Dr Paul Allen

When we are in love—especially when that love is raw and new —we count the days and hours until the time we will see our beloved again. The strange thing about this kind of longing is that it is created by someone, and it can only be solved or filled by that same person. The longing a lover feels for his beloved is what the psalmist feels in Psalm 84. His language is love language:  “How lovely is your dwelling place. . . . My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord” (emphasis added). This psalmist knows God and has been, one could say, wounded by His presence, so that the only balm is to return to that presence. He longs for it. He yearns for it. The great church father Gregory of Nazianzus described this feeling in his poem De rebus suis as knowing in his inmost being “the sharp stab of desire for the King.”   C.S. Lewis gave fine expression to this desire in his Reflections on the Psalms: “I have rather—though the expression may seem harsh to some—called this the...

“How can I be sure that I have been given new, holy desires?” And this is really a question of “How can I be sure I have been born again?” Because that’s what the new birth does; it gives us these new, God-centered, Christ-exalting, Spirit-empowered desires. And the other question is “How much desire for God and victory over contrary desires — sinful desires — is realistic or normative for the Christian life?” Let’s describe how the New Testament pictures the desires of the person who has been born again and the kind of battle this introduces into the person’s life. Goodbye, Darkness Before we’re born again — and I mean born again by the Spirit of God through the word of God — the Bible describes us as natural persons, meaning that we don’t have the Holy Spirit. And therefore, we do not have the spiritual ability to see the beauty of Christ and his gospel for what they really are, or the ability to feel them for what they really are — namely, precious. First Corinthians 2:...

Not many people realize that the rules God gives his people in the Bible are not meant to suck the joy out of life, but rather to equip one to enjoy life, family, relationships, and worship more and more. This is the perspective of the psalmist who penned Psalm 119:9-16. 4 STEPS OF GODLINESS SO YOUR WALK WILL NOT BE A DRUDGERY BUT A DELIGHT 1. THE BELIEVER’S DESIRE Psalm 119:9 How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. The psalmist is asking – how can I stay pure, how can I obey God? This is a great question, true godliness begins with this desire. You have to want to be godly for the rules to work. Even if God gives you his word, if you don’t want to please God, you might obey him while others are watching, but you will cut corners in private The law of God only works if it springs from a desire to please God. Jesus reprimanded religious hypocrites for doing their service only to be seen by men. Matthew 6:1 Beware of practicing yo...

“Give me this hill country . . . and I shall drive them out.” These are the words of eighty-year-old Caleb, recorded in the book of Joshua, as the Israelites surged into the land and prepared to engage their enemies ( Josh. 14:12 ). In light of the obstacles in front of Caleb and the dangers they represented, one would be hard pressed to think of him as being anything less than ambitious. But were Caleb’s ambitions good or bad? Too often the word ambition conjures up negative images of Wall Street investment bankers rationalizing self-serving greed. Or, one might find the word plastered across a motivational poster with a climber clinging to the side of a mountain attempting an ascent. But which is it? Is ambition bad, or should we cultivate it in ourselves and in our children? Does the Bible promote ambition? When we do a search for the word ambition in the Bible—looking through various English translations—we see it in multiple texts translated from several Greek words. The word ...