God Won’t Always Open A Window

By: Matt Boga
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Those of us that are well-trained in cultural-Christian platitudes may be quick to tell our suffering loved ones “When God closes a door, he opens a window.” We say it with the most sincere intentions, but we likely haven’t inspected the words we’re saying to see if they square with what God has revealed to…

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20 Quotes from “The Church: The Gospel Made Visible” by Mark Dever

By: Matt Boga
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Mark Dever, Senior Pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC, is a Baptist. If for some reason you think he isn’t convinced of his baptistic stances, or if you think, when pressed about Baptist distinctives, he might say something like, “Well, we can’t really know so we’ll just agree to disagree.” You’re dead…

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25 Quotes from “Seek First: How the Kingdom of God Changes Everything” by Jeremy Treat

By: Matt Boga
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Jeremy defines the kingdom of God as: God’s reign through God’s people over God’s place (p. 15). In eight words he offers for us this working definition, and then for the rest of the book he elaborates on how that definition permeates our entire lives in the buckets of Kingdom Perspective, Kingdom Purpose, and Kingdom People.

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Gazing On The Gospel

By: Matt Boga
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The movie The Greatest Showman captivated my imagination when it came out a while back for numerous reasons, but perhaps the biggest reason is the theme of idolatry running through the whole thing. I told my wife at the time that it seems like whoever wrote the script spent a lot of time reading the…

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20 Quotes from “The Crucified King: Atonement and Kingdom in Biblical and Systematic Theology” by Jeremy Treat

By: Matt Boga
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In this book Jeremy Treat does what it seems few are interested in doing these days: he gets rid of the binary and focuses our eyes to the messy reality of “both/and.” Over the course of about 300 pages (and some change), he shows us how theology (biblical and systematic) and the two dominant motifs…

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Bring Your Trash to the Cross

By: Matt Boga
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God said, “dump it here, I’ll take it.” You see, the stink, the ugly, the mistakes you wish you never had. All of it. Christ took it, became it, and gave you what was his. Your trash for his treasure. He gave you what you made all of that trash trying to find. He gave you himself.

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10 Quotes from “Before You Open Your Bible” by Matt Smethurst

By: Matt Boga
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Matt Smethurst is the Managing Editor for The Gospel Coalition. That means, in part, he makes decisions about what  will be generally edifying, encouraging, and appropriately challenging to the readers that visit the site. It shows in this book.

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Don’t Be Deceived By Experiences

By: Matt Boga
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We live in a culture that tells us things like look inside, follow your heart, trust your gut. We’re not really conditioned to look outside of ourselves to find truth, but the real truth is that our hearts are deceitful, sick, and shouldn’t be trusted. That leaves us to find another (better) way.

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God Won’t Always Open A Window

By: Matt Boga
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“When God closes a door, he opens a window.” –Worldly Wisdom I don’t know how many times I’ve heard this over the years, but it’s a big number. This saying permeates our culture, and to be honest it seems great. However, with some nuance, we will come to see that there is some truth to…

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