Three Ways to Respond to a Toxic Culture

By / Sep 7

Little River

I grew up in eastern North Carolina, “in the sticks.” As a teenager, my folks built a house in the middle of nowhere, and my stepdad set out to “tame” the land—chasing critters, chopping down trees, and cleaning up the river.

Sometimes beavers dammed the river, flooding the woods and trapping trash. One day, he took me to clear a dam. I hated the idea: mosquitoes, spiders, leeches, the stench of stagnant water and garbage. Still, I pulled on chest-high waders, put on gloves, and stepped in. We tossed sticks aside, ripped out weeds, dragged trash to the bank.

When we climbed out, I peeled off the waders and realized I was still clean. No mud, no leeches—just a little sweat from the work. That day, I learned a valuable lesson: You can clean up a mess without becoming a mess.

That’s the challenge of toxic cultures—especially for people of faith. Surrounded by “it is what it is” and “that’s just how things work around here,” we’re still called to step into the mess and help change it, without letting it change who we are.

Living in a Dysfunctional Culture

Do you ever feel stuck in a dysfunctional culture—polarized, hostile, and fragmented? Or surrounded by superficiality, instant gratification, and “you do you” morality? Many of us face dysfunctional homes, office politics, toxic classmates, and constant manipulation. So how do Christians “clean up” the culture without the culture sticking to us? How do we pull apart the “toxic dams” around us without our clothes getting muddy?

Second Samuel begins with a bloody war between the dynasties of David and Saul. We see battle, bloodshed, civil war, rival generals, political maneuvering, deception, and betrayal. Many of the individuals in these dynasties grew up worshiping, singing psalms, offering sacrifices, and hearing Scripture. Stepping into the “real world” of adulthood was quite different as boys turned into soldiers and they were exposed to—and engaged in—manipulation and bloodshed. They were exposed to a broken and sinful culture, and many chose to participate in it and reinforce its patterns through the way they live.

But in 2 Samuel 3, David goes against the grain of the culture. As the long, messy war drags on, David refuses to seize power through revenge or manipulation when presented with the opportunity in this scene. He steps into the mess and shows us that you can clean up a mess without becoming a mess.

Following are three options for confronting a toxic culture that we observe in 2 Samuel 3.

Option 1: Avoid Culture — The Way of Ishbosheth

Avoidance is Ishbosheth’s specialty. He is a weak king caught in a leadership mess.

While war rages between the house of Saul and the house of David, Abner is “making himself strong” in Saul’s house. Ishbosheth finally confronts him over Saul’s concubine, accusing him of betrayal (2 Sam. 3:6–8). Whether the accusation is true or not, the dynamic is clear: Ishbosheth is a weak leader and Abner is an underhanded, manipulative power player.

In chapters 3–4, Ishbosheth does only two things: He passively lets his general do whatever he wants, and he takes a nap he never wakes up from. He proves to be a passive king of avoidance. Even his name betrays him as, when translated from Hebrew, it means “man of shame.”

“Ishbosheth could not answer Abner another word, because he feared him” (2 Sam. 3:11). That is leadership by avoidance: refusing to engage the mess, confront problems, or take responsibility.

We feel this pull too. It is easier to ignore the dysfunction in our homes, to dodge office politics, to stay out of church conflicts. Sometimes you do have to walk away for safety or sanity. But when avoidance becomes our default mode, the mess doesn’t disappear. We leave others to deal with it, and the toxicity and manipulation only grow.

Option 2: Adopt Culture — The Way of Joab

If Ishbosheth avoids the culture, Joab adopts it. He is a product of his culture.

After Ishbosheth’s weak confrontation, Abner crosses enemy lines to make a covenant with David, promising to “bring over all Israel” (2 Sam. 3:12). It looks like the civil war might finally end. Then the family mess erupts.

Joab, David’s commander, hears that Abner—who killed his brother Asahel in battle—is now making peace. Joab is furious and plots revenge. He secretly lures Abner back, pulls him aside as if to talk, and murders him “for the blood of Asahel his brother” (2 Sam. 3:26–27).

This is the logic of adoption: “You killed my brother; prepare to die.” It’s a bloody world, so I guess I need blood on my hands. It’s a muddy world, so I guess it doesn’t matter if I get muddy.

Saul mastered political maneuvering. Abner was skilled at manipulation. Joab embraced the same violent logic as everyone else.

We face the same temptation. Everyone cuts corners at work, so why shouldn’t you? Everyone gossips and manipulates in your friend group, so why not join in? However, just because the system is broken doesn’t mean you have to be. When we adopt the mess, we become part of the problem. We take on the culture’s manipulation and help perpetuate its dysfunction.

Option 3: Alter Culture — The Way of David

David chooses a different path: alteration. He doesn’t avoid the culture like Ishbosheth, and he doesn’t adopt it like Joab. He is countercultural.

In this story, David consistently acts with integrity. He seeks peace, uses diplomacy to end the civil war, and refuses to play the usual political games. The clearest window into his character comes in his response to Abner’s murder.

