I probably don’t say it often enough, so I’ll say it now: Thanks for reading my site/newsletter. It means a lot that you’d do so!

Today’s Kindle deals include a book for parents who want guidance on raising their kids in this world. There is also a book for leaders and a good one from Tim Keller.

“Rather than trying to reinterpret the Bible’s prohibitions, many who affirm same-sex marriage acknowledge that the New Testament does prohibit same-sex sex. But, they argue, Christians can nonetheless embrace same-sex marriage because the trajectory from the Old Testament to the New is one that (if continued) ends in validating same-sex marriage.” Rebecca McLaughlin responds to this.

“Did Jesus claim to be God? Christians say yes, but skeptics argue Jesus never claimed this. Who did Jesus believe he was? What claims did he make about his identity? Can we make a definitive case that Jesus believed he was God? I think we can.”

Alistair Begg’s new advent devotional, Let Earth Receive Her King features a daily question to aid personal reflection and a carol or hymn to enjoy meditating upon Jesus. A free advent preaching guide for pastors corresponding to the book is available so churches can go through the devotional together. Get 25% off with code RECEIVE. (Sponsored)

This is always a question and debate within the church and I appreciate Matt Smethurt’s response to it.

Trevin Wax points out, rightly, that you can’t life-hack your way into holiness. “No foolproof formula exists. Many believers striving to overcome persistent sins often feel their Bible reading or prayer doesn’t bring victory. They seek spiritual nourishment but still feel stuck in their struggles.”

Mitch Chase discusses the biblical themes of sight and blindness.

“It might surprise you to know that many pastors who have generous smiles on their faces each Sunday are, deep down, very disheartened.” Indeed, they are.

Serve, serve, and serve some more. Act in love even when you don’t feel loved, act with grace even if you don’t feel particularly gracious. 

God tries us that we may rise; Satan tries us that we may fall. God puts an occasion in our way to be a stepping stone up; Satan puts an occasion in our way to be a stumbling block, and cause us to fall.
—F.B. Meyer

A friend of mine recently went to be with the Lord after enduring a long battle with leukemia. In his final weeks, as his strength slowly faded away, he told his family that he wished he could write a book titled What To Do While You Wait To Die. There would be no time to write a book, but I did tell him I would gladly share on my blog whatever he was learning along the way.
He expressed joy in the relationships God had blessed him with. As God gave him strength, he reached out to as many of these people as he could to thank and encourage them.

[I am] thankful to those who have been mentors to me. I’m young enough that many of those mentors are still alive, so I get to honor them and encourage them and just thank them so much for God’s ministry in my life.
On the other side, the Lord has given me pleasure in brotherhood and working shoulder to shoulder with men at church, men in different ministries, and that is just a great and wonderful thing. I certainly don’t deserve it, but I love it. The Lord is so kind and so good.

So, the first thing to do while you wait to die is invest in people. A committed evangelist, my friend also called as many unbelievers as he could to tell them about Jesus one last time.
He also rejoiced at how the Lord was using his disease to challenge other people and to give them an opportunity to respond with faith and love.

I’m beyond thrilled by how so many young people have come and encouraged me and my family. Oh, what a balm for these last few days. I never expected that, but what a lovely thing. I’ve told my family often that I don’t deserve that, but I am so grateful for it and I wish it. I don’t wish this disease on my worst enemy, but I do wish these discussions for all of my family and friends. God’s people can be so glorious and so kind and so gentle. It makes my bed softer. It makes the journey sweeter. I know it’s only by His goodness and His grace.

So I suppose the second thing to do when you are waiting to die is to be grateful and to look for every evidence of God’s grace.
And then he told of his deepening understanding of what matters the most in this world. A man who had been very successful in life and business, he was well-regarded by associates and ministries alike. He led companies and served on boards. Yet he realized that everything was being stripped away and he was being left with the one thing that matters.

As I graduate to the finish line, I can see quickly all of the shiny armor I thought was on me, fall and clink away as I make steps towards that final, final round. God wants me to be, essentially, free of anything in this world. What I came with is what I’ll leave with. Pretty much the exact same things. That’s nothing but Him, nothing but His providence, nothing but His mercy and grace. What a glorious shedding that has been! I’m no longer a CEO or COO or CIO or any fancy title, no longer part of a Board of Directors, or anything. I’m just a man who has to submit to God’s good and gracious will and just be faithful to Him.
When you store up treasures in heaven, it makes it much easier to leave this world behind.

