The Lord be with you and bless you today.

(Yesterday on the blog: Rest Takes Work)
The Wise Man Is In Town
“Where did we get the idea that the wisest among us dwell in seclusion in hard to reach places?” That’s a simple question and receives a great answer.
7 Reasons Guests Don’t Return
“It is encouraging to see visitors come into the church, but it can be discouraging when the vast majority seem to only be one-time visitors. Here is a list of possible reasons that may be helpful as you evaluate what is happening in your church.”
When Were Christians First Regarded as Intolerant “Haters”?
“In the midst of the high octane culture wars of the last ten years, Christians have been labelled all sorts of things: intolerant, bigoted, arrogant, narrow, dogmatic, just to name a few.” And how about “haters?” When did people first begin making that charge?
The 50 Countries Where It’s Hardest to Follow Jesus in 2023
“Sub-Saharan Africa—the epicenter of global Christianity—is now also the epicenter of violence against Christians, as Islamist extremism has spread well beyond Nigeria.” But, unsurprisingly, North Korea takes top spot.
What Does God Want Us to Continue?
Resolutions are great, but “sometimes we need to set our faces and purposes once again to continue something we’ve already started, to stay the course, to keep going.”
Should We Call God Mother?
Denny Burk carefully analyzes the argument of a new book.
Flashback: You Just Can’t Have It All
Though we know perfection is impossible, don’t we all sometimes still grow frustrated at the sheer messiness of Christian individuals and Christian churches? Don’t we all sometimes face the temptation to pack up and move on when our fellow believers act like the sinners they are?

In the Western mind, we work five days to earn the right to rest and play on the weekend. But God tells believers to start the week with rest before we work. In Scripture, rest is a gift, not a reward. —Dan Doriani

It takes a long time for sinful instincts to become pure, for tendencies toward what is evil to be transformed into tendencies toward what is good, lovely, and pleasing to God. The man who quits drugs will still react when he catches a whiff and the woman who gave up alcoholism will still struggle when she takes a sip. You can be a Christian for many years and still find your heart instinctually swayed toward what you once loved and what once drew your heart.
This is why, I’m sure, the Bible often offers warnings like, “Do not envy the wicked” (Proverbs 24:1). The Bible would not bother to warn us of something that was not an actual temptation. Hence, we can be certain that we need this warning—we need to be warned that, unless we guard our hearts, we will be envious of others—even those who hate God. And not only that, we will be envious of them for the things that are permitted to them but withheld from us.
A man I once met along the way told me that he sometimes wishes he had sowed his wild oats while he was young. He had lived out his young adult years with a good measure of self-control, then settled into married life. He loves his wife and loves his family. But sometimes an inner voice whispers that he might be more fulfilled now if he had experimented more then—if he had dated more girls, slept with a few of them, and had a greater number of sexual experiences. It’s not that he wants to do any of that now, but that he feels a sense of envy that he will go to the grave without experiencing what so many others have. He looks toward the wicked with a sense of envy.
I have never been drunk but sometimes wonder what it’s like. After all, it certainly seems to be an enjoyable experience, at least until the next morning. Though I know the Bible says it’s wrong, I do sometimes wonder why they get to experience it and I don’t. I have never done drugs but have occasionally wished I could try it just once to experience what seems to be a rush that is not otherwise available. I have never played the lottery, but sometimes look wistfully at the photos of the winners with their oversized checks for countless millions of dollars. I know in theory that ill-gotten gains do not profit, but I still sometimes feel a sense of envy toward those who get to enjoy them.
Like that man I met along the way, like the young man to whom Proverbs is addressed, and like you (I presume), I am prone to envy the wicked. And to envy the wicked is to resent God—to fall into the age-old trap of believing that God is withholding something good from me, that I would be happier if he would allow me to enjoy what he forbids, to indulge in what he says is dangerous. My discontented heart is so easily swayed, so easily drawn from the right to the wrong. My heart so naturally believes that God is a foe rather than a friend, one who keeps me from joy instead of leading me toward it.
Yet in my better moments I am not resentful but thankful, for I know that God’s boundaries are good. I know that he permits me everything that will actually benefit me and denies me only what will actually harm me. I know that he withholds no good thing from those that he loves, but withholds only what would harm my body, scar my soul, undermine my relationships, and bring reproach upon his name. In my better moments I look toward the wicked with pity rather than envy, for I know there are always consequences to their indulgence and impending judgment for their wicked ways. “Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes,” said the Sage. “But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment” (Ecclesiastes 11:9). It is such a sobering thought, that.
I know that if I have missed out on a particular sin, I have not missed out on anything good, anything valuable, anything worthwhile.Share
And so I know that if I have missed out on a particular sin, I have not missed out on anything good, anything valuable, anything worthwhile. I have certainly not missed out on anything that would satisfy me for longer than a moment or that would make me a better man, a better husband, a better father. And I am fully confident that from the vantage point of heaven I will never look back with the least regret, but instead with the greatest gratitude, thanking God that his boundaries were drawn in such pleasant places, that he made known to me the path of life, and that by his grace he kept me on it, even when my heart was so prone to wander, so prone to leave the God I love.

