Sometimes we all need just a little bit of help when we pray. Sometimes it is good for us to borrow the prayers of other people and put them to use ourselves. And for just that reason, here’s a lovely prayer from St. Augustine (as found in the excellent little book Fount of Heaven. Perhaps it will give you words to pray today.

Great are you, O Lord, and greatly to be praised.
Great is your power. Your wisdom is infinite, and we praise you.
We, who are just a particle of your creation. We, who carry our mortality with us—the witness of our sin, and the witness that you resist the proud.
Yet we praise you.
You awaken us to delight in your praise. For you made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it finds its place of rest in you.
Grant me, Lord, to know and understand which is first: to call on you, or to praise you? To know you, or to call on you? For who can call on you, not knowing you? Whoever does not know you might call on you as someone other than you really are.
Or rather, do we call on you so that we may know you? But how do they call on him in whom they have not believed? Or how will they believe without a preacher? (Romans 10:14).
And whoever seeks the Lord will praise him: for they that seek will find him, and they that find will praise him.
I will seek you, Lord, by calling on you. And I will call on you, believing in you, because you have been preached to us.
With the faith you have given me, I will call on you. That faith has inspired me, through the incarnation of your Son, through the ministry of the preacher.
Amen.

It has been a good few days for Christian writing and I’m glad to share a roundup of some of the articles I’ve discovered in my online wanderings.

Over at Westminster Books you’ll find a discount on Kevin DeYoung’s new book.
There is a number of Kindle deals to glance at today.
The Tearing Apart of Convictional Civility
“Something has changed in the air of evangelicalism in recent years. Once-aspirational words like ‘winsome’ and ‘thoughtful’ or descriptors like ‘nuanced’ and ‘kind’ now trigger an attitude of dismissiveness and sneering from many on the right.” Trevin Wax shares some really good thoughts here.
Preaching Is Culturally Determined
Eddie reminds us that the style of our preaching is culturally determined. I love this: “it is one of the anomalies of systematic expository preaching that preachers will take one of Jesus’ wonderful self-explanatory parables and turn them into three tightly argued (alliterative) points.”
By Faith Abel
“Why did God approve of Abel’s offering, but not Cain’s? It’s not a simple question to answer, especially if you limit yourself to the facts of the story as told in Genesis.” Rebecca offers a compelling take on the matter.
The FAQs: Report Reveals Sexual Abuse Cover-Up by Southern Baptist Entity
Joe Carter has one of his FAQs to provide a framework for understanding the report about abuse in the SBC. “On Sunday, a 288-page report commissioned by the Southern Baptist Convention was released that finds allegations of sexual abuse were ignored or covered up for nearly 20 years by senior members of the denomination’s Executive Committee.”
Not Enough Wisdom
I enjoyed this article about a father and his daughter.
Help! I’m Addicted to Pornography
“Friends, porn is crushing us. Sexualization is everywhere. Rather than exalting sex, our culture is reducing sex by reducing everything to sex. Since God created the human body for sex, it is easy for us to succumb to this pull to sexualize everything. And when sex becomes ultimate, it means that sexual acts must be constant if we’re going to enjoy this life. Outside of sex with another person, that leaves us with the convenient habit of pornography.”
Flashback: 5 Warnings to Those Who Merely Pretend To Be Godly
There is in each of us a dangerous temptation toward hypocrisy, to be one thing but to pretend to be another.

If there is anything in the world that will make a man bestial in his habits it is the idea that he was descended from the beast. —De Witt Talmage

Good morning from southern Zambia where I am finishing up a trip to one of my favorite countries. It has been intense but enjoyable.
Westminster Books is offering a deal this week on the new ESV Spiral-Bound Scripture Journals.
I added some new Kindle deals yesterday and should have some more today as well.

“Mothering well does not depend on having Instagram-worthy kitchens or the laundry neatly folded and put away. Instead, it is about welcoming and nurturing the ones within our circle, caring for their hearts and their hurts through the tender love of Jesus. And then opening that circle to include those hungering outside the door.”

Stacy Reaoch writes about aging (with women as her target audience): “Few of us see gray hair as a crown. We think it’s something to hide! Yet the Bible tells us to prize gray hairs as we might a long life devoted to following Jesus. God, through his word, wants to take our minds off our appearance (and all the fears that go with it) and give our attention to spiritual maturity instead. Suddenly, it becomes possible to celebrate becoming older as we delight to see how God has shaped us over many years.”

This is a good resource for those who may be struggling with body image, or trying to help someone who is.

Here are eight different factors that were meant to be present in a king of Israel. They tell us a lot about the nature of God.

Last week I linked to an author who explained why he thinks it may be valuable to be cautious with how we speak of church as a family. I expected someone would disagree and sure enough Paul Carter came through. I think both of them make good points.

Here is a plea to the government to stop moving forward with the criminalizing of Christian sexual ethics.

Even as we rejoice in every one of God’s blessings and celebrate every evidence of his grace, still we long to be in that new land, that new home, that new place where we can—where we will—truly thrive, where we will display our fullest potential, where we will be all that God has made us to be.

When you come to Christ for mercy and love and help in your anguish and perplexity and sinfulness, you are going with the flow of his own deepest wishes, not against them.
—Dane Ortlund