A mark of a healthy church is when members care well for one another in the love of Christ. In such a church the members build genuine, God-honoring relationships to provoke one another unto love and good works (Heb. 10:24) and to comfort one another by the comfort wherewith they have been comforted of God (2 Cor. 1:4). They do this because they love God and love the other members of the church. They want to use their experiences of God’s grace in their lives to encourage and help others in their suffering and sin struggles. If you are a...
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pastor of Unity PRC in Byron Center, Michigan Where do you go when your marriage is in crisis? How about when you have a difficult child to parent? Where will you find help in extreme suffering after a death, or in dealing with abuse and its affects? What if you are struggling with porn, habitual drunkenness, or drug use? Our covenant God has given us the gift of community so that in our suffering and sin struggles we find help in the church first and primarily. Our covenant God who dwells with us has designed the church to live in...
Pastor of Unity PRC in Byron Center, Michigan and president of the 2023 PRC Synod Who is a wise man and endued with knowledge among you? let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom. But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be...
Rescue Skills: Essential Skills for Restoring the Sexually Broken, by Deepak Reju and Jonathan D. Holmes, Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2021. Pp 259. $16.00. Paperback. ISBN 9781629959054. Rescue Plan: Charting a Course to Restore Prisoners of Pornography, by Deepak Reju and Jonathan Holmes, Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2021. Pp 241. $18.99. Paperback. ISBN: 9781629953830. Reviewed by Garrett J. Eriks. One of the greatest threats to the church today is pornography. This is not hyperbole. In fact, it might be the greatest threat to the present generations in the church. The statistics are staggering. According to the Covenant Eyes website, 51%...
Previous article in this series: October 1, 2022, p. 19. In our last article we saw that the church must have a culture of compassionate care. Saints minister to fellow saints in the service of Christ. Thus we want the church to be a place where we faithfully and lovingly care for the needs of one another. If we will understand rightly the spiritual relationships we are to have in the church, we must begin with God. This is true because our understanding of reality must always begin with God. This is what John Calvin wrote long ago, “It is...
Where should we go? Suppose there is a young man in your church—let’s call him Seth—who is struggling to do his personal devotions and occasionally watches porn. Or suppose there is a young woman in your church—let’s call her Sally—who struggles with anxiety and some bouts of depression. Again, suppose there is a young mother in the church—let’s call her Anna—who recently gave birth to her third child and is overwhelmed with caring for and disciplining three children under the age of five. Or there is a young couple—let’s call them Jack and Jill—who have been married for a few...
The Church’s Hope: The Reformed Doctrine of the End (Volume One: The Millennium), by Prof. David J. Engelsma (Jenison, MI: RFPA). $29.95 soft. 350 pages. Reviewed by Rev. Garry Eriks. The clear message of this volume on eschatology is the church’s hope that Jesus Christ is coming again to bring His church to live with Him in body and soul forever. The church of the Lord Jesus Christ needs this hope because of the attacks upon her and the hardships she faces in an increasingly wicked world. From beginning to end Prof. Engelsma warmly reminds the church of her hope....
And unto the angel of the church in Thyatira write; These things saith the Son of God, who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine brass; I know thy works, and charity, and service, and faith, and thy patience and thy works; and the last to be more than the first. Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. And I gave her space...
Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? Micah 6:6-8 As synod...
Although God’s people are called to live for His glory, because of indwelling sin and many temptations, God’s people sometimes fall into great and heinous sins. By these sins they offend God, experience guilt, grieve the Holy Spirit, and may even lose the sense of God’s favor (Canons of Dordt, 5.3). The church sees this reality in marriages, which are under the constant assault of Satan and this world. Within churches today, many members are enslaved to sins of pornography, drunkenness, drug use, self-harm, and many others. Such sins arise out of a heart that is not seeking the one,...
