Good morning from Toronto (at long last). It was an eventful journey home that included an unexpected stop in Honolulu, but I made it home eventually. And I am glad to be here!

There are some new Kindle deals from both yesterday and today.
MrBeast: The Greatest Showman
This is a fantastic write-up by Chris Martin on the YouTube phenomenon MrBeast. If you haven’t heard of him or seen his videos, it’s likely your kids have.
Does My Sexual Past Disqualify Me from Pastoring?
I appreciate John Piper’s response to this question.
GOD IS FAITHFUL DESPITE WAR AND VIOLENCE IN UKRAINE
“We had never prayed so much before,” shared Lyena, a Ukrainian woman whose home was destroyed in the war. “I had never read the Psalms so thoughtfully before. It was the encouragement that brought tears of gratitude and joy. I realized that only when you walk through the valley of mortal darkness, you learn to completely trust God, and then you are not afraid, because the Lord is with you.” (Sponsored Link)
Rules for Passivists
This is a bit of a cheeky article, but I think it shares some true wisdom. “I’ve been working on an exciting new philosophy of life, cultivating a different way of being in the world, polishing a shiny new weltanschauung. I’m calling it passivism. Here’s how it works.”
What Is Gluttony?
“Gluttony, biblically speaking, can be summed up as laboring ‘for the food that perishes’ (John 6:27). It is not only found in over-consumption, but an idolatrous expectation that looks to eating and drinking to provide sating and fullness for the soul (the inner person).”
Keeping Your Daily Devotions Fresh through Journaling
Paul Tautges offers help on keeping your daily devotions fresh.
The God-Centered Camp
I’ve always been interested in the way God arranged his people around his tabernacle. This article explains.
Flashback: Each Gift Has Its Place
…as the gardener suits the plants to his garden, God suits the gifts to his church. He dispenses gifts to each person, each to be used in love and service to others.

Pastor, do not let your vision for the church you want get in the way of God’s vision for the church you actually have! —Jared C. Wilson

Yesterday we celebrated Abby and Nathan’s wedding—the first of a whole new generation for the Challies side of the family (though certainly not the last since Abby is one of 16 children/nieces/nephews). The day was every bit as beautiful as we had hoped. I’ll try to share a few pictures in the near future, but in the meantime thought I’d share the speech Aileen and I delivered together.

Tim: This is a day of great joy. It’s a day of great joy and we are so thankful to each of you that you’ve chosen to share it with us. Thanks to those of you who drove from the Deep South, to those of you who drove from the Great White North, and to those of you who came from somewhere in between. Welcome to all the Elfarrahs and their friends; welcome to all the Challies and our friends; and welcome, of course, to the many friends of the couple. We consider it a tremendous honor that you would spend this day and this evening celebrating with us.
Aileen: We wanted to start off telling you all a little bit about Abby. As a child Abby was always a bit of a force to be reckoned with. She has always been competent and capable and so very determined. At 9 months old Abby crawled for about two days, then decided that was enough of that and got up and walked. At 9 months. I have no pictures of her crawling because she didn’t crawl long enough for me to get them! At 15 months she decided she had had enough of diapers and potty-trained herself in one afternoon. And at 4 years old, after watching me struggle for a solid couple of months to teach her older brother how to ride a bike, announced she wanted to do away with her training wheels. I told her no—that I needed a break. My neighbor told me to let her try, and then watched open-mouthed as Abby jumped on the bike and rode around and around, no guidance, no help, and with a look of absolute triumph on her face. And that pretty much set a theme for her life.  She showed the same determination with her schooling, ballet, working, and pretty much everything else. Abby has always been so very social and fiercely loyal, and anyone and everyone she met was an instant and life-long friend. We knew with how capable, competent and friendly she was, she would do well when she made the decision to move down to Louisville and attend Boyce College.
Tim: Before she left we bestowed some parental advice upon her:
Abby, we think it would be wise to not date in your freshman year. You have to remember that college courses will be difficult and demanding; you may need some time to adjust. We also think it would be really good for you to focus on developing some strong female friendships. And then you need to know that at Bible college the boys all seem to get into a kind of frenzied state when a fresh batch of girls shows up.
(As an aside: We felt we had to give her this advice this since Nick had come to us a few weeks before they set off for college to say he had just found out that there was a certain young man on campus who had spotted Abby on a preview day two years before and was waiting for her to show up. We thought that was a bit weird and we decided not to tell her about it since we didn’t want to freak her out too much.) Instead we said:
Abby, we aren’t telling you what to do; we’re just saying that we think it would be wise for you to hold off and just tell any boys, “I am very flattered, but I have decided not to date in my freshman year.”
Well, as it turns out, Abby began dating on her freshman day or in her freshman week, at least. Before school had even begun, while she was in the quarantine foreigners had to go through at that time, she and that certain young man had been communicating on Instagram and developing the beginning of a relationship. By the time she set foot on campus for the first time, they had pretty much already decided that they were meant to be.
Aileen: But it turns out that Abby knew better than her parents did. The “Mom, there is this boy” phone call came a little sooner than we expected, but she still managed to do it all. We watched from afar as Abby settled into college life, watched as she grew spiritually, watched as she made what we expect to be life-long girlfriends, watched as she made the Dean’s list and, yes, watched as she found a guy.
Tim: Nathan, you have wooed to yourself a wonderful young woman and we are thankful to you and thankful for you. We are thankful that in the Lord’s vast wisdom and kind providence he had been preparing your heart to join this family by already causing you to be loyal to the Bills and Blue Jays rather than, say, the Patriots or Yankees—loyalties that might have proven insurmountable. We sent Abby off practically still wearing her ballet shoes and she came back wearing sports jerseys and camo and wanting to settle in with me to watch Monday Night Football. That’s a remarkable change and one that made me very happy. But far more importantly, you have proven your character and godliness by being there through a very difficult couple of years, and we know that bonds forged in the fire are the strongest and most lasting of all. It’s a blessing to us to be able to express our love for you and our confidence in you; and to formally welcome you into this family.
And Abby, my precious Abby, we are so proud of you and so proud of the woman you’ve become. You’re competent; you’re capable; you’re loyal; you’re fun; you’re godly; you’re all a father and mother could ever hope for in a daughter. You’re our kid but you’re also our friend, a friend whose wisdom we value, a friend whose godliness we admire, a friend we just love to spend time with. We love you dearly and we love your husband and we are so thankful that the Lord has brought the two of you together. We know you’ll be very happy and will love serving the Lord side-by-side. We are so excited to see what the Lord has in store for the two of you.
Aileen: I think we are supposed to offer just a bit of advice to the new couple, so here goes: Your job in marriage isn’t to fix one another. So be patient with each other’s sins and weaknesses. Put your spouse before your own desires. And above all, be kind to one another. But, if God has not brought you together to fix each other, he has brought you together to support and strengthen one another. He has determined you are better together than apart.
Tim: As for me, I want to remind you that who you are at home is who you most truly are. Life doesn’t flow toward the home, but from it. If your home is marked by joy and love, your whole life will be full of joy and love. If your home is a place of worship, your whole life will be one of worship. If your home is a place of singing, your whole life will be a song. And so it’s my counsel that you work together to make the Elfarrah home one that’s marked by godliness, one where you display Christian character, one that is shaped and formed by the Word of God. If you honor the Lord at home, you’ll honor him everywhere you go and in everything you do.
And now in place of a toast I would like to offer you a blessing from the Word of God: “May the LORD our God be with you, as he was with our fathers (or in this case, as he has been with your parents). May he not leave you nor forsake you, but incline your heart to him, to walk in all his ways and to keep his commandments. May He maintain your cause, as each day requires, that everyone may know that the LORD is God and that there is no other. And may He keep your heart wholly true to Him today and every day. Amen.”

