Good morning. Grace and peace to you.
Today’s Kindle deals include Tom Schreiner’s Spiritual Gifts, a helpful and charitable defense of a cessationist position on the gifts of the Spirit. Additionally, you’ll find several excellent books on marriage including a personal favorite, Married for God. Also, just a reminder that I have a new Kindle + Book deals Twitter account @challiesdeals.

Michael Kruger considers some of the things that make the Gospel of John unique and uniquely enjoyable.

Barbara offers a helpful instruction for times you don’t feel like doing what you know you should do. “I’d like to suggest that we wouldn’t be faking it. Instead, by doing what we ought to do even when we don’t feel like it, we’d be battling our fleshly nature, what the Bible calls our ‘old man.’”

This is quite an interesting piece from Jake Meador in which he draws some comparisons between Tim Keller’s views and Doug Wilson’s.

“When Paul writes to encourage young Timothy, he declares, ‘The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task’ (1 Tim. 3:1). In contrast to today’s gloomy outlook on vocational ministry, Paul is positively sunny. He highly esteems service in pastoral ministry; he’s convinced serving as a pastor is a noble aspiration. You should be, too.”

Writing from a British perspective, Stephen Kneale considers a case both for and against door-to-door evangelism. (FYI, when he uses the word “chuggers” he is referring to canvassers or solicitors.)

Scott Hubbard has an article about confession and he writes for those who fail to confess their sins at all and for those who continue to confess the very sin again and again. “When it comes to confessing our sins, many Christians fall into one of two errors — both of which steal joy, disrupt peace, and undermine assurance.”

Everyone wears gray hair, but not everyone wears the crown. That crown needs to be earned through a righteous life. 

What a blessed condition is a true believer in! When he dies, he goes to God: and while he lives, everything shall do him good.
—Thomas Watson

There’s nothing easier than looking at the world around us and feeling despair. Society is in open rebellion against God and it seems like that rebellion must soon lead to some kind of persecution against God’s people. Courts and politicians seem content to chip away at the right to speak freely and worship according to conscience. Higher education and mainstream media are glad to play along with every progressive agenda. And amidst it all, even the church seems to be distracted by silly nonsense and engrossed in petty quarrels.

But despite all this, we should not be discouraged. We must not be discouraged. For it is in times like this that the Lord has so often proven his power. It is in times like this that the Lord has so often intervened to save his people and glorify his name. It is in times like this that God loves to act.
God’s people were being ground under the heels of the Midianites. Whenever the crops would ripen, the mighty armies of Midian would raid the land and pilfer the best of the produce. The starving people of Israel were forced to flee, to find refuge in dens and caves, to escape with their lives and not much else. But the people cried out to God and God heard them. He told them to assemble the smallest of all armies and with just a few hundred men who were armed with mere torches and jars, he put a mighty army to flight. Just when all hope seemed lost, God vanquished the foe and won a great victory.
The armies of Assyria had conquered all the cities of northern Judah and now approached Jerusalem. Though the king had plundered his own palace and temple in an attempt to buy off Assyria, they remained committed to laying waste to the city and destroying its people. They promised that before long the people of Jerusalem would be so destitute that they would resort to drinking their own urine and eating their own dung. But the people prayed. Led by the king, they pleaded with God for his help, they placed themselves in his hands. And he delivered them. Before they had so much as fired an arrow or swung a sword, God had routed the enemy army and sent it away.
God’s people were in captivity and facing a fearsome enemy. A time of state-sanctioned persecution was about to be unleashed upon them. The message went out: “On such a such a day, all the normal rules are relaxed. On that day, feel free to kill those people—men, women, and children alike—and take their stuff as your own. Have at it.” The end seemed to be at hand. But the people prayed and the people fasted and the people pleaded with God. And God moved. God delivered his people. God saved them.
Are we in worse condition than Israel under Midian? Is our situation more dire than when the Rabshakeh spoke aloud in the hearing of all the people to tell them that nothing and no one could save them? Is our day as bad as the day when Esther told the people to pray and said, “If I die, I die?” God’s love has not lessened, his arm has not weakened, his desire to glorify himself has not diminished. And so we must not grow despondent or discouraged.
And how could we be discouraged when we know this world is the Lord’s and that he has purposes to accomplish within it—purposes that no one can thwart? The God who vanquished Midian with the sound of breaking jars, the God who turned the Assyrians against one another, the God who turned a day of terror into a day of feasting has not become weak, has not become distant, has not become uninterested in the plight of his people.
On the day when Midian triumphs over the army of Israel and puts them to flight, on the day when the Rabshakeh marches victoriously into Jerusalem, on the day when Esther falls before the sword—on that day we may grow discouraged. On the day when God fails in just one of his promises, on the day when God neglects to come through on just one of his vows, on the day when he is proven a liar—on that day we may become despondent.
But until that time we have no reason to fret and no reason to despair. Until that day we have every reason to pray and to plead that God would move, that God would act, that God would protect his people and glorify his name. Until that time and that day, we have every reason to humble ourselves before the Lord and to entrust ourselves to the God who always does what is right.

