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Job lost his family, his fortune, his reputation, and his health. He works through his grief, through depression, through anger, through arguing with God and his friends who try to explain why he is suffering. Job wants God to answer his complaints. A storm comes...
FAITH AND PRESUMPTION
“When Job’s three friends…heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they could hardly recognize him; they began to...
FAITH AND DEPRESSION
Job lost his fortune, his family, and his health. “After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth.” (Job 3:1) After the shock and the stress of his painful suffering he descends into the depths of despair. He loses hope, and questions his faith in a...
COPING WITH EVIL
How do you cope with evil? The book of Job is the classic treatment of undeserved suffering in the Bible. In chapter one Job is described as blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. Yet a combination of natural disaster and human depravity devastates his...
PREACHING AND THE POWER OF GOD
Before I enter the pulpit to preach I habitually kneel to ask God’s help. I pray that God would drive away all the snares of the enemy, that he would fill me with his Holy Spirit, and that he would open the hearts of the hearers to his truth. I am aware that I am a...
THE PREACHER AS A SPIRITUAL FATHER TO THE FAMILY OF GOD
I have never found it easy to preach to congregations I do not know. I much prefer to be at home in the pulpit with my own congregation, with the people who know me. This section from John Stott explains why I feel that way. “Though you have many countless guides in...
IS OUR WITNESS FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE?
Jesus Christ stands on trial at the bar of world opinion. Secular, godless, non-Christian society, now uncommitted, now hostile, is in the role of judge. The devil accuses him with many ugly lies. The Holy Spirit is the counsel for the defense. He calls us to be...
DOES YOUR PREACHER PREACH FOR A VERDICT?
The message of the apostles in Acts consists of two parts: the first is the proclamation of Jesus as Savior and Lord (1 Cor.1:23;2 Cor.4:5). The second is the appeal to come to him in repentance and faith. True evangelism seeks a response. It expects results. It is...
DOES YOUR PREACHER RIDE HIS HOBBY HORSE?
The Christian preacher is a steward (1 Cor.4:1,2). The steward is the trustee and dispenser of another’s person’s goods. So the preacher is a steward of God’s mysteries, that is, of the self-revelation which God has entrusted to men and which is now preserved in the...
IS YOUR PREACHER A BABBLER?
In 1961 John Stott wrote THE PREACHER’S PORTRAIT which looks at some metaphors in the New Testament which describe the Christian preacher. He begins by saying what the preacher is not. First, the Christian preacher is not a prophet…..this gift is no longer bestowed...
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