This week’s Free Stuff Fridays is sponsored by Zondervan Reflective, who also sponsored the blog this week. They are giving away FIVE copies of Michael Horton’s new book, Recovering Our Sanity.

Here’s more about the book:
How cultivating a healthy fear of God liberates us from our fear of others, our fear of the future, and even our fear of death itself.
At times the world feels like it’s losing its mind. From politics to the pandemic, we live with an ever-increasing uncertainty, and many of us have grown to fear the rapid disintegration of our society and our own lives.
Recovering Our Sanity is not another self-help book about how to beat your daily fears for a better life. It’s a book that will show you the gravity and glory of a God who’s worthy of our fear. It’s a book that will reveal how these two biblical phrases—Fear God and Do Not Be Afraid—are not contradictory but actually one coherent message.
Michael Horton—Professor of Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary—shows us that we cannot fight our fears by seeking the absence of fear altogether, but by living with a fear of God that drives out the fear of everything else. Horton will walk you through the case for the fear of God by:

Developing what it means to fear God, biblically and theologically, and what this kind of fear looks like in practice.
Categorizing different types of fears—from cultural anxiety to pain and hardship—and what they stem from.
Focusing on how to confront our earthly fears with our hope in Christ, rooted in the gospel.
Reminding us that God does not exist for us; we exist for God.

Humbling, thought-provoking, and hope-igniting, Recovering Our Sanity delivers a timely message that will help you shift your focus from a human-centered obsession with self-preservation to a fixation on Christ and his salvation.
Rather than clinging to false securities and promises of immediate gratification, you can gain the lasting joy of knowing the One who has given himself to save us and who says to us, “Do not be afraid.”
Enter Here
Again, there are five books to win. And all you need to do to enter the draw is to drop your name and email address in the form below.
Giveaway Rules: You may enter one time. As soon as the winners have been chosen, all names and addresses will be immediately and permanently erased. Winners will be notified by email. The giveaway closes Saturday at noon. If you are viewing this through email, click to visit my site and enter there.

My thanks goes to Reformed Free Publishing Association for sponsoring the blog this week to tell you about their children’s magazine, Ignited by the Word.

There is quite a good collection in today’s Kindle deals. I have it on good authority that we will see plenty of good deals next week.
Westminster Books has a deal on a neat new family devotional.
(Yesterday on the blog: And Then There Was One)
The Chosen and The Word
This article is worth reading and considering. “As I gazed at the smiling, gentle face of Jonathan Roumie, I felt uneasy. This actor who portrays Jesus in ‘The Chosen’ was different to any other Jesus actor I had ever encountered. He had the right skin colour for a start. But more than that, his face somehow simultaneously conveyed a strength and kindness that attracted and drew me in. I felt the need to remind myself that he wasn’t Jesus, and that thought gave me pause.”
The Ultimate Balanced Guide to Arminianism (from a Calvinist)
This is a kind and clarifying explanation of Arminianism.
A Family Vacation, a Broken Transmission, and a God Who Is with Us
I always enjoy reading stories like this one. “Recently, I said these words to my wife as we began to panic about twenty-five miles north of Jackson, Wyoming: ‘God is with us. He will help us and provide for us. This is no surprise to him. We need only to be faithful and not lose heart.’”
I Was Preaching to My Twitter Feed
“I noticed the problem when my joke didn’t land. I thought it was a witty take on a major cultural issue, but no one had any idea what I was talking about. My wife, who usually laughs politely at my humor, stared blankly. I was astonished, because this issue was all anyone had talked about for days . . . on Twitter. That was the problem.”
Don’t Women Need Access to Abortion for Rape?
“You don’t have the right to tell my fourteen-year-old daughter she has to carry her rapist’s baby.” Andy Naselli considers this common argument for the right to abortion. (See also: An Open Letter to a Young Woman Contemplating an Abortion)
Being Made New
“In His hands, our worst sins, pains, and sorrows are re-woven into a new and glorious creation. Every broken relationship, illness, tear, and sin is bound together in God’s redemptive way and made beautiful in Christ.”
Flashback: The Easiest Sin to Justify
When it comes to the sin of anger, we can always find an explanation that exists outside of us. We can always dump this sin in the lap of a husband or wife, a child or stranger. Failing that, we can plead fatigue or hormones or waking up on the wrong side of the bed or something—anything!—else.

You will never be smarter than God, your plan for your life will never be better than God’s plan for you, what you want for you will never be better than what your Savior has died to give you. —Paul David Tripp

I’m thankful to Zondervan Reflective for sponsoring the blog this week to make sure you know about Jared Wilson’s book The Storied Life: Christian Writing as Art and Worship. I plan to read it myself!
Westminster Books is offering a pre-launch discount on a new book by Courtney Doctor. You’ll also find discounts on two new books by Vern Poythress.
There are a few new Kindle deals this morning.
(Yesterday on the blog: Choose Better)

Somewhere along the line, we determined that bored is bad. But maybe it’s time to start recovering boredom.

“Brian Cox is a brilliant actor, but I suspect he needs some direction when it comes to understanding the Bible. He is angry at the Bible. Cox is raging against the Bible.” Murray Campbell explains why Cox is so far off-base.

I tend to agree with Samuel here, that there’s really no good reason to use TikTok. And yes, he deals with the argument that Christians ought to be present on every app in order to spread the gospel.

This is a helpful reflection on AI—the technology that seems poised to enter our lives whether we want it to or not. “Students use AI to answer the questions and cheat in their assignments. Ironically, that means instructors are using AI to make the tests, and students are using AI to take the tests. As a result, the use of AI frees up time from teaching and studying to do other things. But what are those things?”

“I remember the first time I felt the terrible grief in my chest. I was sitting on the black couch in my living room where I always sit, reading an email about move-in dates for fall 2023 at Western Kentucky University. My husband and I discussed possible dates while my oldest, still just 17, waited for the verdict. A minute later, the date had been chosen. I entered ‘Elliot Move in’ to Tuesday, August 15 at 1:40 on our shared family Google calendar. Then I started to sob.”

This is a question that gets asked so often and that must be answered with compassion. Yet, as Jonathan explains here, it is far from a slam-dunk case for abortion.

If there is any word used to describe masculinity in our day, any adjective commonly used to modify it, it is almost invariably “toxic.” We hear almost nothing of positive masculinity or healthy masculinity. But we hear endlessly of its toxicity. 

Where information has increased, wisdom has decreased.
—Kevin DeYoung