A Word in Season: Messages by R.J. Rushdoony on the Faith for All of Life

While traveling recently, I met a man in his fifties who looked barely thirty-five pleasant, sincere, but strikingly immature. A lifetime without work had preserved his face but stunted his growth. I recalled a wealthy couple much the same: forever youthful in appearance, never seasoned by labor, responsibility, or hardship. Scripture, however, calls gray hair “a crown of glory” if it is found in...

Scripture commands gratitude, not as a polite gesture but as a defining mark of the redeemed. Psalm 100 tells us to “be thankful unto him,” while Paul says the reprobate are known by their refusal to give thanks (Rom. 1:21). Some believers radiate that joyful spirit like the hospital worker who exclaimed, “You saved me, Lord, and you’ll never hear the end of it!” but many Christians enter church l...

James 1:2–4 is no one’s favorite memory verse, yet it tells us exactly how God grows us: by testing our faith. If we bristle at hardship, God sends more not to crush us, but to build the spiritual muscles we keep asking for while hoping never to exercise. Patience is not learned in comfort any more than strength is gained by watching television. Babies demand instant relief; maturity comes when we...

We all know what it’s like to do something intuitively like finding the right key in the dark until we think about it and suddenly can’t. Scripture says something similar about our relationship to God. The ox and the donkey instinctively know their master, but God’s own people do not “consider” (Isa. 1:3). We were created so that our very heart and flesh cry out for the living God, yet sin makes u...

Most of us breathe and sleep without effort unless something deeper is wrong. Scripture tells us that chronic sleeplessness is often not a medical issue but a spiritual one: a failure to trust the Lord. When we insist on carrying the government of our lives on our own shoulders, rehearsing our troubles rather than surrendering them in prayer, we naturally forfeit rest. David slept in peace because...

When Paul asked the Thessalonian believers to pray for him, his request was strikingly unlike the typical prayer lists we hear today. He urged them to pray that he might be delivered “from unreasonable and wicked men,” noting that “all men have not faith” that is, not all who profess faith truly possess it. Paul labels these men first as “unreasonable” (ataktos) those who are “out of place,” who d...

When I moved into a large city, every street noise kept me awake, but within a year I heard none of them; when I later moved to the mountains, the coyotes howled nightly, yet soon even they disappeared from my awareness. We grow accustomed to anything. That is precisely why our feelings and experiences are worthless as moral standards: we quickly develop a tolerance for whatever surrounds us. In o...

Asaph confesses in Psalm 73 that when he brooded over the prosperity of the wicked and the injustices around him, his heart “became sour,” and in Moffatt’s vivid rendering he became “a dull, stupid creature, no better than a brute” before God. His bitterness accomplished nothing it did not change the ungodly, nor correct their wrongs; it only corrupted his own spirit and distanced him from the Lor...

Many of us remember the Sunday school boys who tried to meet the Scripture-memory requirement by quoting the shortest verse in the Bible “Jesus wept” hoping to get by with the least effort possible. But far too many adults still live out that same attitude in the church: offering the bare minimum, warming pews without commitment, resisting generosity, criticizing freely while contributing little,...

Some of the church’s most troubling people are not the openly rebellious but the selectively devout those who attend faithfully and read Scripture regularly, yet only for what they want, never for what God commands. Their piety is self-referential; they are religious humanists who use the Bible to serve themselves rather than to submit to the Lord. Eve did not reject all of God’s Word only the par...

Most of what consumes our political and personal energy today isn’t real problems at all but non-problems impossibilities created by human imagination to avoid admitting the real issue. Equality as absolute sameness and freedom as total autonomy are impossibilities; chasing them only produces disorder and tyranny. Likewise, when people say, “I want to be myself,” they pretend that abandoning respo...

When God sent Moses to demand Israel’s release, He already knew Pharaoh would refuse yet He ordained the confrontation to accomplish two crucial purposes. First, it hardened Pharaoh’s heart, intensifying his rebellion until judgment shattered it. Second, Pharaoh’s harsh retaliation forced the Israelites themselves to stop clinging to slavery and to stand with Moses. God often works the same way in...

