Most people say they hate Mondays, but I’ll be honest, I love them. Mondays give me an opportunity to start the new week with a blank slate. If last week went poorly, I have the chance to start over and refocus. This is also the reason I love the first day of the month. So, as you can imagine, like most people, I love the turn of the page that signifies a new year. It’s a chance to step back,... Read more
Parents face the great joy and burden of teaching the Gospel to our children. Paul’s command to raise our children up in the discipline and nurture of the Lord should ring in our ears every day. (Ephesians 6:1-4) The problem for many of us is that we simply don’t know how to talk to our children about the Gospel. When we think about teaching the Gospel to our children, we shouldn’t focus on only one method for doing it. When... Read more
In our distracted and fast-paced world, many Christians struggle to gain depth in our spiritual lives. If our devotions happen, they are usually hurried, so we don’t often make the unhurried time that we need to soak in God’s word and linger before God in prayer that we so desperately need. The result is that we often evidence a weak and shallow Christianity. We may be able to fake depth for a while, but eventually, the hard times come and... Read more
Very few books are durable and lasting enough for others to write books about them, but Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age continues to inspire other authors to write guides for others to better understand and apply his work. James K.A. Smith carried this out a few years ago with his book How (Not) to Be Secular. This year, on the tenth anniversary of A Secular Age’s release, The Gospel Coalition published a book of thirteen essays, edited by Collin Hansen,... Read more
Last week the time changed and it would be difficult for me to overstate how difficult this time of the year can be for me. Typically, I leave the house before the sun rises in the morning and do not return until after it sets. Because of the nature of my job, most of my time during the day is spent indoors. During the late fall and winter months, I fight with what Winston Churchill called “the black dog.” Depression... Read more
Sometimes contradictory thoughts and feelings coexist in our hearts and minds. In one sense, I have never been more encouraged about the direction of Christianity in America than I am right now. I see pockets of brothers and sisters who care deeply about the Gospel, who connect their faith to their work, who take Jesus’ command to care for the least of these seriously, and who see the importance of healthy local churches. Unfortunately, some corners of American Christianity concern... Read more
Most of my weekdays follow a similar pattern. I take the scenic route home from work and turn the radio off when I cross the highway five minutes from my house. In the silence, I ask God to help me stay fully invested in my family when I get home. Some days, the front door flies open as I pull into the driveway and some combination of my four children greet me before I can get out of the car.... Read more
This week, my Bible reading plan brought me to the Minor Prophets. I have been a Christian for twenty years and sometimes I still struggle to read the Minor Prophets profitably. I doubt that I am alone in this assessment, but I have also found that putting in the work to understand these twelve little-known books can also pay great dividends by helping us grow in our knowledge of God, increase our grasp of the whole Bible, and live the... Read more
As I mentioned in my post “The Best Quotes from 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You,” I have spent some time this year reading on the effects that technology has on our lives, families, and neighborhoods. This reading project brought me to Andy Crouch’s The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place. In The Tech-Wise Family, Crouch shares commitments that families can make that will help them utilize what is good about technology while preventing... Read more
I don’t remember the last time I went through a day without reading about a call for someone to apologize, get kicked off the team, suspended from school, or fired from their job. We have become a culture addicted to outrage. We hear about something that someone said or did, get angry, become completely engrossed in following the story, and look forward to seeing them get their just desserts. This is not the exclusive property of the right or the... Read more
One Degree to Another
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