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 “Your Invite to TMAI’s International Symposium.” They are giving away the e-book “How to Build an Effective Missions Program.”

Free E-Book Giveaway
This free giveaway is a succinct and important e-book titled “How to Build an Effective Missions Program.” It’s designed for pastors, but can be useful for any believer and will be given to everyone who enters.
“The seven steps below are intended to guide your missions leadership team through this process…Our goal is to aid you in making the necessary adjustments in order to ensure that your program is as biblical, God-honoring, and effective as it can be.”
Steps Discussed:

Understand the Motivation
Recognize Biblical Principles
Build Your Leadership Team
Devise Your Strategy
Communicate to the Church
Evaluate Your Current Program
Adjust Program as Necessary

“Ultimately, with your new missions strategy as a foundation, your congregation will be able to consider, within a biblical framework, what existing or new missions support opportunities best concur with your goals. As such, your church will be better equipped to maximize its efforts to glorify God and reach the world for Christ.”

The Story Behind the Book
“For over a decade, The Master’s Academy International has been helping to strengthen churches around the world by training indigenous church leaders to become approved pastor-teachers. That has been accomplished primarily by churches sending missionaries to establish and operate training centers in other countries. We are also committed to assisting sending churches by producing and collating resources that assist in the global missions endeavor.
As I have interacted with churches across the United States and around the world, I find that many are struggling with how to get involved in missions and sustain the effort through the years. I have spoken with many pastors who have come into a church to find either no missions effort or one that needs to be re-aligned with biblical priorities, but are unsure how to make this happen. I have spoken with elders who sense the need for their church to be less reactive and more proactive in the area of missions, but are not clear about how to go about it. TMAI desires to serve local pastors in asking and answering these questions: What should be our priorities in missions? What principles should govern our investment of time, people and money? How can we participate most effectively and efficiently in serving the church around the world?
This booklet is intended to…help churches to accomplish the task given by Christ in the Great Commission. We pray it will be useful to you as a pastor leading your church in thinking through the motivations and methods for carrying out the Church’s glorious mission.
Mark TatlockPresident, The Master’s Academy International”

TO ENTER:
Giveaway Rules: You enter—you win! You may enter one time only. By submitting your information, you agree to receive regular updates about the ministry of The Master’s Academy International. The giveaway closes on Friday, January 13, 2023, at midnight. Enter your information into the form HERE.

We can tell a lot about ourselves by what we long for, by what we desire, by what we dream about, by what consumes our thoughts when we lie in the quiet darkness of night. You can tell a lot because what consumes our thoughts is a good indication of what consumes our hearts which is, in turn, a good indication of what we value most. If we dream of riches it shows that we have set our hope on money. If we dream of sexual pleasures it shows that we have raised sex to the status of an idol. And so we should often ask ourselves: What do I dream about? What do I long for? And what does this tell me about myself? Our God or “gods” are never far from our desires.

