Delighting in the salvation of the lost in missions is synonymous with delighting in seeing the lost come to delight in God....

Here’s some steps to follow, both before the first meeting, and at that first meeting together....

Jacob’s dream of a stairway to heaven reminds us of the account of the tower of Babel (Gen. 11). In constructing the tower of Babel, humanity failed to fill the earth as God had commanded (Gen.9:1). They thought very highly of themselves, as if they were God. ...

How is your walk? Now I’m not referring to your strut or your swagger. Or whether you’ve got a hitch in your hip, or a prance in your dance. I mean how is your walk with God? Most often we describe walking with God in terms of closeness in relationship, and steadiness in progress. Sometimes people mistakenly associate walking with God with a Kincaid portrait and the ol...

There are many things that we can view through this lense of promise and prospect or an already, not yet. When a blushing girl gets a ring from a nervous guy, that engagement symbol is a promise that they will marry. The couple has the promise already, but they must wait for their wedding day which is not yet. ...

The Scriptures can give us great confidence like they did for the apostles, and others like Maskepetoon. Such confidence helps us to bear regular consistent witness with the testimony of the Scriptures....

Christians spend hundreds and even thousands of hours of their lives listening to preaching. A believer who faithfully attends his local church and hears a forty-five minute message forty-five times a year will, over the course of forty years as a Christian, spend 1,350 hours hearing sermons. That’s more than fifty-six days of his life! ...

Well, one of the greatest benefits of expositional listening is that it provides precisely the same benefit to the hearer as serial expositional preaching provides to preachers and whole congregations, when compared to personal study. It causes the hearer to be confronted by texts and applications that he might otherwise avoid. It forces the listener to deal with ideas and...

There’s several things that the Christian learns and is reminded of as he gathers with others to hear the Word. Today we’ll look at how the act of expositional listening helps an individual believer relate to others; next week we’ll examine how listening fosters an individual believer’s private and personal growth in grace. As we go forward, it’s important to und...

The life of the church flows from the Word, through the preaching of the Word, into the people who have been gathered and changed by that Word. ...

As Christians, we insist that truth can be known. Truth is objective and the most important truths we can know are centered in God and presented in his Word. ...

Without a recognition of a glorious God, there can be no moral underpinnings. People have the law of God written on their hearts and by nature know what is right or wrong (Romans 2:14-15), but this has been eclipsed by human principles that have deemed that offending others is the ultimate wrong. If humanity is seen as most glorious, then there can be no sense of wrongn...

In this day of pseudo-realities and pseudo-substance, we need to uphold the truth of God and the glories of the gospel. We are not reinventable and insubstantial, but rather those who are created in the image of God to reflect him and his truth. ...

We are now in the Advent season. Advent means “coming”, and for Christians we primarily celebrate the first coming of Christ: the incarnation of the Son of God ...

In the gospel of Luke, along with a multitude of the heavenly host, an angel announces the birth of Christ to local shepherds. The same shepherds then go to Bethlehem to see the child, recounting the angelic visitation to Mary, Joseph and anyone else who would hear. There was no doubt much excitement and activity around the manger. ...

This kind of adopting love also fuels the advance of the kingdom. John says, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love” (John 15:9). Part of abiding in this love is to obey Jesus: “If you love me you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). And this means bearing fruit that abides, i.e. the fruit of conversions (John 15:16)....

One thing she said really struck me: “In those days we had to wait for things a lot more than we do now and we put up with hardship along the way. There is something good about anticipation”. Whether it was waiting and saving to buy a house, waiting and saving oneself for marriage or waiting for the war (and rations!) to end there was a goodness about eagerly antic...

An idol can be a dream or desire for something to be different: “If only I had a better job”; “If only I could find the right life partner”; “If only my parents had loved me more”; “If only my church would live up to my expectations”; “If only my recommendations had been followed.” These wishes can haunt us and dominate our lives. Can we trust God with ...

Hidden idols may not reveal themselves for what they are until they are violently wrenched from our hands. When we face a debilitating illness or injury; when our career is abruptly ended by a layoff; when a close relationship is shattered by separation; when a loved one is torn from us by sudden death ...

In Romans 3:20, at the end of his shocking description of the universality and horror of sin, the Apostle Paul used the phrase from Psalm 36:1, “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” When there is no fear of God before our eyes, we will turn from him to idols. ...

One of the key New Testament texts that teaches this truth is Romans 1:18-32. When we exchange the worship of God for the worship of man-made things ...

