The amateur blog of an aspiring Christian writer and entrepreneur.
A Bible study without these is like a hospital without surgery or medicine, lots of talk, no healing. You may study the Bible for hours, but without the church, you are not being formed into the image of Christ as He intended.
Now at 35, ten years later, I find myself looking back with a deep gratitude of a man who has seen storms, felt failures, tasted joy, and watched promises unfold – not always quickly, not always painlessly, but always faithfully.
God uses suffering to teach his children to trust him. Period. No matter what we do to avoid it, dread it, or pray it away, in the school of Christ, suffering is not an interruption of the curriculum. It is the curriculum. It is not an elective that you can avoid as long as you store up enough credits on the remaining subjects.
Here’s the good news – MacArthur did not labor in vain. The Holy Spirit, who raised up MacArthur, Sproul, and other stalwarts of the faith, delights to do it again. God doesn’t run out of faithful servants.
Friendships fracture over footnotes. Fellowship dissolves over phrases. And suddenly, someone you shared communion with last month is now an “apostate” because they prefer a different Bible translation or dared to think that just maybe there is no such thing as a pre-tribulation rapture.
This is what covenant membership reflects. It is the visible, joyful, weighty declaration that we belong—to Christ, to one another, to the household of faith. It is a commitment not just to attend, but to invest. Not just to visit, but to build. Not just to exist, but to flourish as a people bound together by grace.
It’s always someone else’s fault. The timetable is to blame. The alarm clock conspired against you. Life’s circumstances teamed up to derail your spiritual growth. But let’s be honest—most of the time, it’s not external factors holding you back. It’s you.
Whether you’ve made a formal list of resolutions or not, as a Christian, you cannot faithfully enter into a new year without being resolved to be and to do certain things.
When you lose the elections in a historical landslide where the overwhelming majority vote one way, the reasons should be obvious.
It was late, dark, and quiet—the kind of quiet that made up every night before. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just a regular night. I had prayed, locked the doors, and turned off the lights. The room was sealed like a tomb (as it always was), and I lay down, ready for the sweet mercy of sleep. But what came that night was something else entirely.