Well, let me welcome you to this series of podcasts.

I am very grateful to Ligonier Ministries for giving me the privilege of hosting this series,

and I hope you'll be able to join me each week, Monday through Friday, as we explore

all kinds of topics and different themes that I think are important to us in living the Christian

life. When I was a student, I went one New Year's Day to take part in a service in a Methodist

church in a fishing village in the northeast of Scotland.

I didn't know enough about the Methodist tradition to appreciate that actually it was a rather special service.

And although I and probably they have completely forgotten what I preached on, the service left

an indelible impression on me, because it was the Church's annual New Year

Covenant Renewal Service, and after the sermon, the whole congregation in unison committed

themselves afresh to the Lord in the words of a very personal and moving covenant.

I was quite surprised, actually, because I associated covenant theology with Presbyterians

and the Reformed tradition and the Puritans, and not the Methodists, and certainly

not the Wesley brothers.

But in fact, John Wesley had borrowed the idea of a living covenant from some of the Puritans

that he had read at an earlier stage in his life.

Anyway, it deeply impressed me, and I wanted to introduce it to the church as I served later on.

Occasionally, I find people objecting to the fact that it wasn't really sincere

to commit themselves to the Lord using someone else's words, which, to be honest, slightly

amused me because I watched them heartily every Lord's day, morning and evening, singing

other people's words of commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ.

But the vast majority of us, I think, found it very helpful.

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