christianity

But it wasn’t always that way. Michael Horton explains: Whereas Peter organized the diaconal office so that the apostles could devote themselves to the Word and to prayer, ideal ministers seem increasingly to be managers, therapists, entertainers, and entrepreneurial businesspeople.

But the Bible sees God as the supreme good—not the individual or the family—and that gives us a view of marriage that intimately unites feeling and duty, passion and promise. That is because at the heart of the Biblical idea of marriage is the covenant.

Joshua: Meditate On God’s Word ... As you might expect, Joshua wrestled with self-doubt. He wondered if he was up for the challenge. But both God (Joshua 1:1-6) and the Israelites (Joshua 1:16-18) urged him to be “strong and courageous.” Plus, God challenged Joshua to be a man of His Word (Joshua 1:8). If we spend time studying and meditating on

The expertise that commentaries bring to bear on a particular passage is at one moment their greatest benefit and their greatest danger. The mixed blessing is evident in the two types of pastors who will never make great preachers: The first will not listen to what others say; the other will say only what others say.

A proposition condenses a sermon’s content. Since expository sermons answer What does the text mean? and So what? the propositions that encapsulate a message should also show what is true and what to do. This is accomplished formally by wedding a universal truth to an application. Informal alternatives are too numerous to discuss, but proposition

Rather, I mean that Scripture spends more time focused on the type of people we should be and less on the specifics of where and what we do.

Biblical personal ministry must be just that—biblical. This means that we look at people’s lives from the distinct perspective of a biblical worldview. We are concerned with the glory of God, the sinfulness of man, the fallen condition of the world, the reality of the Devil, the grace of the gospel, and the certainty of eternity. Biblical personal