Do you find this difficult to do in today’s word? I do. The world bombards our senses with sexual humour and innuendo, LGBT agendas and concerns, messages of greed and self-indulgence just to name a few things that are anything but what Paul is describing in Phil. 4:8. We are besieged by those things that would appeal to our sinful nature and capture our thoughts....

We live in a dark world, but we bear the light of Christ. His light has dawned in our hearts, but will dawn one day in full consummation. ...

So the main point I want to make is that meekness is missional. Paul lists seven virtues in chapter 3 and verses 1 and 2. Notice the last one, “to show perfect courtesy”. The Greek says, endeiknymenous prauteta ...

Meek people are teachable people. They welcome God's Word. That word, "receive" means "welcome". To receive is an intellectual exercise in that it means to understand and apprehend what is being taught in the Word....

In our meditations on meekness we would do well to seek to understand that phrase, "the meekness of wisdom". What does it mean?...

Psalm 37 is perhaps the best place to look for a biblical definition of meekness. In fact the Beatitude in Matthew 5:5 is taken directly from that Psalm and verse 11. The wording is virtually parallel. Further on in verse 22 we read, "For those blessed by the Lord shall inherit the land". In other words the blessed man inherits the land just as the meek man does. So, bless...

The beginning of true meekness is that we trust in the Lord not ourselves. That's the only way meekness can be produced. Apart from faith it is impossible. That's one of the reasons God presents us with difficult circumstances ...

In the West, we are hearing more and more about the global refugee crisis. Each day we hear reports about the dangers and trials of refugees. From Greece to France to Britain and North America, refugees are looking for a new places to call home....

God is love! Every child in Sunday School knows this. But why is God love? In fact, this is a staggering statement-and one that only the Christian, who believes in the Triune nature of God, can make....

There is a diligence required of the believer that results in a rich entrance into the eternal kingdom of Jesus Christ (2 Peter 1:10-11). A diligence in what? A diligence in the pursuit of holiness. That is, we need to grow in grace through the means that the Lord has established for our growth....

Having read through The Glory of Christ by John Owen I have some questions. Has "look to Christ", or "behold Christ" become nothing more than a platitude? If you are told to "look to Christ" are you disappointed, hoping for something more? This month I want us to look to Christ and behold his glory, together, for perhaps the reason these statements have lost their savor...

There are few things that all people across the political and social spectrum can agree on. But these days, we all agree that we can't agree. We all suffer from 'outrage fatigue' and the divisions in our world seem more immovable than ever before. Civil discourse is neither civil nor discourse....

Calvary Grace Church is faced with a decision to make by the end of June. We have to decide whether we will express 'our intent to purchase' the building which we currently rent. In this newsletter, I want to share a little bit about what the remaining timeline looks like as we seek to pray, discern and decide....

Prayer is hard work. External distractions may be managed by going into another room and leaving our phone out of reach, but what about internal distractions, how do we manage those?...

While springtime signs are being showcased all around us, one can't help but stop and think of the beauty of God's handiwork. From green blades of grass pushing their way up through brown prairie pasture, to budding cottonwood trees, to the song of the meadowlark, to the bloom of a crocus, God has left His stamp of creativity everywhere we look....

Recently, my wife and I enjoyed an evening out with one of the first couples we connected with at Calvary Grace. Our common belief in Christ, shared in the context of good food and laughter made for a memorable time together. What struck me most about our time together was that as food was being set out on the table, our lives were being opened up before one another in a v...

In Ephesians 1 we see how the gospel fuels thanksgiving and how thanksgiving inspires a life of intercessory prayer....

We can cultivate thankfulness in the way we express it in prayer. The Apostle Paul is a great example of a man of prayer and we can learn some lessons from him through studying the structure of his petitions....

When I was a child, whenever we went to visit someone else's house, my parents always used to tell my sister and me, "Don't forget to say 'please' and 'thank you'". Of course that sometimes simply meant we were polite, not truly thankful. And we can be like that in the church, polite on the outside, seemingly grateful, but quite the opposite within. So for the three weeks ...

We have already seen that the Bereans welcomed Paul and Silas, and that they heard them out with an eagerness to hear and be conformed to the Word of God. The Bereans did not treat Paul with suspicion and did not listen to his teaching as detached, guarded critics, but as those hungry for the Bread of Life....

This month I want us to take a look at money. While it is a gift from God (Dt. 8:18), the Bible is replete with warnings about the dangers associated with it. Money is not inherently sinful. Rather, we sin when we don’t see money rightly and approach it with correct attitudes. It is the love of money that is a root of all kinds of evils. It is in craving money that ...

