Happy new year! May 2023 bring you many of God’s richest blessings.

My sincere gratitude goes to the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors for naming Seasons of Sorrow their counseling book of the year.
There’s quite a large bundle of Kindle deals to go through today.
(Yesterday on the blog: All Is Shadow Here Below!)
Pope Benedict XVI (1927–2022): His Life and Legacy
Leonardo De Chirico is perhaps the foremost Evangelical scholar of Roman Catholicism, so he’s just the man to reflect on the life, death, and legacy of Pope Benedict XVI.
Signs of Life
“Here’s an encouragement for your new year: yours and my inefficient, unremarkable, non-streamable existences are not problems to be fixed. The things that make us late, or bored, or stressed are often the signs of life. Even our pain and suffering are, in their way, reminders that the valley of the shadow of death is not the only thing that’s real. So are his rod and his staff.”
The Turning of the Calendar
Doug Eaton: “God’s mercies are new every morning, and they are also new every year. However, sometimes, we can expect too much from the turning of the calendar.”
Good News for 2023: It’s Not About You
Chris Hutchison offers up a couple of important lessons from the life of Elijah, one of which is for everyone and the other of which is geared toward parents.
God’s Faithfulness in the Past Assures Our Happy Future
Randy Alcorn: “The human race is homesick for Eden, which only two humans have ever known. We spend our lives chasing peaceful delight, following dead ends or cul-de-sacs in pursuit of home. We know intuitively that we’ve wandered. What we don’t know is how to return. Our lives are largely the story of the often wrong and occasionally right turns we take in our attempts to get home to Happiness with a capital H—God Himself.”
No Longer Slaves to Sin
”In all the CA State Prison chapels where I work, the current passage before us is the sixth chapter of Romans, in which are the words, “sin will have no dominion over you”.  And there, among men who have a keen and intense familiarity with what it means to not be free, we’ve been exploring the fundamental release from bondage inherent in the nature of our salvation, release not only from transgression’s final penalty but from sin’s cruel dominion now.”
Flashback: The Best Way to Begin a New Year
There is no better way to begin a new year than with the knowledge of your freedom and the desire to live for the glory of the one who has extended such grace. Christian, you are free and clear.

God wants us to worship him because we become like what we worship. If we worship God in spirit and truth, we’ll become more spiritual and truthful. —David Murray

A new year has dawned. And while we tend to face a new year with energy and enthusiasm, excited by all the possibilities it will bring, perhaps we ought to pause for just a few moments to consider the reality that is set before us. Octavius Winslow would have you consider that this world and all that is in it is but a shadow. And if we simply acknowledge this, we are prepared to live this year well—to live it for the glory of God. Consider what he says:

All is shadow here below! The world is a shadow; and it passes away!
The creature is a shadow; and the loveliest and the fondest may be the first to die!
Health is a shadow; fading, and in a moment gone!
Wealth is a shadow; today upon the summit of affluence, tomorrow at its base, plunged into poverty and dependence!
Human friendships and creature affections are but shadows; sweet and pleasant while they last, but, with a worm feeding at the root of all created good, the sheltering gourd soon withers, exposing us to the sun’s burning heat by day, and to the frost’s cold chill by night!
Oh, yes! “Passing Away” is indelibly inscribed upon everything here below! Yet how slow are we to realize the solemn lesson: “What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!”
Unconverted reader, what is your life but a vapor that passes away? And what are its pursuits but shadows; unreal, unsatisfying, evanescent? Your rank, your wealth, your honors, your pleasures, are but phantoms which appear but for a little while, and then are lost in the deeper shadow of the grave, and the still deeper and longer shadow of eternity!
Oh, turn from these dreams and hallucinations, and, as a rational, accountable, immortal being, on your way to judgment, fix your mind upon your solemn, endless future! You are going to die! And, oh, when that dread hour comes, so real and appalling, how will your past life appear?

