Christian Living / Spiritual Growth

  • Uncommon Belief by John Hutchinson

    FROM TABLETALK | November 2004

    “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees takes off his shoes; the rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.” — Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh, Book VII Through our study of …Read More

  • Pruned to Perfection by Robert Rothwell

    FROM TABLETALK | October 2004

    A newborn baby is such a wonderful example of the beauty of God’s creation. When a newborn is in the room, anyone present is awestruck by how small, cute, and innocent the infant is. At the same time, however …Read More

  • Beacon of Holiness by Alistair Begg

    FROM TABLETALK | October 2004

    “If the Word does not dwell with power in us,” wrote Puritan John Owen, “it will not pass with power from us” (The Works of John Owen, vol. 16, p. 76.). This godly minister personified this truth in his personal …Read More

  • Partakers of Holiness by Douglas Kelly

    FROM TABLETALK | October 2004

    The pain involved in following the Lord Jesus Christ in a hostile world is never hidden from us in Scripture. The early Hebrew Christians to whom this epistle seems first to have been written were no strangers to “reproaches and …Read More

  • Patience in Suffering by Michael Beates

    FROM TABLETALK | September 2004

    I hate pain. I try to avoid suffering, and I don’t go out of my way to look for affliction. But pain, suffering, and affliction find me. They find all of us. If you are free of these things …Read More

  • A Lasting Virtue by Albert Mohler

    FROM TABLETALK | September 2004

    Most of us recognize that patience is one of the cardinal Christian virtues — we’re just in no hurry to obtain it. Others just define patience as a delay in getting what we want. As Margaret Thatcher once famously remarked …Read More

  • The Wait of Glory by R.C. Sproul Jr.

    FROM TABLETALK | September 2004

    My family has been blessed mightily in the last six months or so. My dear wife Denise and I have suffered through two miscarriages. (And three more in the years before that.) Our daughter Shannon, who is mentally retarded, began …Read More

  • The Fruit of Patience by R.C. Sproul

    FROM TABLETALK | September 2004

    The prophet Habakkuk was sorely distressed. His misery was provoked by the spectacle of the threat of the pagan nation of Babylon against Judah. To this prophet it was unthinkable that God would use an evil nation against His own …Read More

  • In God We Trust by Burk Parsons

    FROM TABLETALK | September 2004

    We want patience, and we want it now. We are a society consumed with instant gratification. If something takes too long, we turn to something faster, and there’s no time to waste. For whatever reason, we are under the …Read More

  • Resolved Tensions by Burk Parsons

    FROM TABLETALK | August 2004

    We live in a world of tensions. We are a holy people who have been set apart from the world and yet called to live in the world as a light to the world. We are strangers in a strange …Read More

  • In Jesus’ Name by Chris Donato

    FROM TABLETALK | July 2004

    “In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.” Is this just habit, a formal closing in public prayer? Or, is it a powerful declaration that we who pray in that name are in Him to whom that name belongs? Well, Christians from …Read More

  • True Love by John MacArthur

    FROM TABLETALK | May 2004

    “All you need is love.” So sang the Beatles. If they’d been singing about God’s love, the statement would have a grain of truth in it. But what usually goes by the name love in popular culture is …Read More

  • Transforming Love by Jerry Bridges

    FROM TABLETALK | May 2004

    A deeply distressed father sat for two weeks in a pediatric ICU, watching his three-year-old son slowly die. During those two weeks he read through, quite surprisingly, a book on the Gospel. He later wrote to me, “I want to …Read More

  • Faith Works by Ligon Duncan

    FROM TABLETALK | April 2004

    So, if Christ is my righteousness, if I am accepted by God because of Him, if I am saved by grace alone, and justified because of Christ alone, and declared righteous by faith alone, where do good works fit in …Read More

  • Repentance from First to Last by Chris Donato

    FROM TABLETALK | March 2004

    On October 31, 1517, Dr. Martin Luther posted his ninety-five theses on the academy bulletin board (which happened to be the church door in those days). Essentially, the theses rebuked church leaders for abusing indulgences. Indulgences, he argued, cannot forgive …Read More