Westminster Books has identified some of their summer new and noteworthy books and put them on sale. There are some good books available.

Today’s Kindle deals include a bit of a mish-mash!
Becoming Writers Who Write the Truth Beautifully
“How do we grow to become writers who both write the truth and write it beautifully?” Lara has a wonderful reflection on this.
Involving Ourselves in Every Controversy?
“Part of the pernicious underbelly of the internet is that many allow themselves to be drawn into controversies about which they have no need to involve themselves. For many years, I too wanted juicy details about whatever controversy was swirling around in evangelical and Reformed circles.” This is an important topic.
Gospel-Driven Benevolence with Charles Spurgeon
Part theology and part biography, Spurgeon and the Poor examines how the Prince of Preachers’ belief that gospel preaching and soul-winning should be the church’s primary mission drove his mercy ministry. (Sponsored Link)
Will AI Help or Harm Content Creation?
“I’ll tell you at the beginning that I don’t know the answer to that question. But I do know that as with every tool, the wise and the foolish will use it differently. Therefore, whether it helps or harms content creation will be determined by which path we take. Will we take the path of fools or the path of the wise?”
Rejecting Your Maker Means Rejecting Your True Identity
“Society has jettisoned belief in God. When you reject your Maker, you reject the one who establishes your identity. People, though, naturally want to belong. They crave to connect with a community of people who share their values and feelings. With the Maker gone, there’s an identity vacuum that begs for a new way to view oneself. It makes sense that the concept of gender identity was born.” Alan Shlemon explains.
Make Sure You Don’t Join a Sexular Church
Stephen McAlpline: “The Sexular Age just keeps rolling on. Rolling on like waves on a beach. Tsunami waves. Crashing into a church near you. Let me explain.”
You asked: Why Visit Israel?
Lisa offers a few good reasons to consider a visit to Israel (for those for whom it’s possible).
Flashback: When God Seems Deaf To Our Cries
Joseph…died in peace and at a ripe old age, only because God had known better than to grant the most immediate answer to his most urgent prayers.

We see hardly one inch of the narrow lane of time. To our God, eternity lies open as a meadow. —Amy Carmichael

Over the weekend I mentioned a sale at ChristianBook.com, but I wanted to bring it to your attention again since there are some really good deals to be had. The new ESV Chronological Bible is 43% off. You’ll also find the ESV Scripture Journal NT set marked down 84% (from $199.99 to $32.99), the leather ESV Study Bible at 52% off, the Story of Redemption Bible at $5.99, the Six-Volume ESV Reader’s Bible at 60% off, and so on. This is all part of their huge Bible Sale of the Season promotion which ends today. It’s worth clicking through to see all the deals. (There are also quite a few noteworthy deals on books and I decided to list those here.)

(Yesterday on the blog: A Day in the Life of an Ordinary Christian)
What Did You Plan To Be Hated For?
I appreciated this article by Rhys Laverty so much I asked if he wouldn’t mind unlocking it (removing the Substack paywall) so you could read it. They key point he makes is that Christians are no longer hated for grace, but for nature. Give it a read!
Halloween Revisited
This one is also super interesting. “So, what is the ‘true’ story of Halloween? It’s complicated, but the holiday we now know of as Halloween is a sort of fusion of older Christian themes with nineteenth century Romantic literary creations and then twentieth century civic associations and mass marketing. Halloween is a creative re-invention that gets turned into a Hollywood and Hershey’s sales extravaganza.”
Talking About Sex in a Pornographic Culture
“The pornographic is the water that we are all swimming in. Like the little fish in David Foster Wallace’s proverb, we find ourselves both completely surrounded and completely unaware.” This is true and well worth thinking about.
Celebrating 85 Years of Crossway’s Tracts Ministry
Crossway is celebrating 85 years of their tracts ministry, and I loved reading the ministry’s origin story. And can you believe they’ve distributed more than 1 billion tracts?
Should Women Teach Theology to Women?
“The title says it all. A small but not insignificant movement that has been gaining momentum over the past couple of years revolves around the notion that women shouldn’t teach other women theology. There is some breadth to this movement, and the goal will be to address the original view as well as some of the fruit that’s come from it.” Henry Anderson addresses it well.
We can always be friendly
Stephen keys in on one area where small churches may be able to offer something that becomes more difficult as churches grow larger.
Flashback: Shaken to Bear Fruit
The God who is sovereign over all things may lead us into times and contexts that are deeply painful. Yet we can be confident that our suffering is never arbitrary and never meaningless, for God always has a purpose in mind.

Trials teach us what we are; they dig up the soil, and let us see what we are made of. —C.H. Spurgeon

There is no need to be concerned about snow in September” we were told as we began to pack and prepare for a trip to Austria. The travel sites said it wouldn’t come until later in the year, except perhaps on the highest peaks. Yet even as we drove from the Slovenian foothills into the Austrian Alps, rain turned to flurries and flurries turned to snow. Signs warned we ought to stick to the valleys and avoid the high passes. By the time we reached our destination, inches had fallen, blanketing the world in dazzling white.
The next morning I put on several layers of warm-weather clothing and went for a walk by myself. The world was pristine, the ground untouched by footsteps or tracks. The peaks that tower over the town were obscured by the clouds and by the flakes that continued to fall down and pile up. Every tree was coated in snow, almost as if God had told them to don their winter attire. Trees are beautiful in their own right, of course, but there is something about that snow that makes them more beautiful still.
I found a marker for a trail and followed it, trudging through deep woods made up of towering conifers. And then as the trail curved, the woods turned deciduous and I saw something that made me pause and consider: The trees had grown so heavy that they had bent under the weight of the snow, their bows now frozen to the ground. The branches that were usually raised high were now bent low. They were beautifully coated in white, yet sadly bent and bowed—bowed under the weight of the very thing that made them beautiful.
And as I stood alone in the snow, I thought of people I have known who have faced difficulties and hardships, who have endured deep trials and terrible afflictions. I thought of the ways that God’s providence has bent them down and brought them low. But then I thought as well of how those sorrows have not ruined them but shaped them and not destroyed their faith but increased it. In the strange way that sanctification works, the very circumstance that has been their most excruciating has also been their most beautifying. The pain has worked great good in their lives and brought great holiness. It has given them more of the dazzling character of Jesus Christ.
The very circumstance that has been their most excruciating has also been their most beautifying.Share
Like those trees, we are sometimes forced to bend low beneath the weight of our trials. Sometimes it seems like we cannot possibly bear them and that they can only crush us to the ground. Yet as we persevere we find that God has given us the strength to not only bear them but also to bow our knees in worship and to bow our hearts in submission. The posture of our hearts soon matches the posture of our bodies. We acknowledge that God is the one whose providence has directed our every high and every low, our every joy and every sorrow, our every laugh and our every tear. And as we pass through the trials with a faith that is unbroken and a heart that is victorious, we see that, like those trees, we were made beautiful by the very thing that bowed us down.