To be Little in Your Own Eyes

Jeremiah Burroughs:

A man who is little in his own eyes will account every affliction as little, and every mercy as great.

Therefore his meaning must be, I find a sufficiency of satisfaction in my own heart, through the grace of Christ that is in me. Though I have not outward comforts and worldly conveniences to supply my necessities, yet I have a sufficient portion between Christ and my soul abundantly to satisfy me in every condition. (The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment)

Grote Industries granted an Injunction against the Federal Government’s Health Insurance

On Jan. 30, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted an injunction against the federal government’s health insurance contraceptive mandate to Grote Industries, a Catholic-owned business, reversing a lower court’s ruling that earlier dismissed the business’ lawsuit.

Grote, which creates vehicle components, is a family-owned company based in Indiana. The company self-insures its 1,148 full-time employees, and the Grote family objects to the mandate’s required coverage for contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilization.

Continue reading here. . . .

Preaching the Message

Preaching is hard work. I know some preachers make it look easy, but it is not. As noted in the following article, you must first have the talent for speaking in public and continuously seek to improve it. Secondly, you must always be filling your mind with God’s Word. This should occupy the majority of the preacher’s time. Al Martin writes:

Let us now consider what is wrong with preaching today as it relates to the message, which is being preached. It is perfectly possible for a man to be marked by an eminent degree of personal piety and practical godliness, and yet to be woefully lacking in a powerful preaching ministry. Of course, part of this problem may be due to the fact that some men were never furnished by the great Head of the church with the requisite gifts for a teaching and preaching ministry. In such cases, the only answer to the problem is that such a man must recognize that he is not in the place for which God has furnished him. With no sense of shame, he should leave an active teaching and preaching ministry and seek employment in the secular world, or in some other form of the work of Christ’s church, which does not demand some measure of God-given gifts for oral communication.

However, I am directing my remarks to men who have reasonable grounds to assume that they have been given sufficient gifts to stand as preachers of the Word of God. . . .

Most preaching today, even in good Reformed circles, lacks substantial biblical content. One of the unique things about the great preachers of the past, the thing that makes their written sermons live hundreds of years after they were written, is that they are marked by their weightiness of substantial biblical content. What is it that gives the sermons of these great ambassadors their spiritual power? It is this. They are packed full of solid biblical substance, so that one feels that standing between him and the preacher is a wall of divine truth; that the issue is not with the hearer and the preacher, but with the hearer and the Word of God being conveyed to him by the preacher. That is precisely what men ought to sense when they hear us preach. … [M]uch of the problem of preaching today in respect of its lack of biblical content is due to the fact that men are too busy running the ecclesiastical machinery of their churches to soak their minds and spirits in the truth of Holy Scripture. It is only when the preacher’s mind is saturated in Holy Scripture that the Holy Spirit will bring to remembrance the truth of God in the context of preaching, and enable the servant of God to wield the Sword of the Spirit with power and authority. Then, even the illustrations and allusions will in great measure be drawn from the very words and thought patterns of Holy Scripture. (“What is Wrong with Preaching Today?”)