Many of us act as if repentance is a matter of the will. [But] we can't "will" ourselves into change. We can't "will" ourselves into feeling contrition or remorse. Repentance isn't doing something about our sin; rather it means admitting that we can't do anything about our sin. We cannot woo ourselves into anything but the most external form of repentance.

All our effort, striving, and willpower have ...

The word judgment carries negative overtones for a good many people in our liberal and postliberal world. We need to remind ourselves that throughout the Bible God's coming judgment is a good thing, something to be celebrated, longed for, yearned over. It causes people to shout for joy and the trees of the field to clap their hands. In a world of systematic injustice, bullying, violence, arrogance, ...

On October 22, 1996, in St. Martins-in-the-Fields Church in central London, a congregation of some two hundred people, described the next day by the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph as "admirers," gathered to celebrate the life of the famous twentieth-century English novelist Sir Kingsley Amis. The paper described it as "a secular service: no hymns or prayers, just a lot of laughter." During ...

[My daughter], Allison,* came home for the weekend. She opened the door, didn't speak, and dropped her duffel bag. Smudges of mascara circled her eyes. I whispered a "God-please-no" prayer.

"Come tell me about your classes." I patted the sofa.

"Gotta take a shower."

As she clomped upstairs, I analyzed the recent changes in her: complaints of not having any money, rarely answers the phone, weight loss, ...

The first time I visited Rwanda, I went looking for monsters, albeit a different category of monster—the kind that isn't relegated to B movies. I had heard about the 1994 genocide that had left one million people dead—tortured, raped, viciously murdered—and somehow I thought it would be easy to spot the perpetrators. I naïvely assumed I would be able to look men and women in the ...

While their peers may be carousing and into all kinds of trouble, a new movement of teenagers is defying the trends of their generation. These teens are combating ignorance, rebellion, and apathy with the latest in modern technology: the blog.

Twin brothers Alex and Brett Harris, 17, created their blog (therebelution.com) in order to debunk the "myth of adolescence"—that being a teenager means ...

When Michelle Attaway moved in with her boyfriend, Jay, for a life of drugs and partying, she assumed Jay's parents would turn their back on them in disgust. So it was a bit shocking when Jay and Michelle were instead invited over for dinner. She writes about the events that followed:

I was incredulous because I knew that Jay's parents were "normal" people, the type that crossed to the other side ...

These are the unanswered questions of Martina Phillips, a mother with a wayward son whom she hasn't seen for four years:

How
How does a parent, who has prayed daily, deal with the rebellion of a child?

How does a loving parent accept the rejection of her offspring?

How does a parent keep from giving up hope?

How does a parent resist envy and bitterness when other people's children progress?

Why Why does ...

Editor's Note: On March 10, 2008, we published the following story as an "Editor's Choice" illustration. The story had a number of errors in it, and we wish to provide you with a corrected version. Over the years many pastors have embellished the story, adding the idea that the man who called Joe in the middle of the night was one of Tim Bayly's friends playing a prank on Joe Bayly, Tim's father. ...

Most of us spend the first six days of each week sowing wild oats, then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure.

—Fred Allen, U.S. comedian (1894–1956)