Jay McCarl

  • What’s on Your Bucket List?

    “What pain to find your life-work to be a lot of wood, and hay, and stubble that will blaze furiously, and die out in ashes! You know what I mean: so much time spent in planning frivolous amusements for the people, so much talent expended in teaching that which is not the gospel, so much

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  • Holding Hands in the Dark

    Holding Hands in the Dark

    “As the rain hides the stars, as the autumn mist hides the hills, happenings of my lot hide the shining of Thy face from me. Yet, if I may hold Thy hand in the darkness, it is enough; since I know that, though I may stumble in my going, Thou dost not fall.” —Alistair Maclean Walking in faith—not always fun, but always mighty. Always. —j

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  • The Myth of the Conformist God

    “Much of out difficulty stems from our unwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly.” —A.W. Tozer Perhaps the greatest words we could ever say to God are also the most frightening words we could ever hear from Him—”Thy will be done.” Attempting to conform God to our purpose and will

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  • Preaching ’til Doomsday

    Preaching ’til Doomsday

    “As the sun is not blown out by the tempest, nor the moon quenched by the dew of night, so is not the gospel destroyed by the sophistries of perverse minds. Wherefore let us comfort one another with these words: “The word of God is not bound.” It will be preached till doomsday.” —C.H. Spurgeon

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  • Cure for the Culture War

    “America has the most wise and just and Biblical and moral and constitutional foundation in the world—just like ancient Israel. America is one of the most religious countries in the world—just like ancient Israel. The church is big and rich and free in America—just like ancient Israel. And if God loves His church in America He

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  • Be Significant

    ” ‘The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.’* It would be scripturally false to leave out the second phrase, ‘and to enjoy Him forever.’ The men who formulated this showed great wisdom and insight is saying, ‘and to enjoy Him forever.’ Nevertheless, the first phrase is the first

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  • Malice in the Palace

    Malice in the Palace

    “There exist beings who spend more money, waste more time, take more trouble, than would be required for ten good actions, and that gratuitously, for their own pleasure, without receiving any other payment for their curiosity than curiosity…Why? For no reason. A pure passion for seeing, knowing and penetrating into things. A pure itch for talking. And

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  • The Next Mosquito in the Room

    “The early church didn’t have a Graham, a Finney, or a Moody. It didn’t have Promise Keepers, a Great Awakening, or user-friendly churches. Furthermore, it had no concise spiritual laws to share, no explosive method for talking to the unconverted. What it had seems quite paltry: it had unspectacular people with a hodgepodge of methods,

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  • A Pagan Walked Into a Church…

    A pagan observed an early 2nd century AD church. Here is what he saw. “They abstain from all impurity in the hope of the recompense that is to come in another world. As for their servants or handmaids or children, they persuade them to become Christians by the love they have for them; and when they

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  • “How can you cope with the end of the world and the beginning of another one?  How can you put an earthquake into a test-tube or the sea into a bottle? How can you live with the terrifying thought that the hurricane has become human, that fire has become flesh; that Life itself came to

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