A new year has dawned. And while we tend to face a new year with energy and enthusiasm, excited by all the possibilities it will bring, perhaps we ought to pause for just a few moments to consider the reality that is set before us. Octavius Winslow would have you consider that this world and all that is in it is but a shadow. And if we simply acknowledge this, we are prepared to live this year well—to live it for the glory of God. Consider what he says:

All is shadow here below! The world is a shadow; and it passes away!
The creature is a shadow; and the loveliest and the fondest may be the first to die!
Health is a shadow; fading, and in a moment gone!
Wealth is a shadow; today upon the summit of affluence, tomorrow at its base, plunged into poverty and dependence!
Human friendships and creature affections are but shadows; sweet and pleasant while they last, but, with a worm feeding at the root of all created good, the sheltering gourd soon withers, exposing us to the sun’s burning heat by day, and to the frost’s cold chill by night!
Oh, yes! “Passing Away” is indelibly inscribed upon everything here below! Yet how slow are we to realize the solemn lesson: “What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!”
Unconverted reader, what is your life but a vapor that passes away? And what are its pursuits but shadows; unreal, unsatisfying, evanescent? Your rank, your wealth, your honors, your pleasures, are but phantoms which appear but for a little while, and then are lost in the deeper shadow of the grave, and the still deeper and longer shadow of eternity!
Oh, turn from these dreams and hallucinations, and, as a rational, accountable, immortal being, on your way to judgment, fix your mind upon your solemn, endless future! You are going to die! And, oh, when that dread hour comes, so real and appalling, how will your past life appear?

May you know the Lord’s richest blessings as you send off one year and welcome in another.

For those who, like me, plan to read the Bible in 2023 using the 5-Day Reading Plan, it’s now available for free download.
There are a few new Kindle deals to look at today.
An Anchor for Our Tongues
This is a very interesting look at how we define words and why that sometimes doesn’t get us a whole lot closer to meaning. “Unfortunately, any given language is an imperfect witness to eternal truth. A language is limited in its perspective on reality. It ‘thinks’ in a certain way, and this affects how it describes things. This gives each language a unique perspective and voice, but that uniqueness also implies it’s missing a bunch of things that other languages notice.”
Deepening Your Friendship in Marriage
I appreciate this look at friendship in marriage from TGC India. “We had an arranged marriage, and we were in our twenties. We did not have the benefit of developing an understanding of who we were or what to expect. By God’s grace, it only took us three years to figure out what we were missing in the relationship. We were missing a friendship. No one told us the importance of friendship in marriage. So, we had to start over.”
Psalm 25 and the New Year
“The old British divine Matthew Henry refers to the practice of praying God’s Word back to God as ‘wrestling with God in his own strength.’ For this reason, I love to peruse the Bible for prayers to make my own. And one of my favorite passages to pray is Psalm 25.”
10 Tips for Faithful Student Ministry in the New Year
This list will be helpful for people who are involved in student ministry.
Start the Year Small: Wisdom for Setting New Goals
This article at DG offers “a well-marked yet seldom-traveled pathway to setting wise goals.”
5 Tips to Reinforce Your Bible Study and Prayer Routine
“No church leader wants to admit it, but for many of us it’s true: we still don’t have a sustainable habit for personal Bible study and prayer. Here are five ways forward—true for anyone, church leader or not.”

All our bad does not make us harder to save, and all our good does not make us easier to save. What saves us is Christ, and therefore all we contribute is honesty—admitting we are sinners and casting ourselves on him. —Dane Ortlund

This week’s Free Stuff Fridays is sponsored by The Master’s Academy International (TMAI), who also sponsored the blog this week with the article “Support Indigenous Publishing with TMAI.” They are giving away the 42-volume Essential MacArthur Library set.

The Master’s Academy International (TMAI) is currently training local pastors in 18 schools around the world. The student body represents almost 90 nations, and as a natural extension of this training ministry, nearly every one of their schools is engaged in the work of indigenous publishing. This is because they see that, unlike Christians in America and many English-speaking countries, pastors and church members in many regions of the world have very few biblically sound resources in their native language. TMAI wants to help change that.
To learn more and get behind TMAI’s indigenous publishing efforts, go here.
Giveaway: The Essential MacArthur Library
This week, TMAI is giving away the 42-volume Essential MacArthur Library. This set includes key resources designed to help believers better understand the Bible, the most important resource for anyone. For this reason, the Essential MacArthur Library remains one of the top translation projects for TMAI as they seek to resource the global church with God-honoring books.
Their current goal is to finish translating this Library into German, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Croatian, Albanian, Chinese, Hebrew, Portuguese, French, Armenian, Malay, Farsi, and Burmese.
The Essential MacArthur Library includes:

The MacArthur New Testament Commentary series (33 vols.)
The MacArthur Study Bible
The MacArthur Bible Commentary
Biblical Doctrine
Essential Christian Doctrine
The Master’s Plan for the Church
The MacArthur Pastoral Library—4 vols. (Preaching Pastoral Ministry · Counseling · Evangelism)

To win the Essential MacArthur Library (in English), please enter below.
One winner will be selected.

