I recently announced that I have a new book on the way. Seasons of Sorrow: The Pain of Loss and the Comfort of God will release on September 13 and is now available for pre-order. This is a book I wrote in the year following the sudden death of my son and it tracks through the seasons as I reflect on the deep loss my family experienced and the precious comfort God provided.

Today I would like to let you know that I will be hosting a special launch event for the book. It will take place in Nashville, Tennessee just prior to the beginning of the Getty Music Sing! conference—Monday, September 5 at 10:30 AM (which is Labor Day). It will last for one hour and be completely free to attend. Coffee and tea will be served. (RSVP)
You do not need to be attending the Sing! conference in order to participate in this launch event—it is open to everyone. But if you are attending Sing!, never fear, you will still have plenty of time to get to the opening session.
I am honored that some special friends will be joining me:

Alistair Begg will join me in a conversation about grief and loss (this will be the only chance to see/hear him at Sing! since he will not be participating beyond this)
CityAlight (“Yet Not I but Through Christ in Me,” “It Was Finished Upon that Cross”) has written a brand new song to complement the book and will be debuting it here

And who knows? I can make no promises, but another special guest may turn up as well. Afterward, I will be sticking around and would love to meet as many of you as I can.
The event is being held at Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center (2800 Opryland Dr, Nashville, TN 37214) and will kick off at 10:30 AM.
If you would like to attend, we ask that you RSVP here. Further details, such as the specific room and directions to get there, will be posted here and emailed to you as the date approaches.

Grace and peace to you today.

We are wrapping up the month with a few new Kindle deals.
(Yesterday on the blog: Not a Lack of Food, But a Lack of Hunger)
When the Mob Shows Up the Monday After Roe
Michael Lawrence: “About 7 p.m. on Monday, three days after the Supreme Court overturned Roe, between 75 and 100 people assembled at a park near the church I pastor in Portland, Oregon. In broad daylight, they marched to our office building two blocks away.”
God loves to surprise his children
I like this one. “Any parent will tell you, there is something fantastic about surprising your kids. Whether it is birthdays and Christmas, holidays or just a random treat, surprising your kids is wonderful. There is a rich seam of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram content centred on this very thing. Parents love surprising their children. God is no different.”
Life Is Precious
“Are children a limit on personal autonomy? Yes. There’s no getting around it. They take resources. They need help, care, support, food, time, energy, and the list goes on and on. They need everything supplied to them for a long time. And is there a better way to use autonomy than this?”
Dear Anxious Heart, I Want You To Know…
Amber has some encouraging words for those who struggle with anxiety.
I Despise My Sufferings. And I’m So Thankful For Them.
This is a strange paradox, but a familiar one.
60 Questions for Pro-Choice Christians
“I have 60 questions for any Christian who identifies as pro-choice. These are not meant to be dismissive, snarky, or rhetorical. They are much more helpful than calling an entire segment of people ‘bigots’ or ‘baby murderers.’”
Flashback: A Soul Physician
We are all responsible before God to be involved, to observe carefully, to diagnose accurately, and to treat patiently. Are you caring for the souls of others?

If there is no joy and freedom, it is not a church: it is simply a crowd of melancholy people basking in a religious neurosis. If there is no celebration, there is no real worship. —Steve Brown

I was once told of a woman who lived in a cold-weather climate. She suffered from poor health and this in a part of the world where she could not easily get the nutrition she needed. Doctors suggested she travel to the tropics where the setting might be more conducive to a recovery. A few weeks after her departure she wrote to a friend to say, “This is a wonderful spot where I have access to all the good and nutritious food I could ever need. If only I could find my appetite I’d be well in no time.” But within weeks she was gone. In the end, it wasn’t a lack of food that took her life, but a lack of hunger.

