Posts by Guy Richard

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Not long ago, a man came up to me after a sermon I preached on prayer to tell me that he was no longer interested in praying. His wife had died a few years earlier, and, in the months leading up to her death, he had prayed earnestly for the Lord to spare her life. But God had not answered, and his...
Many years ago, my family and I went to see a fireworks display on Lake Hartwell in South Carolina. We were staying with extended family on the lake, and a friend of the family came to pick us all up in his boat. As is usually the case for these types of events, the lake was extremely crowded that...
One of the most acute and enduring struggles that I have experienced in my own life has been the struggle to be content with myself. The real problem, as I have discovered, is that deep down I don’t want to be the person God has made me to be. Deep down I want to be someone else instead. I want to...
The topics of racism, social justice, and racial reconciliation have been hotly debated topics within the Church and on social media for some time now. One of the questions that I have routinely encountered from Christians in these debates concerns the appropriateness of the word "race." The...
Editor's Note: This is the final post in a four-part series on the life and relevance of Samuel Rutherford ( 1600-1661) . Find previous entries here . Rutherford as a Preacher There is no getting around the fact that Rutherford was an exceptional preacher. Historian Robert Wodrow even goes so far...
Editor's Note: This is the third post in a four-part series on the life and relevance of Samuel Rutherford ( 1600-1661) . Find previous entries here . A Ministry of Sacrifice and Suffering B eing called to the small, obscure parish of Anwoth did not give Rutherford an opportunity to take it easy...
Editor's Note: This is the second part of a four-part series on the life and relevance of Samuel Rutherford ( 1600-1661) . Read part one here . Rutherford's Conversion Rutherford received the M.A. degree in 1621 from Edinburgh and, two years later, was appointed Regent of Humanity for the...
I f you have heard the name of Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661) at all, you have probably heard it in connection with the Westminster Assembly or one of his two best known works, the Letters of Samuel Rutherford or Lex, Rex . You may know that Rutherford is arguably the most important of the Scottish...
I oftentimes tell people that ministry is discouragement. My point, in saying this, is not to suggest that ministry is only and always discouraging. There are, to be sure, times of great encouragement and blessing in ministry. Praise God that it is so! There are times when we know that God is...
As Christians we readily acknowledge that prayer is important. But far too often our actual practice reveals that we really don’t appreciate just how important it is. We know that we do not pray as often as we ought. But sadly we frequently do not even think about prayer with anything like...
A friend once told me about something that happened to him in a meeting of his church’s prayer committee, which had gathered to consider ways of encouraging greater participation in their Wednesday evening prayer meetings. After the committee had discussed for some time the obvious reluctance...