Blessings to you as you work, serve, and/or worship this weekend.

Today’s Kindle deals include a few newer books as well as a few older ones.
(Yesterday on the blog: How to Read and Understand God’s Word)
Closeness Comes Through Fire: How Suffering Conforms Us to Christ
Ed Welch makes some helpful observations here about sanctification and suffering. (Though I’m not so sure about using both Ignatius of Loyola and Martin Luther as examples of the same virtue in the same article!)
Why Taiwan Loves This Canadian Missionary Dentist
With a title like that, I couldn’t help but read it. It’s a great account of a missionary that isn’t very well known outside Taiwan.
The New Public Liturgy
This is a fascinating “video essay” from Carl Trueman. (Note: There are one or two b-roll images in the early going to show just a little too much.)
Sin is Only as Hidden as God Allows
This is so important to keep in mind. “If we have been nursing secret sin and we have not been exposed, that is because up to this point, God has not decided to reveal it. Nothing we do is unknown to God, and in his omnipotence, he could expose us at any moment if he so chooses. Sin is only as hidden as God allows.”
Magnanimity and A Book Deal
“It’s been hard at times then, having been disciplined by God regarding these things, to know the difference between true humility and small-heartedness. Beset with self-doubts and fear of my own pride, and sometimes just in ignorance, I’m often slow to admit I have anything to offer. I want to grab a basket and put it over my lamp because it’s safer. This way I won’t make mistakes. Won’t sin. Won’t be tempted to boast. Won’t fail.”
Clarity from Schilder on “Paradox”
“Some theologians have a reputation for being consistently clear.  Klaas Schilder isn’t one of them.” Yet here’s one way in which he was very clear and very helpful.
Flashback: 7 Ways to Ruin a Prayer Meeting
Here are some ways you increase the likelihood that your prayer meeting will miss the mark.

This week’s blog is sponsored by Insight Counseling, providing counsel, care, and training in the grace and power of Christ.  Click here to find out more.

Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. (Deut. 8:2-3)

I recently planted shrubs to create a little healthy privacy between neighbors’ yards (Prov. 25:17), and I had to find some very different types of plants that would grow under the same conditions of light, water, and temperature. Only time will tell if they can grow side by side and flourish together for the desired result. These growing plants are very much like the qualities God intends to cultivate in us. He often makes surprising pairings that serve as a sign that gospel growth is present. He pairs humility and strength (Matt. 5:5), scarcity and contentment (Phil. 4:12), pain and joy (Heb. 12:2), as well as many others, to draw our hearts to the kind of growth that is uniquely Spirit-driven.

True gospel growth never gives us the sense that we are able to withstand more and more with less and less difficulty. Rather, it expands our awareness that we need “every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” in times and places we never even knew before.Share

Deuteronomy 8 does just the same thing as God reminds His people that the twin fruits He intends to produce from their wilderness journey are resilience and dependence. He granted them a humbling hunger that often took them to the brink of destruction, ultimately producing a strength and perseverance in them that would endure. However, the trial wasn’t pushing them to dig deeper into themselves and their inner resolve but to make them more aware of their utter dependence on God and His mercy. True gospel growth never gives us the sense that we are able to withstand more and more with less and less difficulty. Rather, it expands our awareness that we need “every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” in times and places we never even knew before.

Biblical counseling, like most counseling, begins with a sense that a person needs greater strength and resilience to navigate the challenges of life well. I once had a woman yell two minutes into our first meeting, “I need coping skills!” She was right. She wanted the first shrub of resilience to grow, but the willingness to cultivate the fruit of dependence on God—the ultimate coping skill—was not there yet.

Both Christians and non-Christians are beginning to question the growing dependence on counseling in a culture that sometimes lacks resilience. Though this is a worthy question to address, Scripture gives us the path to that deeper strength. Often a season of biblically based reflection on how to grow both resilience and dependence can be critically helpful. Many questions can be unanswered heading into that season. Why has this challenge affected me so much? What does it look like to depend on God? Do I even want to get stronger and more dependent on him? Why do other people think this is affecting me more than I do? These questions and others can lead us to the very place and person who is the “rock who is higher than I” (Ps. 61:2).

Insight would love to help be a guide to “The Guide” and witness growth only He offers.

Request an appointment [email protected]

Easter is a day of acceptance, a day of completion, for on Easter God validated Christ’s atoning sacrifice by raising him from the dead. Yet despite the sufficiency of Christ’s work, we can so easily slip back into an old mindset in which we become convinced there is still something left for us to do. F.B. Meyer addresses this temptation in a wonderful bit of prose:

We must accept the finished work of Christ. He has ceased from the work of our redemption, because there was no more to do. Our sins and the sins of the world were put away. The power of the adversary was annulled. The gate of heaven was opened to all that believe. All was finished, and was very good.
Let us, then, cease from our works. Let us no longer feel as if we have to do aught, by our tears or prayers or works, to make ourselves acceptable to God. Why should we try to add one stitch to a finished garment, or append one stroke to the signed and sealed warrant of pardon placed within our hands? We need have no anxiety as to the completeness or sufficiency of a divinely finished thing.
Let us quiet our fears by considering that what satisfies Christ, our Savior and Head, may well satisfy us. Let us dare to stand without a qualm in God’s presence, by virtue of the glorious and completed sacrifice of Calvary. Let us silence every tremor of unrest by recalling the dying cry on the cross, and the witness of the empty grave.