TO ENTER:
Giveaway Rules: Entries are limited to 1 per person. U.S. Addresses only. By submitting your information, you agree to receive regular updates about the ministry of The Master’s Academy International. The winner will be notified by email. The giveaway closes on Friday, January 6th, 2022, at midnight. Enter your information into the form below or HERE.

Good morning. Grace and peace to you today.

There have been a few Kindle deals shared this week. You can browse and see them if you like. We’ll hope for more next week!
New Beginnings: On God’s Mercy and Grace
“The beginning of a new school year was always one of my favorite times. There was something exciting about seeing unopened textbooks and knowing that by the end of the year, I would have a thorough understanding of that new subject, or at least evidence that I gave it my best effort. It was a time of new beginnings, regardless of last year’s results.”
Jesus Holds Us Fast
Blake rejoices in the simple truth that Jesus holds us fast.
Light and Life for the Year to Come
Sarah Valentour: “This time of year, we make lists, picking our lives apart for small ways to improve. We seek ways to become the ‘best us’ we can be, searching for answers within ourselves. But as the world preaches the salvation of self-care, God calls his people to a life of holiness, emulating him, in order to become children of light.”
Winning Your Child’s Heart with Winsome Words
“Do we understand the impact of our words on our children? We utter words every day in all sorts of situations, often without intentionality. Sometimes, when we are using words to keep order and get things done, we lose sight of the power they possess.” Darby Strickland reminds us of the power of words to build up and tear down.
Blessed
“So there I was, feeling pretty sorry for myself, and arguing with the Lord. Things had not worked out like I thought they should. ‘Lord, You said that if I looked into your law and obeyed it, I would be blessed. This doesn’t feel much like a blessing.’ There it was in black and white, and yet I did not feel blessed in my doing.”
Flashback: Strength = Good, Weakness = Bad
Consider how God can and will work in you in the year ahead if only you will be weak. Make this the year where you will rejoice in weakness so you can rely on God’s strength.

Nothing should keep our minds busier on earth than this great reality: the Holy One of God was declared unholy, so that unholy sinners might stand unblemished before a holy God. —Mark Jones

Grace and peace to you today.

Stooping To Filthy Feet
What a thought. “The man on his knees, rinsing sweat from Peter’s athlete’s foot and getting between Judas’s toes to wipe away the dung was our Creator, who is before all things and in him all things hold together; the hands that washed those verrucae and blisters would one day be the only ones qualified to break the seals and open the gates to the New Jerusalem.”
Hyper-Headship in Marriage
Keith has been writing a series on the pastoral issues he sees the most in counseling and today he discusses hyper-headship. “What we are speaking about is oppression in marriage. What it looks like from one marriage to the next will be cloaked in many different garbs—constant conflict, a depressed and docile wife, isolation, perpetual walking on eggshells in the home, and the list goes on.”
She heard cries for help during deadly winter storm. Her actions saved a life
We all love stories like this one, and for good reason.
3 Reasons Why You Should Make a New Year’s Resolution This Year
Here’s a defense of making New Year’s resolutions, in case you’d like the challenge.
Seminary Is Not For You
Anna Stewart: “Even now as I immerse myself in year three of my theological education as a weaker, more sober Christian, I find myself asking the questions I realize I should have been asking a long time ago. Why am I really here? Who am I even doing this for? Brothers and sisters in seminary, I invite you to consider these questions alongside me.”
5 Myths about Porn
Ray Ortlund shares 5 ugly myths about porn.
Flashback: How To Make A New Year’s Resolution That Sticks
I have done a fair bit of reading on how to make resolutions work, and it turns out that though there are many reasons your resolutions may not work, the most common ones are easy enough to avoid. Here are some tips on making wise resolutions and on making them stick.

The fear of God will swallow up the fear of man. A reverential awe and dread of God will extinguish the creature’s slavish fear, as the rain puts out the fire. —John Flavel

May the Lord be with you and bless you on this fine day.