I don’t think I’m wrong in suggesting that few of us spend much time dreaming about Heaven. Most of our longings extend little farther than what we can see, have, and experience here on earth. And yet the consistent message of the Bible is that there are treasures and blessings beyond this earth that are so beautiful, so wonderful, so desirable, that the best of earth’s joys will pale by comparison.
This longing is the subject of Stephen Morefield’s book Always Longing: Discovering the Joy of Heaven. He, like so many of us, has always known that Heaven is good, but has still preferred to focus his thoughts and desires on this world and this life. He has always known that Heaven is a wonderful place, but he still didn’t want to go there because he had other plans, other dreams, other things he wanted to accomplish. “Sports, college, ministry, marriage, kids—those sorts of things. I had too much to do to want to go to Heaven. I also had a healthy fear of death. Who wants to die? Not me. No thanks.”
But as time went on he came to understand some very good news. “I was completely wrong about Heaven, and you probably are too.” He was wrong in what he understood about Heaven and wrong about wanting to be here more than he wanted to be there. He realized that we live best when Heaven consumes our thoughts and fills our desires. We live best when we live with a longing to be absent from the body and home with the Lord.
He begins the book by asking simply, does Heaven matter? He follows Randy Alcorn in showing that we were made for both a person and a place, and “that person, experienced in the presence of that place, will meet every single need we could ever have. Complete satisfaction is possible. All of our longings tell us it must be. But only in this divine gift of a person and a place will we ever find it.”
The second chapter faces the reality that we must all die and considers what happens after death. He balances the horror of death with the beauty of finally being in the presence of God. “For the Christian, death is used by God for a greater gain, despite its wicked advent.” He distinguishes here between the intermediate Heaven—Heaven as it is now—and the New Heaven and New Earth—Heaven as it will be after Christ’s return. He dedicates one chapter to considering how history will end—a chapter (and follow-up appendix) that is beautiful but may not make him a lot of friends among those who hold to a Dispensational perspective. As the book continues he considers where Heaven is, what we will do there, and the posture we should maintain as we await our time. The final chapter deals with the reality of Hell which leads to a conclusion that includes a strong call to trust in Christ.
We would be lying if we said that this world is only full of sorrows and woes, for that is not the case. We experience many blessings here and enjoy many pleasures. And it is good and honoring to God when we embrace them. Yet these pleasures are not meant to captivate us, but to point us to the fulfillment of our longings—to the presence of that person in that place. And this book does a commendable job of directing our longings in just that way. “Cheer up,” Morefield says. “And as you cheer up, make sure you don’t turn back, sit down, or tread water. Press on. Hit heaven in stride. Jesus’s grace is not only enough to save you now; it’s enough to bring you home and to do so with joy and faithfulness. Run, and run hard. And as you press on, smile. You were made for a person and a place, and both of them will be yours by his grace alone.” And that is worth longing for…
Buy from Amazon

Good morning. Grace and peace to you.

It has been a slow start to the year for Kindle books, but you will find at least a couple of deals.
The first sale of the year at Westminster Books is a good one: strong discounts on their bestselling books of 2022. There are lots of great picks there!
Don’t Let the Culture War Steal Your Joy
This is the second time this week that Trevin Wax has come through with a very strong article. “There’s a worrisome quality in many of today’s would-be prophets—writers and pundits who foresee only doom for the future of civilization, who seem perpetually distressed by the desecration of the church’s witness (whether by external pressures or internal rot).”
His Feet
“I was fourteen and small for my age, a reserved shy shadow of the man I might one day grow into. Others struck me for an unknown reason, some imagined offence I had committed. Verbal assault soon became physical, yet it wasn’t the impact of fist on face that hurt most. I felt alone. I felt small. I felt undone.”
Say It
Peter recounts and applies the well-known but never-tiresome account of Spurgeon’s conversion.
No Mercy Without Rules
Carl Trueman reflects on a NYT story about the death of Pope Benedict XVI and points out that “mercy is incoherent if there are no rules, rules that are rightly believed and applied. Only if there is a rule, and a just rule, can forgiveness for its transgression be seen as an act of mercy.”
Building a “Non-Brittle” Identity
“Ultimately, we cannot build our identity on ourselves. We must build our identity on something outside of ourselves–something that never changes and that never fades away. What follows is nothing you have never heard before, but something we need to be reminded of frequently. Every single one of us forgets the truths of the Gospel in our lives. We must revisit them often.”
7 Reasons Winter Reminds Us to Hold on to Hope
At a time of year when many people are prone to emotional struggles, Ruth offers “seven reminders to hold on to hope; whether in the physical season of winter or the personal wintery trials we encounter.”
Flashback: The Christian Introvert
Both introverts and extroverts will face particular temptations to sin. My temptation as an introvert is to run away from people instead of serve people. It is to be selfish instead of giving.

Hell is not for the worst people. It is for the impenitent people. —Dane Ortlund

Grace and peace to you on this fine day.

