Humility. “Take every word as spoken to yourselves. When the word thunders against sin, think thus: ‘God means my sins;’ when it presseth any duty, ‘God intends me in this.’ Many put off Scripture from themselves, as if it only concerned those who lived in the time when it was written; but if you intend to profit by the word, bring it home to yourselves: a medicine will do no good, unless it be applied.” (From a sermon by Thomas Watson entitled “How We May Read the Scriptures with Most Spiritual Profit”) SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "The only appropriate posture for Bible reading...

Aliterate people lack the desire to read. They can read (and thus are not illiterate ), but they just don’t. Not sure what the statistics are on reading habits after high school but I doubt they are very encouraging in our society. People do many things enthusiastically, but not many people are readers as they get older. The exact opposite happened to me. I read a handful of books to get through high school, and then Christ arrested my heart and I quickly developed a voracious appetite for reading. (Still slowly though.) At least 4/5 homes in America have a Bible, yet a small fraction of...

Just finished reading a fascinating book, Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists by Collin Hansen (Crossway Books, 2008). Hansen is editor-at-large for Christianity Today magazine, and a phenomenal writer and story teller, in my humble opinion. His new book is an expansion and more detailed research project of his September 2006 article in Christianity Today magazine . During that time and afterward he traveled all around the country (for nearly two years) chronicling the diverse movement, from the Passion conferences to Southern Seminary, to Bethlehem Baptist...

" ‘Tis not that I did choose Thee, For Lord, that could not be; This heart would still refuse Three, Hadst Thou not chosen me … My heart owns none before Thee, For Thy rich grace I thirst; This knowing, if I love Thee, Thou must have loved me first." – Josiah Conder, 1836 Found in the front matter of the Jesus Storybook Bible we bought Dutch. Wow, that’s the type of Christ-exalting humility and truth I hope our young son to grasp. We hope to swim with him in the deep end of God’s perfections and grace (even from this young age). "We love becaus e...

Damian and Norman over at Christians in Context posted a guest post by me (Jeff) after I won a great new book in a recent drawing they held. I won The Expository Genius of John Calvin by Steven J. Lawson. Looks to be a great book and from what I’m told highly accessible and full of practical helps. Here’s what they let me say as a promo for their blog/site (read it here or there ): Last week, after arriving home from a discouraging day attempting to tutor disinterested public high school students, I received an email from Damian saying I had won a book from Christians in Context....

"Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit which freely submits to and delights in God’s wise and fatherly disposal of every condition." - Jeremiah Burroughs , The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment (listen to a discussion of the book here , highly recommended) "…I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me." -...

“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. . . . The gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and the most portentous fact about any [person] is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that comprises the Church. Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God.” - A.W. Tozer, Knowledge of the Holy...

By its nature, saving faith loves God and delights in God as the sum of all that could ever satisfy the soul. —John Piper, Future Grace , p. 252. SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Saving faith delights in God", url: "http://www.deTheos.com/2008/04/24/saving-faith-delights-in-god/" });

“The sad fact is that many of us are simply not biblical in the way we use the Bible! Being biblical does not mean merely quoting words from within its pages. Being truly biblical means that my counsel reflects what the entire Bible is about. The Bible is a narrative, a story of redemption, and its chief character is Jesus Christ.” –Paul David Tripp, Instruments In The Redeemer’s Hands, p. 27 (emphasis added) SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "The Bible is a narrative, a story of redemption, and its chief character is Jesus Christ", url: "http://www.deTheos.com/2008/04/04/the-bible-is-a-narrative-a-story-of-redemption-and-its-chief-character-is-jesus-christ/"...

Pride is an issue of where your satisfaction is. —John Piper, Future Grace , p. 91. SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Pride + satisfaction", url: "http://www.deTheos.com/2008/03/30/pride-satisfaction/" });