A La Carte (July 8)
Good morning. Grace and peace to you.
Today’s Kindle deals are headlined by Tim Chester’s A Meal with Jesus and Megan Hill’s A Place to Belong.
Book Brief When the Sea Came Alive by Garrett M. Graff is a riveting oral history of D-Day told from the perspective of those who were there. It’s very much in the vein of his equally riveting The Only Plane in the Sky which is an oral history of 9/11. Both are highly recommended.
(Yesterday on the blog: Your Best and Worst Days)
“Crow bait. That’s how many people treat the search for truth. They pick and choose from the scraps of spiritual roadkill that has been leftover from the centuries.” I’ll have Clint explain that to you.
“The ultimately breaking of one part of God’s good intention for marriage. Every part of the marriage debate/debacle over the past few decades has been to destroy the God-givenness of it. Not to destroy God of course. But to become gods ourselves. And the more godlike we become the less like God we become.”
Kevin DeYoung explains why it’s impossible to make every issue “your thing.” That’s very freeing! “Only God is able to handle 8 billion people making requests to him. Only God is able to comprehend and handle an entire globe of joys and catastrophes and needs. The human psyche isn’t meant to bear that.”
Matt Smethurst offers some excellent guidance on identifying a great deacon—a crucial responsibility for every church. “So if eyeing future deacons, look for godly saints who see and meet needs discreetly (they don’t need or want credit), at their own expense (they sacrifice), and without being asked (they take the initiative to solve problems). Warning signs in a candidate, then, will include not merely a tendency to be quarrelsome but also a tendency to be disorganized or unreliable.”
“It is rare for anyone associated with the United Nations to take a stance against any aspect of the Sexual Revolution, and thus a recent report by Reem Alsalem, the U.N. special rapporteur on the causes and consequences of violence against girls stating that prostitution ‘reduces women and girls to mere commodities’ and ‘hinders their ability to achieve true equality’ is very encouraging.”
There’s an important principle behind the ancient proverb. “When life is going well, we can get complacent. People who get everything they want and have everything just the way they like it sometimes start to feel entitled. Though we know we need God’s grace and help in every circumstance, we feel our need of Him more during trials.”
The great daily challenge is, on the face of it, so very simple: to think like a Christian, to speak like a Christian, to act like a Christian.
Joining a local church isn’t simply one aspect of your Christian life. The local church is the primary context where you live out your Christian discipleship.
—Sam Emadi
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A Family and Personal Update
As I share this update I am just setting off to begin the project I have titled Worship Round the World. The premise of Worship Round the World is that I will visit 12 different churches in 12 very different places to get to know those congregations and to join them for a Sunday service. Each of these churches will worship in a way that is consistent with Scripture, yet also faithful to the local language, customs, and culture. In this way each worship service will be unique yet distinctly biblical. I will be making the journey with my friend Tim Keesee.
This was a project I dreamed up a few years ago and fundraised for in 2019. I had intended to set out in 2020, but then the world slammed shut because of the pandemic and is only now getting back anywhere near to normal. If all goes well, the great majority of the travel will take place by the end of this year. In 2024 we will produce a book and video series based on all we saw and experienced. Our great hope is that it will encourage us all to praise God for what he is doing each and every Sunday as his people gather together to join in a worldwide chorus of praise to his name.
While we very nearly reached our fundraising goal in 2019, travel costs have increased substantially since then and we know we will fall short. If that sounds like something that would interest you, you can make a tax-deductible donation to the project through Frontline Missions. (Click and then scroll to the bottom of that page.)
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In other news, I have a new site design that will be launching in the days ahead. This is a huge project that has been underway for some time now. When it launches you will quickly see that things look a lot different, but I hope you’ll also find that things function better. I’m sure there will be some initial bugs and errors, so please just bear with me through those. I’ll have more to say about this project soon.
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Last month I undertook what I think may prove one of the most difficult things I have ever done: I changed my keyboard layout. I learned to type, as you did, on a keyboard with a standard QWERTY layout. In fact, I learned on an actual manual typewriter back in ninth grade, the teacher tapping a yardstick while together we rhythmically chanted (and typed) “A … S … D … F … G … H … J … K … L … semi.” I learned well and have been able to type at nearly 100 words per minute ever since with almost perfect accuracy. Yet it is now well-known that while the QWERTY layout may have made sense for typewriters it doesn’t make as much sense for computers. And it has the unfortunate problem of putting the most-used keys in some of the most awkward spots—spots that often require stretching the weakest fingers. I deal with significant pain when typing and, having exhausted most other solutions, decided it was time to take this radical step.
