HUNGER FOR GOD’S WORD IN POLAND An article in the Bible Society Record (Feb., 1983) features a large picture of a long line of people, three and four wide, stretching out of sight down the block, waiting to receive Bibles at the Bible House in Warsaw. According to the article in 1982 the Bible […]
THE PROBLEM ISN’T SCIENCE BUT UNBELIEF Professor J. R. Vande Fliert, who teaches Geology at the Free University in Amsterdam, had been speaking to a group of Christian Reformed ministers in support of the “new” Reformed theology in The Netherlands. Citing the old story of Galileo’s controversy with the Roman Catholic Church he urged that […]
Having been brought up always to pray to God with Thee’s and Thou’s, and being over thirty so I cannot easily change, I intend to continue to use Thee’s and Thou’s in my prayers. There is something beautiful in these forms of address. They are a constant reminder that God is the Creator and we […]
Of the monarch who, having perpetrated a twofold enormous crime, prayed: “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness; according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit […]
But when he was come to the River where there was no Bridge, there again he was in a heavy case; now, now be said be should be drowned for ever, and so never see that Face with Comfort, that he had come so many miles to behold. And here also I took notice of […]
Heavenly Father, eternal and merciful God, we acknowledge and confess before Thy divine majesty that we are poor miserable sinners. We were conceived and born in utter wickedness and corruption and are prone to all manner of evil and incapable by nature of doing any good. By our sinful life we transgress Thy holy commandments without ceasing, and thereby […]
In the last issue, I challenged the eldership to prayer: specific, diligent and faithfully practiced prayer. In this one, I direct that same challenge to the deacons in the church. A couple of introductory comments are in order. With the elders. a warning needed to be sounded about the danger of forgetting that their work is […]
Prayer is the greatest subject of spirituality in the Bible. It deals with our communication with God and how God and His plan, purpose, power and priority can be known in our lives and circumstances. But where did the idea of prayer come from? And how does the origin of prayer affect the way we […]
Over recent years, this column has sounded a call for pastoral care by elders (especially). For that period of time, I have argued that many Reformed churches are losing touch with the divine pattern for the care of Christ’s church precisely because we have allowed ourselves to think of the eldership as an administrative board […]
A few weeks ago I received an e-mail asking for prayer. David Allen, a young missionary to Malaysia, had contracted a rare (possibly unknown) disease that was killing him. He couldn’t keep anything down and his body was literally wasting away. The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta said it would be two months before […]