Five Points Blog
Full Receipt For All Our Debts
- JJ Sherwood
- Jan 03, 2010
?Oh! Rejoice in the richness of our salvation! When the Lord pardoned our sins, he did not pardon half of them, and leave some of them on the book? but with one stroke of the pen he gave a full receipt for all our debts.
When we went down into the fountain filled with blood, and washed, we did not come up half-clean, but there was no spot nor wrinkle upon us?we were white as snow.?
~ Charles Spurgeon, ?The Joy of Salvation?
10 Questions To Ask At The Beginning of 2010
- JJ Sherwood
- Jan 01, 2010
Don Whitney, professor at Southern Seminary and author of Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, has 10 good questions to ask at the start of the new year:
1. What’s one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God? 2. What’s the most humanly impossible thing you will ask God to do this year? 3. What’s the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your family life this year? 4. In which spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress this year, and what will you do about it? 5. What is the single biggest time-waster in your life, and what will you do about it this year? 6. What is the most helpful new way you could strengthen your church? 7. For whose salvation will you pray most fervently this year? 8. What’s the most important way you will, by God’s grace, try to make this year different from last year? 9. What one thing could you do to improve your prayer life this year? 10. What single thing that you plan to do this year will matter most in ten years? In eternity?
Six Ways To Access The ESV Bible Reading Plans
- JJ Sherwood
- Dec 30, 2009
Regular Bible reading is a crucial element of spiritual formation.? There is much need for slow, meditative, contemplative, reading and re-reading of texts.? But we must imbibe the whole counsel of God consistently as well.? Imagine looking back on 2010 in 2020 remembering it as the year you decided to read the whole Bible through every year.? If you are looking for new or different Bible reading plans going into the new year or looking to try one for the first time, Crossway makes available about ten reading plans and you can access those ESV Bible Reading Plans can be accessed in multiple ways:
- web (a new reading each day appears online at the same link)
- RSS (subscribe to receive by RSS)
- email (subscribe to receive by email)
- iCal (download an iCalendar file)
- mobile (view a new reading each day on your mobile device)
- print (download a PDF of the whole plan)
HT: Justin Taylor
Christ Was Born A Martyr
- JJ Sherwood
- Dec 25, 2009
?The whole life of Christ was a continuall Passion; others die Martyrs, but Christ was born a Martyr? His birth and his death were but one continuall act, and his Christmas-day and his Good Friday, are but the evening and morning of one and the same day.?
?John Donne, Christmas sermon (Dec 25, 1626)
(HT: Tony Reinke)
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel
- JJ Sherwood
- Dec 24, 2009
O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear.
O come, thou Rod of Jesse, free thine own from Satan’s tyranny; from depths of hell thy people save, and give them victory over the grave.
O come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer our spirits by thine advent here; disperse the gloomy clouds of night, and death’s dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.