David orders Joab and the people to tear their clothes, put on sackcloth, and mourn. He himself walks behind Abner’s bier, weeps at his grave, and composes a public lament (2 Sam. 3:31–34). He even refuses to eat until sundown as an act of grief and protest. The people notice, and “it pleased them, as everything that the king did pleased all the people” (2 Sam. 3:36).

This is also the first time the narrator explicitly calls him “King David.” Up to this point, he has been anointed and called king by others, but now the story itself recognizes him as king—and repeats the title. At last, Israel has a leader who does not simply mirror the surrounding culture. David is not perfect, but he is transparent, ethical, and faithful. He is willing to get into the mud of leadership, yet he emerges clean.

How Can I Influence Without Sacrificing My Faith?

David wrestles with the same questions we all face:

  • How do I influence a toxic culture without letting it change me?
  • How do I speak up without losing my character?
  • How do I engage problems without compromising my integrity?
  • How do I clean up the mess without getting mud on my clothes or blood on my hands?

Like David, we are called to step into broken situations without adopting the world’s way of responding to them. We cannot avoid every difficult circumstance, nor should we mirror the manipulation, bitterness, or revenge around us. Instead, we are called to pursue integrity, faithfulness, and peace.

Step into the mess. Alter the culture by pursuing faithfulness where you are with integrity.



The Church, The Rule of Faith, and Interpreting Scripture

By / Sep 4

Are creeds and confessions still useful today? The idea of such things leaves many Baptists with hesitation and suspicion. Today, creeds, confessions, and liturgies are often viewed as restrictive forms of formal religion and tradition—perhaps too Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. But throughout Christian history, these practices have served as longstanding means of protecting orthodoxy and preserving the faith once delivered to the saints.

“Faith That Believes” and “Faith That Is Believed”

There are two ways to conceive of faith: Faith that believes and faith that is believed. The first—faith that believes—is personal and internal. It is what the Scriptures mean when they instruct us to have faith in God. This faith exists in the heart and deals with one’s personal relationship with God.

The second conception of faith—faith that is believed—is objective and widely measured. It is the summary of Christian belief, often referred to as the faith. This is the purpose of creeds, confessions, and statements of faith. They provide concise summaries of how to understand the whole of the Christian faith.

Why Interpretation Needs Guardrails

These two concepts of faith are related. Faith that believes must have an object of faith that is believed. In other words, our faith isn’t vague or abstract; it is built upon a set of doctrines that are convictionally held and clearly articulated. It isn’t enough to say, “I believe the Bible,” without also saying what you believe about the Bible. Or, to put it another way, believing the Bible isn’t just a matter of content but also a matter of interpretation. To say, “I believe the Bible,” doesn’t mean much unless you say what you believe about the Bible (i.e., how you interpret it, apply it, understand it, use it, etc.).

Why not? For at least two reasons. First, Scripture wasn’t written in a vacuum. It was given to God’s people in real historical contexts and continues to address God’s people today. Second, and probably most important, you don’t live in a vacuum. Every reader approaches Scripture from a particular point of view. This is the danger. If we do not interpret the parts of Scripture in light of the whole of Scripture, we will interpret it through our worldview, culture, backgrounds, etc.

For these reasons and more, it is important for the church to consider its method of interpretation. The Bible isn’t open to whatever interpretation you personally prefer. You don’t get to impose your feelings or perspectives on it. What is at stake in our interpretation is a right understanding of God. Our interpretative practices will either lead us to see God as He has revealed Himself, or they will lead us to make up an idol and call it “God” when in fact it is our own perception of Him.

This leaves us with a glaring question: How do we rightly interpret the Bible?

I find this to be one of the most important questions facing the modern church. When everyone has a theory or an idea about a doctrine and can appeal to some portion of Scripture to support it, the issue is no longer simply fidelity to the Bible but of rightly handling the Word of truth (2 Tim. 2:15).

The Rule of Faith

To rightly handle the Bible, there must be some universal guidelines and parameters. Here enters the importance of historic creeds, confessions, and statements of faith—or the rule of faith. These rules of faith summarize the major tenets of the Christian faith in a clear and concise way. They do not replace the Bible, but they help articulate its central message.

Such rules of faith serve as fences of protection. They help readers interpret Scripture in light of the Bible rather than themselves. What we are after is the Bible interpreting the Bible, not the Bible being reshaped by an individual’s preferences, ideas, or assumptions.

How can we say that the Bible interprets the Bible if we need rules of faith like creeds to help keep us on the correct path?

The reason this is true is because our rules of faith themselves come from the Bible. It is a beautiful conundrum that our Bible reading informs our doctrine and our doctrine informs our Bible reading. The more we are exposed to Scripture the more we develop doctrinal convictions. And the more we develop doctrinal convictions the more they mold our interpretation. Therefore, if we begin with commonly held standards of orthodoxy—creeds and confessions from church history—we will start our journey of interpretation from the right place.

The Church’s Role in Interpretation

Here is another very important question: How do we get rules of faith? Who gets to decide what creeds or statements of faith are correct?

This is where the importance of the church enters the discussion. By God’s grace, we are a priesthood of believers (1 Pet. 2:9), each filled with the Holy Spirit who guides us into truth (John 16:13). It is a wonderful gift of God that we have the Bible in our own language, can read it, and can understand it with the Spirit’s help.

