thought exercise on Conversion

After a sojourn in the United States where he experienced the vibrancy of Black churches, Dietrich Bonhoeffer returned to Germany in 1931 to teach at the University of Berlin. His pastoral ministry co...

There are few Christian authors more respected than C. S. Lewis. After his conversion to Christ at age 33, he would spend the rest of his life writing iconic Christian works. However, his relationship...

Maltbie D. Babcock, author of This Is My Father’s World and a Presbyterian pastor in Brooklyn, introduced a free pew system in his church, upsetting a wealthy woman who found strangers in her us...

The two thieves appear to be representatives of two opposing directions. One of them founders on the cross; the other is raised up by it. The story of the repentant thief does not teach that every sco...

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of Sherlock Holmes fame became a zealous spiritualist later in life. He would often give public lectures on the subject. At one such meeting, he gestured enthusiastically while...

In his seminal work, The Cross of Christ , British pastor and author John Stott describes the unique, upside-down kingdom instituted on the cross: ‘Irresistible’ is the very word an Iranian stude...

Grace is not only needed for the occasion of conversion, the moment we suddenly (or slowly) come to our senses and realize that we are spiritually bankrupt, having nothing to bring to God and everythi...

The word eccentric comes from a combination of the Greek terms ex (out of) and kentron (center). When combined, ekkentros means “out of center.” The term gained currency in the late Middle Ages, when ...

Many Christians know John Newton as the author of the hymn Amazing Grace and other beloved hymns. Fewer know that Newton’s own life matches the beauty of transformation written in Amazing Gra...

In this short excerpt from C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, the fictional demon Wormwood instructs his apprentice Screwtape to build on the doubts that often occur once the initial spiritual and emo...

John Newton authored one of the most beloved hymns for English-speaking black Christians in the world, yet he spent his early life transporting African slaves to the New World. He was born in 1725, w...

W.H. Auden is one of the greatest poets of the 20th Century, who grew up in England but who spent some of his life in the United States. In November 1939 he found himself in a German-language movie th...

If we are honest with ourselves, for many of us who celebrate the sacraments on a regular basis, at times we take them for granted. We lose sight of their nature to inspire and remind us of our covena...

In England in 1955, a prominent atheist/humanist gave a series of lectures attacking Christianity. In response, the Anglican clergyman John Betjeman, wrote the following poem that deals with the quesi...

Billy Graham had a weekly radio show titled The Hour of Decision. Normally it was a tape recording of the service and message he’d given at a recent evangelistic rally. And at the conclusion of every ...

I (Josh) know a young man named Mark who was on the brink of self-destruction. He partied away his first semester of junior college and was later kicked out of school. He was devastated by his loss an...

Some time ago I heard a dear friend describe the day she became a Christian as the most wonderful day of her life. She said the next day was the worst day of her life. I asked why. She explained, “I a...

In Book Eight of Confessions , St. Augustine recounts how, in a state of deep inner turmoil, he “heard from a nearby house a voice, as of a boy or girl, I know not which, chanting repeatedly, ‘Ta...

[In the middle of the twentieth century a] young Russian communist went to a meeting one night where he heard a Christian expounding his faith. The communist was angry. How could anyone still believe ...

What happens when you wake up in the morning? For some people, waking up is a rude and shocking experience. Off goes the alarm, and they jump in fright, dragged out of a deep sleep to face the cold, ...

When the great theologian Jürgen Moltmann was sixteen years old in 1943, he was drafted into the German army and was soon captured by the Allied forces. He wound up in a prisoner of war camp in Scotla...

The Grand Prince of Kiev (now called Russia), Vladimir the Great, was under intense pressure to choose a national religion. The year was 987 AD, and paganism was quickly going out of fashion. More and...

David (Yonggi) Cho would go on to lead what is recognized as the largest church in the world (the Yoido Full Gospel Church), but his spiritual journey began far from Christianity. Raised as a Buddhist...

History records the Battle of Cannae as perhaps Rome's most devastating military defeat, orchestrated by the tactical genius of Hannibal of Carthage. In the aftermath of this crushing victory, the...

The 19th and 20th century Canadian-American pastor Harry Ironside once told a story of a new Christian who gave his testimony during a church service. Beaming with joy, the man spoke of how God had re...

In Jane Smiley’s novel Horse Heaven, Buddy Crawford, a horse trainer, has a “born again experience but things don’t go according to plan. This is his prayer: “One night, when he was praying his usu...

In 1947 huge crowds came to hear a thirty-two-year-old Californian preach at mass evangelistic rallies throughout China. Although Bob Pierce had no knowledge of Chinese language or culture, his messag...

In a quiet hospital room in North Carolina, an eager young doctor with a bright future evaluates his elderly patient with not much future left at all. She has a terminal heart condition, inoperable. A...

It was on November 28, 1965, that fighter pilot Howard Rutledge’s plane was shot down right into the hands of the North Vietnam Army. Quickly he was shuttled to the “Heartbreak Hotel,” one of the noto...

From his start in life, you would not have expected Andrei Borisovich Bloom to have ended up Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, founder of the Russian Orthodox diocese for Great Britain and Ireland. Bo...