Life's Inanities and Ironies

We are living in an hour of great spiritual deception. Television, streaming platforms, social media, and even some so-called “Christian” bookstores are filled with content that glamorizes the paranormal. Ghost-hunting programs, psychic mediums, astrology, tarot cards, crystals, spirit guides, and “conversations with the dead” are presented as entertainment, self-help, or harmless curiosity. Yet the unchanging Word of God issues a clear, repeated, and severe prohibition against every form of the occult and paranormal. This is not a matter of personal preference or cultural sensitivity. It is a matter of obedience to the living God and protection of the soul. God’s Explicit Command In Deuteronomy 18:10-12 the Lord declares: “There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever do...

  Beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. I write to you today not as one who stands above the fray, but as a fellow pilgrim who has known the deceitfulness of his own heart and the long-suffering mercy of a holy God. The subject before us is solemn, searching, and urgently needful for every soul that names the name of Christ: the danger of remaining recalcitrant in our sins. To be recalcitrant is to be stubbornly resistant, obstinate, unyielding. When the Word of God speaks, when the Spirit convicts, when the conscience is stirred, the recalcitrant soul digs in its heels. It hardens the neck. It stiffens the will. It refuses to turn. Scripture does not treat this posture lightly. It treats it as a pathway that leads, if unrepented of, to sudden destruction and that without remedy.   The Clear Testimony of the Word Let us begin where all true teaching must begin—with the inerrant Scriptu...

“And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint.”   —Luke 18:1 (KJV) Our Lord Jesus did not begin this familiar parable with a story. He began with a purpose. Before the widow ever stood before the unjust judge, Christ told His disciples *why* the parable was being given: that men ought always to pray, and not to faint. That single verse sets the entire tone. Prayer is not presented as an emergency measure or a last resort. It is presented as the normal, continual posture of the believer. The place of prayer is not first a geographic location—though a quiet closet is a blessed thing—but a settled determination of the heart that refuses to quit. Always Pray The word “always” leaves no room for seasons of spiritual neglect. It does not mean we are to walk about with our eyes closed and our lips moving every waking moment. It means that the channel between the believer and the throne of grace is never to be shut down. Communion with ...

  In the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel according to Luke, our Lord Jesus Christ sets before us three linked parables that reveal the very heart of God toward the lost. The chapter opens with the Pharisees and scribes murmuring because publicans and sinners drew near to hear Him. Their complaint was simple and revealing: “This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them.” In answer, the Son of God unfolds the parables of the lost sheep, the lost silver, and the lost son. Today we turn our full attention to the middle parable—the story of the woman and her ten pieces of silver. Hear the words of the Lord again: “Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it? And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost. Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of...