If you could go back in time and insert yourself into any point in history, even if only to be a proverbial fly on the wall, what would you choose? What moment would you wish to observe, or what event would you wish to witness? Would you want to watch God create the world? Would you want to see Elijah perform miracles, David compose psalms, shepherds hear tidings of great joy? As for me, I would have to think long and hard, but in the end I might just choose to observe Jesus and his disciples in the upper room.

It was in the upper room that Jesus celebrated his final Passover, that he washed the feet of his disciples, that he predicted his betrayal, that he gave his new commandment, that he foretold Peter’s denial, that he declared himself the way, the truth, and the life, that he promised the coming of the Holy Spirit, that he prayed a long intercessory prayer for his disciples and for his followers through the ages. Each of these was a sacred moment, each packed with the utmost significance. And each took place in one little room and in one short period of time.
Jesus’ time in the upper room has become known as his Farewell Discourse and it is the subject of Sinclair Ferguson’s new book Lessons from the Upper Room. The book’s subtitle, “The Heart of the Savior,” is significant, for it is in this address that Jesus so wonderfully and clearly reveals his heart. He reveals himself as having a heart that longs to obey his Father and a heart that longs to serve the ones who are loved by his Father. He reveals himself as a Savior who is humble and kind, submitted and steadfast.
While Lessons from the Upper Room is an exposition of John 13-17, it is by no means a dry or academic work. To the contrary, it is devotional and applicable. It did, after all, begin as a series of lessons for laypersons—a teaching series distributed through Ligonier Ministries. Ferguson says he intends it to function somewhat like the “audio description” function on a television—a function that provides a running commentary on what is happening on the screen for the benefit of those who are visually impaired. “I hope there will be moments in reading these pages when readers will feel—as I have in writing them—that they are ‘there’ in the upper room itself, meeting with Christ, watching Him, and listening to Him teach and pray.”
And, indeed, this is exactly the case. Ferguson is a skilled expositor and one who is clearly captivated with his subject matter. He loves the Farewell Discourse and the Savior it so wonderfully reveals. He draws the reader into the events unfolding and the words being spoken, and is always careful not to leap too quickly from the upper room into our own living rooms, from past events to present application. That application comes, but always on the basis of sound interpretation. It’s a powerful package.
Ferguson uses the metaphor of a television’s “audio description” function to describe his book, but I might use the metaphor of a tour guide. Over the course of my life and through my many travels, I have taken a host of tours of locations of special interest and special importance. In Lessons from the Upper Room, he serves as a kind of tour guide who describes what has happened in this room, what it meant at the time, and what it continues to mean today. He offers a guided tour of one of the most significant evenings in human history and tells how and why it matters to you and to me and to the course of events in this world. It’s my strong recommendation that you take the tour.

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