After commending the Bereans for their noble character, Luke then proceeds to present two closely related evidences of this nobility: their receiving the Word with all eagerness, and their searching the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. This week, we’re going to look closely at the former....

The very first thing Luke says about the Bereans is a compliment of their character: "Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica..." First of all, it's vital to understand that the points he makes that follow...

Like many others, online and in real churches, I was striving to be "Berean," but looking back now I think I was missing at least two-thirds, if not even the whole, of what Luke aimed to commend the Bereans for in this text! In other words, I had read the text, isolated "examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so," and basically ignored the rest. That's ...

One of the things that happens when you do something for a while is that you start to de-prioritize it. When life is busy, the things that used to be special become commonplace. As the old saying goes, 'familiarity breeds contempt'. ...

This concludes our look at Godliness according to Thomas Watson in “The Godly Man’s Picture”. At the end of the book (the second last chapter) he offers comfort to the godly. This is so important, because if you are a godly person you will mourn your lack of godliness. You will not focus on what you have but how far you still have to go. You may even become discourag...

Having looked at various characteristics of the godly and having been exhorted to godliness, it is now time to turn to practical helps in godliness and the idea of perseverance. All this, again, is drawn from Thomas Watson in “The Godly Man’s Picture”....

Chapter 6 in Thomas Watson’s work, “The Godly Man’s Picture” is one of exhortation to godliness. He accomplishes this first by contrasting the godly and the ungodly. He starts by exhorting men to seriously weigh their misery while they remain in a state of ungodliness. Here Watson would have a person consider that the ungodly are in a state of death, that their...

Continuing with Thomas Watson on characteristics of the godly person from “The Godly Man’s Picture”...

This month we are continuing with Thomas Watson on characteristics of the godly person from “The Godly Man’s Picture”. This goes together with the earlier series I did in August, 2015. Thomas Watson’s words will be in italics as a means of identification....

Calgarians are anxious. As the oil boom comes to an end, there is a sense of stress and fear. People who have tried to buy their way to happiness are realizing the vanity of wealth and chasing after the wind. Others who have trusted in the security of a prosperous society are now disoriented and confused about what life is all about....

When the exiles returned from Babylon they rebuilt the wall of Jerusalem. Nehemiah tells us that, “each laboured on the work with one hand and held his weapon with the other.” (4.17). They didn’t have the luxury of focusing entirely upon the building work, since they were in a hostile environment. But they couldn’t simply focus on fighting all of the time; they had...

In the first post on idolatry, we have considered what idolatry looks like in the life of the Christian. In the second post, we have reviewed some diagnostic steps that will help us to identify idolatry in our hearts. Now, how do we defeat it?...

How do we Diagnose Idolatry? Idolatry begins in our hearts. Our hearts are tricky to diagnose ...

Idolatry is a really big deal in the Bible. It comes up over and over again as the most basic of sins, both for Old Testament Israel and New Testament Christians. Both the presence and damage of idolatry is obvious in much of the Old Testament, but its presence in the New Testament is not as obvious. However, idolatry is no less a foundational sin in the New Testament....

Continuing with Thomas Watson on characteristics of the godly person from “The Godly Man’s Picture”, this will be the last newsletter on this subject for a while. There are more to come....

Continuing with Thomas Watson on characteristics of the godly person from “The Godly Man’s Picture”:...

A godly person cares about the worship of God. This isn’t to say that he enjoys worship, but that he is careful about it. A godly man reverences divine institutions, and is more for the purity of worship than the pomp....

Thomas Watson, in “The Godly Man’s Picture”, puts forth 24 characteristics of a godly person. The first is that they are spiritually knowledgeable. This knowledge is grounded in the faith (Col. 1:23). It is one that esteems God and energizes (enlivens) the spirit. It is applicable to our sinful nature and transforms that nature (2 Cor. 3:18). It is a knowledge t...

There is no doubt that the key to Christian life and growth is communion with God…on your own! You’ll hear many people say that they pray throughout the day with arrow prayers or they pray with other people. This is good, but this is not the foundation. Jesus constantly went to be with his Father in prayer (Matt. 26:36; Mark1:35; Luke 4:42, 5:16, 6:12). If he did this,...

