Life's Inanities and Ironies

 “In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”   — 1 Thessalonians 5:18 ( NKJV ) We live in a complaining culture. Social media feeds are filled with grievances, news cycles thrive on outrage, and even many Christians find it easier to grumble than to give thanks when life gets hard. Yet the Holy Spirit , through the Apostle Paul , issues a crystal-clear, non-negotiable command: in everything give thanks. Notice the little word “in.” Not “for” everything (though sometimes we can get there by grace), but **in** everything. In the diagnosis and in the healing. In the layoff and in the provision. In the prodigal’s rebellion and in the homecoming. In the coffin and in the empty tomb. This is not positive thinking . This is not “fake it till you make it.” This is the revealed will of God for every born-again believer. If you have ever wondered, “Lord, what is Your will for my life?”—here is one thing you never have to pray about again. God...

 “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” — Matthew 13:31–32 (ESV) We live in an age obsessed with size, metrics, and visibility. Mega-churches boast attendance numbers in the tens of thousands. Influencers measure success by followers, likes, and viral clips. Meanwhile, the little country church with cracked pews and thirty faithful souls on a Sunday morning is dismissed as irrelevant, dying, or “not doing enough for the kingdom.” Jesus begs to differ . Three times — in Matthew, Mark, and Luke — the Lord tells the same parable. The Holy Spirit thought it important enough to record it thrice. This is not a cute illustration about “having big faith.” This is a divine prophecy about how God’s kingdom actually advances: through what the world counts ...

 Brethren, the more we gaze upon these Separatist saints, the more we see the Word of God leaping off the page into real history. Their story is not merely “inspiring”—it is a divine typology. God wrote their voyage into the margins of our Bibles as a fresh exhibition of ancient truths. Here are more unbreakable parallels that ought to make every Bible-believing Christian fall on his face in wonder. 6. They were Abrahams, obeying the call to leave kin and country for a land they had never seen.    “By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went” (Heb. 11:8).      These Pilgrims forsook houses, lands, fathers, mothers, and the graves of their ancestors because Christ was more precious to them than England itself. They did not wait for a comfortable retirement package. They stepped onto the Mayflower with nothing but the promises of God in ...

 Brethren, when we speak of the Pilgrims , let us strip away the schoolhouse myths , the cartoons with buckles on hats , and the secularized fairy tale of “ friendship with Indians .” Those things happened, but they are not WHY the Pilgrims matter to blood-bought, Bible-believing Christians in 2025. The Pilgrims mattered because they were unashamed, uncompromising, separatist, Bible-saturated saints who counted everything rubbish for the excellency of knowing Christ Jesus their Lord. They were closer to us than most modern evangelicals will ever be. Consider who they really were. 1. They were biblical separatists — not “ tolerant reformers .”       They saw the Church of England as a false church, steeped in Roman Catholic remnants , ruled by a king who called himself head of the church instead of Christ. They believed the Scripture taught that a true church was a gathered company of visible saints , baptized upon profession of faith, walking in covenant tog...

In the blackest midnight of Judah’s story—when the temple lay in ashes, when mothers ate their own children in the siege, when Jeremiah sat weeping on the ruins with a heart shattered into a thousand altars—God did something utterly outrageous. He made a promise that still sets the heavens ringing. Not a patch.   Not a reform.   Not a stricter law with better enforcement. A **new** covenant. Jeremiah 31:31–34 (the verses that burned through the prophet’s tears like dawn through prison bars): > “Behold, the days come, saith the LORD,   > that I will make a **new covenant**   > with the house of Israel , and with the house of Judah:   > Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers   > in the day that I took them by the hand   > to bring them out of the land of Egypt ;   > which my covenant they brake,   > although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD:...