All Articles For Grace Life

Rev. Dick is pastor of Grace Protestant Reformed Church in Standale, Michigan. If you are a Grace Life person, you are a morning person. You are a lover of morning. For it is the time of glories. You just have to get up. You have to be there among those morning glories. To observe them, smell them, listen to them, touch them, and drink them in. To enjoy them. So those glories become yours. So you are glorified for another day. What are those morning glories? Why do we not want to miss them? Why especially in the morning of...

Rev. Dick is pastor of Grace Protestant Reformed Church in Standale, Michigan. Hoopla over the movie The Passion of the Christ will, by the time this article is published, have simmered somewhat. Evangelical faddists will have begun testing the market for another new thing (a Disney version of the Chronicles of Narnia, anyone?). Conservatives will have gone back to the Bible for sermon material. Writers, if you will believe me, will still be finding The Passion grist for their mills. At this same time most churches are, in their worship services, in their concerts, and in their devotions, reflecting upon...

Rev. Dick is pastor of Grace Protestant Reformed Church in Standale, Michigan. What has Jerusalem to do with Athens? This is the question theologians put when considering the matter of how the Church, Jerusalem, is related and relates to the world, Athens. Put another way, the question is How is the Church, and how are the people of God in that Church a part of or not a part of the culture of a fallen world? And if by “culture” is meant “the ideas, customs, skills, arts, etc. of a given people in a given period; civilization” (New World Dictionary),...

Rev. Dick is pastor of Grace Protestant Reformed Church in Standale, Michigan. The man and maid who have been led to one another covenantally, in the context of family and church, and hitherto trusting the guiding hand of God, can know for sure very simply if they are meant to be married. This is the ninth thesis of covenant marrying (cf. the April 1, 2003 issue of the Standard Bearer). These two can have such certainty because their way toward marriage together has been principled. The couple has been graced to follow God’s way of covenant marrying as revealed in...

Rev. Dick is pastor of Grace Protestant Reformed Church in Standale, Michigan. In the March 15 issue of the Standard Bearer, “Grace Life” elaborated upon these seven theses of covenant marrying: 1.The father of the Christian home must earnestly endeavor to know who his children are to marry. 2.Father’s knowledge of God is crucial for the father’s superintending the marriage of his children. 3.The godly father will seek to know God’s will for a mate for his children through his knowledge of families. 4.Mates will be pursued in the church. 5.The church will be actively involved in the marrying of...

Rev. Dick is pastor of Grace Protestant Reformed Church in Standale, Michigan. Dating must die. And Grace Life, you will recall, has been all for its swift demise. There have been several articles (cf. SB, Dec. 15, 2001; March 1, 2002; April 15, 2002; June, 2002; August, 2002; September 15, 2002). In them we have written just what convicts and condemns dating; it is everything she is about. For this is she: The unbiblical coupling and cavorting of two who are not yet ready for marrying, The pairing off of those who confess Fun, but who have not yet confessed...

Rev. Dick is pastor of Grace Protestant Reformed Church in Standale, Michigan. In Evangelio Dominus Ego sum, inquit, veritas. Non dixit, Ego sum consuetude! (Augustine, in De Baptismo, III.6.9, translated, “In the Gospel the Lord says—’I am the truth.’ He did not say, ‘I am custom.'”)Dating is fatherless. Modern American dating is determined to be fatherless. Not all fathers have succeeded in aborting all their children. But all daters do away with dads. Fatherless dating is a sign of the end of time. It is just one way, but a significant way, in which end-time worldling young and not-so-young people...

Rev. Dick is pastor of Grace Protestant Reformed Church in Standale, Michigan. If modern American dating is so bad, as yours truly has contended, what then is the alternative? How, just how, ought our covenant men and maids go about getting married? In the June issue of the Standard Bearer I mentioned that we must think theologically (and therefore biblically) in our approach to this. And, I suggested, when we do that, think theologically that is, we will be thinking along the lines of what could be called “the Family principle” when it comes to the marrying of the covenant...

Rev. Dick is pastor of Grace Protestant Reformed Church in Standale, Michigan. Dating is the way, the truth, and the life of the ungodly. It is the sought-out Savior of many-a-youth too scared to go through adolescence alone. It is the Silver Cup from which many older lonely and unmarried folk long to drink in order to live a Life they fear has passed them by. Believe me, dear Grace Life readers! Believe one who has been in the land of the pagans, believe a pastor and friend of all who would be the friends of Jesus—Dating is the Idol...

Rev. Dick is pastor of Grace Protestant Reformed Church in Standale, Michigan. Previous article in this series: March 1, 2005, p. 252. In the elegant books of creation we read, through the spectacles of Scripture, of sin and grace. We read some tsunami books in our last Grace Life article. Those terrible killer waves that crashed coasts some months ago are not only lessons in earthquakes and “where to build your next resort.” They are spiritual books. They are God’s own literature of the “shock and awe” genre. They shock us into an awesome sense of sin and sin’s killer...