Our need for rest is humbling. It demonstrates that we are not God. God never sleeps (Ps. 121:4) and Christ upholds the universe with the Word of his power (Heb. 1:3). God is not taxed and tired out by life. He is the source of life (Gen. 1; John 1:4). Knowing that we are dust (Ps. 103:14), created, not the Creator, is a biblical mandate for the need of rest, whether that...

Over the past couple hundred years, living as an evangelical Christian in the West has been relatively easy, compared to the experience of many of our brothers and sisters throughout history, or even in other parts of the world. However, indications in our culture suggest that this time of respite for the Church in the West may be coming to an end. Therefore, my motivation...

Christians in the post-Christendom West may be rather bewildered at how quickly the culture around them is abandoning the trappings of their Judeo-Christian heritage. However, the Lord they follow had no such illusions about his own Torah-soaked society. The hard reality is that Jesus, like the Old Testament Law and Prophets he came to fulfill, was crystal clear about the ...

The Christian faith is, from the perspective of the world, an unbelievable tale. Think about it. We believe that a book which contains talking donkeys and sticks that turn into snakes is absolutely true in all that it affirms. We believe in a God who is both one and three, somehow. We believe that every human being, even the cutest, cuddliest newborn baby, is born totally ...

You have likely heard the phrase “pay it forward” which was made popular by the 2000 movie by the same name. This is the idea that out of the blessings and kindnesses we have received, we in turn should pass it on to others. We should be cultivating good deeds as a means of paying it (the kindnesses shown) forward. In turn, we are blessed in our giving. This week, ...

We obviously need money to obtain the basic necessities of life and to provide for our families. It is also prudent to save for the future and to give some thought to investing money for the future. Having and investing money is not wrong. Remember it is the love of money which is a root of evil, not money itself. Yet, money can tempt us so strongly. Once we have it, ...

If the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil that has led to the ruin and destruction of many, then we must ask the questions, “How does a Christian regard money? With what attitudes should we approach wealth?” While Jesus has taught much on money and has given us many cautions to heed, let’s take a look at 1 Timothy 6:3-10 for an answer....

As we think about wisdom and what it means to find it, we must be aware that both Lady Wisdom and the woman folly are always calling to us. We need to know who is calling. Both of these women promise the same things at the beginning ...

How we speak is addressed many times in Proverbs. 26:17-28 alone addresses the busybody, inappropriate joking, gossip, argumentativeness, insincerity and lying. All of these are foolish misuses of words. What struck me as I read through Proverbs for this series was how words relate to wisdom in other ways as well. The way we hear words matters. Both folly (the adulterous ...

One of the things we want to be known for at Calvary Grace is keeping the main things the main things. We want to be unified on the most important doctrines and practices. This is not to say that secondary issues are not important, but knowing how tightly to hold on to important yet not central doctrines and practices without causing division can be difficult. A basic rule...

Get wisdom. This is not only sound advice from Scripture (Proverbs 4:5,7), it is a fundamental for Christian discipleship. As Christians, we are going to find ourselves increasingly at odds with our world. Our recent conference on the Goodness of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood was excellent and useful, but counter-cultural. The decision this week by the Supreme Court of Ca...

It seems that recent tweets I made about biblical manhood, womanhood and marriage have gained attention in the UK. Several national newspapers picked up these tweets and there was reaction from both Christians and non-Christians. Some people were very upset; others were very encouraged. ...

Last week we defined forgiveness. But practicing it is not that easy, especially if the other person is selfish, a habitual sinner, or even abusive....

Christ came, “to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God…” (Luke 1:76-78). The birth of Christ in Bethlehem was always about the death of Christ at Calvary. Therefore, forgiveness, which brings relational peace between God and man, is at the very heart of the gospel. However, forgiveness is on...

It is now time in this last newsletter of October 2014 to look at the actual work of mortifying our sin. We have considered John Owen’s thoughts on the need for mortification, the nature of mortification and what we have to consider in preparation for the work. Now it is time to ask the question, “What will be the means or the agent of the mortification of our sin?�...

Having looked at the necessity and that nature of mortification, it is now time to set ourselves toward the work itself. John Owen in his book, “Of the Mortification of Sin in the Believer”, puts forth both general and particular directions for the work itself. In other words, he gets his reader to consider their own sin so as to know their enemy. He also gets his read...

Last week we began a look at what it means to mortify one’s sin. Borrowing heavily from John Owen’s writings on the mortification of sin, I tried to highlight the necessity of it. In the words of Owen, if we are not actively killing sin, sin will be killing us....