However, biblical interpretation isn’t just an individual practice. It should be done by the individual but also in conjunction with the Church. Why? Any student of the Bible will know that when left by themselves, they are more prone to error than when they are held accountable by the collective wisdom, memory, and studiousness of a group of believers. This is not to say that a group cannot get it wrong. It is to say, however, that we are better students of the Bible when we study it in the context of the Christian community, the Church. This is God’s design. So, while you can and should study the Bible as an individual, you must also study it under the accountability of the collective Church.

This is why it is the Church who determines the rules of faith. This is why churches need to take their Statement of Faith seriously. Churches must be wise and not abandon the collective study of Scripture from 2,000 years of church history. They need to help guide their people in biblical interpretation by defining what is the rule of faith—the central components of the Christian faith. The church must care about doctrine, truth, and guiding others according to that truth. This responsibility is not for a select few but for the whole body.

The need is only growing for not only a strong commitment to the Bible’s inerrancy, but also a strong commitment to faithful interpretation. The Bible is not a free-for-all to be read however we feel. There are right ways and wrong ways to approach it. As we work to understand it collectively as a church, we must make clear what is absolutely central—the deity of Christ, the Trinity, justification by faith—and study Scripture as individuals in light of these communal guardrails. Such an approach is God’s design, and it is for our good.

*Much of the underlying information came from Presley, Stephen O. Biblical Theology in the Life of the Early Church: Recovering an Ancient Vision. Grand Rapids, MI. Baker Academic, 2025.



What Wendell Berry Can Teach Pastors About Language

By / Sep 3

Mr. Wendell Berry of Port Royal, Kentucky, died on August 31, 2026. He was 92 years old, having lived most of his life in his hometown of Port Royal, farming on his property at Lane’s Landing since 1964. He is the author of many books, novels, essays, and poems.

Mr. Berry was a complex figure. He was “too liberal” for some conservatives, and “too conservative” for some liberals. His writing ranged widely, but he examined nearly every issue with an eye to the local, keenly aware that global problems are, in some sense, all local ones. Agriculture’s call to “get big or get out” sounded good on paper, but Mr. Berry showed how that USDA-led agenda, under Earl Butz, destroyed local communities and harmed the land. His 1977 book The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture addressed such issues, and it is likely his most famous work.

Mr. Berry also rejected many modern conveniences, including television and computers. So, it is deeply ironic that I was introduced to his work in 2019 through the documentary Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry, and that I’m writing this on a computer now. I once published an academic journal article on his work, and I sent him a copy along with a lengthy letter thanking him for how it had shaped my own. It wasn’t until after I sent the letter that I realized that sending him a two-page typed letter felt … weird. He was kind enough to send me a handwritten note in return.

As I began to read through Mr. Berry’s work, I was struck by the deeply pastoral tone running through much of it. Of course, I don’t agree with everything he wrote. If I did, I suspect Mr. Berry would cast a sideward glance at me, wondering whether I had even read his material. I’d like to address one issue that he returns to often: language that is spoken but not understood.

The Unknown Tongue

Mr. Berry is best known for his essays, but I’ve always been drawn to his Port William novels. It isn’t “world-building” in the Tolkien or Lewis sense, but Mr. Berry does construct a small community that mirrors his native Kentucky. And what is most fascinating to me is how simple and ordinary the lives of these people are. They work together, fellowship with one another, and live out an old, unseen world slowly being taken over by the “new” world of fast-paced living and “greener pastures.”

Mr. Berry makes this case for a responsible language throughout his work, and two stories illustrate it well.[1] In the novel Remembering, Andy Catlett attends a conference on “The Future of the American Food System” in San Diego. Andy is not impressed with what he hears; these former farmers are now living luxurious lives despite the harm their policies have caused many communities and—importantly—the soil. What is seen as “progress” is nothing more than harm to families, healthy communities, and good land. The language they’re speaking, Andy concludes, is only known to themselves. The average, everyday farmer hasn’t the slightest idea what is being discussed.

The same thing is seen with Nathan and Hannah Coulter’s son. Caleb loved farming, but his professors convinced him there was no future in it. To help farmers like his father, he’d have to not farm. So, Caleb became Dr. Coulter, a respected academic who taught agriculture to fewer and fewer students who wanted to farm. But his publications, Hannah says, are written in the Unknown Tongue. “Reading them always makes me think of this farm and how it has emerged, out of ‘agriculture’ and its ‘soil types’ and its collections of ‘species,’ as itself, our place, a place like no other, yielding to Nathan and me a life like no other.”[2] Her point is clear: farming, and the life it provides, cannot be so easily dissected.

Pastoral Responsibility

This has vast implications for pastoral ministry, especially for young pastors fresh from seminary and seasoned scholars alike. It’s simply this—know your people. Mr. Berry wrote, “We must speak, and teach our children to speak, a language precise and articulate and lively enough to tell the truth about the world as we know it. And to do this we must know something of the roots and resources of our language; we must know its literature.”[3] Mr. Berry wouldn’t object to learning and specialization, so long as they’re rightly used and understood.

