Christian Living

In my adult years, I have enjoyed whitewater rafting. Several years ago, my wife and I decided to do the Gauley River. Every fall, the Somerville Dam is released and the River turns into a world class white water adventure! If my recollection serves me, when water is released from the dam, eight...

When I was a child there were times when my mother, exasperated by my behavior, would ask: “Who do you think you are!?” My unruly and arrogant conduct revealed that I was not thinking rightly about myself. Understanding salvation from sin is like this. Rightly understanding salvation means rightly...

Some Christians resist belief in the doctrine of irresistible grace. These brothers and sisters find the teaching that grace conquers all pushback repugnant. How could an all-loving God run roughshod over the freedom of his human creation? This is a misunderstanding of the doctrine for sure. We...

How many people do you know who wear glasses? Perhaps you yourself wear them. Glasses are a wonderful help for people who are near or far sighted. When the lens of our eye fails to bring the image into focus on our retina, our vision is blurred or impaired. Glasses correct the focal distance to our...

John 17 contains the wonderful prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ in which he bears his soul to the Father shortly before his death on the cross for elect sinners-soon-to-be-saints. In this prayer Jesus is asking that his manifest glory, which he had from before the world was created, would be his...

Exuberant over an experience, an oh-so-sweet manifestation of divine providence, you delightedly seek to give God praise in telling your story. “It was such a ‘God thing’,” you proclaim. As you see it, God wove together an otherwise inexplicable combination of events to deliver a wonderful—even...

Are the Doctrines of Grace practical? Let me be more specific, more practical in my question. Is the doctrine of unconditional election a user-friendly doctrine? Let me put it another way, will this doctrine help form piety, deepen love, and strengthen my faith? Maybe you would respond, "Couldn't...

As a A.C.B.C. certified counselor and ordained pastor, I have the privilege of helping at the Biblical Counseling Institute associated with the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, PA. [1] I value an educated pastorate and stress the importance of systematic theology and...

The doctrine of election should be a most humbling doctrine. It means that God chooses for salvation before the foundations of the world a people unto Himself to receive that salvation. The basis for election is “unconditional”. In other words, God does not look ahead and take into account what...

The word depravity implies the absence of something that used to be abundant. In considering the doctrine of man’s total depravity it’s good to see first that man, Adam, was totally good, righteous, and upright. This is what Solomon taught when he declared that “God made man upright” (Ecclesiastes...