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My name is James A. La Belle. I am grateful to my Lord that I grew up in a Christian home and have been in Christ since I was 14. The early days of my spiritual sojourn were peppered with backslidings, but the Lord’s persistent love and patience continued with me. He healed my backslidings and kept drawing me closer to Himself.
One way the Lord drew me closer to Himself was bringing Chantry to be my lovely wife. We met in High School and were married in 1991, the year following my graduation (yes, she’s a year older :). She has brought me tremendous joy over the years and has been a great encouragement in my spiritual growth. Being married young, we not only grew up together, but we grew in the faith together. God has been so kind to bring about our spiritual growth as one. And we are grateful that He has been pleased to bless us with 7 wonderful children.
I came to the Reformed Faith in 1993 while on a mission trip in Zimbabwe. As I was reading the Bible through for the first time, the Lord opened my eyes to see the wonders of the doctrines of grace. This turned my Pentecostal world upside down–to say the least. Upon returning to America, I was as thirsty as a desert to know God and the Bible better. I continued studying the Bible and was introduced to Reformed and Puritan authors like Lorraine Boettner, A.W. Pink, Charles Hodge, B.B. Warfield, John Calvin, Matthew Henry, Thomas Boston, and Thomas Watson. Their writings were nothing less than soul-enriching and I drank deeply and insatiably from their wells.
Coming to the Reformed Faith naturally brought us out of the Pentecostal church. We were members of a Reformed Baptist church for a few years, which proved to be an important season of growth, and when our time there was done the Lord brought us to a Presbyterian Church in America congregation. I was ordained as a Ruling Elder in that congregation and served the church by teaching regularly and preaching occasionally.
I knew in Africa that the Lord was calling me to full-time ministry, but Seminary didn’t become a reality until 2002. In the meantime I continued to study, learn, and grow in my appreciation for the rich heritage of the Protestant Reformation. While at Seminary we joined an Orthodox Presbyterian Church congregation. I graduated from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia in 2006 with my MDiv. degree and I was ordained into the pastoral ministry in April 2007 at Presbyterian Church of Cape Cod.
It was while in ministry that I became most aware of the English Puritans. Their writings were introduced to me by Iain Murray in 2007 and I’ve not stopped reading them since. Although I already had a few Puritan commentaries on my shelf and had dabbled into them like a child playing in the edge of the water on the shore looking for shells, I was largely ignorant of the treasure that could be mined from the depths within their pages. When Iain Murray challenged me to read The Mute Christian Under the Smarting Rod by Thomas Brooks, I was amazed and blessed. I felt like I’d discovered hidden treasure. I found their sermons and expositions to be Christ-exalting, sinner-humbling, sin-exposing, Scripture-saturated, and God-glorifying. I’ve grown immensely in my faith, devotion, zeal, and Christian walk by their writings. They set Christ before me in all His beauty and glory, which makes me love Him more every day. They set sin before me in all its ugliness, which makes me detest it and want nothing to do with it. They set myself before in all my sinfulness, which humbles me and makes me loathe my natural corruptions. But then they show me what and who I am in Christ, as His holy and redeemed Bride, which humbles me and makes me praise my Saviour and be ever thankful for the grace which first set divine love on me. They set God before me as one who is merciful, gracious, compassionate, loving, holy, wise, good, and just, which nurtures both my love for Him and my fear of Him. And they do all this, most importantly, by opening the Scriptures to me. I will always be thankful for Iain Murray’s encouragement to read the Puritans. I’ve hardly read anything else for the last decade. The influence they’ve had on my personal life and preaching/teaching ministry is immeasurable.
In the Lord’s providence I have written three Puritan-based books with Joel Beeke and published by Reformation Heritage Books. They are titled: Living by God’s Promises, Living Zealously, and Living in a Godly Marriage. I graduated from The North American Reformed Seminary in August 2016 with a Doctor of Divinity in Puritan Studies.
I’ll close by expressing my deep gratitude for the work to which He’s called me. I love the congregation at Presbyterian Church of Cape Cod with all my heart. It has been one of the greatest privileges of my life to serve them, now, for ten years and it is my prayer that I may serve them until the Lord calls me home. They are a joy to me and I would give my life for them. I pray the Lord will continue to pour out His Spirit on our congregation, filling us with the graces of Christ and shining His light through us to the praise of the glory of His grace in Christ. Amen.
