From man’s standpoint the most tragic loss suffered in the Fall was the vacating of this inner sanctum by the Spirit of God. At the far-in hidden center of man’s being is a bush fitted to be the dwelling place of the Triune God. There God planned to rest and glow with moral and spiritual fire. Man by his sin forfeited this indescribably wonderful privilege and must now dwell there alone. For so intimately private is the place that no creature can intrude; no one can enter but Christ; and He will enter only by the invitation of faith.
Author: Jojo Agot
Pastor at Victory. Faculty and adviser at Every Nation Leadership Institute (ENLI). MA in Theology and Mission at Every Nation Seminary.
Reading the Old Testament
An interview with Old Testament scholar Alec Motyer:
What are Christians missing by not reading the Old Testament?
Motyer – The death of the Lord Jesus as understood in Old Testament categories. We don’t understand the cross unless we understand the Old Testament category of sacrifice and the shedding of blood. Likewise, the New Testament doesn’t have as strong a stated doctrine of creation. It leans on the Old Testament to reveal the nature of man and the nature of God as creator.
Read the rest of the interview here.
Free Kindle eBooks
Get them while they’re free for a limited time:
Robert H. Gundry’s Commentary on James; Warren Wiersbe’s 10 People Every Christian Should Know; and Burk Parson’s John Calvin: A Heart for Devotion, Doctrine and Doxology.
Tony Reinke, in his book Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books, penned this words about the importance of reading, especially for Christians:
One of the most important events in the history of publishing took place in the book of Exodus when God put pen to paper — or finger to stone — and wrote and published the Ten Commandments (Exodus 31:18). That day on Sinai, God published, he became an author, and literacy was forever changed.
John Piper on the Prosperity Gospel
What is it about Christians that makes them the salt of the earth and the light of the world? It is not wealth. The desire for wealth and the pursuit of wealth tastes and looks just like the world. Desiring to be rich makes us like the world, not different. At the very point where we should taste different, we have the same bland covetousness that the world has. In that case, we don’t offer the world anything different from what it already believes in.
The great tragedy of prosperity preaching is that a person does not have to be spiritually awakened in order to embrace it; one needs only to be greedy. Getting rich in the name of Jesus is not the salt of the earth or the light of the world. In this, the world simply sees a reflection of itself. And if they are “converted” to this, they have not been truly converted but only put a new name on an old life.
Excerpted from John Piper’s Let the Nations be Glad
What Profit Is It?
For what would it profit us to know the whole Bible by heart and the principles of all the philosophers if we live without grace and the love of God?
— Thomas à Kempis
Charles Spurgeon
I believe that every particle of dust that dances in the sunbeam does not move an atom more or less than God wishes — that every particle of spray that dashes against the steamboat has its orbit, as well as the sun in the heavens — that the chaff from the hand of the winnower is steered as the stars in their courses. The creeping of an aphid over the rosebud is as much fixed as the march of the devastating pestilence — the fall of…leaves from a poplar is as fully ordained as the tumbling of an avalanche.
Jojo Agot 