This week’s Free Stuff Friday is sponsored by Grassmarket Press, a new imprint of Crown & Covenant Publications. They are giving away the first three books from Grassmarket Press (I Have a Confession by Nathan Eshelman, What Is Love? by Kyle Borg, and Worship, Feasting, Rest, Mercy by Daniel Howe) to each of ten winners.

Grassmarket Press aims to provide short books on Reformed and Presbyterian teaching and practice—for regular people. Each book is slim and lightweight, yet durable. They contain engaging stories, practical examples, and clear, biblical teaching.
I Have a Confession
In your town, there are probably many churches saying they follow the Bible, yet they worship very differently and take different positions on big issues. How can we find a church that promotes right thinking about the Bible, encourages unity with truth, protects us from error, and helps us proclaim the good news? That is the heart of confessional churches and being a confessional Christian. This book is an introduction to confessions and what they’re supposed to do (and not do), focusing on the Westminster Confession of Faith.
Stephen G. Myers: “Too many Christians today see confessions of faith as dry, obscure straitjackets. In this accessible, engaging work, Nathan Eshelman dispels these caricatures, showing how the Westminster Confession, in particular, brings Christians clarity in the gospel and guidance in the Christian life. Many Christians, both new and mature, will be in his debt.”
What Is Love?
There are many voices in every corner of our world that are trying to tell us what love is. We need that noise quieted by a voice that strong and true. In the Bible, God speaks clearly and fully in defining and describing what love is in all the different relationships of life. This book is an encouragement to stop and listen, to consider that which the Scriptures call the lightning flash of the Lord.
Rosaria Butterfield: “Accessibly and delightfully written, Pastor Borg’s What is Love? arms Christians to recognize and distinguish real love from its counterfeits. All Christians in a post-Obergefell world that uncritically believes ‘love is love’ need to read this book.”
Worship, Feasting, Rest, Mercy
“One day a week, we lay aside our tools, wash off the sweat, stop pursuing our agendas, and feast and sing in honor of God.”
The world tells us that work is our identity. Career, income, and the toys they let us buy determine our success or failure. But God says otherwise. The Sabbath is His weekly message that the good things we have are His gift. Once a week he invites us to set aside our labor, trust him to provide, and celebrate his faithfulness.
In this book, Daniel Howe makes the case that the Christian Sabbath is not about what we’re forbidden from doing. It’s about what we get to do: honor and enjoy God’s gift of rest, and share it with others.
Coming Soon
Look for more titles from Grassmarket Press in 2023–24, including Worthy: The Worship of God by Nathan Eshelman; Good News for the Poor by Pete Smith; The Elders of the People by Drew Gordon; and Loving the Trinity by Barry York.

To Enter:
Fill out the form below with your name and email address—limit one entry per person. When you enter, you agree to be added to Crown & Covenant’s email list. The winner will be notified by email and must have a North American shipping address. The giveaway closes on Monday, April 17 at 12 p.m. EST.

Good morning. The Lord be with you and bless you today.
I added some new Kindle deals yesterday and hope to dig up some more this morning.
(Yesterday on the blog: A Difference-Making Ministry for Any Christian)

This article shows how the existence of hell, and the Bible’s warnings about it, are meant to motivate holiness.

Keith Mathison reminds us of a lesser-known benefit of the Lord’s Supper. “When we come together for the Lord’s Supper, it should remind us of the oneness of the body and spur us to compassion that we might do what we can to share the burdens of our brothers and sisters in Christ.”

Coram Deo is a Latin phrase meaning “before the face of God.” The phrase is often associated with John Calvin and other Reformers who summoned the Christian to live all of life in God’s presence (Ps. 56:13). More specifically, pastors have been charged in the presence of God to preach the word (2 Tim. 4:1-2). This conference (which features Kevin DeYoung, John Piper, H.B. Charles Jr., and others) aims to remind pastors of our great God, to recharge the preacher for teaching with clarity and conviction, and to reinvigorate the weary soul for a life of ministry faithfulness before the face of God. (Sponsored Link)

“We don’t like the ten plagues in Exodus, they feel like exactly the sort of thing we secretly wish wasn’t in the Old Testament because they afflict our innate sense of fairness and our unexpressed desire for God to be kind to everyone—even those who hate and afflict his people.”

