the conversation that will edify anyone? Then, I encountered an impressively bad argument.
Leviticus is—admittedly—one of the harder books of the Bible to interpret and apply, but through hard work and study, one will come to see that Leviticus, perhaps as much as any other book, teaches the profound need for mankind to be saved from their sins and God’s gracious provision for that salvation. In my mind, that qualifies the book as a favorite.
Faithful soteriology should maintain the inherent tension between justification and obedience. That tension guards the Church from falling away from the truth on either side of this issue. While not effectual unto justification, obedience is a simultaneous effect and proof of justification and necessary for salvation.