On this day in 1850, a blizzard in Colchester, England, changed the course of church history.
A 15-year-old Charles Spurgeon, burdened by the weight of his sin, was blocked by the snow from reaching his usual place of worship. He ducked into a small Primitive Methodist Chapel on Artillery Street just to escape the storm.
With the regular minister snowed in, a simple layman, traditionally remembered as a humble deacon, stood up to fill the pulpit. He lacked formal education and eloquence, but he had a text: Isaiah 45:22.
"Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else."
The preacher looked directly at the young Spurgeon and shouted: "Young man, look to Jesus Christ! Look! Look! Look! You have nothing to do but to look and live!"
In that moment, the clouds parted for young Charles Haddon Spurgeon. He later said, "I saw at once the way of salvation." The "Prince of Preachers" was born out of a simple look of faith on a snowy January morning, 176 years ago, today.
Whatever storm you are in today, the message remains the same: Look to Christ and live!
#Spurgeon #ChurchHistory #OnThisDay #Faith #Gospel #CharlesSpurgeon
Algorithms and the Affections
John Piper (Nov. 2025): “If you had thought that your essence of humanness in the image of God was your reasoning capacity, over an ape or a porpoise, you’re in trouble. Because, guess what? ChatGPT is smarter than you are and more creative than you are in expressing things in language that is good. It can write prayers better than you can, and it can reason through hard problems better than you can. Therefore, there are people who are going to forsake the faith because they thought to be a human in the image of God was to be a reasoning person over against the animals, and they discovered a machine can do it better than they can. Crisis of faith. This to me is no crisis because of my Christian Hedonism. I do not think that my reasoning capacities are my essence. I think the soul’s capacity to delight in God is my essence. The soul’s capacity to enjoy God. No machine will ever enjoy, period. It will have the language of enjoyment. You can tell it to write a poem of enjoyment and it will use the language. That machine is not enjoying *her*. It’s not. It never will. Only human beings created in the image of God can enjoy God. Therefore, enjoyment matters. I mean, affections are who we are ultimately. The end of history, the end of creation, is not going to be merely rational creatures thinking rightly about God, little computers. It’s going to be people who are so perceptive spiritually of the glories of God that they are full of affections that are appropriate for those glories and can give expression to them. That’s what eternity will be.”
Source: Sovereign Grace Churches, Pastors Conference PreCon (November 2025)
The 8th edition of the Proton Lifetime Charity Fundraiser is here!
🎟️ Enter the raffle for a chance to win 1 of 10 Lifetime plans
💜 Help us support 10 community-nominated organizations
🎁 NEW: We’re giving away an additional Lifetime plan through a social contest.
⬇️1/6
10 Traits of dying churches:
1. They value the process of decision over the outcome of decision
2. They resent to Community for not responding as it once did.
3. A refusal to handover meaningful leadership to the next generation.
(More to come in later post)
In a convenience store, there's warning labels on the dangers of using alcohol or tobacco.
But in any grocery store in America, the food products harming our nation aren't accompanied by the same cautions.
Consumers deserve food warnings. Read my piece 🔽
https://t.co/ZY2xUqZqYJ
I’m not saying they’re the only important questions, but it befuddles me how infrequently questions like these are asked of SBC presidential candidates:
“When’s the last time you presided over a business meeting? How frequently do you do that?”
Your church is not an event you attend; it’s a body to which you belong.
The Southern Baptist Convention is not a body to which you belong; it is an event you attend.