Weekend A La Carte (April 22)
I am once again grateful to Children’s Hunger Fund for sponsoring the blog this week. “Across the US and in 29 countries around the world, faithful pastors and church volunteers from Children’s Hunger Fund church partners have dedicated their time to serving children and families in desperate situations.”
(Yesterday on the blog: The Gospel of Jesus)
Political Life Begins in the Church
Patrick Schreiner has an important article about the church’s primary (though not necessarily sole) political witness to the world.
Trusting God with The I-Don’t-Knows
“A mysterious curtain hangs just beyond this immediate present moment shielding our gaze from endless I-Don’t-Knows. Those I-Don’t-Knows are numerous, quite humbling, and often painful.”
Moses, the Mountain, and a Mass of Email
“Christians and non-Christians alike constantly talk about the need for ‘self-care’ these days. I wonder if farmers, working 80 hours a week in 1950s America, thought about ‘self-care.’ That is a rhetorical question.” Of course it is!
Once More, Church and Culture
There is a lot to ponder in this long article about the relationship of church and culture. “To ask about the church’s place in society while living in Christendom is redundant. The question answers itself. The question is genuinely new, however, when posed after Christendom.”
Freedom from the Burden of People Pleasing
Susan Narjala: “As a child, I learned to colour inside the lines. I do not mean just in art class, but that nature and nurture moulded me into a rule-follower.” She goes on to discuss how we can find freedom from people pleasing.
Could AI replace my pastor?
“The latest iteration of the chat bot can apparently produce sermons. You tell it your passage, how many points you want and point and shoot and away it goes. What you end up will be grammatically correct and may read well, though I think it comes across as a bit sterile. But to think that it is a sermon is to think wrongly about what preaching is.”
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A La Carte (July 7)
Grace, mercy, and peace to you today.
Three Reasons Not to Yell at Your Kids
“Before we had kids, we might have looked with pity or disdain on this poor man. ‘I will never yell at my children.’ But after having children, at some point, that day comes—the day when it’s all just too much. And we yell. And that’s a problem.” It is, indeed.
A Nobody in One Country, Famous in the Next
This is a fantastic illustration of an even better reality.
Win Your Free Copy of The R.C. Sproul Signature Classics
Ligonier Ministries is giving away 100 free copies of The R.C. Sproul Signature Classics, a six-volume collection containing some of Dr. Sproul’s most influential books. Enter the giveaway today for your opportunity to win thousands of pages of faithful, biblical teaching. (Sponsored Link)
The FAQs: Queer Theory and American Politics
This is a useful FAQ on queer theory—what it is and where it originated.
Transformation of a Transgender Teen
“Eva was in a church luncheon when she got an email from her 12-year-old daughter Grace. (Their names have been changed.) ‘Mom and Dad, I need to tell you I’m not actually a girl,’ she read. ‘My pronouns are they/them.’” Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra tells about the transformation of a transgender teen.
The temptation: beautiful woman, or old hag?
“I’m preaching a series through the temptations of Christ, and in my studying I realized that there is a stark interpretive choice a preacher has to make. Is the temptation account primarily in the Bible to give us a description of how we are to resist temptation, or is it in the Bible to show us a picture of someone who fights temptation in our place?”
What Can Protestants Learn From Thomas Aquinas?
If you’re in the mood for some theological reading, you’ll find a new issue of Credo magazine free to read. The theme of this one is Thomas Aquinas.
Flashback: Joy Is for the Generous
Each one gave as he decided in his own heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion. God loves that kind of cheerful giver and God’s people love to be that kind of cheerful giver. God granted and his people gained joy.Faith stands or falls on the truth that the future with God is more satisfying than the one promised by sin. Where this truth is embraced and God is cherished above all, the power of sin is broken. —John Piper
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A La Carte (May 11)
It was a tremendous honor to learn that Seasons of Sorrow has received the annual Christian Book Award for biography & memoir (from the The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association). You can see the winners in other categories here.
There are a few new Kindle deals that are worth considering.
The Inner Circle
“It’s all who you know,” they say. Yet, as Seth Lewis says, “the trouble is that most of us were not born into powerful families. We don’t naturally rub shoulders with people in influential positions. Which means that if you want to get ahead professionally, socially, or any other way, you have to start with the people you already know, and work from their circles of influence into the more powerful circles above them.”
A Response to an Employer’s Request for Pronouns
This aptly shows one way employees can respond to requests for pronouns. Unfortunately I don’t expect that all will meet with the same level of success, though.
Confronting those who sin against us
We know there are times when we must confront other people for their sin. Yet we all learn that “we can ‘go and tell’ or ‘rebuke’ others and end up making the situation far worse than it was before by doing these things in an unhelpful way. We can further damage the relationship, and we can even make the prospect of reconciliation less likely than ever by ‘telling’ and ‘rebuking’ in ways that hurt rather than heal.”
We may need to re-learn the basics
“There are some basic things in churches that we can neglect to do for a whole host of reasons. Not doing them for some time can lead us to forget how to do them altogether. Worse, as we forget how to do some of these basic things, they may have a knock on impact on everything else we might hope to do.”
In Secret
Derek Thomas reminds us that “according to Jesus, it is what we do in secret that matters most.”
The Valley of Humiliation is Green
“Few things strike our sensibilities quite as harshly as humiliation. To be brought low, to fall down, to struggle, to run out of answers, to become weak and poor—this is a hard place to fall into. But what if I told you the ‘valley of humiliation’ is really green?”
Flashback: The One Sure Mark of Christian Maturity
…spiritual maturity is better displayed in acts than in facts. You can know everything there is to know about theology, you can be a walking systematic theology, you can spend a lifetime training others in seminary, and still be desperately immature.Not going to God because your faith is weak is like not going to the doctor because you feel sick. —Steve Fuller
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Free Stuff Fridays (Ligonier Ministries)
This week’s Free Stuff Friday is sponsored by Ligonier Ministries, who also sponsored the blog this week.
Sometimes one word is all that stands between the truth and a lie, between life and death. In the Reformation, that word was sola, “alone.” Ligonier Ministries is offering the ebook edition of The Heart of the Reformation as a free download for Challies readers. With this 90-day devotional on the five solas, spend time reflecting on core biblical truths that display the reliability of God’s Word and the depths of His mercy. Ten Free Stuff Friday winners will receive the paperback edition.
Learn more about the book here.To Enter
Giveaway Rules: You may enter one time. When you enter, you agree to be placed on Ligonier Ministries’ email list. The winner will be notified by email. The giveaway closes on November 10, 2023.
