Scripture Zealot

How We Are To Treat Others

For your consideration, a quote by the Puritan Richard Sibbs from The Bruised Reed. Brackets were added by me.

[Martin] Bucer [who influenced the development of Calvinism] was a deep and a moderate divine; upon long experience he resolved to refuse [reject] none [no one] in whom he saw aliquid Christi, something of Christ.

[Even] The best Christians in this state of imperfection are like gold…

An Excellent Article on Depression

This article by Todd Pruitt is good enough to post by itself:

The Hard Apprenticeship of Sorrow

What Providence Isn’t

This is a repost from a little over a year ago. I’ve shortened one quote and added another by John Owen that I recently read.

Providence is that continued exercise of the divine energy whereby the Creator upholds all his creatures, is operative in all that transpires in the world, and directs all things to their appointed end.

–D. Martin Lloyd-Jones

Martin Lloyd-Jones writes about what…

How Does God Guide Us?

This is a repost from 2014: How does the Lord guide his people? Assuring us a Christian life with a beginning, a middle and an end, with the end being the tying up of all loose ends? It is an interesting fact that the apostles, in giving much doctrinal and practical guidance, never once (as far as I can see) gave guidance with respect to Christians’ futures. They are never asked, and never offer…

The Fear of God

Repost from September 19, 2016: The fear of God has been one of my favorite subjects. Unfortunately, it’s very misunderstood. This may be partly because it isn’t mentioned much anymore, and many tend to understand the word fear as fright, and only fright. The fear of God is a very multi-faceted doctrine (teaching). It doesn’t just mean awe. There are some translations like the NET which have…

Recommendation for Your First Puritan Book

Of the Puritan books that I’ve read so far, what I would recommend as the first book for someone who’s interested in starting to read them would be All Things for Good, by Thomas Watson. This is an excellent exposition of Romans 8:28. In addition to being relatively short and easy to read, it’s representative of Puritan thought on God’s sovereignty, providence, and grace as it applies to our…

2 Corinthians 12:8 and Answer to Prayer

I just found that I’ve been blogging for over 10 years, although not very much lately. II thougt I would post some from the archives: 2 Corinthians 2 Corinthians 12:8-9 So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. 8 Three times I pleaded with…

We’re not better than Old Testament Christians

Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. Psalm 73:25 KJV D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones describes how we aren’t any better than Old Testament Christians in his book Faith On Trial, a great exposition of Psalm 73. One often finds a tendency amongst Christian people to depreciate the Old Testament. It is not that they do not believe in it as the Word of God.…

A Prayer On Prayer

May the matter of my prayer be always wise, humble, submissive, obedient, scriptural, Christ-like. Give me unwavering faith that supplications are never in vain, that if I seem not to obtain my petitions I shall have larger, richer answers, surpassing all that I ask or think. Unsought, thou hast given me the greatest gift, the person of thy Son, and in him thou wilt give me all I need. Partial…

I’ve been reading in various places about how difficult prayer is for the vast majority of Christians. The possible irony (and by that I don’t mean humor) is that we can forget to pray about prayer. Whether it’s praying about wanting to pray, or praying more, or our experience of praying becoming more and more like the one below–which is what spurred me on to write this post–as the person who…

New Year’s Puritan Prayer

I’m not much for holidays, but as I was reading/praying this prayer, it sounded like it fit well for this time of year. This is part of the prayer Christian Love, from The Valley of Vision, a book of Puritan prayers. Order all my ways by thy holy Word and make thy commandments the joy of my heart, that by them I may have happy converse with thee. May I grow in thy love and manifest it to mankind.…

As the new year comes along, many people evaluate their Bible reading or want to start reading it, and this blog can’t go without a post on something so important, so here is a modified repost. Scripture doesn’t command us to read it exactly once a year, but there are many who live by a book they haven’t read in its entirety. There was a long period of time when I didn’t read my Bible as much as…

Biggest Book Blog Post Ever–Christian Books Read in 2017

By biggest, I mean on this blog. I read far more books in 2017 than I have in any other year. In case you’d like to see all of what I’ve read, you can find them at Good Reads journey in books for 2017. I never, ever thought I’d be someone who would read a book a week (although many of them were short). I only mention this because I had a very bad reading drought–as far as books outside the…

Reflections on R.C. Sproul “Reflections on his life and legacy continue to be shared online—whether in short tweets or longer obituaries. Below is a collection of some of them.” Better Man Project: 7 Things I’ve Learned From Reading More “I never noticed how much easier it was to sit down and actually do it when I was doing it regularly. Not reading made it harder to read. Reading a few hours…

I admit that the subject line is click bait–somewhat. Have you ever heard the argument that some men are more passionate about football than God by how they act when watching a game? They seem to show more emotion when watching football (or whatever the sport) than they would in church. I’ve always thought this was a ridiculous comparison. Certainly there are many men who profess (or professors,…

We learned that R.C. Sproul died today. I’m not good with eulogies, or even anniversaries or writing about major events, so I’ll just write a little bit about what I’ve learned from him. The first book I read of his is The Truth of the Cross. I just looked up a review of this book I did on the blog and see that it’s the first book I ever reviewed. I will always remember his exposition of portions…