The church has been at the forefront of many social changes—in relationship to medical care, to slavery, to prisons, to workers, and more—all of those changes emerge from the conviction that Jesus Christ changes lives by the power of the Spirit. If we attempt to offer social change without transforming power, we will ultimately be able to offer neither. It is the Gospel that has transformed culture, and it has done so as it has transformed human hearts.

At the beginning of Acts 3, at the gate of the Jerusalem temple, the apostles Peter and John encounter a disabled man who thinks he needs one thing: money. If he doesn’t have any money, he thinks, he can’t eat—and if he can’t eat, then he’ll be dead. So he needs money.
And so we read that when Peter and John were on their way into the temple, “he asked to receive alms” (Acts 3:3). But the two apostles, having now witnessed the risen Lord and seen Him return to heaven, having received the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, did something the man did not expect:
Peter directed his gaze at him, as did John, and said, “Look at us.” And he fixed his attention on them, expecting to receive something from them. But Peter said, “I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” And he took him by the right hand and raised him up, and immediately his feet and ankles were made strong. (Acts 3:4–7)
When people today fix their attention on the church of Jesus Christ, they typically are expecting, like the beggar at the temple gate, to get something from it. Over the last century, the church has taught people to expect slogans, political agendas, and psychological cures—and in exchange, it has taught them to expect to be asked for money. But does the church really have anything worthwhile to offer? Does it have the power to remake a life?
A Message of Transforming Power
We may be tempted to say that the miracle of healing is what Peter and John had to offer. But the healing miracle, like all of the signs and wonders of the New Testament, was only a pointer to a greater miracle, which was the reconciliation of a sinful people to holy God.
That’s why Peter, when he saw that the overflowing joy of the healed man was drawing a crowd, seized the opportunity to share not an offer of healing or a promise of prosperity but the Gospel of forgiveness. It was the cosmic authority of the risen Lord, whom Israel had sent to the cross, that had made the lame man walk (Acts 3:12–16).
Read More
Related Posts:

Marriage is hard. It is, at the same time, one of the great blessings and most difficult responsibilities to fulfil. But the thing that gives us strength to persevere and especially not give up hope is the knowledge that it is God who is supernaturally at work in the hearts of believers making them one. This is also why we must guard ourselves in our spirits so that we continually recommit ourselves to loving our wives (Malachi 2:15).

I was preaching at a wedding recently and was deeply challenged by my own sermon. Thankfully, by God’s grace, this happens on a regular basis! As I exhorted those who were husbands in the congregation to love their wives I realised that I didn’t do this anywhere near enough myself.
It’s not that I’d become violent or mean—although I do still need to grow in gentleness, self-control and patience—but I was convicted by God’s Spirit that I was not loving my wife as Christ does the church (Eph. 5:25). I was taking her for granted and I wasn’t really caring for her as I would my own body (Eph. 5:28).
I later realised after I made some initial steps of repentance, that this had been affecting my own fellowship with God. Prayer had become something of a “burden”, the LORD had felt distant, and I wasn’t experiencing the Spirit’s power in my life. The words of the apostle Peter were especially pertinent at this point:
Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.“ 1 Peter 3:7
All of which is say, love for one’s wife is more important than any form of spiritual success or wider influence in Christian ministry. Because if I fail at this then, as a minister of the Gospel it really undermines everything else I do. As John MacArthur states:
The true spirituality of a church leader is not measured best by how well he leads a deacons’ or elders’ meeting, by the way he participates in Sunday school, or by the way he speaks from the pulpit—but by the way he treats his wife and children at home when no one else is around. Nowhere is our relationship to God better tested than in our relationship to our family. The man who plays the part of a spiritual shepherd in church but who lacks love and care in his home is guilty of spiritual fraud.[1]
In this regard, there are a couple of verses in Scripture which have ‘haunted’ me over the years. One of them is where the apostle Paul writes in 1 Timothy 5:8, “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” And the other is in 1 Corinthians 9:27, “…I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.” In other words, there is something about marriage that should be of first importance. Because if I fail to love my wife and children then I have not faithfully served Christ.
Is your wife a ministry “widow”?
The danger is that our wives and children can become ministry “widows” or “orphans”. We can sacrifice their spiritual well-being on the altar of our own spiritual service. And even worse, we can justify our selfish—nay, idolatrous—behaviour because of the Gospel. The words of the Lord Jesus Christ to the Pharisees are especially apt at this point where he rebuked them for their failure to honour their parents by being overzealous (yes, there is such a thing) in their ‘devotion’ to God.
“…why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honour your father and mother’ and anyone who curse his father or mother must be put to death.’ But you say that if a man says to his father or mother, ‘Whatever help you might otherwise have received from me is a gift devoted to God, he is not to ‘honour his father with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you:
“These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; Their teachings are but rules taught by men.” Matthew 15:3-9
Read More
Related Posts:

