The Sabbath is Vital to the Christian Religion
Learning to delight in the Sabbath and to see more clearly how it is the straight teaching of Scripture.
Sabbath-keeping does not come naturally to me. It does not fit with my sensibilities; I much prefer believing that I may refresh myself in any way I please on the Lord’s Day. But as the Spirit has sanctified me to put my Sabbath-breaking to death, I am learning to delight more and more in it.... Continue Reading
Spurgeon’s Greatest Evangelist
Mrs. Lavinia Strickland Bartlett (1806-1875)
She was a woman in constant demand. Pastors from the US praised her for her importance to Spurgeon’s church. Women from across the world wrote to her for advice in their own endeavours. Even in semi-retirement, men begged her to speak to women at their churches. The streets of London were at a standstill.... Continue Reading
Russian Pastor, Maxim Fokin, Exiled in Turkey
Maxim has connected with a group of Russian speaking people in Izmir, Turkey who were looking for a pastor for a church they were planting.
After receiving this telephone call, Maxim and his family made the very difficult decision to remain as exiles in Turkey rather than to return home. Maxim and his son are opposed to the present war Russia is waging. This decision has been painful to his soul because he had labored for years in starting a... Continue Reading
Sybil Mosely Bingham and the Challenges of Missionary Life in Hawaii
Sybil set up the first missionary school in Hawaii – initially in the twenty-feet-square home provided by the government to the thirteen missionaries and their babies.
The Binghams stayed in Hawaii for twenty years and founded the Kawaiahaʻo Church. They also helped to develop a written Hawaiian alphabet. Besides the school, Sybil also started a weekly prayer meeting, attended by more than a thousand Hawaiian women. Sybil’s admission to the mission field reminds me of a scene of a movie.... Continue Reading
When God’s Sovereign Will Seems Inscrutable: Elisabeth Elliot
Sometimes God’s sovereign will seems inscrutable, especially when it involves His allowing overwhelming trial or crushing disappointment.
Elisabeth reached a number of solid conclusions about such incomprehensible developments: (1) Sometimes God’s sovereign will is inscrutable and defies easy explanation. Our “why?” questions may not be satisfactorily answered for a very long time, or perhaps not ever in this life, although they doubtless will be in eternity. (2) Such situations provide Christians with... Continue Reading
Who Was John Lafayette Girardeau?
He preached with the goal of raising the entire congregation to higher levels of knowledge and Christian devotion.
Next to Girardeau’s exemplary ministry to enslaved men and women, perhaps his most enduring legacy was his literary contribution to the office of deacon. Writing almost two hundred pages for The Southern Presbyterian Review, he established the office as one of spiritual necessity in the church and crafted the wording for American Presbyterianism’s ecclesiology on... Continue Reading
A Reminder Etched in Glass Is Etched On My Heart
“You are our letter, written in our hearts, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”
God enriched my life not only with friends like Dorie Howell, but with friends of so many different nationalities and diverse races. My life has been etched time and again with such diversity. But the most important etching in my life and on my heart is that of my most beloved Lord and Savior, Jesus... Continue Reading
Review: ‘Powerful Leaders?: When Church Leadership Goes Wrong and How to Prevent It’
Leaders are servants fundamentally, under-shepherds to bring the flock to feed on God.
The heart of the book describes the “slippery slope” from the accountability, transparency, plurality and embodiment that characterizes legitimate leadership to the murky world of dysfunctional, illegitimate leadership. Honeysett describes the slide as the replacement of transparency with secrecy and concealment, the cutting off of any meaningful collegiality, leading to leadership isolation, power imbalances from... Continue Reading
Strange Lyre: Early Beginnings of Pentecostal Worship
The seedbed from which Pentecostalism grew in the 1900s was actually a considerable departure from prior worship reformers such as Luther, Wesley and Watts.
Pentecostalism grew out of the Holiness movement, and thus drank deeply from the populist movements in Methodism and Baptist and African-American circles. Charles Fox Parham (1873–1929), is usually credited with the beginnings of the movement. He was born in Muscatine, IA, and claimed a revelation of light at age 13. Parham associated with Methodism, but... Continue Reading
Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntington
The more Selina let go of her earthly ties (only her daughter Elizabeth outlived her), the more she poured her life in the spreading of the gospel.
As the Church of England tightened its rules in preventing dissenters from obtaining a license to preach, she found a loophole in the legislation by calling preachers to minister in her private chapels, which was allowed. She stretched however the rule by enlarging her chapels and inviting thousands to attend the services. By the end... Continue Reading