It has been a productive time in Zambia and I very much enjoyed worshiping with Faith Baptist Church Kakolo. Today I begin making my way to the northern part of the continent.

Logos users: remember to take a look at the September Super sale which has some great resources on sale along with this month’s selection of free and nearly-free books. There are also some Zondervan collections and resources discounted at the moment.
(Yesterday on the blog: Christ’s Second Advent)
Help Me Find a Loving Dentist
Kevin is looking for help finding a loving dentist. But as you may guess, I don’t think he’s actually talking about dentists.
Public Pulpit Prayers
J.V. Fesko has a helpful article on praying public prayers.
Teach the Metanarrative of Scripture to Little Kids
The new God’s Big Promises Bible Storybook from The Good Book Company connects 92 foundational Bible stories by showing how God makes and keeps his promises. (Sponsored Links)
The State We’re In
“How do we know when a civilisation is nearing its end? If one sign is a general ennui, listlessness, lethargy, then we could well be almost there. We are always prone to moan and complain and imagine that ‘the good old days’ were a real thing (they weren’t) but there is a collective weariness across the British Isles; a sense that nothing is working quite like it should. Broken politics, broken healthcare, crumbling concrete.”
He Says This is “Literally Impossible” (Video)
Red Pen Logic offers a response to an increasingly common argument.
Contentment doesn’t mean you must stay in the same circumstance forever
It’s a valid question: If we are told to be content in all circumstances, does that mean it’s wrong to try to change those circumstances?
How Puritan Women Debunk 3 Puritan Stereotypes
“I hate to say it, but Puritan stereotypes—which go all the way back to the 17th Century—are still going strong. It almost seems like no matter how many solid scholarly books are written about them, the stereotypes will live on.” Jenny-Lyn de Klerk addresses three of them.
Flashback: Not a Matter of Pitch or Tone
Those who struggle to sing may be self-conscious, tempted to stay quiet or to do no more than mumble along. Should they? Not at all, for singing is a matter of the heart before it is a matter of pitch or tone.

Contentment is the product of the heart that is resting in God. —A.W. Pink

Every one of us has become familiar with the pattern. Every one of us has seen church members becoming dissatisfied and then disgruntled, missing church occasionally and then consistently. Every one of us has seen the pattern and begun to dread the nearly-inevitable conclusion. This is especially discouraging when the reason for the departure is not an area of essential theological disagreement but something much more common and much less important—hurt feelings, petty squabbles, matters of preference.

This pattern is so common that we should all assume we ourselves may at some time fall into it. This being the case, what should you do when you begin feeling discontent at your church? What should you do when you feel that yearning to pick up and move on? What should you do when you find yourself eager to slip out of one church and into another? I’d like to offer just a few suggestions that I hope you’ll consider and put into practice.
Pray through the directory. Find yourself a copy of the church directory and commit to praying through the entire thing at least once. Pray for each person or each family by name. Pray what the Bible models and pray what the Spirit prompts. Prayer is one of our core responsibilities toward one another and has a way of stirring up our affections. As you pray for those people may it remind you that you’re not just walking away from a club or institution, but from a community—a family, even.
Commit to serving. The temptation when disgruntled is always to stop serving—to remove yourself from whatever ministries you’ve been involved with. Before you leave, recommit to serving others for a period of time—several months at least. Love tends to grow cold when we stop loving others and it tends to be rekindled when we start loving again. Plus, it’s as we serve that the Lord reminds us that he has gifted us specifically so we can use his gifts to bless our fellow Christians.
(Parenthetically, it is almost universally true that when people leave churches for reasons that are poor or inadequate, they have stopped praying for their fellow church members and have stopped serving them. Rarely do people leave when they are constant in prayer and diligent in service.)
Remember the good, not just the bad. In times when we are hurt or discouraged we usually find ourselves fixating on what others have done wrong, not what they have done right. So as you consider leaving, force yourself to remember not only the church’s failings, but also its blessings. Remember not only the bad times, but also the good, not only the times it fell short, but also the times it rallied to the cause. Remember all the times it blessed you, expressed kindness to you, and supported you. You may find this side of the scale by far outweighs the other.
Think it through. There may be many good reasons to leave one church for another, but there are certainly many bad ones. The worst reason of all is allowing unidentified or unrepentant sin to be the determining factor. Hence, before you leave any church, think carefully about whether sin or sanctification is leading the way—whether you feel the need to leave because you have grown in holiness or because you have diminished in holiness. Too many people allow sin, not the Spirit, to lead them out the door.
Pray it through. The only way to adequately think it through is to pray it through. You need to labor in prayer to become convinced that your departure is consistent with God’s will. Pray for God to expose your heart, to guide your feelings, to make your motives clear. Pray that your deepest desire would be to honor and glorify him, whether that means leaving or staying.
Talk it through. It is possible that the church is in error, but it’s also possible that you are in error. It is possible there is a sore problem with the church’s leadership, but it is also possible that there is a sore problem with your sanctification. Have the character and honesty to ask someone, “Am I making a wise decision?” And make sure that individual is the type who will challenge you if you need to be challenged. Don’t leave if trustworthy men and women are telling you to stay.
The fact is that in a consumeristic culture like this one—a culture in which the customer is always right—too many people leave too many churches too easily. It’s unlikely that any of us is above the temptation to depart for poor reasons and to leave behind us a trail of hurt and confusion. So before you make that decision, pray for the people of the church and diligently serve them. Ask God for wisdom and ask others for guidance. And then, only then, leave with confidence that your departure is God’s will. As you do so, you will have honored God, served others, and modeled how to leave a church well.

If you’ve ever preached as much as a single sermon, if you’ve ever delivered as much as a single conference address, if you’ve ever led as much as a single Bible study, then I expect you know the temptation. I expect you have longed to make much of Jesus, but have also felt the desire to have people make much of you. I expect you have prayed that God would glorify himself through your words, but have also wished that those listening would glorify you, at least a little bit. This is a familiar, and I dare say universal, temptation for those who teach, lead, and minister.

This is a temptation I have to battle every time I stand before a group of people large or small, familiar or unfamiliar, far from home or in my local church. It is a temptation I battle as I study, as I prepare, as I preach, and as I engage with people after all has been said and done. It is a battle I’ve yet to win and, frankly, doubt I ever will completely.
Yet I have made some headway, I think.
I have made some headway by committing this to prayer, not just on a sermon-by-sermon basis, but in the big picture. I pray for the humility to go unseen, unacknowledged, and unremembered, so long as Christ is seen, acknowledged, and remembered. In fact, I pray that Christ would be so present and so visible that people would fail to think of me at all.
I have made some headway by reminding myself of the goodness and sufficiency of Scripture. If I had to stand before people and bring them some of my own wisdom I might well despair and boast—despair at the difficulty of the task and boast in any success I might have. But I really have nothing of value to bring, nothing that can bless, challenge, or strengthen people except for what God has already said.
I have made some headway by acknowledging the tension that exists—the tension that I may only know that God has used something I’ve said if people tell me. And the tension that such encouragement is a way in which others may wish to bless me.
And I have made some headway by pressing on, knowing that just as I will never preach a perfect sermon or deliver a perfect speech, neither will I ever be a perfect man preaching a sermon or a perfect man delivering a speech. I need to press on even if my heart is not fully pure and my desires fully blameless. Like Peter, I can sometimes only say, “Lord, you know! You know I love you. You know I want to honor you. You know I want you to be the hero.” And then I press on, doing my best, asking God to forgive any shortcomings in my words or my desires, asking him to grant what I desire at my best rather than at my worst.
And then I prepare to fight the same fight and plead the same grace the next time.