I love marriage deeply, and every day just grows sweeter! However, this joy and contentment in marriage is built on the bedrock of 25 years of deep joy in singleness. After one of my recent posts on marriage and the beauty of marriage, I promised someone that I would soon write about the glories of singleness. So, here goes! Most people who read this are either married, or will someday get married. I don’t know what the precise percentage is of people who will never get married, but what I do know is that everyone is, for some indefinite season of their life, unmarried. If you happen to be unmarried, I have three things you need to be intentionally doing with your life.
Charles Spurgeon
A Weary World Rejoices
From deep in the southern hemisphere, the Zornes would like to wish you and yours a tremendously Merry and joy-filled Christmas! This time of year we hear the jingling bells of the cluttered thinking of our 21st century mind. My concern is that the Church wags its head as it watches our society unfurl a whole gambit of responses and approaches to Christmas. We are first perplexed by the persecution we are facing because the ACLU has once more banned some church’s nativity scene from public property. Then, we are aggravated by the materialism and ridiculousness of our secular society’s attempt to celebrate Christmas (mind you without a mass and without a Christ); this is often accompanied by the politically correct debate over whether it is “insensitive†to wish someone “Merry Christmas†or should we stick to the less offensive “Happy Holidays.†Some try to maintain a Christian mooring during the whole thing, and they have a Christmas play with cute kids, bad theology, classic carols, and hot cocoa afterwards. We are encouraged to remember that Christmas isn’t about the “Ho, ho, ho’s†of some red-suited Santa, but that “Jesus is the reason for the season!â€
And so, we have many Christian’s that are left uncertain of how or if they can, or if they should celebrate Christmas. I have watched as Christians have begun to treat Christmas in much the same way they treat Halloween: hands off, hide in the basement, shy away, and duck your head so as not to be seen. However, I would like to submit that Christian’s ought to be the most robust celebrators of this holy-day with the jolliest of grins creasing our faces and unashamedly giving generously to our families, friends, and neighbors. [Read more…] about A Weary World Rejoices
The Recipe for Spiritual Starvation
Scripture warns us to take heed over 60 times, and each of these instances would provide a profitable meditation for our soul. We are exhorted, when we think we are standing, to take heed lest we fall (1 Cor. 10:12). The nature of man’s soul is such that we can be starving spiritually, and yet think ourselves healthy and robust merely because we do a whole bunch of spiritually oriented things. Modern Christianity is filled with many instances of this standing but actually falling paradox.
The Hardest Job
The hardest job description on the planet is to be a godly man. This is not to discount or belittle the role of godly femininity; however, godly men hold the burden of making the role of a godly woman, in a certain sense, easier. M’Cheyne; memorably wrote, “The Christian is a person who makes it easy for others to believe in God.†While everything God created was signed by His own creative signature, and pointed to Him as the Creator and upholder of all things, the first thing God made in His own image was a man. He then placed upon that man the great burden of responsibility for demonstrating the glory of God’s own image. When Eve was created, she had the blessing of being given an earthly portrait and image of the Heavenly reality.
[Read more…] about The Hardest Job
Exegesis or ExeJesus
Exegesis is a big word that, in evangelical circles gets thrown around like a frisbee on a college campus. Some of you may not even know what exegesis is. Well, to put it simply, it means explaining what a text–or in Christian circles, Scripture–means. There. I just exegeted exegesis. Words, sentences, paragraphs and books carry meaning; and though our postmodern friends would like to deconstruct language to remove all meaning, the fact remains: language carries meaning!
Spurgeon on Idolatry
A few helpful words from Spurgeon on our idolatrous and atheistic hearts. The full sermon can be read here
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