(Yesterday on the blog: On the Changing of the Dictionaries)
The Same Old Faces
“A new friendship is a wonderful beginning, fresh and exciting and full of potential, like the planting of a new tree. Don’t we all naturally long for relationship? To know and be truly known? To love and be truly loved, in spite of being truly known? Of course we do. But…”
I Can’t Put Them Down Yet
Brianna has a sweet reflection on motherhood and worship.
Grant Me One Muslim Friend
Here’s a prayer you may do well to pray—and a prayer God may well be eager to answer.
This Isn’t What I Asked For!
Sylvia Schroeder: “This past Christmas might have confirmed what we knew all along. Many of the things we want most don’t come wrapped in beautiful packages. While  holidays wind down and stores fill with red hearts, we realize, Christmas couldn’t give what we desired most. And we beg God for more.”
How Guilt and Shame Can Bring Us Closer to God
“When Adam and Eve rejected God’s goodness and authority by eating the forbidden fruit, their eyes were opened and they suddenly recognized that they were naked. This new, hyper-self-conscious reality set in motion a series of actions, each one a strategy to hide the shame that they felt over what they had done.”
Steadfast Hope in Seasons of Suffering
Donna offers some ways to remain steadfast in hope during the most difficult seasons of life.
Flashback: 5 Reasons We Eat Together as a Family
I was in sociology class when the teacher asked this: How many people here eat dinner as a family at least twice a week? Two of us put up hands—me and the only other Christian in the class.

Toil is the price of success. To loiter is to lose all; to falter is to fail. —J.R. Miller

There is something morbidly fascinating about watching dictionaries slowly but surely change their definitions of common words. It raises some questions, not the least of which strike to the very purpose of a dictionary. Is a dictionary meant to be an objective arbiter of the meaning of words? Or is a dictionary meant to subjectively list the ways in which words are used among the speakers of a particular language at a particular time? These are valid questions, especially in moments when certain key words are being intensely debated.

It is not without significance that Dictionary.com’s word of the year for 2022 was woman. “It’s one of the oldest words in the English language,” they say. “One that’s fundamental not just to our vocabulary but to who we are as humans. And yet it’s a word that continues to be a source of intense personal importance and societal debate. It’s a word that’s inseparable from the story of 2022.” They explain that searches for the word spiked last year, first when Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was asked to provide her definition of the term—a request she denied—, then again at the overturning of Roe v. Wade and, though they don’t mention it, probably also when Matt Walsh released his film What Is a Woman?.

It was a rare case of not just a word in the spotlight, but a definition. We at Dictionary.com weren’t the only ones to take notice. The prominence of the question and the attention it received demonstrate how issues of transgender identity and rights are now frequently at the forefront of our national discourse. More than ever, we are all faced with questions about who gets to identify as a woman (or a man, or neither). The policies that these questions inform transcend the importance of any dictionary definition—they directly impact people’s lives.