Anyone who has been to Calvary Grace Church for any amount of time has hopefully realised by now, that we have a lot to say about sin. To be sure, we have much to say about grace as well, but you can’t fully appreciate grace until you’ve spent some time pondering sin. Unfortunately, people can fall victim to a morbid introspection where your sin is all you see and gr...

For many Christian families, the stress of the back to school scramble is compounded by decisions regarding how to school their children. Do we choose to home school? Do we send our kids to public school? Christian School? How do we decide what’s best for our family and is right in the eyes of the Lord? I would like to encourage us all to think about how we can encoura...

One of the great things about the Christmas season as it is celebrated by Canadians is the family get-togethers. There is always lots of food, feasting and fun. But when family is far away, or estranged, those family gatherings that everyone else enjoys can rip the skin off of old scars. ...

Our family likes to go on road trips. On one of these trips, we drove through northern Utah. Since the Lord of the Rings movies had been released recently, the thing that sprang to mind for a few of us was “Mordor.” Though devoid of evil goblins and archvillains, the landscape gave us an intimidated feeling. The sheer cliffs and perpendicular angles of the rock faces m...

Disasters rarely occur at a time of convenience, and the recent flooding that struck Southern Alberta was no different. Lives were lost; billions of dollars worth of property was destroyed; uncounted millions in economic damage was done. Compared to the losses of the bereaved and the newly homeless, it seems trivial to discuss the inconveniences that the flooding caused fo...

“Lessening the tension in a crisis is not of itself a good thing." Why? Because we can be tempted to rush in and deal with the symptoms without discovering the cause. Lloyd Jones is speaking in the context of true conversion as opposed to simply moral and philosophical reform....

This past Sunday our pastor shared a great sermon about our infinite moral debt to God, and how Christ's perfect life and substitutionary death is the only currency that can pay this debt. To paraphrase him: We certainly have failed the obligations of God's law - to love, worship and obey him as we should. Christ is the only one that can free us from the damning obligation...

On the weekend of January 25th- 26th 2013, Calvary Grace hosted its fifth annual conference. This was the first time that we have hosted this conference in our own building. The topic was “Revival”, and the guest speaker was Dr. Michael Haykin, a former teacher and colleague of our Senior Pastor, Clint Humfrey....

On Christmas Eve there will be a service at our house in Canmore. It comes out of the community group that has been meeting here for the past couple of years. God has blessed this Gospel work and I believe it is significant that the people in this group have keenly endorsed an “official” service....

“Anything you can do, I can do, better”. That’s how the saying goes. Or is it a song? Whether or not you can do things better, is it true that anything anyone else can do, you can do? Are we all simply interchangeable parts in this world? The voices of our culture tell us that if we remove all the barriers to opportunity, then anyone can do anything. That is the a...

In a city of oil-bucks and big trucks, the idea of church may seem irrelevant. But the claims of Jesus Christ remain, and his church continues to be built, even here in Cowtown. Other people might think Calgary is the buckle on the Bible Belt, but they would be wrong. Calgary is in desperate need of the gospel as fewer churches hold forth the good news of Jesus’ death an...

Human nature being what it is, we are all too prone to push good things past the point where they are useful. So we need to guard against the temptation to think that we can 'figure it all out.' Moreover, we need to resist the idea that 'figuring it all out' would be a good thing....

In the afterglow of a weekend conference you can almost bank on the intense feelings to start wearing off by about Wednesday if not earlier. If a conference is a good one, it can seem a bit disappointing to let its benefits slip through your fingers like so much water. And most of the time, we content ourselves to feel disappointed with the quick loss, rather than actually...

Words have power. They can be used for good or evil. They are useful tools for building up, but can be destructive weapons for tearing down. Gospel partnership requires that we cultivate wisdom in our use of words....

Proverbs 22:6 is a well-known passage relating to child-rearing. It is, unfortunately, an oft-misunderstood one, as well. It’s fairly easy to find Christians who read or even teach this passage as a promise: if you train your child with all the correct methods and influences, God has promised that he or she will turn out a good and believing child. A darker twist on the ...

Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve, and with the dawn of the new year comes the annual making of New Year’s resolutions. Many will resolve to lose a certain number of pounds this year, or read a particular book, or save a particular amount of money, or spend more time doing this or that....

Over the last twenty years, there has been a resurgence in interest in all things “natural.” There are natural foods and natural supplements. There are natural forms of medicine, like chiropractic and naturopathy....

When I was in Grade 7, my homeroom teacher, Mr. Scholtens, said something that fundamentally changed what I thought about God, heaven, and work. ...