There are a couple of new Kindle deals from yesterday and today.

(Yesterday on the blog: The Thing About Light and Momentary)
Questions Your Church Should Ask a Missionary Candidate
“For churches, selecting which missionaries to support can be difficult. Missions committees and elder boards are often overwhelmed with requests from prospective partners. How should they sift through these opportunities and decide which ministries to prioritize?” Here’s a list of good questions to ask.
5 Reasons Why We Should Not Stop Using Male Pronouns for God
“It is right to believe that God is transcendent: God is not a man. Even little children learn in the catechism that ‘God is a Spirit and has not a body like men.’ And certainly, in Scripture God’s character and actions are sometimes described using feminine imagery (cf. Isa 49:15). But none of that means we should abandon male pronouns for God.”
Q and A with Alistair Begg
If you enjoy Q&A sessions, you might like to watch this one with Alistair Begg from the recent Basics Conference.
3 Ways to Live Humbly Online
A little bit more humility wouldn’t hurt any of us, would it?
How to Make the Case against Abortion in Less Than a Minute
With abortion back on everyone’s mind, this would be a good time to refresh yourself on how to make the case against it.
The Ordinary Christian Life in Retirement
“What is an ‘ordinary Christian life’ for a retiree? Is living an ‘ordinary’ life a good thing? Doesn’t God want us to live extraordinary lives—with exceptional experiences and accomplishments? Isn’t that what most people retire for?” Chris Cagle thinks it through.
Flashback: Each Man Before the Mob
We should be happier if a man follows a different path than we do while heeding his conscience than if he imitates us while violating it. We should affirm him in making a decision that is different from our own, as long as that decision is consistent with his conscience.

Human love was never intended to be our living water. Instead, it can be an addictive drug that is never enough. True freedom comes when you love God more than all else. —Ed Welch

Today’s post is written by Tim Chester and is sponsored by Christian Focus Publications. Tim is a senior faculty member of Crosslands Training and the author of over 40 books, including  Angels: When Heaven Meets Earth. He has a PhD in theology, a PgDip in history and 25 years’ experience of pastoral ministry.

“My grandma’s house is full of angels.”
I must have looked a somewhat quizzical, so she clarified: “Statues and pictures.”
“Is she a Christian?” I asked.
“Oh no. It’s angels that she’s into.”
“Does she believe in God?”
“I guess so.”
“Jesus?”
“Not really.”
“But angels …?”
“Oh yes. She’s really into angels.”
Perhaps you’ve had conversations like this. Perhaps you’ve seen angelic figurines or angel prayer cards in a neighbour’s home. There’s every chance your local bookshop has a section for accounts of angelic encounters. People are interested in angels.
My own hunch is that, in the midst of a scary world, angels offer a sense of other-worldly protection. We’ve lived for the past two years in a time when death has stalked unseen through the air around us – in the form of the coronavirus. So perhaps its unsurprising that many people long for an unseen protector to linger in the air around them. The big attraction of angels – or so it seems to many people – is that they offer this protection without the demands that organised religion is perceived to make. People want protection without obedience, comfort without allegiance.
Whatever the reasons, people are interested in angels.
Many of us have assumed we are living in a post-religious era where superstition has been replaced by science. The people of our day, we assume, are rationalists who value rational enquiry and empirical evidence. And they are materialists who believe the world we can see and touch – the world that science can investigate – is all there is. And we’ve prepped apologetic ammo accordingly. We know what to say when people question miracles or point to suffering. We can explain how science need be no enemy of faith.
This version of our times is true. But it’s only half the picture. There is another side to modernity. It’s a side populated by superstition, tarot, spiritualism, horoscopes, mediums – and angels. The supernatural is alive and kicking over on this side of modernity’s fence. And the people who live in this terrain are asking different apologetic questions that require different answers.
They want to know about angels. So what will we tell them?
In the past I’ve tended to steer clear of angels. Not in life, of course – I’m not sure what one might do to avoid an angel! No, I’ve avoided angels in conversations with unbelievers. It’s felt like too much of a weird place to start. I’ve assumed I was talking to rationalists and so angels would get the conversation off on the wrong foot. I’d rather get on to safer ground – like creation (lots of overlap with science), or sin (plenty of empirical evidence for that), or resurrection (a bit trickier, but a clear and central claim). By contrast angels are a bit spooky. In a rationalist’s mind they’re in the same category as ghosts. If I start here, I’ve assumed, then I’ll lose people straight away.
But it turns out that angels are a good place to start with many people. Nearly eight in ten Americans believe in angels. Even among those who never attend church it’s four out of ten.[1] In the United Kingdom one in three people believe they have a guardian angel.[2] Every tenth person in your street or workplace thinks they may have seen or heard an angel in some way.
Even among die-hard rationalists and materialists angels are a route into a conversation about heaven, souls, spiritual realities and eternity. It’s a short step from there to a conversation about the God who entered our world from outside at the incarnation. Life beyond physical matter and life after death go hand in hand.
So let’s talk about angels. But of course let’s not stop at angels. Perhaps the longest sustained passage in the Bible on angels is Hebrews 1. Here the writer repeatedly compares angels to Jesus, and every time Jesus is shown to be superior. Angels point us to Jesus. That’s their job. Indeed the word “angel” is actually a job title – the word means “messenger”. Angels are God’s messengers. Most famously they were the messengers who heralded the news of Christ’s coming on the first Christmas day. They filled the skies with the sound of song when Jesus was born. What is their message? The angel who appeared to the shepherds said:
“Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” (Luke 2:10-12)
Their message is Jesus: a Saviour, the Messiah, the Lord.
The angelic host then sing: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests.” (Luke 1:14) “Peace on earth,” we often say, as if this was a lame exhortation to get on with one another. But this is peace from God coming to humanity. When we rejected God, we declared war on God. We made him our enemy. But now God has declared peace – peace through the mediation of the child in the manger who will became the Lord on the cross. The death and resurrection of Jesus are our only hope. This is want angels declare and this is what fills their songs.
So angels are a great starting point. But let’s makes sure the end point is Jesus.
Get your copy of Angels: When Heaven Meets Earth here.
[1] “Nearly 8 in 10 Americans Believe in Angels,” CBS News, 23 December 2011, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-nearly-8-in-10-americans-believe-in-angels/; accessed September 8, 2021.
[2] The Bible Society, “A Third of All Brits Believe in Guardian Angels,” 13 December 2016, https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/latest/news/a-third-of-all-brits-believe-in-guardian-angels/; accessed August 30, 2021.