They make their position on dictionaries clear when they insist that the purpose of theirs is to reflect “how people use words in the real world” and they make their position on gender identity clear when they insist that a “dictionary is not the last word on what defines a woman. The word belongs to each and every woman—however they define themselves.” In other words, they believe people are free to define themselves however they see fit and that a good dictionary will serve people by ensuring it defines words in such a way as to affirm individuals’ self-identity.
It’s only fair to point out that dictionaries do routinely change words to keep up with the times. Look up the word bomb and you’ll find definitions that are relatively recent—definitions that may help people understand what it means when someone says, “that movie bombed” or “that movie was the bomb” or “don’t ever shout ‘bomb’ in a crowded movie theater.” Meanwhile, they also remove or de-prioritize definitions that have become antiquated. In that way we do expect dictionaries to provide definitions of words as they are actually used.
Yet dictionaries are also considered sources of truth, perhaps even objective truth, and are often used to back up truth claims. We appeal to dictionaries when we have disputes and expect they will guide us well. We have been trained to know that when we wonder at the meaning of a word—a word like woman, for example—we should turn to a dictionary for its guidance. In days past we would have found a definition like “an adult female human being.” Today, though, we may also find something like this: “an adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth” (Cambridge). (It should be noted that while many people are saying we need to insist upon defining woman as “an adult female human being,” some dictionaries have also changed the definition of female to something like “having a gender identity that is the opposite of male” (Merriam-Webster).)
What is the point of considering how dictionaries are changing today? First, it affirms that in our day everything is political and that all of society’s structures and institutions are being made subservient to political ends. Hence even dictionaries are expected to play their part by changing words in response to changing cultural narratives. What was until recently unthinkable has now been enshrined by the institutions that are considered to have the greatest definitional authority. (See Carl Trueman on this.)
Second, it affirms that in our society self-definition is considered unassailable so that a person’s individual defining of a word must reign over a dictionary’s. A dictionary can suggest, but it is the individual who determines. Ultimately, if I say I am a woman, I am a woman, no matter what the dictionary (or biology textbook) might say. For the individual is sovereign over even definitions and no one has the right to tell me I have defined myself wrongly or inaccurately.
Third, it affirms and reaffirms that as Christians there is no earthly institution that we can fully rely on, for all of them are influenced by “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2). Even dictionaries will be turned against the Lord, against his people, and against his truth. Even they will make him an enemy.
But none of this should trouble us to any great degree, for God has given us a source of truth that reigns over every book, every dictionary, every source of information. God has given us his truth in his Word and it reigns supreme. And he makes it abundantly clear in his Word that a woman is an adult, female human being who has been made in God’s image and created as a counterpart to man—an adult, male human being. Male and female he created them and male and female they will always be—male and female in their bodies, male and female in their minds, male and female in their ways of relating to God, to one another, and to the world around. And when even the best and greatest dictionaries have become defunct and crumbled into dust, that Word will remain fixed and constant, inerrant and infallible, as trustworthy then as it is right now and has always been.

May the Lord be with you and bless you today.

CBD is having a sale in which many books are $6 or less. That includes titles by Lutzer, Jeremiah, Walker, [Mary] Mohler, Piper, MacArthur, Poythress, Ryken, and Leeman, among others. It also includes lots of Bibles.
For Kindle deals, you’ll find some titles by Colin Smith for sale.
C. S. Lewis and Mrs. Moore: Relationship of Sin or Sanctification?
This is a fantastic bit of writing from Trevin Wax. “Every biographer of C. S. Lewis must face ‘the Mrs. Moore question’ and decide what to make of the relationship the beloved writer had with a woman more than 25 years his senior who remained a major part of his life from the time he returned from the trenches of the Great War until her death in 1951.”
Unraveling the Riddle of Rejoicing Always
Joe Allen: “Some Bible verses lend themselves quite well to becoming a tweet, a ‘life verse,’ or the inside of a greeting card. But when we read the Bible looking for catchphrases and mottos, we risk mangling the meaning of the Bible and invariably miss out on important truths.” He goes on to write about the biblical commands about rejoicing in all circumstances.
Why the King’s Christmas speech concerns me
David Robertson explains his concerns about the new King’s Christmas speech. “Perhaps nothing indicates the changes that are occurring at the top of our society more than the new King’s Christmas speech.”
Make Abortion Laws Consistent with Homicide Laws
“Roe v. Wade is dead. This is the first year in nearly half a century that the grim U.S. Supreme Court decision is no longer in effect. Sadly, though, abortion is still very much alive. In fact, there are many laws that protect the right of women to end the lives of their unborn children. Despite this reality, there are still some state laws in place that protect unborn children, which leads to a puzzling inconsistency in the law.”
Don’t Settle for Change That’s Only Skin-Deep
Cindy Matson says that “whether you’ve written your your goals or not, you probably have habits, sin-patterns, or weaknesses that you’d like to change in 2023 and beyond. Some of those changes may be purely external, but be careful this year that your change isn’t only skin deep.”
Flashback: Before You Read Another Book on Marriage
Books on marriage can be wonderful, and I have benefitted from reading many of them. But the best and most helpful books on marriage are the ones being lived out by husbands and wives in your family, in your neighborhood, and especially in your church. Read them longer and more thoroughly than any other.

