I first wrote this piece five years ago during a time when life had thrown us a few curves. I offer it again here to those who may be going through a rough patch of their own. Unless you have been walking about with eyes and ears closed all of your life, you are familiar…

The post below is from a journal entry of sorts which I wrote during our first months living in Vietnam in 2013/2014. The context has changed for us, but the truths the piece touches on have not. Are you are sorting through some things you find confusing? Perhaps this will help. “God has a larger…

On May 18, 2016, I was staying at a mission guest house in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. As in many such places, there was a library. This one was like many others in such guesthouses. It showed signs of a collection that simply “happened” over the years. Missionaries on their way home or on their way to somewhere…

Although I have seminary training, I still find it immensely helpful to hear someone exposit God’s word to me each morning. In addition to my wonderful pastor’s sermons on Sunday, I take time each morning to listen to one of my favorite preachers before I delve into God’s word on my own. With the current…

For the past 10 years, our most widely used publication has been the little catechism, Simple Truths. As of this writing, the book has been translated into 37 languages and more than 400,000 are in print distribution in over 30 countries. Few evangelicals use a catechism today. But some Christian leaders are hoping to fuel a…

This week I’m answering something of a practical nature: “What are your best daily practices?” I’m not sure if this question refers to spiritual disciplines, but I’m going to take it broadly. Here are 7 things I’ve picked up over the years. I find them almost universally in people I admire, Christian and non: 1….

Here are two recent direct quotes I’ve read from otherwise wonderful, gospel-centered, reformed resources:  “It doesn’t make any sense to get mad at somebody who is lost. It doesn’t make any sense to make it a matter of personal offense against you. It doesn’t make any sense to condemn a lost person with words or…

In the last post, I shared a few thoughts on prepositions as words to hang a prayer life on. Turns out, asking three questions is working well for me in keeping my prayer life on track (albeit, still not all I wish it were). “What do I want God to do THROUGH me?” What do I…

It’s been a long time, but somewhere in those first few years of my education, I came across – prepositions. Prepositions, I was told, are the “hardware” of a language. Like fasteners and hinges and door knobs, sentences wouldn’t hang together without them. Good literature just doesn’t happen without prepositions. As a student, they were…

I have written in other places [here] about the challenges of writing theology in simple English. Here is an example that will appear soon on the A Simple Word website (www.asimpleword.org). Take a look. The article uses limited grammatical structures and vocabulary options are limited to a word list of only 1600 words.   Q.10…