Sunday Devotional: Every Road and Every Sea
Every true Christian can attest to the unique value of the Bible. Some do this by describing the attributes of the Bible, and they use doctrinal words like “inspiration,” “canonicity,” “inerrancy,” “infallibility,” and “sufficiency.” Each of these is useful in describing something that is true about God’s Word.
But there is another way to describe the Bible, and that is to describe the effects it has on the Christian mind, heart, and life. That is the tactic Thomas Guthrie employs. As he waxes eloquent, he tells what has proven true about the Bible as he has committed himself to reading it, meditating upon it, and living it out. He says, “The Bible is an armory of heavenly weapons, a laboratory of infallible medicines, a mine of exhaustless wealth. It is a guidebook for every road, a chart for every sea, a medicine for every malady, and a balm for every wound.”
Guthrie insists that the Bible has proven its value as weaponry in the battle against spiritual foes, as a laboratory researching cures for spiritual maladies, and as a rich source of treasure in the accumulating of wisdom. It has proven itself a guide to the pathways of life and a chart to navigate the stormy seas of trial and tribulation. It has been to him medicine that brings healing to every spiritual illness, and it has been a soothing ointment for every one of life’s deep wounds.
What a blessing that the Bible proves to be all of this and more to those who commit themselves to it.

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A La Carte (December 14)
Westminster Books has deeply discounted the excellent Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament series. I’d especially recommend Schreiner on Romans and Revelation, Moo on Galatians, and Beale on Colossians & Philemon.
I added quite a number of excellent Kindle deals yesterday and plan to add some more this morning.
(Yesterday on the blog: My Favorite New Songs of 2023)This is an important article about what it means to die with dignity. “The conversation around MAiD puts front and center the questions of what makes life worth living and, by implication, in what circumstances a life might no longer be worth living. In the modern Western ethos of entrepreneurial individualism, the cardinal virtues include efficiency and productivity.”
“We often show what is important to us by what we do. It’s easy to say, ‘I want to please the Lord more than anything else,’ but it’s another thing to act like it.” I think we can all attest to our own inconsistencies there.
“A baby who was the High King of Heaven. In a feeding trough. It’s a shocking picture, really, when you think about the humility of Christ. To step down from the literal throne of Heaven itself, take on our humanity, and enter our world as an infant born into poverty among an oppressed people is hands down the most extreme display of humility in all of history. Nothing else comes close.”
This article explains how and why Uzzah was struck down for touching the Ark of the Covenant.
Samuel discusses the role of personal experiences in shaping people’s understanding of the world. “When it comes to empathy, many people who say they ‘believe the victims’ are carrying experiences and knowledge around that is literally impossible to transmit effectively. They dislike Calvinists or complementarians, partially on principle, and then partially because over the years, in dozens of obscure articles, personal conversations, and unspoken observations, they have built up an idea whose origins are mostly inaccessible to anyone else.”
Wes spent a year reading the New Testament in Greek rather than English. His reflections are really interesting and make me wish I had progressed a bit further in Greek!
As we parted ways that day, Aileen and I both knew without the smallest shadow of a doubt: God did this. In fact, Aileen has often said that this was the very moment she really understood that God was caring for us in our loss. And it was not through a miracle, but through providence.
The anguish which love endures for others’ sins is among the saddest of earth’s sorrows.
—J.R. Miller -
A La Carte (July 15)
The Lord be with you and bless you today.
True Companions
“To the ancients, friendship was the crown of life and the school of virtue. To us, it’s both of you clicking a button on Facebook. How far we have fallen.” Yes, but the situation is far from hopeless.
Satan Delights In Church Growth That Isn’t Gospel Driven
“Like every individual Christian, the Church’s greatest enemy is Satan. He lives and continuously strives to deceive God’s people, and to divert them from their God-given agenda and purpose. Though we could consider countless ways that Satan does this, in this article I’m going to focus on one: quantitative church growth.”
