Tried With Fire: Direction

Tried With Fire: Direction

We face a kind of paradox in doing the Lord’s work. On the one hand, God often places us in positions that require us to overcome obstacles. As we depend upon Him, these circumstances require determination, persistence, and courage if we are to succeed. In fact,...
Tried With Fire: Direction

Tried With Fire: Chastening

We must beware of mixing the metaphors that God uses to teach us about salvation. For example, the work of salvation can be viewed under the metaphor of a courtroom in which the guilty sinner stands before God as judge. In this metaphor, God charges the believing...
Tried With Fire: Direction

Give to the Max Day 2019

In 1763 Britain emerged from the Seven Years’ War as the world’s leading power. Ten years later George Macartney wrote of British rule as a “vast empire on which the sun never sets, and whose bounds nature has not yet ascertained.” For more...
Tried With Fire: Direction

Sword Thrusts or Honey?

Words are powerful things. Proverbs 18:21 reminds us that death and life are in the power of the tongue. Our words can produce negative effects (“rash words are like sword thrusts” – Prov 12:18) and positive ones (“gracious words are like a...
Tried With Fire: Direction

On Using Labels

In the movie classic “The Princess Bride,” Vizzini repeats the word “inconceivable!” again and again as the masked pursuer of him and his ruffians keeps gaining ground. Finally one of his cohorts, Inigo Montoya, proclaims, “You keep using...
Tried With Fire: Direction

Toward a Softer, Gentler Science

My previous essay briefly introduced the limits of scientific knowledge and the rise of Scientism, the modernistic belief that science is superior to other disciplines. Unlike knowledge that deals with intangibles such as religion and philosophy, hard science, we are...