Packer’s Dusty Puritan Discovery Still Guides and Helps
May a new generation continue to follow Packer to make new discoveries like his of their own.
25 Quotes from The Storied Life
My new book The Storied Life: Christian Writing as Art and Worship is now available from Zondervan Reflective. This book is for both experienced and aspiring writers — whether you write stories or sermons or even just social media posts or daily journal entries — and is designed to equip you with some nuts and […]
2023 For the Church Book Awards
Series: Book Reviews
Like year’s past, we are excited to present our readers with a few books that stood out as exceptional from this past year. For our seventh annual For the Church book awards, members of our FTC council, editorial staff, and seminary community chose two books—a winner and a runner-up—to honor and to recommend to you […]
Through Agony, Comes Forth Life: How Childbirth Points Us To The Hope Found in Christ’s Death
A few weeks ago, I was reading through the Gospel of Mark and came upon the narrative of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. As I read the words of Jesus “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will,” I felt […]
9 Biblical Methods for Encouraging One Another
The Need for Encouragement Would you take more encouragement if you could get it? Have you ever felt like you had no more need of encouragement? What would be possible in your life if you lived with a continual diet of encouragement from others? These questions help reveal something we all intuitively know: We need […]
Am I A Good Mom?
I feel like such a failure. Growing up, I became accustomed to objective standards of success defining whether or not I had succeeded. An ‘A+’ signifies a job well done. A winning record in my collegiate sport proves my hard work. Even in marriage, a “Great job!” from my husband means I am accomplishing my […]
On Vice and Virtue
In volume two of his trilogy, Ethics as Theology, Oliver O’Donovan attempts to “follow moral thought from self-awareness to decision through the sequence of virtues from faith to hope.”1 Here, O’Donovan begins with a sort of reorientation related to the ‘Spirit and Self.’ This reorientation is attempting to respond rightly to the divine summons in […]
The Purpose of Theology in Times of Uncertainty
For the first time in centuries, England had no King. What started with saber rattling led to a fractious civil war. After years of conflict during the 1640s, the anti-royalists terminated the war with a celebratory sabrage of the monarchy. Many declared the end of the world had come. For students at Oxford University, this […]
Start With The End: 3 Reasons You Should Try Writing the Conclusion of Your Sermon First
Have you ever listened to a sermon and felt like the preacher did not know how to stop talking? “Just land the plane” is an encouragement you may have heard before. Preaching is hard and ending the sermon with a satisfying conclusion is even harder. You can have the most engaging opening story, great exegesis, […]
The Secret to Loving Your Wife Better: Love Jesus Better
I recently heard somebody say that one of the ways to endure well in ministry is to realize that ministry is not about you, it’s all about Jesus. The same is true of marriage. When you embrace that marriage is about Jesus first, and you and your wife second, one of the secrets of a […]