Prayerlessness is like the flu but so is prayerfulness. It’s contagious. Passion for prayer is often more caught than taught. —John Onwuchekwa

Blessings to you today.

Logos users will want to be sure to grab this month’s free book and take a look at the other discounted items. You’ll also find lots of Mobile Ed courses significantly marked down.
(Yesterday on the blog: The Year of Our Dreams or the Year of Our Nightmares)
Look Out! Preparing for ‘23!
“Solomon wrote thousands of proverbs. So when he writes, ‘Above all else…’ – that should get our attention. What is ‘above all else’ from Solomon’s perspective? In Proverbs 4:23, he tells us: ‘guard your heart.’  That is huge.” It is. And it gives us something to ponder at the beginning of a new year.
Trusting through Trials and Tragedies
“Each year, for some reason, we buy into the belief that next year will be different. As December concludes, we have high hopes that a change in the calendar will end the struggles and hardships that we are facing. However, as the new year dawns, it usually doesn’t take long for such happy hopes to be dashed to pieces by the less-than-romantic reality before us.”
Was The Pope a Catholic?
Stephen McAlpine considers the death of Pope Benedict XVI and reminds us of something obvious—that the pope was Catholic.
Dangers of Self-Revolution
“Imagine for a moment year 2023 gives you exactly what you want. What if your ambitious resolutions are reached and your year is a year of growth unlike any other?” That’s worth thinking about.
A Foolproof Discipling Program: Corporate Worship
“Churches make disciples. Okay … but how does a church do this? How does your church do this?”
John Piper’s Favorite Things
This one is a bit silly but still fun—John Piper talking about some of his favorite things (e.g. movies, food, etc).
Flashback: The New Year — A Poetic Prayer
I’ve been exploring the poetry of Marianne Farningham who wrote the bulk of her works in the late 1800s. Among them was this poetic prayer for a new year.

When God calls a man to pastoral ministry, he calls him to deal exclusively in the glory of God. God’s glory is our trust, our means, our end. —Jared Wilson

This week’s post is sponsored by The Master’s Academy International (TMAI), a global network of pastoral training centers that specialize in expository preaching. They invite you to sign up for their 2023 International Symposium on March 7th in Los Angeles, California.

We sometimes hear that a mature church will be “all in” when it comes to missions, but we rarely define what that engagement can look like for every member of our church. 
In 2023, with an ever-growing wealth of technology at our fingertips and an abundance of Christian expertise in many sectors of society, the question of how whole churches can support missions requires a careful answer.
As an extension of pastors preaching God’s heart for the nations and how to reach them, is there also a way for them to train our business professionals, schoolteachers, musicians, and others to leverage even their vocational skills for the good of the global church? Is there more to supporting missions than sending money and men? 
We believe the answer to these questions is yes. And if you’re looking to shepherd your church towards greater maturity and missions-mindedness, we want to help you capture a vision for how to do that with all hands on deck. This is why you’re invited to join us at the 2023 International Symposium on March 7th, where we’ll enjoy keynote messages from John MacArthur, Conrad Mbewe, and Paul Washer. 
While “missions proper” will always remain the work of sending pastors and planting churches, “missions support” can get much more dynamic than sending dollars. In fact, we’ve seen our own support network exploring creative ways to help local churches advance the word, and in doing this, they are following a godward trajectory of thinking that was recovered in the Reformation.

What the Reformation Recovered for Us
Prior to the Reformation, it was easy to embrace a sharp divide between “sacred” and “secular” aspects of life. Priests were privileged to do “sacred work” while the 9:00-5:00 labors of the common churchman could be considered “secular.” In this thinking, the everyday work of Christians was easily distinguished from the holy purposes of God.
But when the Reformers recovered their Bibles, they also recovered biblical insights that could repair that disconnect and show us how the Lordship of Christ graciously governs everything we do. The Reformers reclaimed a clear commitment to the priesthood of all believers (Rev 1:6) and spoke about how every Christian’s work is sacred unto the Lord (1 Cor 10:31; Eph 6:5–9). In teaching this, God’s word helps us understand that what we do from Monday to Saturday matters in the grand purposes of God.
And yet, even today, it seems there are dots left to connect when it comes to how the gifts of every church member can integrate with the Great Commission.

