Using the word “vision” these days is like Mother Hubbard’s dress, it covered everything and touched nothing. But once a certain tool becomes popular, everyone has to have one. In fact, these days if you don’t have a vision statement for what you are doing, you are surely a failure, a follower, or at best […]
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Author: Rick Shrader
The Perfect Tense Will of God
Someone has said, “The will of God is just what I would choose if I had all the facts as God has them.”1 But, since we don’t have such facts, we often don’t choose what God would choose even though we may pray and ask God’s guidance. Why? The answer sometimes rests in understanding the […]
Why Do Christians Vote?
The Bible says that believers are pilgrims and strangers on the earth and that we have no certain dwelling place here. As normal human beings we are citizens of many countries, speakers of many languages, and partakers of many cultures. Yet as Christians we are only visitors here, ambassadors for a more noble country, pilgrims […]
The Assembling Of Ourselves Together
And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much more, as ye see the day approaching. (Heb 10:23-24) As a pastor and father and a life-long church attendee, I […]
Let Us Draw Near: Our Act Of Worship
And having an high priest over the house of God; let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water (Heb 10:21-22). It took Sir Robert Anderson, Scotland Yard chief detective, to shed the following light on […]
Godliness and Evangelism
Though many have said the following in similar ways, I like the way C.S. Lewis put it, “Those who want Heaven most have served Earth best. Those who love Man less than God do most for Man.”1 Answering obvious objections to that thought, Leonard Ravenhill wrote, “Someone now warns us lest we become so heavenly […]
Threshold Seperation
The Biblical doctrine of separation is rooted in the very holiness of God and it is expressed in numerous texts in the Word of God. Peter expressed it in his first epistle, As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance: but as he which hath called you is holy, […]
Are We Legalists
It was James who wrote the wonderful and inspired oxymoron, So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the perfect law of liberty (Jas 2:12). Douglas Moo wrote of this verse, “God’s gracious acceptance of us does not end our obligation to obey him; it sets it on a new […]
The Holy and the Profane
As long as man lives in this world and in his present condition, there will be the struggle between the holy and the profane. We can no more rid ourselves of it than we can of heaven and hell, of God and men, or of sin and salvation. No sooner had God given the Law […]
The Purpose Driven Problem
President Theodore Roosevelt said, “Wisdom is nine-tenths a matter of being wise in time. Most of us are too often wise after the event.”1 However true this is of all of us, it is still better to be wise late about something than not wise at all. When I first read Rick Warren’s “Purpose” books […]