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Showing posts from October, 2011

Repent: The Shortest (and Best) Sermon Ever Preached

The word repent means “to change one’s life for the better.” It carries with it the idea of making a 180 degree turn, of totally changing directions in your life. In short, repentance is a command for the thief to quit stealing, the drunk to quit drinking, the fornicator to quit fornicating, the gossiper to quit gossiping, etc. But that doesn’t sound like a good sermon. Aren’t sermons supposed to make the listener feel good? Maybe talking about repentance every now and then is ok, but just during an invitation or somewhere near the end of the message. We should never begin a sermon with a call to repent, and we should never harp on it the whole time. After all, won’t all that repent talk offend the lost or turn them off from Christianity? For starters, if a person is not a Christian, a sermon, no matter how bold, cannot make that person any more lost. But what about the claim that we have to warm people up to the idea of repentance? Let’s look at how some of the greatest preache

Asleep in Heaven's Nursery: Why Every Christian Needs to Read This Book

“I believe in the traditional Baptist doctrine on that subject.” That answer came from a pastor when I asked him what the Bible says about the age of accountability. He clearly had no idea what he believed, and instead of taking time to research the matter, he simply deferred to the Baptist doctrine. Asleep in Heaven’s Nursery is not just for people who have lost children, although that is a major part of it. I want Christians to know why I wrote this book, and why I think it can be helpful to them. This might sound self-serving, like I am writing this to just sell books. But I never would have written the book if I didn’t think it would serve a purpose. And as a not-for-profit ministry, I don’t make a penny off of these books, so this is not about financial gain. This book looks at the age of accountability to see if it is biblical. It also lists the major criticisms for the age of accountability and gives a rebuttal for them. For example, if Jesus said that no one gets