This week you can find 50% off on the ESV Journaling Bibles at Westminster Books. They are a great resource for better understanding and applying the Bible.

There are not a lot of Christian Kindle deals today, so I added a few general market options that caught my eye.
(Yesterday on the blog: Breathe a Sigh of Relief or Recoil in Terror)
How Evangelicals Lose Will Make All the Difference
That’s an intriguing headline, isn’t it? And it’s got a good article behind it.
The Gray Havens – I’ll Fly Away (Live from The Zion Caravan Tour)
I enjoyed this new rendition of “I’ll Fly Away” by the Gray Havens.
What is our greatest need?
Compelled by a desire for men to know God’s love, Washer draws from the church’s greatest theologians to herald Christ’s centrality in revelation, salvation, sanctification, study, proclamation, and glory. The Preeminent Christ will stimulate you to zealously seek Christ and His gospel over all worldly “needs.” (Sponsored Link)
Use Your Comfort Zone to the Glory of God
“‘Get out of your comfort zone.’ We hear it all the time, from friends, family, business leaders, church leaders, and actually, the whole rest of the world, it seems. But I’m going to encourage you here to do just the opposite: to find your comfort zone and stay in it.”
Shooting For The Earth
This article seems to me to nicely complement the previous one. “Shoot for the moon, they say, and even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars. I‘m not so sure.”
Your preaching is primarily for believers
This is so important to consider. “In certain circles, seeking to get unbelievers into church is seen as the highest possible goal. There is nothing better, according to some, when unbelievers come into the church and under the sound of the gospel. That, they aver, is what we ought to be about. At the risk of being deemed a contrarian, I just don’t think that is true.”
LORD, My Heart Is Not Haughty
What a great reflection/meditation/prayer.
In Dependence
Here’s one for those especially independent people. “Not long ago, I was talking to a 25+ year friend and former colleague, and, in a teary moment, said to him, ‘I need you to hear this.’ As I paused, he said, ‘Lisa, I have never thought of you as needing anything.’ His honesty set me back on my heels.”
Flashback: What a Wonder Is a Human Being!
A mighty oak from the smallest acorn, the greatest mustard tree from the tiniest seed, and a great and noble life from the littlest child. So much potential bound up in so tiny a person, so many possibilities lying latent, so many opportunities to serve simply waiting for time, for growth, for maturity.

The nearness of God, secured by the gospel, is a source of all kinds of comforts and wisdom. —Ed Welch

The Parable of the Talents is one of the best-known and best-loved of all the parables Jesus left us. It tells of a man who is going on a journey and, who, before he sets out, distributes his wealth among his servants for safekeeping. To one he gives five talents, to another two, and to another just one. (A talent, for sake of context, is about 20 years’ of wages for a laborer.) It tells how each of these servants responds to what is entrusted to him: Two of the servants invest the money wisely and double it, while the other simply buries the money and then later returns it as-is. The first two receive their master’s approval while the third receives his condemnation.

This parable leads to many legitimate applications and often challenges us to be faithful with what the Lord has entrusted to us, whether that is the gospel itself, or the gifts, talents, money, responsibilities, or opportunities we have been given. God entrusts us with so much and it falls to us, as his servants, to be faithful with it all. We can expect that as we are faithful, we will know God’s approval and reward. “For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance.”
Hidden in plain sight is a simple observation: the servants are never offered a choice in their stewardship. The master does not come to them to ask, “How much of my wealth do you think you’re capable of handling?” He never checks in to inquire, “How would you feel about being given the full five talents? Do you think you can handle five, or would you prefer to have just two?” He doesn’t have them go through an application process and doesn’t pull out the Enneagram to make sure he is dispensing his wealth according to personality type. Rather, he simply assigns an amount to each of them as he sees fit. He dispenses his wealth and expects that each of them will prove worthy of the responsibility he has given them.
Yet surely the one who receives the five talents feels particularly honored. Surely it is a sign of his master’s trust, his master’s confidence, that he is given so much. Surely the master is not being rash or hasty in giving that one servant two-thirds of his wealth. Surely this one has already proven himself faithful and on that basis is now being given the opportunity to prove himself faithful with even more.
And with that in mind, I wonder if you are carrying a heavy burden right now. You may have been entrusted with weighty responsibilities. You may be bearing deep sorrows and fierce pains. You may be wondering why so much has been given to you, why the path you must walk is so narrow, so rocky, so difficult. You may be wondering why God’s Providence seems to have been applied in so painful a way.
From the Parable of the Talents you must see the hand of God in it all, for he is the one who has entrusted all these things to you. And behind the hand of God, you must see his confidence in you, his trust, his optimism. God is the one who has called you to walk this path, and he is the one who has called you to walk it faithfully. Yet he has not judged you wrong or set you up for failure. He has not been flippant in his decisions or reckless in his wisdom. No, he has found you faithful in small things and has now entrusted to you this very large thing. You have been faithful in little and now you have been set over much.
In that way your master’s confidence is a blessing, a reward all its own. He made no mistake in dispensing five talents to you, and he will never leave you nor forsake you as you bear it for his sake, for his cause, for his glory. Let his trust spur you on to prove yourself faithful, his confidence motivate you to prove yourself worthy—worthy of the weighty responsibility he has placed into your hands.

Sundays are for devotion, and this brief devotional celebrates God as the One who reaches out to us.
There are no truly innocent human beings. Each of us has willfully rebelled against God, but even if we hadn’t, we would still be tainted by the sin of Adam, for “by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners” (Romans 5:19).
In Paul’s great letter to the church in Rome, he explains that in our sinful state, we actively suppress any knowledge of God, even denying the undeniable reality of his power and presence in creation. Our thinking about God and the state of our own souls becomes futile, our hearts become darkened, and we behave like fools— for “the fool says in his heart, There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1).
Yet the Bible assures us that we can have a genuine relationship with God. How can that be? It is possible only because God has taken the initiative. When we could not and would not reach out to him, he has reached out to us. “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly… God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6,8). That’s the kind of God we serve—the God who reaches out!