And in much the same way, we have before us all the spiritual food we could ever need—enough to fill and sustain us for a lifetime, enough to carry us through the most difficult trials we can ever face, enough to fit us for life on this earth and an eternity of heaven. The question is whether we will take and eat—whether we will satisfy ourselves with the bounty spread out before us.
Do you attend the worship services of your local church? It is here that you will be fed good food. It is here that the Bible is preached and read and prayed, here that you will see the Bible displayed in the ordinances, here that you will join to sing its very words and greatest truths. It is here that week by week you can take and eat. Do you?
Do you read your Bible day-by-day? Generations of our forebears and millions of our contemporaries could only wish to have the access to the Scriptures that we do today—a hundred translations, a thousand apps, a million opportunities to read it, to know it, to obey it. All that can keep you from the Scriptures and all their benefits is a lack of desire, a lack of hunger. Do you fill yourself with this food?
Do you spend time in fellowship with Christians, those who are charged by God to carry out the work of ministry, to speak the truth in love, to encourage you in your faith? To spend time with brothers and sisters is to spend time with those who can speak the greatest truths to your highest joys and your deepest sorrows. Do you spend time with them so you can enjoy the feast they provide?
Do you take advantage of the bounty of resources that is available to all of us today? Never in all of history have we had so many books and blogs, so many broadcasts and podcasts, so many sermons and periodicals. There is a great meal spread before us at every moment of every day and the only question is whether we will partake of it, whether we will join in the feast.
We see many withering and perishing around us, many diminishing and dying. Those who fall away and are lost can not possibly be said to have died from a lack of food, for there is an unending bounty spread before us. They can only be said to have died from a lack of appetite—from a simple failure to take what is offered, what can feed them, what can strengthen and equip them for a lifetime of serving God and an eternity of enjoying him. It is not a lack of food that threatens any of us, but only a lack of hunger.

Looking for some good reading? Westminster Books is offering great deals on sets of commentaries and reference works.

Whose Choice?
“In 1973 I was 19 years old and a sophomore in college when the Supreme Court decided the Roe vs Wade case and legalized abortion. Honestly, however, I never expected the Court’s landmark decision to affect me personally.” And yet…
4 Thoughts on Spiritual Fatherhood
Jared Wilson: “As I get older, I think more and more about this claim from Paul — and the concept of ‘spiritual fatherhood’ generally — and it seems a pressing issue to me, not just ‘culturally,’ but personally.” He offers some thoughts on what the practice looks like.
OK, so there was Glastonbury
Matthew Hosier reflects on the recent Glastonbury festival.
It’s a Mistake to Take Online Populist Movements Very Seriously
Samuel James: “‘I’m now at a point where the first thing I wonder about a job applicant is, ‘How likely is this person to blow up my organization from the inside?’’ The emerging generation of activists are arriving at these organizations with two things: incredible amounts of leverage over their employers (thanks to the Internet), and incredibly low amounts of personal investment in groups or networks outside themselves.”
Did God Really Say … ?
“When my kids were little, one of our homeschool lessons was on ‘red flags.’ We talked about what things others might say to get you to do something your parents have told you not to do.”
On Keeping Your Greek and Hebrew in Ministry
“To those who have spent hours in seminary parsing Hebrew verbs and diagramming Greek sentences, I have two main contentions: First, I believe that the single most important thing you can do to keep your Greek and Hebrew skills alive in ministry is to do the hard and time-consuming work of preparing sermons out of the Greek and Hebrew text of Scripture. Second, the single greatest challenge to keeping your Greek and Hebrew alive in ministry is the sustained conviction that it matters.”
Flashback: A Soul Physician
I have often observed that some people demand unquestioning obedience of those who follow them, while they themselves dispute every decision of those who lead them…The fact is, we train our followers by the way we follow.

God uses waiting. Immediate success doesn’t build character, integrity, or depth in a human being because patiently waiting on the Lord does. —Shelby Abbott

My church is once again offering an internship program for those who have completed seminary training or are near completion with the intention to pursue full-time pastoral ministry. Details are at the link.

(Yesterday on the blog: The Beauty of Duty)
Finding Family
“God’s family is a precious thing, bound by wine and bread instead of blood and resemblance. Its members don’t dress alike, share a uniform culture or a common language. But whether it be in a building or a living room, whether through candles and liturgy or guitars and blue jeans, whenever believers gather, we belong to each other. And wherever two or more of us come together, Jesus is there.”
What to Do with Regret
We all go through life carrying some regrets. Barbara offers some counsel on what to do with them.
What happens to God’s people after they die? (Video)
This is a question we have all wondered, isn’t it?
Speeding in Opposite Directions: ‘Lightyear’ and ‘Maverick’
I appreciate Brett McCracken’s two-for-one review of new films. “Where the original Toy Story was a wide-eyed marvel of artistry and enchanting storytelling, Lightyear is overstuffed and uninspired. And where Toy Story celebrated childhood as childhood, even leading adult viewers to feel like kids again, Lightyear does the opposite—pushing childhood into adulthood in inappropriate ways.”
Is Sermon Application Even Necessary?
Is sermon application necessary or optional? This article suggest it’s a necessary part of preaching.
“Let the Little Children Come To Me”
Kevin DeYoung says that the real monstrosity of Roe was not legal but moral.
Flashback: When God Seems Deaf To Our Cries
When Joseph was in the pit he must have cried out for God to deliver him then and there, to return him to his father that very day. But if God had answered that prayer, he would have preserved Joseph’s life only for it to end in starvation.

