This week’s Free Stuff Friday is sponsored by Children’s Hunger Fund. They have three book bundles for giveaway, featuring titles that have influenced CHF’s ministry and will hopefully encourage you and your family. Each giveaway package will also include hand-selected items from the Children’s Hunger Fund store. The giveaway will close on May 7 at noon EST.

 Mission Drift by Peter Greer
Too often, as Christian organizations grow, the gospel often becomes cursory, expendable, or even forgotten. Again and again, leaders have watched their ministries, businesses, and nonprofits professionalize, expand, and lose sight of their original goals. Even churches can stray from their calling.
In Mission Drift, Chris Horst, Anna Haggard, and Peter Greer provide the tools leaders need to keep their organizations “mission true” or get back on track. Supported by research and filled with compelling anecdotes, Mission Drift identifies organizations that exhibit intentional, long-term commitment to Christ in contrast to those that have wandered away from their core beliefs. Discover what you can do to prevent drift or get back on track and how to protect what matters most.
George Muller of Bristol by A.T. Pierson
George Muller was living proof that God can be known intimately, that He is a faithful companion, and that prayer yields miraculous results. This classic biography tells of George Muller’s dependence on prayer and how his compassionate concern for orphans in Bristol, England, shaped decades of missionary and social endeavors throughout the world.
Emblems of the Infinite King by J. Ryan Lister, illustrated by Anthony M. Benedetto
In an imaginative journey through the grand story of the universe, this book introduces kids ages 10+ to God’s radiant beauty using the main categories of systematic theology: God, humanity, sin, Christ, the Holy Spirit, salvation, the church, and last things.
Full of captivating illustrated “emblems” meant to symbolize key facets of Christian doctrine, this unique book seeks to bring theological truths from words to life. The creative design combined with rich theology will challenge young readers to search God’s Word for important answers to big questions about themselves, God, and the gospel.
All you need to do to enter the drawing is drop your name and email address in the form below.
Giveaway Rules
You may enter one time. When you enter, you permit Children’s Hunger Fund to send you marketing emails. The winners will be notified via email. The giveaway closes on Sunday, May 7 at noon EST.

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I want to continue to express gratitude to those who have featured interviews or reviews related to Seasons of Sorrow: Kurt & Kate on Moody Radio (audio); Three Guys Theologizing (audio); Paul Tautges; Reading for the Glory; Sandee Macgregor; and Reformed Mum.

Westminster Books has a deal this week on Paul Tripp’s new book. They’ve also marked down a number of his other works.
It’s another good day for Kindle deals as we continue to build our libraries!
Into the anthropological chaos
Carl Trueman considers Revoice and its inevitable drift. “It is hard to find one high-profile critic of the movement who was taken with real seriousness by Revoice advocates. With the reports of gender and trans ideology making its way firmly into Revoice 2022, the time for dialogue seems now to be over.” (Also read the article he references.)
A Caution to Those Who Decree and Declare
Oyewole Akande urges caution to those who decree and declare in prayer. “Over the last few decades, the practice of decreeing and declaring has spread like wildfire across Africa. This practice comes from the Word of Faith movement and its emphasis on the power of words and the need for positive confessions in every sphere of the Christian’s life.”
A 90-Day Devotional on the Five Solas of the Reformation
Sometimes one word is all that stands between the truth and a lie, between life and death. In the Reformation, that word was sola, “alone.” This month, you can request Ligonier Ministries’ book The Heart of the Reformation for a donation of any amount in support of Ligonier’s gospel outreach. Take up this devotional to spend 90 days with the five solas of the Reformation. (Sponsored Link)
Food Offered to Idols: A Contemporary Issue
“This issue is more important than many who are from a Christian-influenced, secularized, or monotheistic religious background readily understand. [2] Cultures dedicated to this kind of pagan worship are dominated by public religious festivals and regular rituals. Community and family life revolve around these observances. Involvement in all this is the major expression of community, ethnic pride, unity, and even patriotism.”
Our Bodies Have Purpose and Value
In the current cultural context it’s crucial to affirm that our bodies have God-given purpose and value.
Waiting on the Lord
“I want to be patient, to wait up on the Lord, to trust in His timing. But my initial reaction is to be disappointed for what might have been, to struggle as I watch our retirement dreams hang in the balance, and to try to find an answer for myself to the question, ‘If God wanted me to be patient, why did he create me so impatient?’”
Flashback: The Influenced Will Be Like the Influencer
Bit by bit, day by day, sermon by sermon, podcast by podcast, we will come to resemble the people we follow. For good or for ill, we will imitate them until we are like them.

