This week’s Free Stuff Friday is sponsored by Reformed Free Publishing Association, who also sponsored the blog this week with their article “What Is God’s Calling For Me?” They are offering a free copy of Finding My Vocation: A Guide to Young People Seeking a Calling to each of ten winners.
How can I pick the right job?
Actually, you don’t need to choose a job that’s “perfect for you.” But you do need to be faithful and productive in ways that honor God in your work life.
Here’s a better question: As a believer, how can I determine what I am supposed to do, and then do it well?
The doctrine of calling, or vocation, leads us to the answer. Because for those who are “called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28), God provides a place, a time, and the gifts necessary to work for him in this world.
This book will help you do three things:

Ponder the doctrine of vocation—learn what it means to have a calling and what Scripture teaches about work.
Prepare for vocational living—determine the skills and character traits you’ll need and learn how to sort through your vocational options, remaining faithful to your other callings as you work.
Practice vocation—apply biblical disciplines to succeed at work and relate work to the rest of who you are as a Christian.

God placed us in his world to work for his glory. You might not know exactly what he has planned for you, but you must—and can—be faithful where he calls you to be.
What Others Are Saying About the Book
The doctrine of vocation is a surprisingly important one. If you come to a firm understanding of this doctrine while you are young, it will serve you well for the rest of your life. That is why I am so pleased with this book. It addresses sound teaching and faithful application to teens and young adults—the very people who have a whole lifetime of vocation ahead of them.– Tim Challies, founder of the Challies blog and author of Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Positivity
“Finding My Vocation by Pastor Bill Boekestein is a timely book. Many young people are questioning the traditional assumptions about how to find their niche in life. This book masterfully unpacks calling in the space of 100 pages. Simple without being shallow, Boekestein exams the biblical concept of vocation as well as how to prepare and practice one’s vocation. The content of each chapter is illustrated by the stories of people that were interviewed over the course of writing the book. Finding My Vocation: A Guide for Young People Seeking a Calling will be a birthday gift for all my grandchildren who are trying to find their calling. I could not make a better recommendation than that.”– Tedd Tripp, author of Shepherding a Child’s Heart, pastor emeritus, conference speaker 
“Mastering his usual literary skills, William Boekestein covers every aspect of the doctrine of vocation particularly as it applies to young people thinking about their future. Accompanied by true-life examples, this helpful guide is especially timely in a society characterized by a contrasting mixture of high expectations and common anxieties. Even someone like me who has left youthful days far behind can benefit from this reminder and these practical suggestions on how to “lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him” (1 Cor. 7:17 ESV). Because of the abundance of scriptural references and pertinent quotations, I have found this book more devotional and nourishing than I would have expected. Highly recommended for the whole family.”– Simonetta Carr, mother of eight and author of the Christian Biographies for Young Readers series 
To enter
Giveaway Rules: You may enter one time. When you enter, you agree to be placed on Reformed Free Publishing Association’s email list. The winner will be notified by email. The giveaway closes on September 21, 2024, at midnight.

I have said it before: gossip is a “respectable sin” among Reformed Christians. The Christian world, and perhaps especially the Reformed Christian world, is absolutely chockablock with gossip. From the pulpit to the pew, from the conference green room to the conference hallways, gossip is rampant. It is whispered in the name of important information and blogged in the name of discernment—both ways of dressing it up in respectable apparel. But if it isn’t true and it isn’t edifying and it isn’t necessary, it is gossip. Truly, gossip may be the besetting sin of this movement and a major contributor to her current or coming collapse.(1)