But what we must do, as he points out, is not read merely to learn about something, but to be shaped by it. We learn from it, not just about it. His criticism of those who treat the Bible as mere literature is, in my opinion, vintage Mr. Berry:

It is conceivable that the Bible could be well taught by a teacher who believes that it is true, by a teacher who believes that it is untrue, or by a teacher who believes that it is partly true. That it could be well taught by a teacher uninterested in the question of truth is not conceivable.[4]

So, pastors: Preach in a language that is coherent, not unknown. Academic jargon has its place, but the truths of Scripture must come in clear, effective, and persuasive language. I’m always reminded of this whenever I attend an academic conference. How does what they’re saying translate to our local church? Would Mrs. Bonnie understand what they’re saying? Can we make it accessible without dumbing it down? I’m not saying specialized study is unimportant; it is. But we must speak in the known tongue of our people, and that means actually being among them and learning their language.

I think of this most when I remember the note that Mr. Berry sent me a few years ago. It is brief, only a few handwritten lines, but it was written by a man who spent his whole life speaking a language that his neighbors could read. That, among other things, is something I thought about when I learned of his death. Mr. Berry never traded Port Royal for the lecture circuit, and he refused to write in Caleb’s “Unknown Tongue.” And perhaps that is one reason why his reach is so far.

I never had the privilege of meeting Mr. Berry, but I do have this letter and a stack of books by him. By reading his books again and again, I learned his language and how the patient, local way of seeing helped shape him. Pastors would do well to learn that language. Know your people, love your place, and speak so that the ones in front of you can understand what you’re saying. Mr. Berry did, and I intend to keep learning how.

[1] See “Standing by Our Words: Learning a Responsible Language,” in Wendell Berry and Higher Education: Cultivating Virtues of Place, eds. Jack R. Baker and Jeffrey Bilbro (University of Kentucky Press, 2017), 47–69.

[2] Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter (Counterpoint, 2004), 132.

[3] Quoted from Baker and Bilbro, 63.

[4] Quoted from Baker and Bilbro, 64.



Discipling: Prudence and Pastoral Ministry

By / Sep 2

The Scriptures, particularly in its wisdom literature, depict prudence as a central habit “that denotes applying knowledge to some useful purpose.”[1] Solomon says in Proverbs that prudence acts in preparation and deliberation toward right acts: “every [prudent] man acts with knowledge, but a fool flaunts his folly” (Prov. 13:16), and, “the simple believes everything, but the prudent gives thoughts to his steps” (14:15). Solomon also shows that prudence guards and guides: “the prudent see danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it” (27:12), and, “a fool despises his father’s instruction, but whoever heeds reproof is prudent” (15:5).

Likewise, the New Testament demonstrate prudence as a practice of the Christian to discern the best means and ends for the sake of their realization in the true Good. Hebrews 5:14 notes, “solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” Instead of falling into lawless acts or being double-minded, James warns us to practice the meekness we have received through the implanted Word by being quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger (1:19–21). Jesus teaches in Matthew 7:24–27 that the wise man applies what he knows to be true so that he can be safe from the storm (i.e., enter the Kingdom of heaven).

Therefore, since virtue “is a right and well-ordered habit of the mind which facilitates the soul in all its operations, ordering it to blessedness,”[2] prudence is the mother of the virtues. Prudence can simply be said to be well-ordered reason in well-ordered action. Prudence distinguishes according to the order of love so that one is empowered to be good and to act well in daily life. The Christian practices prudence because of their “becoming partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). That is, those in Christ have been swept up into the vast ocean of His being, which is so full of life where they find all happiness, contentment, and bliss. This takes shape in their acting in accordance with new covenant reality through the happy life of attentiveness and guidance by God’s Spirit.

Building Up the Body

For the pastor, the virtue of prudence (right reason for right action) is found in the whole of ministry, but maybe it’s most present in the way in which we equip the saints for the work of ministry. In Ephesians 4, Paul shows that the pastor’s ministry of equipping isn’t to increase the church numerically nor to determine the ROI of the church’s various programs. This ministry entrusted to the pastor is for the purpose of the saints growing into the maturity of Christ’s fullness (v. 13). In other words, the pastor’s ministry of equipping is theological and spiritual in nature. Thus, the focused aim of the pastor is the body building itself up in love (v. 12, 16).

The doctrine of union with Christ has great importance for the pastor’s practice of prudence because for those in Christ, their thought, speech, and actions are done through the Spirit, in which He, through the grace of regeneration, has enlivened and restored our faculties from bondage. As sinners are transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of the Beloved, their entire being is restored and remade. So, for the pastor, his labors in equipping the saints require biblical prudence grounded and shaped by the new life in the Spirit of Christ who sanctifies and renews real people that were once dead to sin but are now made alive in Christ Jesus. From decisions about Scripture and song selection in the liturgy to the decisions on a sensitive pastoral care matter, the prudent pastor’s ministry is engulfed by the reality that we are no longer compelled to settle for lesser loves by looking to ourselves, but by God’s grace, we are freed to choose love—God—and delight in Him through gratitude and worship.