Many years ago I discovered a set of tools and procedures that allowed me to be most productive. Since then, I have pretty much stuck with those same tools and with that same system, save for a few minor tweaks here and there. (See Do More Better)

In the past year, though, I have discovered a few new tools that have swiftly made a big difference to my life. These have not replaced any of my existing tools, but instead settled in alongside them. Knowing that some of my readers are interested in such things, I thought I’d share about them. The first two pertain to reading, retaining, and engaging with information while the third pertains to time management.
Roam Research
Roam Research is a note-taking tool that allows you to enter, organize, and then re-discover information. It is, I suppose, a tool for personal knowledge management. Some call it their “second brain.” It has proven truly life-changing for me and I keep it open at all times.
I have long used Evernote to store notes, receipts, and other important information, and it follows a standard hierarchical method of putting notes in notebooks and notebooks in notebook stacks. It’s perfectly suited to that purpose. But what it doesn’t do well is relate one piece of information to another. This is where Roam Research comes into its own. It uses a non-hierarchical method of relating notes to one another with its “bi-directional links” creating relationships between related pieces of knowledge.
Consider, for example, this note I took while reading Carl Trueman’s The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self:

The brackets and hyperlinking of “Philip Rieff” show that I can click on his name. This will open a page displaying all the other references to Rieff across the entirety of my Roam database—both the links I have made deliberately by employing those brackets and others one that I may have missed. These links may have come from books or articles I’ve read, articles I’ve written, podcasts I’ve listened to, or just about any other source of information. The same is true of “psychological man” and “safe place,” and could be true of any other word I care to bracket. If I do click on “Philip Rieff” I can see that I have also run into him and bracketed his name in Rod Dreher’s Live Not By Lies and the multi-authored Myth and Meaning in Jordan Peterson, and can read the contexts in which his name appeared.

Additionally, I can see a “graph view” which shows the relationships between terms. So, for a term like “Critical Social Justice,” I can see which resources and terms it most relates to.

Roam Research also has a daily notes function which is extremely useful in its own way. To be honest, though, it’s all quite hard to explain, so instead of writing thousands of words, I’ll link to a couple of explanatory articles and then suggest that you check it out, especially if you work in areas where relationships between knowledge could be helpful. And then be sure to read about Readwise and how it interacts with Roam. (Introductions to Roam: 1, 2; as an alternative, you can look at the similar app Obsidian)
Roam Research is free for 31 days, then has a moderate subscription fee. “Scholarships” are available to researchers, people under 22, and people in financial distress.
Readwise
Readwise is an app designed to help you get the most out of your reading, and especially reading on the web or e-reader devices. Again, let me tell you how I use it so you can take that as a test case.
I read the great majority of my books on my Kindle. As I read, I highlight important passages. Readwise’s job is to collect those highlights and to do two things with them.
The first is to build a daily newsletter which is sent to me in the morning. This newsletter contains a selection of highlights from the books I have read in the past. It selects them randomly from all the books in my library, except the ones I have specifically unselected. I can weight some books as more important than others, or books I’ve read recently as more or less important than books I read a long time ago. These daily newsletters have been an extremely helpful mechanism for helping me re-encounter and retain the information from those books. I have Readwise send me 6 highlights per day and I take the time to read each one. It is 2-3 minutes well invested.

The second thing Readwise does is export all the highlights from my books into Roam Research. So what I highlight on my Kindle is automatically entered into Roam Research a few hours later. Here, for example, are some highlights from Theodore Cuyler’s How To Be a Pastor:

After the highlights get exported, I go through them briefly to bracket keywords (or add hashtags, which accomplishes the same thing). Each highlight includes the Kindle reference so I can easily navigate back to that spot in the book with a single click. If I read books the old-fashioned way, I can still add my highlights, but either have to type them in manually or use Readwise’s scanning function, which works middlingly well.
Readwise is free for 30 days, then has a modest subscription fee.
Tempo
The final resource is an email app called Tempo. Its unique feature is that it delivers email in batches based on a customizable schedule. So for those who, like me, struggle with email self-control and seem unable to stop themselves from checking it all day and every day, Tempo allows you to determine the times of day at which it will fetch your email. This has proven to be exactly what I needed to wrestle back control over my email habits.

I have Tempo setup to check email in the early morning, at noon, and at the end of the workday. That is all I need and it works absolutely perfectly. It has other features as well, including a wonderfully minimal workspace, but batching is its best one. Its iPhone app is in beta, but works very well. Android and Windows support is coming in the future.
Tempo is free for 30 days, then requires a subscription.