The great poet David once looked to the night skies and poured out his heart in praise to God: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge” (Psalm 19:1-2).
Notice all the ways that creation is communicating: The heavens are declaring, the sky is proclaiming, the day is speaking, the night is revealing. And then notice the content of this communication: The heavens are declaring God’s glory, the skies are proclaiming the fact that they were created by him, the day and night are revealing the knowledge of his existence.
It’s for this reason that Sam Storms once said that each human being is under a mandate to become an amateur astronomer. Every Christian is to look to the heavens to see what God has created and to learn the lessons he means for us to learn from them. And just as we must look up to the skies, we must also look down to the microscopic world, out to all the plants and animals, and even inward to the human body and soul. In all of it, we see God’s handiwork. If we have ears to hear and eyes to see, we will learn beyond any dispute that God is communicating. He is communicating that he exists and that he is supremely powerful—that he is worthy of our honor and worship.

Grace and peace to you.

(Yesterday on the blog: Our Understanding of Earth and Our Assumptions of Heaven)
Okay, So it’s a Secular Age, But Jesus is Still Working
“Jesus is still working. Yes we call it a secular age, and it truly is, but perhaps it feels like there’s the stirrings of God doing something again in the midst of all of this turmoil and angst. It’s an anxious age, and men’s’ and women’s’ hearts may well fail them as war ramps up again, as seismic changes lurch us from left to right and from Left to Right. Who are we to discount revival?”
Died: Brother Andrew, Who Smuggled Bibles into Communist Countries
“Anne van der Bijl, a Dutch evangelical known to Christians worldwide as Brother Andrew, the man who smuggled Bibles into closed Communist countries, has died at the age of 94.”
How Much Theological Education Do You Need?
“How much theological education do you need? It depends, obviously.” This is a useful illustration to show how different people may need different amounts of theological education.
I Don’t Know
“Ideally, as the pastor, you should be one of the better-educated people in your church. You have likely gone to college and then studied for three or four years to earn your MDiv. During that time you’ve probably read thousands upon thousands of pages of theological literature. For your sermon preparation you ideally read a great deal each week, and that’s not counting your leisure reading.” Yet you can’t know everything and shouldn’t act like it.
What does it mean that God is able to keep us from stumbling? (Video)
Here’s a good answer to a good question: What does it mean in the book of Jude when it says that God is able to keep us from stumbling?
Introducing Ligonier Guides: Accessible Theology for Everyday Life
Ligonier Ministries has just announced the launch of “Ligonier guides.” “These guides, covering topics such as theology, worldview and culture, biblical studies, Christian living, and church history, provide overviews and explanations from Ligonier’s topic index, along with quotes and links to additional topics and resources.”
Flashback: Set An Example: Don’t Surrender To Low Expectations
The primary way to serve your church is to pursue godliness, to grow in wisdom and knowledge, in character and obedience. Set an example. Be an example. Make your life a beautiful work of art.

It’s not change, then you get Christ; it’s Christ, then you get change. It’s not try to change and then God will accept you; it’s accept Christ and he’ll change you. —David Murray

This week the blog is sponsored by Zondervan Reflective. This is an excerpt from Thaddeus Williams’ latest book on living out a radically God-centered systematic theology entitled Revering God: How to Marvel at Your Maker (Zondervan Reflective, 2024), featuring stories of Christian thinkers like Michael Horton, Fred Sanders, Joni Eareckson-Tada, John Perkins, Vishal Mangalwadi, and others on how God’s attributes have impacted their personal lives.
There are many so-called “evidential” arguments for God’s existence. The universe’s beginning points to its Beginner. Design in the universe points to its Designer. Moral laws point to the Moral Law-giver, and so on. Such arguments compute well with how certain minds are wired, particularly the more philosophic brainiac types. But there is another style of case for Christianity, one that I believe touches those without patches on their blazer elbows, pipes in their teeth, or five-syllable words on their tongues. There are arguments, if they can even be called that, which address themselves to all of us, every human and every dimension of our humanness. They address us not as cerebrums on sticks but as the artists, lovers, dreamers, hypocrites, heroes, loners, romantics, dullards, worshipers, adventurers, failures, jokesters, and weirdos that we are.
Every day you are bombarded with more arguments for God’s existence than your five senses can possibly intake or appreciate.Thaddeus WilliamsShare
They are something less like arguments and more like invitations, signposts, pointers, clues, keys that open doors to wider vistas of human experience, lighthouse beacons that guide us out of churning black ocean chaos to safer shores. They are what a pastor hailed as “America’s most important and original philosophical theologian” understood so well. Describing the searching soul, Jonathan Edwards says,
[I]t sees that till now it has been pursuing shadows, but that it now has found the substance; that before it had been seeking happiness in the stream, but that now it has found the ocean…. The enjoyment of [God] is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams. But God is the ocean.
Dusk, magnolia flowers, ground-rule doubles, dandelion fluff, thunder, baptisms, laughter-induced side cramps, the sudden volume spike of rain from a pitter patter to a torrent, the conversation with a homeless man, the wrestling match with a toddler, the cool pillowcase, the Lord’s table, and on we could go. Try to wipe God from the horizon and, in the final analysis, this stream of wonders runs dry. They are reduced to nothing but “illusions fobbed on us by our genes,” in the words of atheist Michael Ruse.
I have some books on my shelf that list five arguments for God. Others document a dozen. Peter Kreeft lists twenty. One youtuber boasts 150 arguments for God in a four-hour video. What is the true number? Something more like how many drops are in the Pacific, or how many subatomic particles exist. Every day you are bombarded with more arguments for God’s existence than your five senses can possibly intake or appreciate. Lord, give us eyes to see, noses to smell, buds to taste, fingertips to touch, ears to hear, and souls to sense the moment by moment grand case for You. Help us follow shadows to the Substance, streams to the sea, sunbeams to the Sun. Amen.