Good morning. May grace and peace be with you today.

You will find a small list of Kindle deals today.
There is some big news in the family: my Abby got engaged! Her boyfriend fiancé Nathan asked her the big question yesterday. We are so very happy for them.
9 Things You Should Know About the Taliban
Joe Carter: “Twenty years ago, the United States overthrew the Taliban government in Afghanistan for harboring Osama bin Laden and providing training grounds for Al-Qaeda terrorists. This month, the Taliban has returned to power after U.S. military forces withdrew and the Afghan government collapsed. Here is what you should know about the brutal Islamist regime.”
Is the Church I’m Going To “A Cult”?
“So how can you tell if the church you are attending is ‘a cult’ or just a little bit different than the church next door?” This is a pretty good explanation.
Church Closed
Kevin Davis: “The truly frightening thing about this church is just how much of it is in all of us, in our churches, in the individuals who make up the churches, and in the leaders who lead them. We inspect others, not out of a love for God and neighbour, and not out of a love for those who are being duped by the false teachings. Not at all.”
Show, Don’t Just Tell
“It’s a key principle of educational philosophy: Show, don’t just tell. Communicating ideas is a good thing. But it’s even better if you can show your work, present persuasive argumentation, explain it clearly, and illustrate it vividly. The show-don’t-just-tell principle has many applications for teachers and leaders of all stripes.”
Unintended Consequences Of Failure Porn
This is worth considering. “It’s the irony that bugs me. We’re listening to a podcast critiquing celebrity culture within the church, and responding to it with all the glee of someone flicking through a celebrity gossip magazine. Apparently oblivious to the hypocrisy. A podcast criticising how the Mars Hill cult leveraged branding and technology to send their message globally is now using the very same technology and platforms, and gaining a cult following.”
I Make, I Carry, I Save
Idolatry, it turns out, comes in many forms…
The Deeper Beliefs Begin to Come Out
This is an interesting look at a culture’s deeper beliefs. “It can feel like the years of steady teaching and discipleship have failed to trickle down into the places of the soul where it really counts. Are the basic means of grace actually enough to transform these people? is a question I find myself wrestling with.”
Flashback: When It’s Time To Remember All the Stupid Things You’ve Said
When you hear how others have spoken idly of you, don’t over-react. A moment’s reflection will remind you that you’ve done the very same thing a million times over.

The world has been enriched more through the poverty of its saints than by the wealth of its millionaires. —F.B. Meyer

It is one of the most important habits that any married couple can form. Unfortunately, it is also one of the most rare. For a husband and wife to live well together before the Lord, they must pray together. For a couple to honor God in their marriage, they must be as intimate spiritually as they are physically. At times it can be difficult to know what to pray or how to pray. This prayer by George Swinnock is a wonderful model of a prayer a couple can (and perhaps should) pray together.

Lord, who are the guide of all relationships, may our marriage befit those married to the Lord Christ. Like Abraham and Sarah, may we be famous for faith; like Isaac and Rebecca, may we live in dearest love; like Zachariah and Elizabeth, may our walk be blameless.
May the meditation of each other’s frailty spur us to greater fidelity. May you be our guide, and Scripture our compass. Whatever stony paths we walk on earth, may we enjoy a comforting sunshine from heaven. And since you have tied this knot between us, may we do nothing which might loosen it through angry thoughts or quarrelsome deeds.
May our thoughts of each other be sweetened with love; may our words to each other be seasoned with love; and may our actions towards each other be given a relish and savour by love.
May love be the strength with which we bear one another’s burdens. May love be the mantle with which we cover one another’s infirmities. And may love be the fire which consumes opposition between us! May we cleave close to one another in our affections as those who are bound together by God himself.
As those who are equal sharers in gains and losses, may we stand and fall together, not wasting wealth through our extravagance but concerned for the needs of the other. Let us be more tender of each other’s reputation than of our own. And may we imitate your Majesty in covering and forgiving one another’s infirmities.
May we conspire for each other’s welfare, and carry domestic burdens on both our shoulders, joining together to bear personal hardships. As fellow-travellers through life, may we cheer up one another to make our journey more pleasant, until we come to rest in the true paradise!
We pray, above all, that with great faithfulness, we may serve each other’s souls, conspiring together to walk in step with the Spirit, praying, and fasting and reading together. Let us take sweet counsel together, that our house may be a Bethel, “a House of God”.
Enable us, Lord, as husband and wife to shine like the sun and moon, and our children as stars, so gloriously and powerfully with the light of holiness, that our house may be your lesser heaven.
George Swinnock as quoted in Into His Presence. I have slightly adapted and truncated it.

I was once told of a man who, over the course of his life, had risen from poverty to riches. He had grown up in the most difficult of circumstances, in a setting in which his parents could barely provide for even his most basic needs. But as he came into adulthood, he proved to be a man of unusual talent and founded a business that eventually thrived and made him exceptionally wealthy.

And while this man was willing to enjoy the fruit of his wealth, he wanted to make sure he would never forget his roots. So for that reason he would make an annual pilgrimage from his great mansion in the city to a little house in the village he grew up in. He would stay there for a time to remember what it was like to live without servants, to fetch water from a well, to shiver through long winter nights. And having completed his little pilgrimage, he would return home thankful, not taking his wealth for granted.
This man understood a universal temptation—the temptation to forget our blessings and to forget the God who has so graciously dispensed them to us. And this is exactly why Christmas is so needful and so precious, for at Christmas we pause to deliberately remember. We pause for a day to remember the greatest of all blessings—the advent of Jesus Christ.
In celebrating Christmas we remember—we mark, we recall, we memorialize—the miracle of God becoming man. We remember that the God who made this world was willing to enter into this world, that the God who was immortal was willing to take on mortality, that the God who had existed eternally and omnipresently was willing to be born at a particular moment in time and in a particular point in space. Remaining what he was, he became what he was not so that by becoming what we are, he could make us what he is. Because of his obedience we are counted obedient; because of his death and resurrection we are counted dead to sin and alive to righteousness. By the Son we become sons. We are given the greatest of all gifts, we receive the greatest of all mercies.
Yet we are prone to forget all of this. We are prone to forget our poverty, our need, our desperation, our condemnation. We are prone to forget where we came from, prone to forget what God drew us out of. And so we circle a date on the calendar to ensure we never forget and always remember the coming of the One who was the son of God and the son of Mary, the coming of the God-man through whom we have salvation. We remember so our minds will not grow hazy and we remember so our hearts will not grow cold. We remember to recount the facts and we remember to rekindle our worship.
And so as Christmas Eve gives way to Christmas Day, as we enjoy the sweet rituals of giving and receiving, gathering and feasting, let’s be sure we take time to remember and rejoice—to remember our poverty and to rejoice in our riches. For it was on this day so many years ago that God opened up the storehouses of his mercies and began pour them out in wondrous abundance upon the likes of you and me.