Here, we see a reverberating effect of the ministry of the Word. As the pastor practices prudence for the “right action” of equipping the saints toward maturity in Christ, now, those in Christ can practice well-ordered reason in well-ordered action. Now, those in Christ can practice prudence that distinguishes according to the order of love so that we are empowered to be good and to act well in daily affairs. Webster notes, “the Christian moral life, arising within a perception of the primacy of God’s regenerative grace in Christ which the gospel announces, entails learning how to steady oneself by its reality, how to act in its wake, how to refuse the charms and threats of other reality indications.”[3] With a new heart of flesh, spiritual eyes, and incorporation to Christ’s body, we can see that Christ is the chief good, the one at God’s right hand, where “there are pleasures forevermore” (Ps. 16:11). Christ’s divine power has granted to us all that is needed for life and godliness. Being attentive to this reality, both in the world and in Christ, will help us see that God has richly provided us all that is needed to make it home.

Entrust to Faithful Men

The first, and arguably most important, aspect of prudence (or any of the virtues) is that it must contain the right desire. “It is a great virtue in a virtuous man to despise glory, because this contempt is seen by God, but is not revealed to the judgment of men.”[4] Virtue for self-glorification, or virtue signaling, is destructive and deformative because it is a practice of the old man, whose father is Satan. Not only can false prudence look like in virtue signaling, but it also can look like manipulation or slothfulness all for selfish gain at the expense of others. The true practice of true virtue is intrinsically self-denying. Recall that the very act of sin goes against the essence of our beings and therefore the purpose of our life. “No one who is prudent will have a high view of himself.”[5] False prudence is following the old man’s father and his ways of wickedness.

This angle of virtue, and prudence in particular, bears important significance on the unique task of pastors to train and entrust faithful men in pastoral ministry. The “approved worker” not only avoids irreverent and empty speech, but seeks to correctly teach the word of truth in both life and doctrine. In other words, the way in which a gospel minister is approved is through his willingness and eagerness to be an example to the flock as he correctly teaches them. The corrupted desire of compulsory oversight and greedy lordship runs counter to the privilege of “sharing in the glory about to be revealed” (1 Pet. 5:1). The one who seeks his own glory cannot model to the congregation of how to seek the glory of Christ; indeed, he will lead the congregation astray.

Pastors, as you seek to entrust and commit to faithful men the message delivered, do so in such a prudent way that is modeling what you want to raise up: willing men who clothe themselves with humility and eager men who seek the glory of Christ alone.

Editor’s Note: This is an edited excerpt from Every Perfect Gift: Classical Virtues for Christian Formation

[1] John Calvin, Commentary on 1–2 Corinthians, 1:401.

[2] Thomas Traherne, The Shining Human Creature, 33.

[3] John Webster, God Without Measure, Vol. 2, 18.

[4] Augustine, City of God, V.19.

[5] Basil the Great, On Christian Doctrine and Practice, 111.



Back to School

By / Sep 2

It’s that time of year again. Kids are a mix of excited and sad. Parents are a mix of excited and sad! In this episode of the pod, Jared Wilson and Ronni Kurtz discuss the back to school experience, why it always comes with a mix of emotions, and offer some counsel for students (and for parents) in making the best of their new season of studies.



Reading as Wisdom for the Christian Life

By / Sep 1

One of my biggest regrets in life is that I didn’t start reading sooner. Charles Spurgeon is said to have read the Puritans at just 9 or 10 years old. Imagine what you were doing at 9 or 10! Proverbs 11:14 states, “Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety.” Reading is like consulting “an abundance of counselors.” When you want to learn how to do something, you look at the instruction manual. When you are new to a craft, you learn from an expert. When you do not want to make a mistake, you ask for advice (or, at least, you should). Authors and publishers work hard to produce books for readers to glean from.

While not every book contains advice on Christian living or biblical wisdom, it is helpful to consider reading as an act of wisdom for the Christian life. Through books, we learn from disciples of Jesus Christ who have gone before us—their successes and their failures.

Here are three reasons why you should consider reading more.

1.    Books Are Written from Deep Reflection.

Authors are passionate enough about a topic to spend hundreds of hours thinking and writing their thoughts out. They have pondered the topic, learned from personal life experiences, and offer thoughtful conclusions to their readers. Take Jason Allen’s three-volume series Letters to My Students, for example.[1] In the spirit of Spurgeon’s Lectures to My Students, Allen saw it fit to give his advice to pastors-in-training. Reflecting on his decades of ministry experience and current experience in higher education leadership, Allen’s books are a gold mine for pastors-in-training who desire to learn from a ministry leader who has gone before them and learned lessons about the Christian life and ministry.

2.    Books Connect Us with Christians Who Came Before Us.

The Lord told the prophet Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jer. 1:5). The Lord sovereignly ordained Jeremiah’s life and calling within a specific moment in history to serve the people of God. Similarly, you and I did not choose when we were born. What is clear, however, is that people have lived before us. When we pick up books such as Letters to My Students by Charles Spurgeon or The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, we are learning from disciples of Christ who lived before us in history with different contextual struggles. In other words, we should ask ourselves, “What did they learn about the Christian life that I can learn for my benefit today?” We can save ourselves time and avoid unnecessary mistakes by learning from those who lived before us.