A Case against the Longer Ending of Mark
Some time ago I shared an argument that made the case for the longer ending of Mark. Here’s a follow-up that makes a case against it.
To Understand the Bible, Follow the World’s Advice
“I read secular books. That’s not so much a confession as much as it is a confirmation.” This article considers how we can read non-Christian books that will truly help us.
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“My favorite memories usually revolve around the themes of good food, beautiful setting, and excellent company, and yesterday delivered on all three. But of the thousands of meals I’ve eaten in my life, only a rare few resurface in my memory. Not because I’ve captured those moments on my camera, but because they’ve captured me. They’ve become little diamonds, refracting new hues of color, growing more beautiful each time I turn them over in my mind.”
Are God and Satan Playing Chess with My Life?
“Time to be real. If I’m to tell it straight, I’ve felt a few times lately like God and Satan are playing chess, and I’m a pawn.” Perhaps you’ve felt that way as well…
Flashback: When Christians Just Don’t Read the Bible
While I receive some requests about difficult circumstances and advanced matters of obedience, the most common by far are the simplest: Pray that I would read and pray.If he gives you the grace to make you believe, he will give you the grace to live a holy life afterward. —Charles Spurgeon
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Dream Small
There are a lot of authors in the Christian world, but not nearly as many writers. There are a lot of people who publish books, but few who have a level of mastery over the English language. There are a lot of people who can say what’s true, but not very many who say it beautifully.
Seth Lewis is one of those rare authors who can truly write. I have been reading his blog for a number of years and have admired his ability to write both poetry and prose that is interesting, compelling, and full of beauty. I was thrilled, then, to learn that he has now also written a book, Dream Small: The Secret Power of the Ordinary Christian Life.
Dream Small takes as its starting point the fact that most of us enlist our dreams and ambitions in the direction of self-aggrandizement. We dream big in the sense that we dream of changing the whole world. And if we fail to do so, if we fail to achieve fame, fortune, or power, we then tend to believe we have failed to live a life of significance.
“The world around you will constantly encourage you to follow your dreams,” says Lewis. “That’s not bad advice as far as it goes, but I’m asking you to pause first, and take the time to ask an important question that often gets overlooked: just where, exactly, are your dreams leading you? Before you follow your dreams, you need to aim them. And what will you aim them at? The default assumption which says that bigger dreams will always turn out better is simply not true. Where will you find better dreams?”
That’s exactly what his book is about. It’s about dreaming better dreams and then working to achieve them. This means he has to set humanity in its proper context as wonderfully significant to God, yet also infinitesimal by comparison to God. He has to explain how the gospel redeems us and directs us toward the good of others and the glory of God. He has to show that God’s values are very different from the world’s and, therefore, often very different from our own. He has to show that by dreaming small we can accumulate achievements that God deems great.You are here for a purpose. You were carefully crafted with a perfect plan in mind. You are a character in the greatest story ever told, and your life, and your actions, and your decisions—even today—can send shockwaves into eternity. Maybe the role God has for you is big and public. Maybe it is quiet, behind the scenes, where hardly anyone will notice. Don’t worry about that. You can invest in loving God and loving the people he loves from wherever you are, and the best ways to do that have always been the closest, most ordinary, most overlooked and under-appreciated ways, like humble service to humble people and time spent with God and all the little ways we can remind each other of God’s truth and God’s love and the big story he made us to be part of.
To dream small, he explains, is not to miss out on God’s plan for our lives, but to find it, to take hold of it, and to live it out. It’s to live a life of the highest significance to the God whose ways are so very different from our own.
A few years ago the Christian world saw a whole crop of books that dealt with being ordinary—a natural reaction, I think, to books like Radical and Do Hard Things which meant to shake people out of their spiritual complacency. These books achieved their purpose, but may have also discouraged some who tried to be radical and some who tried to do hard things, but who in the end found themselves still living very ordinary lives. Dream Small offers an important correction. It shows beautifully that the most significant Christian life is also the most ordinary Christian life.Buy from Amazon