Author: S&P

Ever since Karl Marx penned his denunciatory statement on religion in 1843 (that religion is the “opiate of the masses”), secularists, social progressives, and other opponents of religion have worked to convince us that religious faith is an outdated relic of the past whose inexplicable (in their view) existence remains only by means of a stubborn, unenlightened, and uneducated lower c...

  Americans are heading for the voting precincts today as the 2012 election is at hand. Already, millions of our fellow citizens have voted through early voting options. Millions more are soon to be headed to polling places across the land. In any event, millions of citizens will participate in the first duty of freedom — the freedom to vote. There is so much at stake. We hear every election ...

I read a story recently about a church who had just received a new young pastor. Intent on visiting every Sunday School class, the eager young man began his first Sunday on the job by visiting a boys’ class.  While meeting with them, the young pastor asked the boys, “Would you tell me please, who knocked down the wall of Jericho?” The boys immediately fell silent and began t...

Imagine that your feet are straddling a crack that is increasing at the rate of an eighth of an inch a month. By month 6 it’s only a small gap, less than an inch.  But after 16 years you’re looking at 2 feet and after 40 years the gap will have widened to 5 feet. It won’t be long before you will either fall into the gap or be forced to decide which side to stand on. Now let’s make things a li...

I come from a cavalry family, as in horse soldiers. My great-grandfather was a cavalry scout in the frontier West. My grandfather commanded the Army’s last horse cavalry regiment (in 1938, believe it or not). At that point, our family switched from horses to tanks, and both my father and I served as tank officers. Suffice it to say that I possess a fair amount of cavalry paraphernalia. In fa...

There is no conflict between loving truth and loving people. You really can love people as you obey Titus 1:9, which says an elder should “hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict.” You can even love people as you follow Jude’s appeal that you “contend for the faith that was once for all delive...

A review of A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Siting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband “Master.” When I was tasked with reviewing Rachel Held Evans’ new book, I was admittedly nervous. A lot of heated discussion is circling around AYear of Biblical Womanhood, and I was hesitant to step into the fray. However, having now re...

In the simplest of terms, what God wants from you is your heart. Some might hear that and think it’s the basis for a kind of sentimental religion. Others hear it and conclude that if God wants our hearts He is asking for an easy thing. But God asking for our heart, above mere behavior and agreement, is the greatest demand He can make. Asking for a man’s heart is asking for all of the man, no...

We all sometimes struggle to find words to express our feelings. That’s why God gave us the Psalms. An Anatomy of All the Parts of the Soul The 16th century reformer, John Calvin, called Psalms “the Anatomy of all the parts of the Soul” and observed that There is not an emotion of which any one can be conscious that is not here represented as in a mirror. Or rather, the Holy Spirit has here drawn ...

People believe all kinds of things about what happens when we die. One is that people become angels. Another is that we become flowers in God’s garden. But are these things true? Some may genuinely believe these things. Others may just be holding onto a nice idea while dealing with their grief. Let’s dig into the subject about angels. Do we become angels when we die or not? How do we know? Where w...

Let me warn you right up front — my goal is to change the way you think about leadership. I do not aim merely to add one more voice to the conversation about leadership, I want to fundamentally change the way leadership is understood and practiced. For the better part of the last three decades, leadership has been a major cultural preoccupation and a professional obsession. Walk into an airport bo...