A La Carte (February 25)
May the Lord be with you and bless you today.
I mentioned earlier in the week that Westminster Books has some excellent biographies for young readers on sale. Today they’ve added a good book on reading the Bible well.
To Stay and Serve: Why We Didn’t Flee Ukraine
Here’s a dispatch from within Ukraine: “In recent weeks, nearly all the missionaries have been told to leave Ukraine. Western nations evacuated their embassies and citizens. Traffic in the capital of Kyiv is disappearing. Where did the people go? Oligarchs, businessmen, and those who can afford it are leaving, saving their families from potential war. Should we do the same?”
Bursting Christian bubbles
“We need to regularly ask God to burst our Christian bubbles.” This article explains how and why.
Did Justin Martyr Know the Gospel of John?
“There has been a long-standing scholarly discussion about how far back we can trace the roots of the fourfold gospel. ” Michael Kruger asks whether we can trace them all the way back to Justin Martyr.
Why be a small group member?
Tony Payne considers why we should consider being part of a small group (assuming that is something our churches offer).
The Trinity and Blaspheming the Holy Spirit
“God does not demand worship because he is insecure and needs affirmation, but simply because it is true. This truth means that any time someone misuses or defames the name of the Lord, blasphemy is the charge. One person could sin against another, and it would not be blasphemy; but to dishonor the Lord is to commit a different kind of sin.”
Closeness Comes Through Fire
Ed Welch considers the connection between suffering and sanctification.
Flashback: When Grumbling Meets Gossip
As Christians, we are responsible to maintain the unity of our local churches, and to do that, we need to protect our relationships with our brothers and sisters.
If you cannot fly towards heaven with the wings of assurance, walk there on the legs of faith. —Andrew Gray
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Free Stuff Fridays (Christian Focus)
This week’s Free Stuff Friday is sponsored by Christian Focus. They are giving away five-book sets of Tell God How You Feel: Helping Kids with Hard Emotions and God Hears Your Heart: Helping Kids Pray about Hard Emotions by Christina Fox.
As emotional beings, we all have feelings. And in a fallen world, some of those feelings are difficult. Fear. Grief. Sadness. Disappointment. Guilt. Loneliness. Anger. We learn from an early age ways to navigate such hard emotions. For some of us, we learn to avoid or distract ourselves from painful emotions. Others “feed” our emotions through various temporary pleasures in the hopes of finding comfort. Still, others may cover them up and pretend they don’t exist. Yet the Bible teaches us another way: to bring all our hurts to God.
Tell God How You Feel and God Hears Your Heart are part of a discipleship series designed for parents and caregivers to use in engaging their children with their emotions. It helps parents teach their children to bring their emotions to God and tell him what hurts. It teaches them Biblical lament.
In these books, children are invited into the lives of brother and sister, Josh and Mia. They watch as these siblings experience hard emotions in life and learn to bring their cares to the Lord in prayer.
Tell God How You Feel covers emotions including fear, sadness, loneliness, and rejection. God Hears Your Heart explores anger, disappointment, guilt, and failure. Each story ends with discussion questions for parents and caregivers to use in helping their children apply the stories to their own emotions.
Help your children develop the godly habit of lament by reading them Tell God How You Feel and God Hears Your Heart.
What people are saying about the series:
“Children are often unsure about what to do with their emotions. Whether they are feeling happy or sad, peaceful or anxious, angry or joyful, they can learn healthy ways to share their emotions with God. Christina Fox’s new book, Tell God How You Feel is a wonderful book to help parents and children discuss their feelings, as they consider the ways people have prayerfully talked to God all throughout Scripture, especially in the Psalms. This book is a wonderful way to talk with your children as you help them learn to talk to God.”
–Melissa B. Kruger (author and director of Women’s Initiatives for The Gospel Coalition)
“Tell God How You Feel is unique and badly needed. Many children’s books deal well with particular emotions, but no book I’ve ever seen gives children such a clear, concrete, relatable framework for dealing with any and all emotions by engaging their Heavenly Father with the weights and dreams in their hearts. Illustrated in an ethnically inclusive, warmly inviting style, Tell God how You Feel fills a vital niche in nurturing a living faith in our children.”
— Alasdair Groves (Executive Director of CCEF)
“If emotions are complex for adults (AKA, me!) to understand and respond to appropriately, how much more for children? This is why I’m so glad Christina has given us a helpful tool for guiding our kids through emotions like disappointment, anger, and failure. Best of all, she roots each lesson in biblical truth, particularly in the psalms which give voice to our hearts. I recommend this book to you!”
— Kristen Wetherell (Author of ‘Humble Moms’, ‘Fight Your Fears’ and co–author of ‘Hope When It Hurts’)
Enter Here
Again, there are five sets to win. And all you need to do to enter the draw is to drop your name and email address in the form below, which will add you to Christian Focus’ mailing list.
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Free Stuff Fridays (Radius International)
This week’s Free Stuff Friday is sponsored by Radius International. They are giving away a conference package that includes: 2 tickets, a Radius pullover, and 2 books.
