Dear pastor, you may think, “I don’t have what it takes. I’m just an ordinary man.” Well, you are right. In and of yourself, you don’t have what it takes. You have WHOM it takes–and your Savior is no ordinary man! Let us be concerned about the true care of souls. Let us labor in the Lord’s vineyard, pastor in his pasture with the words of Paul ever before us, “For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me” (Col 1:29).
As Calvin so helpfully observed, our faith is "slight and feeble." It needs to be propped up on every side. If we neglect the means that God has given for this very thing, we will be tempted to find other means, and they will always be far less satisfying.
Many of us have joyfully welcomed the renaissance of Christ-centered preaching that churches in North America have undergone in recent decades. For some it has been an old practice to saturate their ministry with the person and work of the Savior. For others it is a relatively new thing to earnestly seek to proclaim their Savior in a more pervasive way in thier preaching. Praise God! If Christ is being proclaimed, the church has done well. Yet there is a fine line between being Christocentric (preaching the Scriptures in a Christ-centered way) and being Christomonic (preaching Christ to the exclusion of the Father and the Spirit).
There has been quite a lot of discussion in recent years about evangelical scholarship in the Old Testament and the validity of the doctrine of Scriptural inerrancy. As I watch from my perch in an evangelical and Reformed seminary, I have a few preliminary thoughts on some of the issues that seem to keep coming up.
Marriage can be painful--and Christian marriage is no exception. When two sinners are in a relationship as intimate as marriage, there is bound to be some measure of hurt. Our flesh will balk at the demands of self-sacrifice, service, and humility affecting one another for ill. There will be sins committed, wounds aggravated, and injuries inflicted. The extent will vary with each relationship. Some will be more challenging than others, but every Christian marriage experiences some pain.
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