A La Carte (January 25)
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you today, my friends.
Why, yes, there are some new Kindle deals today.
(Yesterday on the blog: It’s Okay To Just Pray)
“Seeing our children suffer through trials can be extremely difficult. Even parents who are well-equipped to cope with their own problems often find themselves feeling helpless when their child is the one hurting. How can we shepherd our children through adversity in a healthy, God-honoring way? When troubles find our children, here are three ways we can support them.”
“In an age where the tap of a finger brings a cascade of momentary images and sounds, TikTok epitomizes the ephemeral nature of our digital interactions. For billions of people across the globe, this social media platform provides a torrent of never-ending content, where each video is but a momentary ripple soon lost in the stream of ceaseless novelty.” Joe Carter explains the importance of redeeming time in an age like this one.
Doug writes for those who may have been deceived into thinking that all is well with their souls.
Yes, it’s true. If you are in Christ, God is for you, no matter where, who, or what.
There are many reasons Christians should oppose abortion, but in this article Robb Brunansky focuses on three of the most important.
Andrea recounts and celebrates the fact that Jesus led a very ordinary, everyday life.
Ultimately, if there is to be comfort, it will not be grounded in the hope that nothing bad will happen to me or to the people I love, but in the perfect God whose perfect character is displayed in his perfect will.
You Might also like
-
A La Carte (December 13)
The God of peace be with you today.
Did you know Sinclair Ferguson has a new daily devotional out? Westminster Books has it at 40% off. They’ve got some other devotionals discounted as well.
Today’s Kindle deals include a variety of interesting titles. Remember that I’ve got an X account at @challiesdeals that shares some of them each day.
Carl Trueman spends a fair bit of time with Roman Catholics and was recently asked why he isn’t Catholic. He answers at First Things (which, of course, is a Catholic publication). “Confessional, orthodox Protestants should take no satisfaction in Rome’s increasing resemblance to the old enemy of liberal Protestantism. Rome still has the money and institutional weight to make a difference in these great struggles over what it means to be human. If Rome equivocates and falls on these issues, the world will become colder and harsher for all of us. To quote Elrond, our list of allies grows thin. And Pope Francis is not reversing that process.”
Ain’t this the truth! “To conquer a city you need a well-trained army, a thorough knowledge of its weak spots, strategy, patience, and perseverance through losses. It takes grit. The Bible tells us that as hard as that is, ruling your spirit is even harder.”
Even though our cultural moment might feel uniquely complex and chaotic, history is full of examples of similarly uncertain and tumultuous eras, as Amy Mantravadi proves here.
“It’s conventional wisdom today that a key step between dating and marriage is for a young man and woman to ‘test-drive’ their relationship by living together, sharing the same house and almost always the same bed. According to a recent Barna poll, 65 percent of American adults believe cohabitation is a good idea. Even many evangelicals are ambivalent about living together and having sex before marriage…”
You’ll enjoy this grandmother’s celebration of the news that there will soon be another grandchild.
Now here’s a good idea: Let’s ensure that whatever else we do in 2025, we deliberately allow the Bible to form us.
When God goes big, my first tendency is to go small. When God speaks universally, my first thought is to look for exceptions, for the nuances that allow me to wiggle out from under his commands.
Is not he a fool that will believe a temptation before a promise?
—Thomas Watson -
Christmas Thoughts
Today’s post is sponsored by the Banner of Truth and reflects on a new collection of writings from J.C. Ryle, edited by Andrew Atherstone.
‘What does Christmas mean to you?’ This is a question you hear often during the months of November and December. For some it’s, ‘The best of times’, for others ‘the worst of times’ (to borrow from Charles Dickens). But consider this; many may hear and think of the name of Jesus than at any other time of the year. Christmas can still provide a timely opportunity for the church to share timeless truths to the world at large – as J.C. Ryle did to the people in his villages.
In his introduction to a new collection of writings, Christmas Thoughts, from J.C. Ryle, Andrew Atherstone writes:
‘John Ryle was a warm-hearted pastor and preacher in rural Suffolk, vicar of the little villages of Helmingham and Stradbroke. Often at Christmas and New Year, he wrote an exhortation to his parishioners in the form of a short tract, distributed from house to house. These tracts were hugely popular, eagerly read in towns and villages across England, each running into multiple editions in tens of thousands of copies. Christmas, and New Year, are excellent moments to pause and reflect—as scattered families regather for the national holiday, and as the calendar turns over again, with another year gone forever. Ryle urges us—in the midst of our feasting and festivities and family reunions—to make time to consider our spiritual state and our relationship with God. How is it with our souls? What do we make of Jesus Christ? What will be our future, when all our Christmases are passed?
