May the God of love and peace be with you today.

This is a good one. “Here are three things we should strive for: Christians who are willing to confront but aren’t eager for controversy. Christians who pursue a gentle revival, not a holy war. Christians who eavesdrop on Jesus’ intercession instead of joining Satan’s accusations.”

This article grapples with “whataboutery,” the inclination to apply Scripture to everyone else before ourselves.

R. Scott Clark explains why church discipline is not mean. To the contrary, when carried out as intended, it is a form of love. “In our time, the tendency is to view the church as a means of therapy, merely as a place of fellowship and encouragement, but not as the divinely instituted embassy in which the keys of the Kingdom of God are administered. Viewed thus, the very idea of church discipline seems high-handed, arbitrary, unjust, and even cruel. After all, the reasoning goes, who are those sinners to judge this sinner?”

Andy Farmer offers some helpful thoughts on offering opinions. “I’ve had to develop a kind of ‘rules of engagement’ so that I respond appropriately when I’m ever asked or pressed to engage a hot cultural topic. Here’s how I parse it out…”

“You are not alone, Christian believer! God’s people have always wrestled with fear, with questions, with sickening doubts when it comes to the many challenges of living in a sinful world. Yet the answer continually returns: there is no need to fear!”

This video from SBTS will help you better understand biblical typology—a key subject for understanding Scripture.

The parent who spares the rod does not only ruin the child, but also ruins a future relationship with the child. The parent who spares the rod hates his son, but he also hates himself.

If believers are lost, God loses more than they do, for he loses his honour, he loses his character for truthfulness, and the glory of his name is tarnished.
—Charles Spurgeon

We are not lacking when it comes to daily devotionals. To the contrary, there are more options than we could possibly read in a lifetime. Yet not all daily devotionals are created equal, so it can be difficult to find a good one—one that is worthy of a full year’s attention.

Everyday Gospel

Several years ago, Paul Tripp wrote New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional and it quickly proved not only popular but also meaningful and helpful. It has sold over a million copies and guided all those people to better understand the gospel and apply it to their lives. Writing a 365-part book is a major task, so it is no great surprise that it took ten years for him to write another. But we have it at last and it is called Everyday Gospel: A Daily Devotional Connecting Scripture to All of Life.
Everyday Gospel has both similarities and differences when compared to New Morning Mercies. It is similar in that it provides a full year of devotions and in its relentless focus on the good news of the gospel. The foremost difference is that it follows a one-year Bible reading plan that leads from Genesis to Revelation. Therefore, each of the entries reflects on that day’s Scripture reading. The purpose of it all is to connect Scripture with life—to show how the truths of God’s Word are meant to transform all you are and all you do. And that’s true whether the passage in question is within the application sections of one of Paul’s epistles or the sometimes hard-to-understand narratives of the Old Testament. We know that all of Scripture is breathed out by God and therefore profitable (see 2 Timothy 3:16-17), and a key part of Tripp’s task in this work is to show how.
Everyday Gospel comes in a standard hardcover format that is about 500 pages long, though I suspect leather or leather-like versions will be available in the future. It also comes in a format that integrates the text of the ESV so that the day’s Bible reading and devotional are within the same volume. This edition is called ESV Everyday Gospel Bible: Connecting Scripture to All of Life and is available in hardcover, leather, and TruTone (a kind of faux leather finish).
While I have not yet read every entry, I have read enough to know that it’s a devotional I will recommend freely and distribute widely. New Morning Mercies has been on our living room book table for years and Everyday Gospel will soon be joining it. I would encourage you to consider doing likewise.

I apologize to anyone who received yesterday’s email multiple times. The newsletter service I use experienced a glitch. I believe it has now been resolved and shouldn’t happen again, but if it does, please bear with me.
Today’s Kindle deals include some excellent picks like Dream Small by Seth Lewis and The Future of Everything by William Boekestein.
(Yesterday on the blog: Unexpected, Unwanted, and Unwelcome)
Book Brief: My Only Comfort is a slight but effective reimagining of the Heidelberg Catechism. In place of the standard Q&A presentation, it offers the content formatted much like The Valley of Vision. It makes an ideal devotional supplement.

No one has this issue completely solved, but some have at least taken good steps. Here’s how one family navigated the smartphone and social media issues as well as they knew how.

This is worth reading and considering. “I’ve found that for a growing number of people there is an assumption that to be a human is to need therapy. We’re all maladjusted, and the purpose of therapy is to adjust us so that we’re high-functioning members of society, living flourishing, mentally healthy lives. In this model, therapy is something like a weekly medicine we all need to mentally survive a hostile world.”

The title of this article may be a bit silly, but it opens up some interesting avenues of discussion. “As AI enables more devices to become more capable, I’m led to reconsider another favorite question that I often ask Christian audiences: What technology do you think will—or won’t—be in heaven? More specifically, why (or why not) would there be Roombas in heaven? And what does our answer tell us about our relationships today with technology, work, and time?”

You have probably noticed, as I have, that progressivism seems to destroy everything it touches. Andrew Walker explains why this is.

“We think transformation will be quick, and sometimes it is. But generally speaking, God isn’t in a rush. There’s a certain kind of holiness and beauty that develops only after decades of walking with God. You can’t microwave it. But when you see it, it’s a beautiful thing.”

Yes, there are so many blessings that come as we pray together. “Many have had negative experiences with corporate prayer. Perhaps people droned on about distant relatives’ needs and little time was spent in prayer. Or maybe you experienced an emotionally manipulative prayer gathering. There are many ways that corporate prayer can go wrong. But when it goes right, there are few things more spiritually invigorating.”

…we need to keep the heart, tend the heart, guard the heart, and feed and satisfy the heart with good spiritual nourishment.

I have reason to praise him for my trials, for, most probably, I should have been ruined without them.
—John Newton