The third and final thing, then, is to submit to God’s will and to rejoice that while we may leave this world as weak and helpless as when we arrived, we leave safe in the hands of a mighty God.
It was a blessing to know my friend, a blessing to see him serve the Lord to the end, and a blessing to join with so many others to honor him at his memorial service. And it will be a blessing to see him again when the Lord calls me to follow the same path.

It is for good reason that we have both the concept and the word average. To be average is to be typical, to be—when measured against points of comparison—rather unremarkable. It’s a truism that most of us are, in most ways, average. The average one of us is of average ability, has average looks, will live an average lifespan, and will leave an average mark on the world. That’s just the way averages work.
Maybe it’s something about being well into middle age that has given me greater freedom to admit all the ways in which I am average or below average. As a young man, I may have harbored dreams of excelling at everything I attempted and of achieving each of my dreams. I assumed I had all it would take to succeed in every way, that I was far beyond average and far more than ordinary. But as a not-so-young man, I have a more realistic assessment of myself—an assessment that accounts for the ways in which I am average or less-than-average. And there are many.
In this vein, I often find myself thinking of the parable of the talents and the way the main character in the story distributes his wealth to his servants. “To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability.”
This man knew his servants and had realistically assessed their capabilities. He knew that some were more able than others, and he distributed his wealth accordingly. To the most able he gave much and to the least able he gave less. And crucially, he passed no judgment on the varying abilities, as if the two-talent servant was lazy and needed to work harder or the one-talent servant was apathetic and ought to expect himself to enlarge his capacity. He distributed to each what he knew they were capable of handling, whether by nature, nurture, or some combination of the two.
From the parable we learn that God distributes opportunity according to ability, for “talents” are all that God distributes among his people—gifts, passions, abilities, influence, education, money, and anything else that can be used to honor (or dishonor) the Lord and carry out (or fail to carry out) his purposes. And while we may all like to think that we are the five-talent servant, the law of averages, not to mention an honest look within, assures us that most of us are not. Many of us are three- or two- or one-talent people. Though to some God has given extraordinary minds, abilities, opportunities, and responsibilities, to most he has not. In most ways and for most of the time, most of us are hovering around average. You are probably hovering around average, and so am I.
Though to some God has given extraordinary minds, abilities, opportunities, and responsibilities, to most he has not.Share
And that is okay. It is okay because this reflects the way God himself has made you. There is no shame in being a one-talent servant when God gave you one-talent ability. There is no need to compare yourself unfavorably to those who have achieved more success on the basis of their greater gifts. And that’s because God’s assessment of you is made on the basis of what you did with what he gave you. Even though the five-talent servant and the two-talent servant generated different results (a gain of five for the first and a gain of two for the second), they received the same reward. Why? Because they had been equally faithful with what God had entrusted to them so that their results were proportionally identical. God had five-talent expectations of the five-talent man and two-talent expectations of the two-talent man. Faithfulness did not look like five from the two or two from the five.
A sweet application of the parable is that the person of little ability can be every bit as successful in the eyes of God as the person of outsized ability. And that’s because you are responsible before the Lord for what he has given to you, not what he has given to another. Your task is not to display the same results of faithfulness as the person with a bounty of gifts but the results of faithfulness that go along with your sparse gifts. I am quite certain that heaven does not cheer louder for the five-talent servant who earns another five than it does for the two-talent servant who earns another two. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the greatest cheers rise for the one-talent servant who is simply and joyfully faithful.
The upshot is that you don’t need to dream of pastoring a bigger church, leading a greater ministry, writing bigger checks, or influencing a larger crowd, as if this is what it means to succeed in the eyes of God. Of course, neither should you allow yourself to be apathetic and fail to discover and maximize what God has given you. But you can faithfully, diligently, and confidently steward your one talent or two and know that God is well pleased, for you are most truly stewarding his one talent or two—the full sum of what he entrusted to you.