3.    Books Can Help Strengthen Your Faith.

I want to be clear: Scripture is sufficient for the Christian life (2 Tim. 3:16–17). By strengthening your faith, I mean that reading can help you glean wisdom from multiple authors about how to live the Christian life more faithfully. You may not agree with everything an author writes, but reading their books sharpens your thinking and helps you better understand why you believe what you believe. Read and study Scripture, then supplement your Bible study by consulting other disciples’ reflections on the Christian life.

In his popular book Teaching to Change Lives, Howard Hendricks writes, “The two factors that will influence you the most in the years ahead are the books you read and the people you’re around.”[2] Choose your books wisely. The authors are your counselors. In the end, books are a matter of wisdom. Scripture is sufficient, and God has provided everything you and I need for life and godliness (2 Pet. 1:3). We should not walk the Christian life alone, though (Prov. 27:17), and that includes not ignoring our counselors in written form. Save yourself some time by learning from others: Pick up a book, glean wisdom from the author, and strengthen your faith—all under the authority and sufficiency of Scripture. Reading is wisdom for the Christian life.

[1] Jason K. Allen, Letters to My Students, 3 vols. (Nashville, TN: B&H Books), 2025.

[2] Howard Hendricks, Teaching to Change Lives: Seven Proven Ways to Make Your Teaching Come Alive (New York, NY: Multnomah, 1987), 27.



True Power and True Prayer

By / Aug 31

“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” – Mark 11:24

Brethren, do you believe in prayer? I know you pray because you are God’s people; but do you believe in the power of prayer? There are a great many Christians that do not, they think it is a good thing, and they believe that sometimes it does wonders; but they do not think that prayer, real prayer, is always successful. They think that its effect depends upon many other things, but that it has not any essential quality or power in itself.

Now, my own soul’s conviction is, that prayer is the grandest power in the entire universe, that it has a more omnipotent force than electricity, attraction, gravitation, or any other of those secret forces which men have called by names, but which they do not understand. Prayer has as palpable, as true, as sure, as invariable an influence over the entire universe as any of the laws of matter. When a man really prays, it is not a question whether God will hear him or not. He must hear him, not because there is any compulsion in the prayer, but there is a sweet and blessed compulsion in the promise. God has promised to hear prayer, and he will perform his promise. As he is the most high and true God, he cannot deny himself. Oh! to think of this; that you a puny man may stand here and speak to God, and through God may move all the worlds. Yet when your prayer is heard, creation will not be disturbed, though the grandest ends be answered, providence will not be disarranged for a single moment. Not a leaf will fall earlier from the tree, not a star will stay in its course, nor one drop of water trickle more slowly from its fount, all will go on the same, and yet your prayer will have effected everything. It will speak to the decrees and purposes of God, as they are being daily fulfilled; and they will all shout to your prayer, and cry, “You are our brother; we are decrees, and you a prayer; but you are yourself a decree, as old, as sure, as ancient as we are.”

Our prayers are God’s decrees in another shape. The prayers of God’s people are but God’s promises breathed out of living hearts, and those promises are the decrees, only put into another form and fashion. Do not say, “How can my prayers affect the decrees?” They cannot, except in so much that your prayers are decrees, and that as they come out, every prayer that is inspired of the Holy Ghost unto your soul is as omnipotent and as eternal as that decree which said, “Let there be light, and there was light” (Genesis 1:3), or as that decree which chose his people, and ordained their redemption by the precious blood of Christ. You have power in prayer, and you stand today among the most potent ministers in the universe that God has made. You have power over angels, they will fly at your will.  You have power over fire, and water, and the elements of earth. You have power to make your voice heard beyond the stars; where the thunders die out in silence, your voice shall wake the echoes of eternity. The ear of God himself shall listen and the hand of God himself shall yield to your will. He bids you cry, “Your will be done” (Matthew 6:10) and your will shall be done. When you can plead his promise, then your will is his will. It seems, my dear friends, an awful thing to have such a power in one’s hands as to be able to pray! You have heard sometimes of men who pretended to have a weird and mystic might, by which they could call up spirits from the vast deep, by which they could make showers of rain, or stop the sun. It was all a figment of the fancy, but were it true the Christian is a greater magician still. If he has but faith in God, there is nothing impossible to him. He shall be delivered out of the deepest waters—he shall be rescued out of the sorest troubles—in famine he shall be fed—in pestilence he shall go unscathed—amid calamity he shall walk firm and strong—in war he shall be ever shielded—and in the day of battle he shall lift up his head, if he can but believe the promise, and hold it up before God’s eyes and plead it with the spell of unfaltering reliance.

There is nothing, I repeat it, there is no force so tremendous, no energy so marvelous, as the energy with which God has endowed every man, who like Jacob can wrestle, like Israel can prevail with him in prayer. But we must have faith in this; we must believe prayer to be what it is, or else it is not what it should be. Unless I believe my prayer to be effectual, it will not be, for on my faith will it to a great extent depend. God may give me the mercy even when I have not faith; that will be his own sovereign grace, but he has not promised to do it. But when I have faith and can plead the promise with earnest desire, it is no longer a probability as to whether I shall get the blessing, or whether my  will shall be done. Unless the Eternal will swerve from his Word, unless the oath which he has given shall be revoked, and he himself shall cease to be what he is, “We know that we have the requests we have asked of him” (1 John 5:15).