They are words that can be tremendously encouraging or tremendously discouraging. Said at the wrong time or in the wrong spirit they can compound hurt, but said at the right time and in the right spirit they can be a cool drink on a hot day, a soothing balm on a sore wound. They are the words “light and momentary.” As the Apostle suffered physically and spiritually, as he spoke of the outer self wasting away, he proclaimed “this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” His suffering was real. It was harmful and hurtful, weighty and lengthy. And yet he told no lie when he said it was just as truly light and momentary.

When I was a child I would sometimes help my dad, a landscaper, on his job sites. He would do the planting while I would bring him the materials. I’d have to load the wheelbarrow with flats of plants or heaps of soil and do my best to lug it over to him. “You can do it,” he would say. “It’s not that far and it’s not that heavy.” And in a sense he was right—it wasn’t that far and it wasn’t that heavy. But he was looking at it from the perspective of a man while I was looking at it from the perspective of a boy. He was grown and strong while I was small and weak. Now that I’m an adult I would agree that it’s an easy load and a short haul. But back then it took everything I had.
And I think this helps us get at what Paul is saying. Sorrow truly is heavy and hard in the moment. It calls for strength and endurance, fortitude and perseverance. It does us no good to minimize our pain or downplay our suffering. We need not suffer with dry eyes and impassive hearts. We are Christians, not Stoics. We are followers of a Savior who stood outside the tomb of his friend and wept, a Savior who knows what it is to have his heart broken. Tears are so sacred, so precious that God promises that not one goes unseen and unnoticed.
Yet even as our suffering is excruciating it is also light and even while it feels endless it is also momentary. To understand this we must engage our faith and move forward in time—forward beyond time. Through faith we can transport ourselves to the future and see the glories of heaven, the endless ages of joy, the completion of divine purposes. And now, from this shifted perspective, we can look back on our suffering. As we look forward from present to future our suffering is heavy and long, but as we look back from future to present it is light and momentary. Faith allows us to see this, to feel this, to believe this.
The deepest sorrow on earth is light in comparison to the smallest pleasure of heaven. It is a feather against an anvil, a grain of sand against a mountain, a drop of water against the mighty Pacific. The longest sorrow on earth is momentary in comparison to the shortest joy in heaven. It is a second against a year, a step against a marathon, a single tick of a clock against an entire age. It’s faith that allows us to see this and faith that allows us to believe it.
We may not judge today’s afflictions light and momentary. And, in fact, there is a very real sense in which they are not. So as we bear these burdens and endure these sorrows, as we feel their pain and cry our tears, we fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen, not on this day but on that one. And we say, with faith, “I can and will endure this light, momentary affliction as it prepares me for the full weight of glory that will prove far beyond all comparison.”