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Book Review: Pilgrim’s Progress
“As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I came to the place where there was a den. Inside, I lay down to sleep, and as I slept, I had a dream.” John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress When I first read Pilgrim’s Progress as a young believer I was captivated by the adventure and all the clever ways Bunyan brought Scripture and doctrine to life through allegory. The story follows a man named Christian, who begins with a burden in the city of Destruction. Bunyan shows the clear gospel when at the “place of Deliverance” (the cross) Christian releases his burden and sets out to journey on the “King’s Highway”…
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Summer Fruit Devotion: Self-Control Day 5
By the Spirit “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before,…
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Summer Fruit Devotion: Self-Control Day 3
Train the Young “But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled. Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your…
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Summer Fruit Devotion: Gentleness Day 5
Unity in Gentleness “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” Ephesians 4:1-6 The Spirit loves unity. The Spirit also loves diversity. The next part of…
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Summer Fruit Devotion: Kindness Day 1
Kindness Saves “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.…
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Summer Fruit Devotion: Love Day 4
Speaking in Love Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of…