Editor’s Note: Excerpted from Breath of the Soul: Devotions for Powerful Prayer©2026 by Charles H. Spurgeon, edited by Geoff Chang. Used with permission of New Growth Press. May not be reproduced without prior written permission. To purchase this and other helpful resources, please visit newgrowthpress.com.



What Does It Mean to Believe in God?

By / Aug 27

Knowing About God

Sometimes the people who are supposed to know the most about God know Him the least. Perhaps this sounds counterintuitive, but this has consistently been the case throughout history. The past is littered with examples of men and women who have been raised to believe in God, who have been trained in theology, and who spent their whole lives studying Him but did not truly know Him. Martin Luther is a perfect example of this. Prior to his rediscovery of the gospel during the Reformation, Martin Luther claimed to hate God.[1] Yet, as a monk he studied Scripture, fasted regularly, and did all sorts of devotional duties. Luther knew many things about God, but he did not know God.

This phenomenon—knowing lots about God yet hating Him—is present in the Bible as well. The Pharisees constantly challenged by Jesus because of this. Just like Martin Luther, these men were required to know the Bible and studied the things of God to a degree beyond many of us. Yet, they too were guilty of not truly knowing God. Jesus makes this abundantly clear when He exclaims, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others” (Matt. 23:23). They failed—just like Luther once did—to grasp the purpose behind all their diligent study.

Believing in God

Both of these examples demonstrate something that is extremely important when dealing with the topic of belief in God. There is a big difference between saying, “I believe in God” and “I believe in God.” The first highlights that someone can have a lot of knowledge about God, can read all the right things about God, can do all the prayers and rituals without ever truly believing in God. For them, belief is merely intellectual assent to an idea. Saying “I believe in God,” under this rubric, is no different than saying “I believe that the earth revolves around the sun.” It is a mere fact.

This is why not everyone who claims to believe in God will enjoy eternal life, because they do not truly know God. They believe in the wrong way—a way that failed to produce life. As the late J.I. Packer says in Knowing God, “A little knowledge of God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge about him.”[2]

However, when a Christian says, “I believe in God,” they are not using this phrase to show their intellectual assent to an idea, but to reflect their trust in the God of the Bible. Belief, faith, and knowledge of God are primarily relational categories. “Christians don’t just believe—we believe in someone.”[3] Obviously, this means knowing things about God. A person cannot claim to be in a healthy relationship with someone if they know nothing about that person. But it also means much more than simple intellectual assent.

Abraham’s Faith

So why do Christians think of belief in this way? Why is it that they focus on the relational instead of only focusing on the intellectual? The answer to this can be found in the book of Genesis and the life of Abraham. Abraham was called by God to leave his family and travel to a new land. God was going to take him and make him into a great nation. But there was just one problem, Abraham did not have an heir. So God appears to Abraham and tells him, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them . . . So shall your offspring be” (Gen. 15:5). Abraham responds to this in a rather unique way; “And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6; cf. Rom 4:3).

Abraham believes God, takes Him at His word, and trusts that He will do what He says He will do. This faith is credited to him as righteousness. He is not commended by God for his great theological skills. He is not exalted because he can list the attributes of God without needing to reference a theology textbook. No! He is considered righteous because he believes in God. He puts his hope in the word of the Lord that is addressed to him. He has faith, and as Herman Bavinck beautifully says, “only by faith does a promise become our possession.”[4] It is trust in the Lord that is highlighted when the Christian exclaims, “I believe in God!” It is relationship, not mere knowledge, that is proclaimed by the Christian.

Belief That Leads to Life

Martin Luther, the Augustinian monk who once declared his hatred for God, eventually came to understand this for himself. He did not have any grand vision or a cathartic experience, but he came to believe in God through “study in the tower of the Augustinian monastery.”[5] There, Luther would have a similar experience to Abraham’s. Rather than looking to his own merits, he would learn to take God at His word and trust Christ. This so changed his life that he could write, “What man is there whose heart, upon hearing these things, will not rejoice to its depth, and when receiving such comfort will not grow tender so that he will love Christ as he never could by any means of any laws or works?”[6] Martin Luther’s recognition of these things not only allowed him to say “I believe in God,” but sparked a movement against the cold, dead intellectualism of his day and has since allowed millions of people to proclaim “I believe in God” with him.

None of this is meant to sound anti-intellectual. Learning about God, studying theology, and knowing the Bible are all really good things. Yet, Christian faith cannot end with the intellect. To say “I believe in God” is to proclaim that you have entered into a relationship with Him by taking God at His word. It is, as Herman Bavinck says, “not a matter of knowing a number of doctrinal truths” but consists “in the soul’s union with the person of Christ according to the Scriptures and with Scripture as the word of Christ.”[7] It is a relationship, not knowledge of facts.

[1] Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand: The Life of Martin Luther (New York: Meridian, 1955), 44.

[2] J.I. Packer, Knowing God (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1975), 26.

[3] Alister McGrath, I Believe: Exploring the Apostles’ Creed (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 20.

