Over the past couple of days I made the very long journey to Fiji where a friend has invited me to minister alongside him at a conference for pastors. Though I’m awfully tired, I’m also glad to be here and thankful for the opportunity. I’d appreciate your prayers that we’d minister faithfully and encourage well.

Today’s Kindle deals include the weekly collection from Crossway.
(Yesterday on the blog: 7 Beautiful Things)
Yelling from the Sidelines
“There are ministers that are in the trenches: preaching, teaching, discipling, counseling, and serving Jesus in the church. And there are those who want to be called ministers, but merely criticize from the sidelines, while always yelling: ‘Reformation! Reformation!’”
Should I Charge Other Christians for My Expertise?
I appreciate John Piper’s handling of this question about whether Christians should allow themselves to be “used” when they have a particularly in-demand skill.
In the End, There Are Yellow Tulips
Madelyn has a lovely piece of writing here. “It was one of the hardest days of my life, but it didn’t offer time to sit and really process the pain I felt and the loss I’d been dealt. There were things to do and people depending on me to do them. I’d put on the dress, the lipstick, and taken an ibuprofen to help ease the headache you get after crying too hard for too long.”
You are the horse: low-bar evangelism strategy
This article grabs a metaphor from show jumping of all places and uses it to discuss evangelism.
Andrew Thorburn is Lawyering Up: I Think That’s the Right Move
Stephen McAlpine tells why he thinks Andrew Thorburn is doing the right thing as he lawyers up and I think I’m inclined to agree. At least, I’m not sure I could say he’s doing the wrong thing. “Essendon’s CEO-for-a-day Andrew Thorburn has engaged with lawyers and is reserving the right to sue the Essendon Football Club.”
How to Glorify God with Professional Accomplishment
“Most Christians are not called to full-time ministry, but each of us is still under the obligation to glorify God in whatever we do. So what do you do when you have personal success in your vocation? How can you glorify God with any professional accomplishment you might have?”
Flashback: Saved By the Quivering Of an Eye-Lid
F.B. Meyer used to tell a story that, while it sounds perhaps just a little far-fetched, makes a great point. He would use it when appealing to unbelievers to repent of their sin and believe the gospel…

In many homes the sorrow over the living is greater far than that for the dead who have passed to sweet rest. —J.R. Miller

This week’s blog is sponsored by Christian Focus Publications and written by John Stuart Ross, author of a new biography about Scottish missionary John Ross (no relation), The Power and the Glory: John Ross and the Evangelisation of Manchuria and Korea
 
The new biography of my namesake, the Scottish missionary John Ross (1842-1915), is the first published in English. From 1872 to 1910, Ross worked in northeast China, but his influence spread south into Korea, resulting in both regions in large numbers of spontaneously expanding, locally sustainable, Presbyterian polity churches, independent of missionary control. Neglected for over a century, the story of Ross was never more relevant than it is today: here are five reasons why. 
 
1. Unsatisfied with passing off a smattering of language, the adoption of local dress and superficial adherence to local customs as cultural awareness, Ross immersed himself in the history, literature, philosophy and religion of China and Korea. The benefits were enormous: he gained respect for himself and acceptance for the gospel.  
 
2. As an expatriate, Ross could never achieve what local Christians could. His priority, therefore, was to recruit and train Chinese and Korean evangelists on fire with God’s grace. Intellectual ability had its place, but, as he put it, ‘when the stubborn iron-ore of the heart has to be smelted, the lamp alone is of little value. We need the fire.’
 
3. Ross trusted the Holy Spirit in the people he trained. Rejecting paternalism, he insisted that without independent indigenous ministry the church would remain a frail child carried about by a nurse. He was delighted to hear his protege, Wang Ching-ming, insist that the Chinese Christians had the Bible, knew the truth, and would teach and repeat the gospel even if there were no missionaries in the land. 
 
4. Then there was courage in the face of adversity. Ross lost his first wife soon after their arrival in China and four of his eight children died in infancy, he also knew the rigours of arduous travel, the loss of his property in rebellions and wars, shortage of funds, misunderstanding by colleagues and boards, as well as battles with revivalism and liberal theology. Yet he knew that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character results in buoyant hope that never lets us down. 
 
5. Ross’ balanced Christian life and ministry enabled him to meet famine with food, ignorance with education and sickness with medicine, rejoicing in the work of grace in the lives of those he came to win for Christ. But he also, quite literally, considered the lilies through his skilled botanist’s eye, discovering plants unknown to science, five were named after him. Ross gloried in the rich fabric of his Father’s world, whether nature or grace, creation or redemption.
 
As an old man on a visit to his boyhood home of Balintore, Ross was talking to a group of men who were all utterly bewildered until his son whispered in his ear that he was speaking to them in Chinese. He had so assimilated Chinese culture and language that he hardly knew whether he was speaking English or Chinese, or, for that matter, his native Gaelic.
 
 
Click here to get your copy of The Power and the Glory and learn more about John Ross’ fascinating life.

The Lord be with you and bless you today. 
Westminster Books wants to help you get the new year off to a strong start, so have put devotionals on sale.
Today’s Kindle deals include the brand new and very important On Death and Dying: A Catechism for Christians.

This is an important article, and a sober warning, from Mark Jones. “Strategically, Satan can do a great deal of harm to the church when he can play a role in the fall of a pastor. Pastors therefore should understand they are the special objects of attack. But they should also remember the powerful presence of indwelling sin will mean they are never guiltless when they fall. The external causes may be Satan and another woman (not his wife), but the internal moving cause is their own sin.”

Vaneetha Rendall Risner wonders “whether heaven will bring added reward for those who persevere in suffering. … Will there be any compensation for those who respond to the loss and the emptiness by leaning into God for fulfillment? Will there be any prize for the sufferer who looks to God for the grace to endure the physical or emotional pain that screams through the night?”

“I am no empress, hovering over my kingdom of work as though the outcome of the next 24 hours is fully dependent upon me. Because it is not. Satan cackles at this silly mantra, licking his chops, because he knows that self-dependence paired with pleasing people will smother my walk with Christ, weaken my spirit, and leave me limping along in life.”

Here is a sweet reflection by Geoff Thomas. “The child born in the manger was not ‘everyman’. He was an individual who was an Israelite, a first century man who learned to speak Aramaic and was rooted in the traditions, customs, civil laws and religious laws of his people. Through the umbilical cord he was not only attached to his mother but to the life stream of all the fallen children of Adam. The link with men and women was forged in the womb of Mary and was established as irrefragable, that is, eternally impossible to break, alter or refute.”

And, on a similar note: “Did God plan this birth from before the world began, but forget to make reservations for Joseph and Mary at the hotel in Bethlehem? No, it was the purpose of God that from day one of Jesus’ life on earth he would be a suffering servant, a humble and helpless infant without a home.”

Jill remembers a peanut butter and jelly Christmas Eve. “Brave Mom. For sure she was physically and emotionally nearing empty. I can only imagine the heaviness of her heart and the weight on her mind at that point. That evening would have been the perfect time for manna to rain down from heaven! That didn’t happen…”

When I first began blogging…I was (sinfully) opposed to curating content and linking to other people’s material. Somehow Envy had shown up and convinced me that if I did that, I would diminish my own readership. 

The way of blessing is the way of Jesus. Live your life in Jesus, for Jesus, following Jesus. That’s the best, blessed, most delightful way to live.
—Kevin DeYoung