Craig T. Owens

Here’s a quote from John Piper that got me thinking: “God loves His people. He loves for them to get good food, rich food. He knows how to put His shepherds in the vice of affliction and squeeze out of us authentic, prayer-soaked, desperation-flavored insight—the unsearchable riches of Christ for the joy of His people.” Pastor, God wants to use you to shepherd the flock He’s placed under your care. So trust Him to give you what you need. And check out my book When Sheep Bite to help you along through this journey.

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“Do more than go to church; be the church. Find a place to serve in the promises of your pastor and fight for that vision like it was your own. Do more than give what’s left; give what’s right. Do more than show up as a consumer; show up as a partner, knowing the day will come when you will need partnership to see your dream come to pass. If your promise is concerning business, then be the best employee of the people for whom you work. If your promise will need generous people involved to make it happen, then be generous in the promises of others. If your promise is about your family, be a blessing to the families of those who are around you. Make their dreams come to pass and you will plant the seeds that will, in time, become the fruit of your God-given why.” —Jim Wiegand, in Why is Greater Than What 

“You have noticed, I expect, that Christ Himself sometimes describes the Christian way as very hard, sometimes as very easy. He says, ‘Take up your Cross’—in other words, it is like going to be beaten to death in a concentration camp. Next minute he says, ‘My yoke is easy and my burden light.’ He means both.” —C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity 

T.M. Moore is beginning a new series of posts on the importance of the spiritual life for the Christian. He writes, “We may thus define the spiritual life in terms of Christ exalted as our focus, Christ indwelling as our sustaining power, Christ at work in and through us as the outcome of our discipleship, and Christ returning as the hope which sustains us through the tests we encounter every day. True spiritual life, in other words, is all about Jesus Christ.”

“The truths of eternity have an infinite power. They are often powerless because we do not give them time to reveal themselves. Taking time to be alone with God is the only remedy. … The Word that we get from the mouth of God brings the power to know it and to do it. Let us learn this lesson: personal fellowship with God alone in secret can make the Word alive and powerful.” —Andrew Murray 

Dr. Thaddeus Williams unpacks what Charles Darwin meant when he wrote to a friend, “The horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.” Check out Dr. Williams’ post, which he opens with, “If our minds came from a capital “M” Mind—God—gifted to us as truth-knowing mechanisms, we have a reason to reason. But if our minds came from a non-mind, a literally dumb process of random mutations and natural selection, then our minds are not fundamentally truth-knowing mechanisms, but mere survival mechanisms.”

“Our first birth brought us into sin and sorrow, but our second birth brings us into purity and joy. We were born to die; now are we born never to die, ‘begotten again’ unto a life that shall remain in us for evermore, a life which shall even penetrate these mortal bodies, and make them immortal, ‘by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.’” —Charles Spurgeon, commenting on 1 Peter 1:3-4