The winner will receive two free tickets to the Radius Missiology Conference being held June 29-30, 2022, at Christ Covenant Church, Matthews, NC. This event will be live in person or available as a live stream. Kevin DeYoung, Alistair Begg, Ian Hamilton, Wayne Chen, Brooks Buser, Chad Vegas, and others from the Radius world will be live and in-person to teach on the Great Commission in today’s world with free books from 9Marks, Banner of Truth, and others.
The winner will receive a Radius International branded pullover. Size and gender option to be selected by the winner from available stock.
The winners will also receive two books that Radius International highly recommends:No Shortcut to Success
A Manifesto for Modern Missions
By Matt Rhodes
Avoid “Get-Rich-Quick” Missions Strategies and Invest in Effective, Long-Term Ministry
Trendy new missions strategies are a dime a dozen, promising missionaries monumental results in record time. These strategies report explosive movements of people turning to Christ, but their claims are often dubious and they do little to ensure the health of believers or churches that remain. How can churches and missionaries address the urgent need to reach unreached people without falling for quick fixes?
In No Shortcut to Success, author and missionary Matt Rhodes implores Christians to stop chasing silver-bullet strategies and short-term missions, and instead embrace theologically robust and historically demonstrated methods of evangelism and discipleship—the same ones used by historic figures such as William Carey and Adoniram Judson. These great missionaries didn’t rush evangelism; they spent time studying Scripture, mastering foreign languages, and building long-term relationships. Rhodes explains that modern missionaries’ emphasis on minimal training and quick conversions can result in slipshod evangelism that harms the communities they intend to help. He also warns against underestimating the value of individual skill and effort—under the guise of “getting out of the Lord’s way”—and empowers Christians with practical, biblical steps to proactively engage unreached groups.Missions By The Book
How Theology and Missions Walk Together
by Chad Vegas and Alex Kocman
Across the church, there is a rift between theology and missions. Bad theology produces bad missions, and bad missions fuels bad theology.
We wrongly think that we must choose between making a global impact and thinking deeply about the things of God. But the relationship between theology and missions is symbiotic—one cannot exist without the other. They walk hand-in-hand.Enter Here
Again, there is one package to win. And all you need to do to enter the draw is to drop your name and email address in the form below.
Giveaway Rules: You may enter one time. Winners will be notified by email. The giveaway closes on Sunday, Feb 6th, 2022 at midnight. -
A La Carte (May 3)
It’s a double birthday here today, so happy sweet 16 to Michaela and happy something a bit beyond 16 to Aileen!
Today’s Kindle deals include a John Piper classic.
(Yesterday on the blog: Like a Ruined Castle)
How to Fall in Ministry (and What to Do When You Do)
Jared Wilson writes about ministry leaders being exposed in their sin. “Each time it happens, we get less adept at incredulity, less inclined to outrage and distress. We’re not happy about it, of course, but we are, sadly, getting used to it. Then the backward troubleshooting begins, the diagnosing of sicknesses long after the deaths. Ministry post-mortems tell us so much, but it would be great if we could see the falls coming. But can’t we?”
Twitter Anger and the Righteousness of God
“If we are not angry about something today, then it seems we must lack virtue. How could the cultural dialogue surrounding gender, sexuality, abortion, racism, and countless other issues not lead to anger? You would almost have to be dead inside or extremely apathetic not to be triggered by these things.”
3 reasons Christians slander one another
And in a similar vein, here’s Aaron Armstrong. “I have a confession: I am, on occasion, a doom-scroller. I can easily get sucked into reading nonsense Christians say about one another on Twitter. And I can get riled up really quickly, especially when I see people committing a sin specifically condemned in Scripture: ‘Do not speak against one another, brothers and sisters’ (James 4:11a).”
Thinning the Peaches
“It hurts to rip healthy, growing peaches off a tree, but if I don’t then I won’t have much edible fruit later in the summer. If the nutrients gathered by the roots are spread too thin across too much fruit, then each peach will end up small and will lack the necessary amount of sugar for that delicious, sweet taste. Not only that, but the sheer weight of so many peaches would break many of the branches.” As is so often the case, there’s something we can learn from nature.
What to Ask a Passage Before You Preach It
“Good questions force us to identify treasures we often miss. Those treasures come in all forms. We see God’s holiness, our sinfulness, as well as God’s sovereignty and grace. We also discover his promises, our identity in him, and more. Therefore, when observing a text, here are five questions that have helped me. Over time, you’ll develop your own.”
Apologetics: Final Examination for Christian Apologetics
I quite enjoyed reading the questions Timothy Paul Jones asks of students in the final exam of his Christian Apologetics class. They are based on memes, Metallica, Star Wars, and so on.
Flashback: If Only I Had Been Saved By Merit!
One of the hardest tasks for every Christian is to deeply believe and forever remember that we’ve been saved by grace. This is a lifelong challenge because our natural tendency is always to veer back to merit, to assume that we’ve been saved by something we are, something we’ve got, or something we’ve accomplished.Death is half disarmed when the pleasures and interests of the flesh are first denied. —Richard Baxter