An eye to the throne-room of God is the cure to fascination with the circus of the world. —Matthew Harmon

One of the most important habits you can develop is the habit of accepting that life is full of disappointments. One of the best ways to grow in contentment is to accept the inevitability of discontentment. One of the ways you can be most joyful in life is to be realistic about life, to know that the people in it will so often fail to meet your expectations. Having admitted all of this, you can embrace it as the way life is and even the way God means for it to be.

Your church will disappoint you. The pastor will preach some weak sermons, the elders will make some poor decisions, and the members will fail to share every one of your burdens and minister to every one of your sorrows. You will be tempted to become discontent with your church and begin to cast wistful eyes toward other congregations. You will begin to wonder if the path to joy involves picking up and moving on.

Your husband will disappoint you. He will fail to please you, fail to fulfill you, fail to be all you want him to be. You will be given too little attention, sinned against too often, hear too little of your love language. You will be tempted to become discontent with him, to demand more, and to insist that peace will come only on the other side of his personal reformation. You may even be tempted to leave him altogether and start over with someone who promises more.

Your sex life will disappoint you, the wonder of the early days soon giving way to the struggles that come with too little opportunity or too little willingness, too much demand or too much distraction. How many people have made shipwrecks of marriage, family, and ministry because they could not accept the disappointment of a sex life that is imperfect and less than completely fulfilling?

Your parents will disappoint you and so too your children. Your friends will disappoint you and so too your relatives. All will fail you at many times and in many ways. And, of course, you will do the same for them. Your church will disappoint you and you’ll disappoint your church. Your spouse will disappoint you and you’ll disappoint your spouse. Your sex life will disappoint you and it will disappoint your spouse as well. No one will ever fully meet your hopes, desires, and expectations. No one ever can fully meet your hopes, desires, and expectations. And you can’t meet theirs.

I acknowledge that this could all sound discouraging and depressing. I acknowledge that it could be taken as a call to apathy, an excuse to give up effort altogether. But that would be the wrong response. The right response is to accept the reality of imperfection and to be content with discontentment. The right response is to understand that nobody and nothing can live up to your expectations and that nobody and nothing is meant to.

Christians speak often of the ways that beauty and pleasure are meant to direct us beyond themselves to what is ultimately beautiful and ultimately pleasurable. Beauty evokes wonder and wonder evokes worship and worship evokes longing. In that way, the beauties of this earth direct us to the perfect and complete beauties that we will experience in God’s presence. The longing and the ache are a feature rather than a bug, for they point us to the time and place when our hopes will finally be realized and our longings finally satisfied. And it seems to me that there is a way in which disappointment can function in a similar way.

Instead of being discouraged by disappointment, would it not be better to allow it to remind you of the state of this world and, better, the state of the world to come? Would it not be better to allow it to remind you that this world is not meant to completely fulfill you and not meant to satisfy your every longing? Would it not be better to let it increase your desire to be with God in that place where all disappointments will be taken away? And then to enjoy life as it is, not as you long for it to be?

God’s gifts are good and are meant to be enjoyed. Yet none of them can deliver all that they promise.Share

God’s gifts are good and are meant to be enjoyed. Yet none of them can deliver all that they promise. Each of them brings a level of satisfaction but also a level of disappointment, a sense of beauty but also a sense of longing for more. We need to be wary of that longing for more because it can motivate us to make poor decisions or even depraved ones. It can lead us to forsake the ones we love and be discontent in even their greatest efforts and best attempts to love. It can lead us to act rashly and in ways that hurt others and dishonor God.

So when you encounter life’s disappointments, do not be surprised and do not be dismayed. Do not allow them to cause you to turn aside or turn away from those who love you and those God has called you to love. Learn to accept them as an inevitable reality of life in this world. Instead of resenting them, embrace them and allow them to deepen your love and your longing for the only One who will never let you down.