The Quaker pastor approached William Hone (1780-1842), the skeptic, and asked him if he had ever “attentively” read the New Testament. Hone’s answer, and the subsequent conversation recorded by the pastor’s son, uncovered a problem rampant in nineteenth-century England and today, hypocrisy:

  1 This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: 2 “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” 3 So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 4 But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. 5 Then the word of the LORD came to me: 6 “O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?” […]

Pastor John Scripture Reference: Hebrews 1:5-14

“Ahhh…” I sighed in anticipation, sinking down into the overstuffed reading chair in a tucked away corner of Barnes and Noble. Coffee in one hand, book in the other, I was mere seconds away from two hours of pure book store bliss. Then it happened.

  1 When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house, 2 and if she goes and becomes another man’s wife, 3 and the latter man hates her and writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, or if the latter man dies, who […]

   St. Alban had voluntarily declared himself a Christian to the Roman persecutors of the faith and was undaunted by the princely threats. Instead he put on the armor of spiritual warfare, publicly declaring that he would disobey any command to sacrifice to the Roman gods: “I am a Christian, and carry out Christian rites . . . and I worship and adore the living and true God, who created all things.”1 In these words, England’s earliest great historian, a Northumbrian monk called the Venerable Bede, recorded the courageous witness of Britain’s first known Christian martyr, one of the many […]

Pastor John Scripture Reference: Hebrews 1:1-4

  Among the most celebrated preachers of the nineteenth century, Charles Spurgeon was famous for his powerful sermons at London’s Metropolitan Tabernacle, which won droves to faith in Christ. But in the following words from a lecture to young ministers, he notes that sermons alone do not determine the effectiveness of a pastor’s ministry. Indeed, gracious deportment, pleasant manners, and warm hospitality outside the pulpit help buttress his proclamation and lend credibility to the gospel.

by Cindy B. My husband has been walking in freedom from his pornography addiction for going on 10 years. (C’mon now. That’s deserves a shout out.)

27 You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. Matthew 5:27-29 (ESV)