Where the Bible Reforms Us Further
Despite the biblical perspectives recovered in the Reformation, it’s still easy to slip into the belief that if we aren’t missionaries, then our role in the Great Commission doesn’t extend far beyond our checkbooks.
And while financial support of missionaries is entirely biblical (2 Cor 8:1–4; 3 John 8), we would do well to realize that, as it was in the Bible, our wealth involves more than our money (cf. Deut 8:11–18). And this means that our support can involve more than a check.
Because of this, we want to help churches expand beyond a one-dimensional view of supporting missions and grow into a deeper, more holistic mobilization of the church body.
Whatever your skillset and stewardship, it’s no accident that you have your gifts at this time in church history. You need only to consider how you can employ your gifts in the service of God’s word around the world.
To help your church become more missions-minded, join us Tuesday, March 7.

There is an undeniable intricacy to God’s world. There is an inescapable predictability to the universe God has made. The stars and planets follow their course day after day, year after year, millennium after millennium. We can predict with absolute certainty the next time we will have a full or partial eclipse. We can gaze thousands of years into the past or future and know when human beings did see (or next will see) Halley’s Comet. We can forecast down to the second when the sun will rise and when it will set whether days from now or centuries, whether on this side of the globe or the other. The heavens declare the glory of God not just in their immensity but also in their orderliness.

God is nothing if not concerned with details, an artist whose hand is displayed not merely in broad strokes but in fine lines, a designer whose mind is exhibited in both the greatest macro and the smallest micro. Any field of science depends upon this consistency, any field of engineering, any field of construction. None of these would be feasible if there was the least element of randomness in the universe, the smallest element of the arbitrary.
A new year has opened before us and like a watchman gazing into dense fog, we see just a few steps ahead and only vague shadows looming beyond. We do not know what the year will bring, whether great triumphs or great failures, great joys or great sorrows, great gains or great losses. It could be the best of all years or the worst, the easiest or the hardest, the most heart-warming or the most heart-breaking.
But this fog is a blessing for it compels us to shift our gaze from our circumstances and to fix them on our God. For if this God is so concerned with precision in the functioning of his universe, wouldn’t it stand to reason that he is equally concerned with precision in the unfolding of his providence? If he has planned the finest details of the structure of his creation, shouldn’t we also believe that he has planned the finest details of our circumstances?
If this is the case, we can have tremendous confidence in all that the year will bring.
If it brings unparalleled pleasures, these will come by God’s decree and must be accepted with joyful humility. If it brings singular sorrows, these will equally come by God’s decree and must be accepted with meek submission. The hand that guides the stars also guides our circumstances and it does so with meaning and purpose.
If this year brings significant successes, we can be certain that these are God’s will for us and we must return all praise and thanks to him. If this year brings grievous failures, we can be certain that these, too, are somehow part of God’s will for us and we must bow the knee and receive them with willing hearts. The mind that has planned the structure of the universe has also planned the unfolding of our lives.
If this is the year of our dreams or our nightmares, the year we have longed for or the year we have dreaded, the easiest year of our lives or the most difficult, we can be certain that it in some way God is involved in our every circumstance, that the very same precision that keeps the stars following their courses is keeping the events of our lives unfolding according to his plan. We can have every confidence that there is no event beyond his jurisdiction, no joy or sorrow unknown to him, no gain or loss that falls outside of his will. We can know beyond any shadow of a doubt that whatever this year brings, it will be exactly the year God has planned for us, exactly the year God means for us to live out for the good of others and the glory of his name. And with all that in mind I can truly say: Happy new year.

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