One of the great strengths I’ve observed in many modern Reformed ministries, particularly in John Piper with his emphasis on joy and satisfaction in Christ and in R. C. Sproul’s with his exuberant teaching ministry, is what I like to call compassionate Calvinism. Many of my professors, pastor friends, and many of my living ministry heroes are joyful Calvinists, and their preaching, teaching, and writing reflect reverence, joy, and grace.

I’ll never forget attending the first Together for the Gospel (T4G) conference in 2006 in Louisville.
Thousands of voices joined together to sing old hymns with profound energy and zeal, only to sit at rapt attention for hours as well-known Reformed teachers expounded the Word of God. We attended pre-conference events, and in one of those, I learned what a blog was and pondered whether I should start one (I didn’t, but hundreds of others did).
Here’s what I remember most about those late April days sixteen years ago: It was a happy gathering. I was happy. My friends were happy. We were hearing the Word of God preached by our theological heroes and it was all deeply edifying, convicting, rejuvenating—I could add any positive “ing” adjective to the list.
I also remember reflecting backward a decade, in the mid-90s, to the time when I first embraced Reformed theology. There seemed to be so few of us who held to Reformed doctrine in the mid-90s, and we probably seemed idiosyncratic, maybe even weird to some of our fellow evangelicals.
But here sat thousands to hear hours and hours of preaching that flowed out of the doctrines of grace. God’s work in drawing hearts to these glorious doctrines amazed me. It felt like revival that only God could bring.
Young, Restless, Reformed: Its Rise and Fall
That happened during the early years of the burgeoning Reformed movement, what I like to call the age of the mega conference, the coming of age of what Carl Trueman calls “Big Eva”: T4G, Ligonier, the Shepherd’s Conference, Desiring God, The Gospel Coalition, and seemingly dozens of smaller conferences.
Reformed parachurch ministries and publishers—some of which had been laboring faithfully since the 1990s and even prior to that, but in relative obscurity—gained prominence and dotted the landscape: Desiring God, Ligonier, 9Marks, the Council for Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, The Gospel Coalition, Radical, Crossway, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, Banner of Truth, Sovereign Grace Ministries.
In the early 2000s, a team of Reformed scholars produced an excellent English translation of the Bible, the English Standard Version, which became the go-to version for many pastors in the Reformed village.
In 2009, TIME magazine cited “the New Calvinism” as among the top 10 thought movements influencing the United States, and indeed, to those of us in ministry at the time, that seemed demonstrably true. The internet enabled us to download a variety of popular Reformed teachers such as Piper, Sproul, MacArthur, Dever, Mahaney, Keller, Carson, the now infamous Driscoll, and many others. In a real sense, the worldwide web did for this new reformation what Gutenberg’s printing press did for the original.
In September of 2006, my longtime friend Collin Hansen wrote a memorable article that in 2008 became a noteworthy book (I’m still waiting for the movie!) giving the movement a nickname: Young, Restless, Reformed—or YRR. In Hansen’s parlance, my alma mater, Southern Seminary, was ground zero in educating the many young Baptists among us who were restless and Reformed.
The YRR world was a happy place then, but all these years later, that joyful place seems long ago and far away.
Read More
Related Posts: