Fisher of Men

November 1st is All Saints Day! This ceremonial event is a day that we praise all the saints — known & unknown! To honor All Saints Day, please join us in reading or saying this quick devotion:  Dear God, praise you for giving us the glorious example of the Saints. I aspire to meet their company, praising you forever in Heaven. Please help me to follow in their footsteps, and yours, Jesus Christ. Please help me to submit myself to Your call, seeking Your order in all things, just as the Saints did. Please help me to commit myself to Your glory, and to the service of my neighbors. Amen.    What is All Saints Day? All Saints Day, also known as All Hallows’ Day, or Hallowmas, is a Christian celebration in honor of all the saints from Christian history. In Wester...

Have you mastered prayer? I haven’t. I suspect few Christians would report having mastered this great privilege and discipline. In fact, I suspect that most Christians may even feel burdened by their lack of prayer and the seeming ineffectiveness of prayer. We read “pray without ceasing” and it becomes “guilt without ceasing.” If that happens to us, we’ve lost our grip on justification by faith alone apart from any works of our own. If our failures at prayer leave us feeling condemned, we’ve probably began to think of prayer as one of those spiritual duties that keeps God happy with us. To be clear, prayer pleases God (1 Timothy 1:3). Christians ought to pray. But many of us need to learn how to pray as well as fail in prayer in light of the good n...

The Bible says in Ephesians 2:8-9 that people are saved by grace through faith. But what does that really mean? A common answer is that we’re saved from going to hell when we die. But the truth is, salvation is so much more – as is the grace by which we receive it through faith. Salvation is God’s righteousness at work in us when we say yes to His plan. Saying yes is how we demonstrate faith. We get saved by grace through faith, but we also live by grace through faith. Salvation by grace through faith is not a difficult thing, in that it’s not a formula to follow but rather a miracle to believe and receive. What Is Salvation? Salvation is an amazing miracle we watch unfold in our lives. The view of salvation as a ticket to heaven or an escape-hell card ignores life here on earth. The salva...

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 class. Indeed, there appears to be an abundance of data supporting the claim that religious belief in America is—generally speaking — in a state of free fall. In 2009, ABC News, citing a recent study by the American Religious Identity Survey, reported, “In one of the most dramatic shifts, 15 percent of Americans now say they have no religion — a figure that’s almost doubled in 18 years....

  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 cycle that the stakes have never been higher. In one sense, this is usually also true. There is always the sense that there is more at stake this year than last, and, given the way issues unfold, that perception often seems validated by the times. Christians face the responsibility to vote, not only as citizens, but as Christians who seek to honor and follow Christ in all things. But, beyond the v...

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 to look at one another, saying, “I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!” Shocked and dismayed by their lack of biblical knowledge, the pastor called a parish council meeting the next week to discuss the incident. After hearing what happened, an elder of the church stood up and said, “Minister, let’s just get some money out of the repair and maintenance fund and fix the wall and get...

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 little more perilous by saying that because the gap is increasing at such a small annual rate, you hardly notice it. That’s a crude analogy regarding our position as Christians living in societies in which Judeo/Christian values are steadily eroding. For most people change is difficult, agonizing even. But one exception to that general rule might be cultural changes, some of which occur stealthily a...

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 fact, I am writing this chapter at a desk beneath a print of a horse cavalryman firing from his saddle. Of all the great cavalry movies, none holds a dearer place in my heart than John Wayne’s classic, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Portraying Captain Nathan Briddles, a grizzled Civil War veteran who is facing the end of his career, the Duke is a walking cornucopia of manliness. When I was a young ...

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 delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3). A few years ago I would have been suspicious of anyone who mentioned the need to engage in theological controversy in a loving way. I would have done one of those mental clucks of the tongue and inched the person toward the “needs-to-firm-up-conviction” column. As time has passed, though, I’ve participated in a few controversies (many connected to the sovereignty of ...

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 read the book, I’m excited to be part of the conversation. There’s a lot worth talking about, and yes, much to critique. Unfortunately, many are tossing aside this book for its flaws without considering the valid points it brings to an important conversation. Evans spent twelve months following “as many of the Bible’s teachings regarding women as possible in my day-to-day life” (xxi). Sh...

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, not just part. Everything that really matters in life is done with the heart. Without the heart whatever we do is ultimately useless and fruitless. God is grieved when we “draw near” to Him in word while retreating from Him in our hearts (Isaiah 29:13). And because in all things at all times God wants our hearts we are cautioned to keep the heart (Proverbs 4:23) and “direct” ...

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 . . . all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities, in short, all the distracting emotions with which the minds of men are wont to be agitated. Or, as someone else noted, while the rest of the Scripture speaks to us, the Psalms speak for us. The Psalms provide us with a rich vocabulary for speaking to God about our souls. When we long to worship, we have psalms of thanksgivin...