When the City of Man Creaks
I think many of us are noticing the straining and breaking down of systems and wondering what it means. “Progress in the systems we rely on for life necessities or conveniences has been assumed. The pandemic and its aftermath have challenged this assumption and, whether temporary or long-term, the systems around us are showing their weakness.”
Six Questions You Should Ask at the Beginning of 2023
“What I started doing a couple of years ago was to abandon the idea of New Year’s resolutions and instead start thinking about what I wanted to focus on for the next year in early December. Then I started implementing changes that would make progress on my goals before the new year begins. What this allowed me to do was to get out of the habit of thinking the new year would magically change me into a new person.”
A Unique Plan for Reading through the Greek New Testament in 2023
If you know (or knew) Greek, this reading plan exists to help you keep and improve it.
King Charles’s Christmas Message Reflects a Post-Christian United Kingdom
Year after year the Queen gave a Christmas message. But this year, “due to her death in September, it was delivered by King Charles III. His message was akin to the first sermon preached by a new pastor who has succeed a long-serving and much loved predecessor. Charles’s message shed light on the spiritual state of contemporary Britain and on the faith of the King himself.”
Excuse me, may I have six seconds of your time?
“Have you ever considered that six seconds of your life could alter someone’s eternity? A message so simple that a child could understand it is also the power of God for salvation to all who believe.”
“Amazing Grace” at 250 Years Old
Lisa writes about a very noteworthy anniversary—the 250th anniversary of the first singing of “Amazing Grace.”
Flashback: The Half-Trained Dog
We train ourselves for a while, but then grow weary when those last vestiges of the sin refuse to die, or when we realize that sin has much deeper and stronger roots than we had expected, or when we realize that we actually kind of like our sin. We end up half-trained, good enough Christians.

Don’t be easy or simplistic in labeling what a person’s heart is worshipping. You are not on an idol hunt, as if these things could be easily labeled. —Jeremy Pierre & Deepak Reju

Just a reminder that due to the holidays I’ll be publishing A La Carte through this week, but not much else. A more normal schedule will resume next week.

(Yesterday on the blog: My Bible-Reading Recommendation for 2023)
Annual Planning with the Ten Commandments
So, what if you began your annual planning with the Ten Commandments? That’s an interesting thought.
Canadians Must Not Assist a Culture of Death
“In March 2023, Canada will begin assisting the mentally ill by terminating their lives. Canada first legalized medical assistance in dying (MAiD) in 2016. Bill C-7 in 2021 expanded the criteria for MAiD beyond those who had a foreseeable death. Now, a further expansion will allow those with mental illness to receive a prescription for death.” Wyatt explains why Canadians (and others) must not assist in this growing culture of death.
Don’t let the Christ message slip off the radar
“We’ve done a fine job sanitising the birth of Jesus, washing over many of the particulars that make the incarnation so extraordinary and thwart with danger and awe. However, it’s not so easy to give a PG rating to that bloodstained cross. 2,000 years on and that cross remains the most ignominious moment in history. We like the Christmas part of the story, but the death part?”
Flowers are still Darwin’s “abominable mystery”
“In 1879, some twenty years after the publication of his famous Origin of Species, Charles Darwin wrote a letter to botanist Dr Joseph Hooker. One sentence in particular underscored a vexing problem for evolutionary theory: ‘The rapid development as far as we can judge of all the higher plants within recent geological times is an abominable mystery.’” This remains a problem for evolution!
Jesus is not necessarily there to be copied
“It is something of an assumed truism that Christians follow the example of Jesus. Of course we do. He is, after all, the founder and pioneer and of our faith. Surely, if anything was obvious, it is that we are supposed to copy Jesus, aren’t we?” Well, maybe not always.
What’s in a Name?
Here’s the main point of this one: “The only way Abram becomes Abraham is by the power of God through the never-failing word of God. The only way we become who we must become is by the power of God through the never-failing word of God.”
Flashback: The Beautiful Ordinary
All across the world, thousands of ordinary pastors will preach ordinary sermons to ordinary people, and through these sermons they will communicate the most powerful, extraordinary news of all.

Our God is a redeeming God, a God who is determined to reclaim his fallen world, setting it free from its enslavement to corruption and bringing it to a final state of glory. —Douglas Moo and Jonathan Moo