[4] Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Prolegomena, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 565.

[5] Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand, 47.

[6] Martin Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian,” 66.

[7] Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Prolegomena, 573.



FTC Mailbag

By / Aug 26

In this installment of the regular Mailbag feature, Jared Wilson and Ronni Kurtz discuss your submitted questions and topics, including: “blank slate” student ministry, questions for pastoral search teams, premarital counseling, unrepentant friends in church, the dynamic between elders and deacons, and what exactly Luke meant when he said Satan “took” Jesus. As always, you can submit a question or topic for the Mailbag any time by emailing [email protected]



When You Feel Too Weak to Lead

By / Aug 25

When Weakness Meets the Call

There are moments in church life when a man feels both the weight of the task before him and the weight of his own inadequacy.

I know those moments well because I experience them often.

I know what it’s like to stand off to the side before a service begins, Bible in hand, heart pounding, hands shaking, while asking God for help because I don’t feel capable enough to give what the task before me requires. I know what it’s like to want Christ to be honored and yet to feel deeply aware of my inadequacies. There are even times when I want to run away, pretend I’m sick, and let someone else lead.

But lately I’ve begun to embrace this apparent tension.

In his book, The Clay Pot Conspiracy, Dave Harvey says, “Pastoring is where an imperfect person leads imperfect people in an imperfect church to reach an imperfect world.”[1]

Though Harvey is writing about pastors, I think his point applies to anyone who serves in the church. Earlier he writes that when our weakness meets God’s power, the result is resilient ministry.

Leading in the church isn’t about looking capable. It’s about leaning on God because I know I’m not.

The Church Doesn’t Need an Impressive Leader

I remember as a kid—and even through my teenage years—I couldn’t speak to a group of any size without my hands shaking and it ending in tears. Because of this, I concluded that I wasn’t a leader and that if God wanted me to lead anyone, He would need to provide a miracle.

But He gave me more opportunities—starting with my own family.

I found myself assuming that, over time, the work of standing before God’s people would eventually feel natural or effortless. But that has not been my experience. Instead, it has often felt like being a boat tossed by the storms of the sea.

One temptation in leadership is believing that what the church—or even our families—need most is a great appearance, clarity of speech, or confidence and humor that attracts people. But the gathered church doesn’t need a man who appears put together. Indeed, neither do my wife and children.

The church needs to be helped to see God. Not me. That’s the real mission.

When the church gathers, the great need is not that leaders be impressive, but that Christ be visible, the Word of God be clear, distractions removed, hearts lifted, and the people of God drawn again to reverence, faith, repentance, and hope.

We want people to see Christ and cling to Him as their only treasure.

That happens through the Spirit’s work. Often, it comes through ordinary acts of service, preparation, removing distractions, and helping God’s people fix their attention on Christ rather than the man standing in front of them.

The Prayers Weak Leaders Pray

I don’t think of leadership mainly as bringing strength before the body. I think of it as bringing my weakness honestly before God and the body and asking Him not to let me get in the way.

Now, weakness can be damaging if it causes a man to turn inward like it did with me for so many years—and still does at times. It can make you timid, self-absorbed, and fearful. But I’ve learned that there is another kind of weakness. The kind that strips a man of self-trust and drives him to prayer, makes him cling to Christ, and teaches him that he cannot live on gifting or personality alone. It teaches him that he must ask for help.

More often than not, my prayers sound something like this:

Lord, help me.

Lord, keep me from being a distraction.

Lord, let Christ be seen.

Lord, please use me.

These are the prayers of a man who knows he is not the point. And perhaps, at times, they are also a defense against wanting to be the point. They are the prayers of one who remembers that God has always delighted to place His treasure in jars of clay, so that the surpassing power might plainly be His and not ours. The Lord has never been embarrassed to use weak men. He has only ever been glorified through them. This is something that took years for me to learn, and I still struggle to believe it.

Weakness as a Gift

This is good news for a man like me who feels ordinary and for the man who feels too aware of himself. It’s good news for the man who steps forward to lead while inwardly pleading for grace. It’s good news for the man who loves Christ, loves the church, and still feels, at times, too strange and small for the work set before him.

Such feelings do not necessarily disqualify a man from leading. They may, in fact, reveal that he understands the task better than the man who thinks he has mastered it.

Christian leadership is not a great presence, strong communication, or the art of appearing untroubled. It is the humble work of trusting God, speaking His truth, and serving His people while knowing full well that, apart from grace, you are inadequate for all of it.

I know what it’s like to feel too weak to lead. It rarely feels comfortable. But I am beginning to think that this discomfort has been one of God’s greater kindnesses to me. It has exposed the vanity and pride of my heart. It has reminded me that the church does not need my put-togetherness. It has driven me back to a life of clinging to Christ.

And perhaps that is where a man becomes most useful. It’s not when he finally feels strong enough to lead, but when he has been taught, again and again, to seek help from the One who leads him.

Perhaps feeling unfit to lead is not always what keeps a man from serving. Sometimes it is what teaches him how. Keep clinging to Christ.

[1] Dave Harvey, The Clay Pot Conspiracy: God’s Plan to Use Weakness in Leaders (Greensboro: New Growth Press, 2025).