I researched the different options and landed on Colemak (in the “DH” variant for those who follow such things). It has been extremely difficult to overcome 30+ years of muscle memory but bit-by-bit I am getting it and my typing speed and accuracy are slowly recovering. I expect it will be ages before I am back to my old speeds, but I am, at least, getting closer to being able to type at the speed of my thoughts. I am also correcting some bad typing habits and forcing myself to strike the right keys with the right fingers.
I probably didn’t help my cause a lot by also changing to a new keyboard at the same time. I picked up the strangely-named and strangely-shaped Moonlander which offers some very helpful functions, such as a way to eliminate the shift keys (thus mitigating a lot of wear and tear on pinky fingers). Anyway, the whole process has been extremely difficult and frustrating, but I am hopeful the results will be good in the end—and that eventually my brain will clue in to where the “d” key now is, since that’s the one that continues to torment me the most.
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As for the family, all is well, I think. Abby is into the second semester of her junior year at Boyce College while her husband Nate is working full time and taking classes online through The Master’s University as he works toward finishing up his degree in business. Michaela is pressing on in her final year of high school and looking forward to beginning at Boyce in August. Ryn is working full time at a coffee shop in Louisville while also auditing some classes at Southern Seminary. Aileen is still enjoying her job as a personal assistant for a neighbor who works in real estate. The Lord continues to bless us in so many ways and we continue to wish only that we might honor and serve him. -
A Conversation with Alistair Begg & Bob Lepine
Last week I participated in a launch event for Seasons of Sorrow that took place just prior to the Getty Music Sing! Conference. I was blessed to have Alistair Begg and Bob Lepine participate in a discussion, then to have CityAlight and Sandra McCracken debut the song inspired by the book, “In the Valley (Bless the Lord).” Overall I though the entire event went very well and I appreciated receiving quite a lot of kind feedback afterward.
The good people at Getty Music were kind enough to record the event and to then make it available to us. Alistair Begg’s Truth for Life is hosting the media and we wanted to share it with you today in the hope that it will benefit you. You’ll find that it unfolds like this: It begins with the trailer for my book, than with me reading an excerpt. Alistair and Bob join me for a discussion about sorrow and suffering, and then CityAlight and Sandra McCracken lead “In the Valley (Bless the Lord).”
You can watch it or listen to it at Truth for Life. (Note the little “Listen / Watch” switch above the player to toggle between audio and video.)
You can also watch it on YouTube, but please note that this version does not include the performance of “In the Valley (Bless the Lord).”
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You can listen to the studio version of the song “In the Valley (Bless the Lord)” at YouTube. It will be available on Apple Music, Spotify, and so on in the next few days.
Finally, you can learn more about the book and find links to purchase it right here. -
A La Carte (February 5)
Good morning from California. I’m thrilled to be speaking over the next few days at The Master’s University and The Master’s Seminary. I look forward to meeting you (or, more likely, your kids or grandkids) in the days ahead.
Today’s Kindle deals include several good titles from Crossway.
(Yesterday on the blog: What To Do While You Wait To Die)“Deep down, we all want the wicked to receive their due. We all have our cries for justice. Even Broadway audiences cheer the destruction of the manifest monster. Without controversy, we consign Hitler to damnation. We know great evil demands cosmic justice. Yet we have a harder time imagining ourselves, or our beloved friends and family, a the wicked, as those justly deserving what Jesus called hell.”
Jonathan Leeman makes some very helpful distinctions between different types of authority.
Bring your church family together with quick and easy communication between Sundays. Church Social gives members a secure place online to view a member directory and get organized with a calendar, schedules, file sharing, and more. Administrators can also track membership records, create reports, and share information. (Sponsored Link)
I quite like this term: gastronomic humility. It is a practice worth thinking about.
“My bride-to-be daughter rushed past the white lace and sequins, the high necklines and capped sleeves, reaching for a sleeveless dress. Excited women crowded around us. We had only one hour to find the perfect dress at the 50-percent-off sellout sample sale. It was wedding season in Utah. This was war.” This is a helpful look at what Mormons believe about marriage.
A lot of people have remarked on the growing normalization of polyamory. In this article Jonathon Van Maren explains why it is being normalized.
Kim Riddlebarger remembers Dr. Rod Rosenbladt, who died a few days ago.
Though our eyes fill with tears when we sink to the valleys, don’t they also fill with tears when we soar to the heights? Maybe then, just maybe, such tears will still fill our eyes when we stand before that throne, when we gain a sight of that Lamb, when we join our voices to sing of that salvation.
As I am humbled by my difficulties, so I am strengthened by God’s grace.
—Alistair Begg