Making disciples is an act that calls for embodied presence. It requires sharing our lives. It demands we dive into the deep end – even if we’re not convinced we know how to swim. —Drew Hill

In former days Christians spoke often of duty. Though they most certainly delighted in God and were eager to foster and increase that delight, they tended to do so by way of duty. They examined their lives to determine what duties God was calling them to and audited their lives to determine if they were fulfilling them. They longed to be dutiful in devotion, dutiful in obedience, dutiful in every responsibility and every role. They believed that from their duty would grow a deepening delight.

From these forebears you and I should learn the importance of living with care, living with consideration for every moment, every day, every season—with prayerful attentiveness to every duty. Therefore…
… Take care before you waste a moment, for every moment is sacred, given to you by God to be used for his purposes. Moments have often been sanctified to accomplish great things. It was in a moment that Rahab offered sanctuary to the Jewish spies, in a moment that Jesus gave sight to a man born blind, in a moment that Peter made the decision to visit Cornelius—and through him to take the gospel to all the Gentiles.
… Take care before you waste a day, for every day is sacred, given as a gift to be used to do good to others and bring glory to God. God sanctified days when he carried out his work of creation in six of them, when he set aside one of them to rest, when Jesus committed 40 of them to praying and fasting in the wilderness. Little do we know the value of a day and all that can be accomplished in it.
… Take care before you waste a season, for every season of life is sacred, a precious gift from God. Jesus sanctified seasons, for it was in the season of youthfulness that he diligently grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man and in the season of his public ministry that he fulfilled the law and was obedient unto death. It was in the season of his captivity that Paul penned his greatest epistles and in the season of his exile that John gave us his great revelation of Jesus Christ.
If you wish to live according to their example, you must be dutiful—dutiful in the small things as much as the big. Never leave undone for a moment the duty of that moment. Never leave undone for a day the duty of that day, or for a season the duty of that season. To do so is to risk wasting your entire life, for a lifetime is made up of seasons and seasons of days and days of moments. They ebb away like the tide that flows back from the beach, like the sun that sinks beyond the horizon until its last rays fade from the sky and all goes dark.
It is wise and good each morning to ask “What is my God-given duty in this day?” It is wise and good at each juncture to pray “God, help me to be dutiful in all that you call me to.” The one who thinks in this way, the one who prays in this way, the one who lives in this way, will live a life of duty, a life of significance, a life of great delight. The one who lives according to duty will most certainly hear the master’s commendation of “Well done, good and faithful—good and dutiful—servant.”

Good morning! Grace and peace to you.

Today’s Kindle deals include a nice little collection from Crossway.
(Yesterday on the blog: Tell God the Unvarnished Story)
Four Compelling Reasons I Am Pro-Life
“While much more could be said, these four reasons I am pro-life are reasons that I want to be on the tip of my tongue and that I hope will be on yours, also.”
Let the Little Children Come
This one from Madelyn is one the same theme of abortion.
How can I grow in my experiential knowledge of God?
How can we grow in our experiential knowledge of God? Here’s an answer from several theologians.
Josef Tson: What His Suffering for Christ in Communist Romania Taught Him, and Can Teach Us
Randy Alcorn: “God convicted Josef. As a pastor he refused to glorify communist leaders and started to speak out boldly for Christ. Interrogators threatened him with death every day for six months. Finally he told them, ‘Your supreme weapon is killing. My supreme weapon is dying. My preaching will speak ten times louder after you kill me.’”
How to Patiently Prepare for Missionary Work Among the Unreached and Unengaged
How can someone prepare to serve among the unreached and unengaged? This article offers some wisdom.
The Case for (Slightly) Shorter Sermons
I don’t agree with everything here, but I do think he’s on to something when he points out that it’s much easier to write a long, bad sermon than a short, good one. Concision has a way of keeping us honest.
Flashback: Why My Family Doesn’t Do Sleepovers
As I got older I learned of several people I knew who had been taken advantage of during sleepovers, and it wasn’t a perverse father in most cases, but a predatory older brother or sister or cousin. Sometimes it was even the friend himself.

