Together, we have faith

 God's Word is our strength

Personal Bible Journal

 Bible Study Tools
DAILY DEVOTIONAL 
By Carl Shank March 22, 2025
"Only the facts. Ma'am!" I recall that phrase said over and over again on TV as a kid watching the old TV series, "Dragnet." Dragnet was an American crime drama television series starring Jack Webb and Harry Morgan which ran for four seasons, from January 12, 1967, to April 16, 1970. This very famous and dour saying was Jack Webb's cryptic remark to interviewed witnesses of a crime. He did not want superfluous or extraneous or personal opinions to cloud the real "facts" of the crime or situation at hand. A current public radio program claims that they are following "only the facts," that they report only factual events as they really took place. They claim to be free of bias and not "progressively oriented" in their reporting. Consequently, a recent show on abortion offered the scientific "fact" of an unborn baby, or fetus, achieving "life status" at so many weeks of gestation. This was said in response to a conservative caller who phoned in citing other "evidence," including the Bible's take on conception, as the beginning of life. The public radio station claimed that the caller was wrong and cited "scientific facts" about the "real" beginning of life. This is an instance and example of what modern society, especially anti-Christian society, considers as "factual" and therefore worth reporting and worth our time. There are actually three problems with what are called "facts" today even when claiming to be fair and unbiased. The definition of what is "factual" has shifted, first of all, over time and history. Hillsdale College publishes speeches in a format called "Imprimis" ( https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/ ) This very conservative institution offers excellent and gifted speakers who go against the tide of "progressivism" in the country. While they and their invited speakers are often dismissed and ignored by most public and social media today, they offer another look at American culture that is Constitutionally based. One of those speakers noted that in the court system today, progressive constitutional thinking has replaced and overtaken original constitutional mandates. This can actually be traced in the history of the court system. "Facts" seen as such years ago are now replaced by "real" facts, modern facts, today's facts. This is part of the problem of a public radio station purporting to only report the "facts" of a situation today. In the second place, reporters and journalists today have been schooled and educated by liberal elite to discard "old" ways of thinking, especially conservatively based thinking, and report things as they "see" them. And this is the problem. How we process what we see is often, whether consciously or unconsciously, biased in favor of a liberal, anti-Christian way of thinking and seeing. Rather than admit such presuppositional flavoring to "factual" reporting, the modern way is seen as the "only" way to see and process everything. Scientific reasoning, crafted by liberal theologians and philosophers of the Enlightenment, has replaced and driven out any hint of truthful reporting that takes into account biblical truth. And, of course, "religious" truth has been replaced by "scientific" truth, as if humanity's way of reasoning trumps God's revelation. Third, American individualism, copying the French Revolution, has defined American "freedom" today. This requires some explanation. Os Guinness in his Last Call for Liberty: How America's Genius for Freedom has Become Its Greatest Threat (InterVarsity Press, 2018), has carefully cited historical "facts" that link the 1789 French Revolution and the American Left — "The former struggled for "liberté" and "egalité" the latter for "liberation" and "social justice." The former won through violent revolution, whereas the latter seeks to win through a cultural revolution, after which the elite imposes its will through administrative and bureaucratic procedures (regulative bodies and the law courts). And both are characterized by their reliance on the state, their open hostility toward religion, their radical separation of religion and public life, their attempt to control language in order to control reality (French and Soviet "Newspeak," "doublespeak," and American "political correctness"), their unashamed espousal of power, their egalitarian appeal to envy rather than liberty, and their naive utopianism that the removal of repression will mean fulfillment of freedom." (51) He says that American has rejected its covenantal/constitutional heritage of freedom as a republic surrendering to those supoposedly "democratic" forces that redefine our "facts" and our heritage. "Only the facts, Ma'am!" has taken on a new meaning, a new way of thinking and processing, and an anti-Christian, anti-biblical, anti-religious cast that we cannot even see or take into account in our reporting of the "facts."
Show More

Oct 9, 2025

Week $40 — Day 5

Attend the Sermon with Preparation


Q. 90. How is the Word to be read and heard, that it may become effectual to salvation?

A. That the Word may become effectual to salvation, we must attend thereunto with

diligence, preparation, and prayer; receive it with faith and love, lay it up in our hearts, and practice it in our lives.

Prov. 8:34; 1 Pet. 2:1-2; Ps. 119:18; Heb. 4:2; 2 Thess. 2:10; Ps. 119:11; Luke 8:15; Jas. 1:25.

“Blessed is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors.”

“So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation”

“Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.”


“Attend with preparation. We should be like Cornelius, who told Peter, “We are all present before God, to hear all the things commanded you by God” (Acts 10:33). As much as circumstances allow, listeners should bring to the preaching rested and well-cared-for bodies lest the truth meet drowsy minds or grumbling stomachs.”


Excerpt From Glorifying and Enjoying God: 52 Devotions through the Westminster Shorter Catechism (Boekestein & Cruse & Miller)


Attend the sermon with preparation. I have heard through the years the comment, “I did not get much from that message.” The fact is that what you give to a sermon is what you get out of a sermon. Preparatory prayer, freeing yourself from distractions, readiness to hear and learn are all necessary to hearing sermon messages well. This involves a good night’s sleep before the message. Sickness and illness obviously affect how we hear sermons. Extraneous noise around us can also dull our hearing and senses to receive what God wants to give. These are all common and necessary impediments to attending the sermon with preparation.


There is also another force at work in the preaching and hearing of the Word of God. And that is Satan. He does not want you to hear God’s voice in his Word through the message presented. His work is mainly distraction. This is spiritual warfare and you need to be prepared to go to war with the enemy of our souls in attending the message. Saying “no” to Satan’s wiles is a necessary part of attending the sermon.

Be prepared!


A Puritan Prayer —

“THOU GOD OF ALL GRACE,

Thou hast given me a Saviour,

produce in me a faith to live by him,

to make him all my desire,

all my hope,

all my glory.

May I enter him as my refuge,

build on him as my foundation,

walk in him as my way,

follow him as my guide,

conform to him as my example,

receive his instructions as my prophet,

rely on his intercession as my high priest,

obey him as my king.

May I never be ashamed of him or his words,

but joyfully bear his reproach,

never displease him by unholy or imprudent conduct,

never count it a glory if I take it patiently when buffeted for a fault,

never make the multitude my model,

never delay when thy Word invites me to advance.

May thy dear Son preserve me from this present evil world,

so that its smiles never allure,

nor its frowns terrify,

nor its vices defile,

nor its errors delude me.

May I feel that I am a stranger and a pilgrim on earth,

declaring plainly that I seek a country,

my title to it becoming daily more clear,

my meetness for it more perfect,

my foretastes of it more abundant;

and whatsoever I do may it be done in the Saviour’s name.”


Excerpt From

The Valley of Vision

Edited by Arthur Bennett



"We must unquestionably receive its [the Bible's] statements of fact,  bow before its enunciation of duty, tremble before its threatenings, 
and rest upon its promises." – B.B. Warfield


Send us a Message