Category Archives: Church History

Excuses Are Like…

Posted on April 15, 2012 | Leave a comment

After converting  to Christianity, I made the decision that I would never miss a Sunday worship service unless I was deathly ill. My thinking was that being committed to hearing the Word preached every Sunday would keep me from falling away into spiritual mediocrity or, worse yet, open rebellion. This has proven true over the last 15 years. I have suffered some deep valleys over those years. It is easy to become cold to the things of God. However, good sermons have often been the means which God used to defrost an icy heart.

My track record isn’t perfect. I’ve missed a service roughly twelve times. There are legitimate reasons to skip services. Kids get sick. Sometimes Sunday travel is require due to circumstances. Stuff happens. The main thing is that you don’t develop a habit of forgoing worshiping publicly with the  local church.  Charles Spurgeon rightly observed that this is all too common: Continue reading →

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Posted in Church History, Local Church

Drawing Near to God on His Terms

Posted on July 21, 2011 | Leave a comment

People think they can draw near to God on their own terms. They think a walk in the woods or an Arby’s breakfast bible study can be their primary source of spiritual nourishment. They are wrong. God has designed and determined the means in which we will draw near to him. We cannot change it. We cannot improve upon it. So, what is the way we draw near to the Father? John Calvin answers:

Shut up as we are in the prison house of our flesh, we have not yet attained angelic rank. God, therefore, in his wonderful providence accommodating himself to our capacity, has prescribed a way for us, though still far off, to draw near to him. (And that way is the) church, into whose bosom God is pleased to gather his sons, not only that they may be nourished by her help and ministry as long as they are infants and children, but also that they may be guided by her motherly care until they mature and at last reach the goal of faith. “For what God has joined together, it is not lawful to put asunder,”  so that, for those to whom He is Father the church may also be Mother. (Institutes, IV.1.1, “The Necessity of the Church.”)

You cannot draw near to God outside of the church. She is our mother and through her ministry we are brought near to the Father.

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Posted in Authority, Church History, Local Church

Iain Murray on The New Pastorate

Posted on July 12, 2011 | Leave a comment

A while back I was doing some research on Iain Murray and in the process stumbled across a post from a blog called, “Pastor and People.” The blog’s author, Pastor Dustin Benge, was writing about a correspondence he had with Mr. Murray. Benge asked Mr. Murray for some wisdom on taking up a new pastorate. Murray wrote back that, “It is the best work in the world, but not only the hardest – it is quite beyond our own resources…Distrust of self and childlike trust in Him are our lifelong needs.” Benge kindly summarized several other points of Mr. Murray’s wisdom on this matter… Continue reading →

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Posted in Church History, Pastoring, Reformed Theology