Author: Tim Challies

A La Carte (September 18)

A La Carte: What if no one prayed for you? / How to pray when you feel like you can’t / Is that person male or female? / “If one member suffers…” / Ideas for better conversations / Huge Kindle sale / and more.See AlsoA La Carte (May 22)A La Carte (11/17)A La Carte (6/2)

Read More

A La Carte (September 17)

A La Carte: Who’s afraid of Romans 1? / You can only be what you can see / Are you a pastor who hurts people? / A holy life is the seed of evangelism / Thinking biblically in all areas of life / and more.See AlsoA La Carte (August 14)A La Carte (June 24)A La Carte (June 12)

Read More

Shadow, Stream, and Scattered Beam Apologetics

This week the blog is sponsored by Zondervan Reflective. This is an excerpt from Thaddeus Williams’ latest book on living out a radically God-centered systematic theology entitled Revering God: How to Marvel at Your Maker (Zondervan Reflective, 2024), featuring stories of Christian thinkers like Michael Horton, Fred Sanders, Joni Eareckson-Tada, John Perkins, Vishal Mangalwadi, and others on how God’s attributes have impacted their personal lives. There are many so-called “evidential” arguments for God’s existence. The universe’s beginning points to its Beginner. Design in the universe points to its Designer. Moral laws point to the Moral Law-giver, and so on. Such arguments compute well with how certain minds are wired, particularly the more philosophic brainiac types. But there is another style of case for Christianity, one that I believe touches those without patches on their blazer elbows, pipes in their teeth, or five-syllable words on their tongues. There are arguments, if they can even be called that, which address themselves to all of us, every human and every dimension of our humanness. They address us not as cerebrums on sticks but as the artists, lovers, dreamers, hypocrites, heroes, loners, romantics, dullards, worshipers, adventurers, failures, jokesters, and weirdos that we are. They are something less like arguments and more like invitations, signposts, pointers, clues, keys that open doors to wider vistas of human experience, lighthouse beacons that guide us out of churning black ocean chaos to safer shores. They are what a pastor hailed as “America’s most important and original philosophical theologian” understood so well. Describing the…See AlsoFree Stuff Fridays (Zondervan Reflective)Free Stuff Fridays (Zondervan Reflective)Free Stuff Fridays (Zondervan Reflective)

Read More

Did the Angels Laugh?

You’ve got to hand it to the chief priests and Pharisees: They did their best. They did their level best to keep Jesus in his tomb. After successfully overseeing his execution, they remembered that he had not only predicted his death but also spoken of some kind of resurrection. Wanting to make sure his disciples didn’t manufacture a way of sneaking his body out of the tomb, they asked Pilate to guarantee the situation. “Order the tomb to be made secure until the third day,” they demanded, “lest his disciples go and steal him away and tell the people, ‘He has risen from the dead,’ and the last fraud will be worse than the first” (Matthew 27:64). Pilate reminded them they already had access to troops they could assign to the task. The soldiers who guarded the temple could also guard the tomb. “Go, make it as secure as you can,” he told them (27:65). “As secure as you can” could almost have been words of prophecy. “So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard” (27:66). And I can’t help but wonder: Did the angels laugh? Did the angels laugh aloud when they saw these religious leaders satisfied that a stone and a seal and a couple of soldiers could in any way thwart the purposes of God? Did they laugh in disbelief that these little beings thought they could stymie the Creator’s plan to save a people to himself? Did they laugh at the arrogance of…See AlsoApproaching the Tomb with JoyPilate MarveledMovie Review: The Passion of the Christ (Part One)

Read More

A La Carte (September 16)

A La Carte: Why Christians won’t stop singing / Exercising an idle mind / The scars of hope / David’s sin in ordering a census / Is this actually accomplishing anything? / Kindle deals / and more.See AlsoA La Carte (September 10)A La Carte (August 29)A La Carte (June 3)

Read More

Categories

Archives