“We must entrust our friends to God, even when it’s not how we pictured it. This is yet another way we love our friends in knowledge and discernment—in recognizing our lack of wisdom, sovereignty, knowledge, and even love for our friends compared to our Heavenly Father.”

Writing for TGC Africa, Thomas Endjala tells how the prosperity gospel distorts the true gospel. “No one wants to suffer. In my culture, and in most African cultures, suffering is seen as a sign of bad luck; or proof that you did something wrong.”

Susan encourages her readers to focus on someday and to know that it is not all that far away.

Ephesians 6 is a powerful call to be aware of the enemy and his army; it teaches that there is an enemy who devotes his entire existence to the destruction of God’s work and God’s people. Every Christian is engaged in battle against him.

God is not worshipped where He is not treasured and enjoyed.
—John Piper

Today’s post is sponsored by BJU Seminary and written by Stuart Scott, professor of biblical counseling and ACBC Fellow. BJU Seminary equips Christian leaders through an educational and ministry experience that is biblically shaped, theologically rich, historically significant, and evangelistically robust.

Ever since Adam ate of the tree in the garden, every man and woman has inherited a nature of sin. Running its course, sin leads to hopeless slavery. However, if we are believers, sin no longer holds us hopelessly captive because God has justified us, has broken that slavery, and is progressively sanctifying us. But we can still become temporarily and routinely entangled in sin—a sign that something is very wrong or missing in our Christian walk.
Scripture is clear that sin habits are incongruous with a redeemed lifestyle: “we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die” (Rom. 8:12–13a). In other words, a person who continues a life of sin without any real desire or efforts to change has no legitimate claim of redemption.
Consequently, God calls us to mortify the sin in our lives: “but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Rom. 8:13b). As we pursue holiness and rest on Christ’s finished work on the cross, by grace we aggressively strive against sin in our lives.  Pursuing holiness Christ’s way will weaken a sin habit, until its power and predominance is subdued and practically destroyed.
But mortifying our sin is not accomplished by our own efforts to break sinful habits. To mortify sin, we must aggressively strive toward a growing walk of faith with Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
So, the call to mortify our sin is really a call to vivify our faith in Christ and His gospel, first of all and ongoing. To vivify something, we endue it with life and effectuate it. Vivifying is not just about doing something; it is about possessing or personally embracing something from the inside out—for the glory it brings to God and the eternal life it expresses in us.
To vivify our faith in Christ, we must vivify true worship of Christ alone. Turning from competing pursuits and truly seeing Christ and His radical love for what it is will breed radical love, trust, and obedience (with delight) in us.
This vivifying of our faith in Christ includes vivifying faith in the gospel truths of Christ, daily. Turning to the power of Christ in us, His forgiveness, our hope of heaven, and all God’s promises will greatly impact our thinking and our actions. We must especially vivify or exercise our faith in the moments of trial and battle. Specifically in times of temptation, choosing to put faith in what we need to will empower us to resist sin and then grow our faith even more.
Vivifying faith effectually vivifies a walk in the Spirit. As we turn and submit to the truth of God and depend on the Spirit who dwells in us, through prayer, God and His Word can influence us. God’s Word, active faith, and the indwelling Spirit combined, in tandem with other saints, assures a walk in the Spirit.
With the vivification of our faith, we must then focus not on our habit of sin, but on Christ’s specific, righteous alternatives to our sin. Aggressively pursuing the Christlike characteristic corresponding to sin with real faith and dependence effectively works to mortify sin habits.
Replacing our sin habits with the help of the Holy Spirit is necessarily an intensive practice. It involves addressing personal hindrances such as laziness, apathy, and misplaced priorities. It involves personal, periodic examination with confession, and it involves any needed radical amputation of facilitators—all in response to Christ’s radical love.
This vivifying of our faith in the practical putting off sin and putting on righteousness is an ongoing Christian endeavor with Christ. Everything about our Christian walk and mortifying sin is inextricably linked to exercising our faith in a worthy and sacrificial Savior.
A fuller treatment of the cycle of sin habits, and of hope to mortify them, can be found in the book Killing Sin Habits: Conquering Sin with Radical Faith, written by Stuart Scott with Zondra Scott.