Today I want to remind us of the importance of friendships -- more specifically Christian friendships -- which we all need. These relationships, founded on the proper things, will be a major contributor to our spiritual life -- both rooting out sin and living a life in greater union with Christ. I quote today from Matthew Bingham’s book, A Heart Aflame For God: A Reformed Approach to Spiritual Formation : “… especially in the case of the local church, one of its great glorie

Brett McCracken may be a new name to some of you but he has been writing books and articles for the Gospel Coalition, where he is the senior editor and director of communications, for some time. This book is, in fact, almost 10 years old. But that does not make it irrelevant. In fact, what he speaks about has been and will continue to be an issue within the church until Christ comes again -- the local church is a necessary, though not perfect, and often uncomfortable place to

NOTE:  I have invited the contributions of Stu Reimer to write in this space on the issues of marriage and family. If you follow CRC at all you will know Stu to be my frequent substitute in the pulpit and I am looking forward to his work as my substitute from time to time in this space. Expect his blogs to appear every 6 weeks or so. Stu is no expert on the things on which I have asked him to write (Just ask his wife and children), but he is a committed reformed Christian and