An elderly man was once out for an evening stroll when his feet inadvertently sent a little acorn skittering across the forest floor. He came to the place where it had stopped rolling and, stooping slowly, picked it up. And then, strangely, he held that acorn to his ear. He held that acorn to his ear and, listening attentively, heard it speak.

“In time the birds will come and make their nests in my branches,” it said. “In time I will cast deep shade so that cattle can come and find respite from the midday sun. In time I will provide warmth for a home. In time I will be a shelter from the storm for those who gather beneath my timbers. In time I will form the ribs of a great ship and the storms will beat against me in vain as I carry passengers safely across the storm-swept seas.”
“You foolish little acorn,” said the old man. “Will you be all this? Can you be all this?”
“Yes,” replied the acorn. “Yes, God and I.”*
As Christians we are often discouraged by our scant accomplishments and slow progress. We find ourselves attuned more to our spiritual defeats than spiritual victories, more to the sin that remains than the holiness won. Though we may not be who and what we once were, we are still not nearly who and what we long to be.
The acorn in this parable models the kind of faith each of us can have, the kind of confidence we ought to have, for it reminds us that God has made many promises. God has said that since he is the one who began a good work in us, he is the one who will bring it to completion. God has said that he will sanctify us completely so that our whole spirit and soul and body will be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He has said that he will fulfill his every purpose for us. (Phil 1:4, 1 Thes 5:24, Psalm 138:8)
And though we have been justified and will be glorified, we are being sanctified. Though God has in one moment saved our souls and will in one moment deliver them to his presence, he is in the meantime progressively conforming us to his image. And though he calls us to battle to put sin to death and come alive to righteousness, he does not call us to battle in our own strength or with our own power.
Thus even the most recent convert and even the youngest Christian can say, “In time I will abhor what is evil and hold fast to what is good. In time I will put to death all that is earthly in me and come alive to all that is heavenly. In time I will love my enemies and pray fervently for those who persecute me. In time I will be marked by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. In time I will come to be so much holier than I ever believed possible. In time.”
And in that moment of confident proclamation he ought to expect that the temper, the discourager, will whisper, “You foolish young Christian, will you be all this? Can you be all this?” And it then falls to him to answer back, “Yes, God and I.” For though it is He who demands, it is He who provides. It is He who works within, both to will and to work.