I trust you enjoyed your Christmas as we did—remembering the birth of Jesus and spending time with friends and family. The Lord is good to give us days of rest and celebration.
I wasn’t able to track down new Kindle deals before scheduling this post for 12:01 AM, but I did add some good ones yesterday. I will check again in the morning.

You will need to set aside a few minutes to read this article, but I think you’ll find it rewarding. The author essentially sets out a theology of getting fired for your faith.

Chad Van Dixhoorn considers the qualifications for elders (which are character expectations for all Christians) and focuses on a couple we are perhaps prone to ignore.

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Justin Poythress: “In a sense, all of our lives are waiting. Waiting to grow up. Waiting to leave home. Waiting to finish school. Waiting to get married. Waiting to have children. Waiting for those children to grow up and fly the nest. Waiting for your first job. Waiting for your career. Waiting for your dream job.” And so on.

I really appreciate the heart of this article—to not immediately dull the impact of a passage by too quickly interpreting it through the lens of systematic theology.

“Last month, the Lord convicted me that my giving is like that of the rich men in the temple – they were happy to give from their excess because it didn’t pinch them. But the poor widow gave God her all. The little she gave was everything she had. She might not have had enough for her next meal, but Jesus saw her sacrificial offering and honoured it.” That is worth pondering.

This call to honestly applies to pastors, but to everyone else as well.

“So when I am weary in body, and sinking in spirit I say, all the toils of the road will seem nothing, when I get to the end of the way.”

If [God] had perceived that our greatest need was health, he would have sent us a doctor. But he perceived that our greatest need involved our sin, our alienation from him, our profound rebellion, our death; and he sent us a Savior.
—D.A. Carson

You can only imagine what Joseph’s family thought. You can only imagine what the townsfolk thought. You can only imagine what the religious leaders thought. You can only imagine the laughter and the mocking, the rumors and the gossip, the scolding and the censure. And maybe we should imagine it.

“Does he really expect us to believe that he wasn’t the one who got Mary pregnant?” “I’ve heard lots of excuses in my time, but never ‘I was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit.’” “I heard that it wasn’t her first time, either.” “I heard she got attacked when she was out drawing water.”
The fact is, those people would be no more likely to believe her explanation than we would be if someone fed it to us today. And those people would have been no less eager to propose some more likely explanations. Those people weren’t so different from us, though they may have lived at a very different time and in a very different context.
We can hardly blame Joseph for wanting to walk away—to walk away from the mocking, from the gossip, from the shame. We can hardly blame him for resolving to divorce her. We can hardly blame him for wanting to extricate himself from betrothal to a woman who was clearly no virgin. He, after all, was a just man and an innocent one. So at least he planned to do it quietly.
It took nothing less than divine intervention to get him to stay. “An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit’” (Matthew 1:20). When Joseph awoke he remembered the dream, he accepted it as God’s own revelation, and he received it as God’s own instruction. He set aside all thought of divorce, he took Mary as his wife, and he raised her son as his own.
Imagine Mary’s joy, Mary’s relief, Mary’s sense of comfort and well-being when Joseph told her he loved her, he believed her, and he accepted her. Imagine Mary’s gratitude when Joseph stood beside her and said “My wife,” when he took that baby in his arms and said, “My son.” Imagine how his obedience impacted Mary, how his faith blessed his wife, how his love made all the difference.
We can be certain the gossip did not end the day Joseph declared, “I believe her.” We can be certain people were no more convinced by his dream than her visitation. The gossip did not turn to acceptance simply because he added his testimony to hers. Rather, I suspect it increased all the more. “I can’t believe he’s so naive.” “I guess he can’t come up with a better explanation than a dream.” “If this isn’t proof that he’s the one who got her pregnant I don’t know what is!”
But Joseph was a man of faith, a man who chose to believe God’s word and obey God’s direction, a man whose decision to accept Mary was also a decision to share her shame. But he knew that God had spoken, he knew what God had spoken, and nothing would dissuade him, nothing would compel him to reject what God had made abundantly clear.
And as I listened to this familiar passage during my morning devotions, a passage I’ve heard hundreds or even thousands of times, I found myself praying, “God, thank you for Joseph. And please give me the faith of Joseph. Give me the faith to listen attentively to your Word, give me the faith to believe it even when it cuts hard against my presuppositions, give me the faith to apply it even when it’s especially difficult. Let me be like Joseph. Give me a faith like his.”

There are few things more sobering than praying for someone who is dying, and few things more humbling than praying with someone whose time on earth is drawing to a close. In his book Facing the Last Enemy, Guy Prentiss Waters offers wise counsel to those who have the responsibility and even the privilege of this task. Here is his simple guidance on praying for those who are dying.

First, we should pray that the person would have a sure and settled faith in Jesus Christ. About a month before he died, an ailing John Calvin told fellow ministers who were visiting him that “my faults have always displeased me and the root of the fear of the Lord has always been in my heart.” Calvin was well acquainted with his sins. For that reason, he took refuge in the Lord, trusting and fearing Him from the heart. We should pray that our dying friend or loved one would, by God’s grace, make the same kind of confession.
Second, we should pray that the person would submit himself to the will of God. If it is evident in God’s providence that his time on this earth is limited, then the best thing to do is to bow before God. We should also pray for ourselves that we would submit to this hard providence. We may pray this prayer for the dying person and for ourselves in confidence that God is working only for His glory and the good of His people in this world (Rom. 8:28). We trust God even when we do not fully understand what He is doing in our lives.
Third, we should pray that our dying loved one would have comfort of body and soul. We do not want him to linger in physical pain. It is not necessarily wrong to pray that the Lord would take a dying believer home to Him soon. We also do not want the person to experience distress of soul. We should pray that he would experience the “peace of God, which surpasses all understanding” and “guards” “hearts” and “minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:7).
Finally, we should pray that God would provide for the family and friends whom the dying person will leave behind. Pray that He would fulfill His promise to watch over the widow and the orphan (Deut. 10:18; Ps. 68:5). Pray that He would spiritually provide for the survivors as they grieve their loss, that their grief may be in the hope of the gospel.