This little book contains five of Ryle’s most popular Christmas tracts, originally published during the 1850s and 1860s. They have not been issued in this Christmas form since they were first printed more than a century and a half ago. Ryle writes in classic Victorian style, but with a freshness and crispness and direct appeal to readers in every generation. The spiritual wisdom of these Christmas Thoughts is timeless. Ryle challenges us—while we enjoy the wonderful delights of mince pies and mistletoe and mulled wine and music and merriment—to make the most of every Christmas, to consider seriously the person of Jesus Christ and questions of eternal significance.’
Don’t miss this excellent evangelistic resource, especially during a season where the world already has an ear slightly turned to the truth. Order a copy for yourself and one for a friend this Christmas. -
Prayers That God Will Not Answer
There are times when it seems like God does not hear us. There are times when it seems like God has become deaf to our prayers and unresponsive to our cries. There are times when we seek but do not find, knock but do not find the door opened. Why is it that God sometimes does not answer our prayers?
There may be any number of reasons, but before we consider a few of them, we need to acknowledge that often God actually does answer our prayers, though either in a way we cannot yet see or in a way we do not accept. He sometimes answers invisibly or imperceptibly and he sometimes answers in a way we simply fail to see or, worse, fail to acknowledge. Then there are times when God gives us not exactly what we had pleaded for but what he, in his wisdom, has determined we need. Either way, we should always take great care before we conclude “God has not answered my prayer.”
Yet there actually are times when he does not answer. This should not surprise us if we have an appropriate assessment of our own finitude, our own selfishness, our own sinfulness, our own simplicity. We know that God has power that is vast, holiness that is perfect, wisdom that is complete, and plans and purposes that encompass all of time and space. Our lives and the world around would be in woeful condition if God was beholden to each and every one of our petitions.
Our confidence, then, is not in God answering every one of our prayers just as we have prayed them, but in God hearing those prayers and determining if, when, and how to best respond. If God is truly who he says he is, if he is truly our good Father and we the children he loves, we can be certain that if he does not answer, it is only because this is better for us. He is not cruel, nor arbitrary, nor apathetic. Hence his inaction must be for our good, not for our harm.
So what are some of the ways God expresses his love and his goodness through unanswered prayer?
God may not answer our prayers when to answer them would be to rob us of a blessing. This is especially true when we pray to be relieved of suffering or delivered from a burden. The Bible and our own experience makes it clear that God often works mightily through hardships, not apart from them. This being the case, to deliver us too quickly would actually be to rob us of a blessing. It would be to take away the very circumstance through which God is conforming us to his image. There are some flowers that can be plucked only in the depths of valleys and only on the peaks of mountains, and there are some blessings that can be gotten only in adversity. God will not rob us of experiencing blessings by lifting us past the means through which they can be ours.
Then, God may not answer our prayers when they are selfish. If we pray in such a way that we account only for ourselves and not for others, God may not grant our request. God’s mind is much greater than our own and his plan much more expansive. He always accounts for all of his children and will hardly do injury to one in order to bless another. Whether our prayers are knowingly selfish or ignorantly selfish, God may not answer them if giving a blessing to us would prove a sorrow to another.
Of course God may not answer our prayers when what they request is sinful or when we ourselves are living in unrepentance. God will not grant prayers that demand what he has forbidden or that reject what delights his heart. He will not grant prayers to those who are living in unrepentant sin and are rejecting the prompting and pleading of his Spirit. God may close his ears to our pleas as a means of fatherly chastisement that is meant to awaken us to our sinfulness, soften our hearts, and steer us back to him.
Then there are times when our prayers are unanswered only because they are delayed. The God who sees the end from the beginning is not refusing to answer, but is simply waiting until the time is right. We may not yet have character that is prepared or circumstances that are appropriate to receive what we have prayed for. Just as a child cannot take advanced mathematics before he has mastered the basics, we may need divine preparation to be able to receive and appreciate some of God’s blessings. Many who plead for success would be ruined if they received it, so God lovingly delays until their hearts and lives have been made ready.
Then, it could also be that the blessings we want have not yet been fully prepared. We may plant an apple tree and immediately pray for it to bear fruit, but it will take many seasons for it to grow and mature and only then will it satisfy our hunger. And this is true of many of the blessings we long for. There may be a long time of preparation in which we need to wait patiently as those blessings are readied by his hand. God’s silence does not flow from apathy or indifference, but love. He is not refusing to grant us the blessing, but simply preparing it, nurturing it from seed to sapling to fruitfulness.
Where we so often go wrong is in failing to believe that God truly means to bless us, failing to believe that his motives are only and always love, failing to wait for his timing to be right and his answer to be perfect. Our task is to trust him—to trust him in what he will give and what he will refuse, in what he will grant in a moment and what he will grant only in time. Our task is to pray and wait, pray and trust, pray and watch for him to do exceedingly and abundantly beyond all we can ask or even imagine.Inspired by The Hidden Life by J.R. Miller