I don’t want to make it sound as if I am immune to this sin or that I’ve never participated in it. In fact, recent experiences in my life have shown how quick I am to initiate conversations that soon tip into gossip and how slow I am to redirect conversations initiated by others that also dwell on what is little better than tittle-tattle. I write to myself as much as anyone else.
If you love the Reformed faith, which is to say, if you value Reformed doctrine, then I offer this exhortation: Make it your goal to talk about Jesus, not celebrities. Make it your goal to tell about the perfections of the Savior more than the failures of the famous. Make it your goal to describe what God has done, not what Christian personalities have failed to do.
This is not to say that there are no circumstances in which it is appropriate to discuss current events and even the foibles and failures of those people who rise and fall within this corner of the Christian world. Sometimes such conversations can be good and necessary, provided they are carried out within the bounds of Christian character and that they go no further than the established facts. Paul named names when appropriate and I’m sure he sometimes gathered his protégés around himself to discuss what had gone wrong with Demas or Hymenaeus or Alexander and what they could learn from those who had first followed and then fallen away.
But a moment’s introspection should show that the great majority of our conversations about people are neither helpful nor edifying, neither concerned with truth nor spoken in love. The great majority of our conversations that revolve around those who have stumbled or fallen are speculative at best and slanderous at worst. The great majority of what has come from our lips and what has come to our ears is unnecessary and unprofitable. I am certain this is true of you because it’s true of me and true even of so many of the people we look up to. (Trust me—I’ve been around our heroes and I can attest from personal experience that they are as prone to this as any of us.)
I have often wished I could remove from my mind all the evil things I have heard about others—things that were whispered in my ear at a conference or delivered as a message into my inbox, but things I now associate with those individuals. I have often wished that person hadn’t told me, “I know his wife and she says he has an anger problem,” or “I spent time at her house and you should see the size of it.” I have often wished I could obliterate all those pieces of information that could be true or untrue, accurate or pure fiction. I have often wished I had asked that person to just stop, that I had had the strength of character to resist hearing it. And, of course, I have often wished that I myself had only ever spoken what was true, what was necessary, what was genuinely meant to serve Christ’s cause.
Though this movement was once defined by its doctrine, I fear it is increasingly defined by its celebrities. So now, rather than aligning with truth we align with people. This being the case, to participate in Reformed Christianity is to discuss personalities rather than theology. Need proof? When was the last time you had a conversation about the five points? But on the other hand, when was the last time you spoke about that guy who was accused of that transgression? When was the last time you marveled about the facts of the five solas? But then when was the last time you speculated about that pastor who has fallen under his church’s discipline? This kind of gossip is a blight on our theological tradition and a reason many abandon it. There are many who reject Reformed theology not because of its doctrines but because of its adherents—because of you and me and the way we blather on about people, people, people.
We will be a blessing to the church if instead of spending our time discussing the failures of celebrities we spend it going deeper into those precious truths that undergird it. We will be a blessing to the world around us if instead of obsessing about people we fix our hearts on Christ. So take this as my call to you and to me and to all of us: Let’s stop the gossip. Let’s stop the gossip and instead make it our delight to speak about who our God is and about what our God has done.

We are not lacking when it comes to daily devotionals. To the contrary, there are more options than we could possibly read in a lifetime. Yet not all daily devotionals are created equal, so it can be difficult to find a good one—one that is worthy of a full year’s attention.

Everyday Gospel

Several years ago, Paul Tripp wrote New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional and it quickly proved not only popular but also meaningful and helpful. It has sold over a million copies and guided all those people to better understand the gospel and apply it to their lives. Writing a 365-part book is a major task, so it is no great surprise that it took ten years for him to write another. But we have it at last and it is called Everyday Gospel: A Daily Devotional Connecting Scripture to All of Life.
Everyday Gospel has both similarities and differences when compared to New Morning Mercies. It is similar in that it provides a full year of devotions and in its relentless focus on the good news of the gospel. The foremost difference is that it follows a one-year Bible reading plan that leads from Genesis to Revelation. Therefore, each of the entries reflects on that day’s Scripture reading. The purpose of it all is to connect Scripture with life—to show how the truths of God’s Word are meant to transform all you are and all you do. And that’s true whether the passage in question is within the application sections of one of Paul’s epistles or the sometimes hard-to-understand narratives of the Old Testament. We know that all of Scripture is breathed out by God and therefore profitable (see 2 Timothy 3:16-17), and a key part of Tripp’s task in this work is to show how.
Everyday Gospel comes in a standard hardcover format that is about 500 pages long, though I suspect leather or leather-like versions will be available in the future. It also comes in a format that integrates the text of the ESV so that the day’s Bible reading and devotional are within the same volume. This edition is called ESV Everyday Gospel Bible: Connecting Scripture to All of Life and is available in hardcover, leather, and TruTone (a kind of faux leather finish).
While I have not yet read every entry, I have read enough to know that it’s a devotional I will recommend freely and distribute widely. New Morning Mercies has been on our living room book table for years and Everyday Gospel will soon be joining it. I would encourage you to consider doing likewise.