Free Republic

It was a joy to finally visit your church a couple of Sundays ago, and to worship with the believers there. You know IÂ’ve been looking forward to it for a long time. Just as you promised, the pastor is an excellent communicator and a man who loves GodÂ’s Word. His sermon was deeply challenging and led to some great conversations with my children. Now, you asked me why it looked like I wasnÂ’t singing. I know that was probably a little awkward, so thought IÂ’d send along a brief explanation. Primarily, itÂ’s becauseÂ…Â…I was not familiar with the...

Just up the road from our house is a plaza or strip mall, a collection of 20 or 30 stores. This plaza has two large wings and right in the joint between the two wings is what must be the worst retail space in the city. At least, those of us who live here know that it is the worst retail space in the city. Aileen and I have been in this area for the past 15 years and in that time we have seen business after business try to make a go of it there, and not one of...

The prosperity gospel has not produced a new generation of great Christian hymns. Neither have Positive Thinking or Progressive Christianity. There is a reason we would not expect them to. The fact is, the deepest songs come from the deepest truth. The most faithful songs come from the most faithful expressions of the Christian faith. The richest songs come from the richest understanding of who God is and what God has done. As Christians we are told to sing from the gospel, for one another, to the Lord—a ten-word summary of Colossians 3:16 which says, “Let the word of Christ...

A short time ago I learned of a church building in our neighborhood that was for sale. For years now Grace Fellowship Church has been looking for a building of our own, so we thought we should go and give it a look. This had once been a thriving congregation. Faithful Christians had given sacrificially to construct that building. They had consecrated it to the Lord and had worshipped there for many years. Yet now that building was deserted, decaying, and up for sale. What happened? How did that church go from thriving to dying? How did it slide from...

There is much debate and much concern today about redefining marriage. Where it hasn’t happened already, it seems very nearly inevitable that the definition will soon be expanded to include homosexual unions. And once marriage has been redefined away from the union of one man to one woman, it seems almost impossible not to see it also expand to include polygamous relationships. Already books and media and reality television are attempting to convince us of the goodness, normalcy and health of polygamy; this is just the advance guard the portends a coming all-out attack. Of course this is not the...

One of these is unlike the others: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, niceness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. According to Paul’s letter to the church at Galatia, all but one of these is what he refers to as the fruit of the Spirit, which is to say, visible evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit in the life of a Christian. If you are a Christian, your life will necessarily be marked by this kind of character. But which one is foreign to the list? Niceness. Humans seem to be naturally drawn to niceness. Niceness is comfortable. To be nice...