Insatiability never being satisfied with income, possessions, relationships, or circumstances is one of the most pervasive but least acknowledged sins of our age. The insatiable person lives in perpetual restlessness: no house is good enough, no spouse good enough, no blessing enough to quiet the craving for “more.” Scripture counters this with a radically different truth: “godliness with contentm...

Contrition true, painful sorrow for sin is rarely spoken of today, yet Scripture places immense weight on it. The word comes from a root meaning “to bruise” or “to grind,” capturing the reality that our sins wound others and offend God. Real repentance begins only when that truth hurts us. Astonishingly, God declares that He dwells not only “in the high and holy place” but also “with him that is o...

The Psalmist compares the godly to “a tree planted by rivers of water,” and the image is deliberate: living trees never stop growing. The moment they cease to grow, they begin to die and soon become dangerous or obstructive. Scripture uses this metaphor to confront the church with an uncomfortable truth: many of its problems come from “no-growth members,” believers who have stopped drawing life fr...

Some people repeat the same sins and blunders endlessly, even after receiving clear counsel, because as Solomon says “the way of the wicked is as darkness: they know not at what they stumble.” Without a teachable heart, there can be no growth, and without regeneration there can be no teachable heart. The spiritually dead cannot be taught; they prefer talking about change to actually changing. But...

Many devout Christians faithfully attend church and pray, yet have a selective hearing problem when it comes to God’s Word. Like the boy who “didn’t hear” his mother’s command but heard instantly when invited to lick frosting from a beater, believers often listen eagerly to the comforting parts of Scripture while tuning out the commands that challenge or correct them. But the Psalmist declares, “I...

Peter writes to believers who had once lived in drunkenness, wastefulness, idolatry, and immorality but whose sudden transformation shocked their neighbors. Instead of rejoicing, the ungodly resented them, “speaking evil” because these new Christians no longer joined in their former sins. Yet the difference was unmistakable. Peter’s point is piercing: true conversion is visible. If Christ is in us...

Learning gives a man more material to become either wise or foolish and because foolishness is native to our fallen hearts, it is far easier to be a fool. Proverbs repeatedly describes the fool as a scoffer: cynical toward everything except his own opinions, destructive rather than constructive, quick to undermine others while accomplishing nothing himself. Such scorners love to sit on the sidelin...

When the angel told Joseph to name Mary’s child Jesus “Savior” he also revealed that this birth fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy of Emmanuel, “God with us.” Scripture’s focus is not merely the virgin birth but the staggering reality of the incarnation: that the eternal Son, very God of very God and very man of very man, entered our world in true humanity. As Creator, He already knew us completely; as i...

Riding with a reckless driver makes us tense, nervous, and desperate to seize the wheel but many of us treat God the same way. Though Scripture makes clear that He is in the driver’s seat of the universe, perfectly governing all things, we behave like panicked passengers: second-guessing Him, slamming imaginary brakes, and praying as though He needs our corrections. Such anxious “prayers” are real...

Scripture flatly forbids worry, calling it both foolish and sinful. Jesus warns against it, and Peter commands us to cast all our cares on the Lord, because worry and faith cannot coexist. God never worries He governs all things, knows the end from the beginning, and upholds every atom by His power. If He is truly our Lord, then Romans 8:28 is our confidence: all things work together for good to t...

Doctors increasingly report patients with no physical illness only a crushing sense that they have “nothing to live for.” Wealth, travel, and social status offer them no meaning because, as Scripture says, they are “without God” and therefore “having no hope.” Their despair echoes the cynicism of Lord Keynes, who famously shrugged, “In the long run, we are all dead.” But the apostle Paul speaks fr...

Scripture teaches that true wisdom is not merely learning but seeing seeing connections, consequences, timing, and judgment. A wise person looks ahead, discerning the shape of things to come, while the fool may possess mountains of information yet lack a shred of foresight. Our age is full of data and degrees but empty of wisdom: endless reports, expert studies, and policy papers have produced lit...

In Titus 3, Paul offers what he calls a “faithful saying” a core statement of the Christian faith and it is strikingly practical. Believers are to obey lawful authorities, because the Christian way is regeneration, not revolution. They must be ready for every good work, speaking evil of no one, avoiding quarrels, and showing gentleness and meekness to all. Once enslaved to lusts, malice, and envy,...