The only fortune worth anything that you can give your child is the fortune you put in his head and heart. —DeWitt Talmage

Though we profess that God is all-seeing and all-knowing, that he understands not merely the actions of our hands and the thoughts of our minds but even the intentions of our hearts, still we sometimes feel as if we need to hold back from telling him all that we have thought, all that we have done, all that we have desired. Yet if we are to confess our sins before him, we need to confess them all, for he knows them anyway. These words from F.B. Meyer encourage you to tell him the truth—the unvarnished truth.

You have lost the light of God’s face, not because He has arbitrarily withdrawn it, but because your iniquities have come between you and your God; and your sins, like a cloud before the sun, have hid His face from you.
Do not spend time by looking at them as a whole. Deal with them one by one. The Boer is a formidable foe to the British soldier because he is trained from boyhood to take a definite aim and bring down his mark, whilst our soldiers fire in volleys. In dealing with sin, we should imitate him in the definiteness and accuracy of his aim.
Ask God to search you and show you what wicked way is in you. Marshal all your life before Him, as Joshua marshalled Israel, sift it through, tribe by tribe, family by family, household by household, man by man, until at last you find the Achan who has robbed you of the blessed smile of God.
Do not say: “Lord, I am a great sinner, I have done what I ought not, I have not done what I ought;” but say, “Lord, I have sinned in this, and this, and that, and the other.” Call up each rebel sin, by its right name, to receive sentence of death. Your heart is choked with sins; empty it out, as you would empty a box, by handing out first the articles that lie on the surface.
When you have removed them, you will see more underneath; hand them out also. When these are removed, you will probably see some more. Never rest till all are gone.
Confession is just this process of telling God the unvarnished story—the sad, sad story—of each accursed sin; how it began: how you sinfully permitted it to grow: how you have loved and followed it to your bitter cost.

I hope and pray you have a wonderful, restful, worshipful weekend.

There are some new Kindle deals today.
(Yesterday on the blog: On Worship)
There are, of course, lots of articles about the big news from the Supreme Court yesterday. Here are a few recommendations:

Joe Carter’s FAQ explains what happened and what happens now.
Al Mohler rejoices.
Jake Meador’s The Land Is Bright celebrates a victory while also reminding Christians that the work is not nearly done.
Bethel McGrew explains why non-Americans may not be able to understand why this is such a big deal.
Winfree Brisley’s Remember Who Overturned Roe makes sure we remember who’s really responsible for this good news. (Hint: It’s neither a former President nor a current Supreme Court Justice.)

A Conflict of Visions: Comparing Rick Warren’s SBC Speech and Juan Sanchez’s Convention Sermon
“Every once in a while, you witness something that captures in a single snapshot an entire way of thinking. In just a few brief moments, a whole world of assumptions and beliefs is laid bare. The curtain is pulled back, and the heart of a matter is exposed.” This is so true.
Bootstrapping is Folly
Glenna Marshall writes about the common misunderstanding that sanctification is a matter of pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps.
FAQ: Has Jesus Taken Away Satan’s Power—or Not?
“The Bible says that Satan is ‘bound,’ but it also says he’s ‘a roaring lion’ who wants to destroy people. Can both be true? How should we understand Satan’s power in the world today?” That’s a good question, isn’t it?
The Binding of Satan
In a somewhat similar and slightly more scholarly vein, here is Kim Riddelbarger on the binding of Satan. “The binding of Satan as depicted in this passage raises several obvious questions, especially in light of the on-going debate between amillennarians and premillennarians about the timing and character of the millennial age.”
Is this world a sinking ship, or is there still hope for its future?
What will happen to this sinful, corrupted world when Jesus Christ returns? Will He come to bring destruction or renewal? From a Ligonier event, Michael Reeves brings clarity on the new heavens and new earth.
Flashback: The Coming Millennial Midlife Crisis
We are forced to look at our paltry list of accomplishments, to concede our lack of skills, to admit our increasing weariness, to acknowledge our decreasing strength, and to face the fact that we won’t do nearly what we thought we would do.

God has put us into the fire of affliction to refine us, and make us a vessel fit for His use. —Edmund Calamy