Equipping the Saints for Worshipful Service - Eph. 4:12
Longer-form biblical and theological writing from Voice in the Valley Ministries.
The Regulative Principle of Worship and Its Historical Roots Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do.You shall not add to it or take from it. – Deuteronomy 12:32 Once upon a time, in history and recorded in Scripture, two of Aaron’s sons died on the very day the priesthood began. Not…
In America, we have more ways to rest than any people who have ever lived, and less rest than most of those who have gone before us. The phone glows its blue-light rays on the nightstand at midnight. Sunday afternoon fills up with the work we could not finish on Saturday, or a soccer match…
Jeremiah 29:11 Of all the verses in all the Bible, Jeremiah 29:11 is the one we reach for when somebody we love is about to step into the unknown. It is on the coffee mug, the graduation card, the cross-stitch above the kitchen sink, the bookmark tucked in a teenager’s backpack, and the wallpaper on…
The Word of God does not work alone. This is not a minor claim. It touches how we read Scripture, how we preach, and how we account for the difference between a sermon that forms and one that gives life. Ezekiel 37 is where the anatomy is most clearly visible. Isaiah 55:11 promises that the…
Isaiah 55:10–11 (ESV) I have preached in churches where the congregation numbered fourteen, where the carpet was worn down to the hide, where the offering wouldn’t have kept the lights on if there were lights worth keeping on. I have driven home from Sunday services wondering whether anything I said reached anyone at all, or…