If you’re into Kindle deals, remember that I’ve got an X account for that: @challiesdeals. Also by way of reminder, much of my material gets translated into Spanish and you can find that here.

Today’s Kindle deals include some good books: Serving Without Sinking, Write It On Their Hearts, and more.

(Yesterday on the blog: Marriage Happy, Marriage Holy)

I have been intrigued by the recent revival of interest in Stoicism. That is why I was glad to see this article by Jonathan Threlfall.

Samuel James offers some interesting theses on Instagram. For example: “Of all the major social media apps of the last 20 years, Instagram is the most distinctly feminine. Compared to its peers, IG is a beautiful app. It feels. It has a humane and relational texture that other apps, especially Twitter and Facebook, lack. Several things about IG create this, chief among them the app’s reliance on images of people as its main form of communication.”

That is a common question and in this video it gets a good answer.

“Although the lack of workers for the harvest has been a persistent problem since the time of Christ, nowadays there is a new and noticeable trend in missions: those who go don’t necessarily stay.”

I know I recently shared a different theologian’s answer to this question, but considering how often I am asked it, I thought it would not hurt to double up.

Yeah, maybe you should. Maybe we all should.

When I look at your generation, I love the ambition I see, but want to encourage you to pursue the traits that will harness that ambition to the best and highest purposes.

As the social cost of claiming to be a Christian increases, the percentage of nominal Christians decreases.
—D.A. Carson

God’s purpose in marriage is not to make us happy but to make us holy. Or so we have all been told. The truth is more complicated, of course, and I’m quite certain God means for marriage to cover both. The old Anglican liturgy says marriage “was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity.” I like that—fellowship, help, and comfort. Those words seem to cover it all.

When we think of the ways that marriage can make us holy, we probably imagine scenarios that are peaceful and proactive. We imagine sitting side by side to study God’s Word together or gathering our family around the dinner table to read, pray, and sing. Perhaps we imagine our spouse bringing a gentle word of rebuke to address a sin we haven’t yet spotted or, if spotted, haven’t yet acknowledged and dealt with. And hopefully, all of these are part of a Christian marriage! Yet what we probably don’t imagine is the more difficult ways that marriage will provide the opportunities to become holy.

Husband, you will have the opportunity to grow in holiness as your wife behaves immaturely, as she responds with outrage instead of grace or with anger instead of patience. You will witness her act unfairly toward you and ungraciously toward your children. She may go through stretches of time when she grows complacent about sanctification and decides to let sin just run its course in parts of her life. And all the while you will need to determine how you will respond, how you will continue to bear with her flaws, how you will meet sin with love. You will need to determine what it looks like in these moments to love your wife like Christ loves his church.

Wife, you will have the opportunity to grow in holiness as your husband criticizes you unjustly or pesters you to embrace a standard that is his but not God’s. He will at times lead you poorly and at times lead your family selfishly. He will sometimes want to be intimate with you in moments when it is unfair to even ask and then sulk when you decline. He will sometimes ask you to submit when submission is inadvisable or unfair. He will go through stretches when he is bad-tempered and thoughtless and abrasive. And you will need to consider how you will love him in these times, how you will continue to remain sweet when he is sour. You will need to determine what it looks like in these moments to love him without enabling him and to honor him without coddling his sin.

And besides your spouse’s sins, there are also your spouses’s weaknesses—areas that are not sinful but are still difficult and frustrating. You will grow in holiness by tolerating quirks and habits and by not allowing every frustration to boil to the surface. And then there are your spouse’s afflictions—illnesses, infirmities, and frailties. More sanctification may come by being a caregiver to your spouse than ever came by being a lover. Each of them represents a means through which you will be challenged to be holy or unholy, sanctified or unsanctified, to battle sin or foster evil.

I have observed that the couples who endure with joy are most often the couples who embrace one another as a complex bundle of strengths and weaknesses, helps and hurts, joys and sorrows, and who set their expectations for marriage accordingly. They are each more concerned with their own holiness than their spouse’s, each quicker to embrace an opportunity to overlook a sin than to confront one, each eager to forgive in the ways they’ve been forgiven by God. They are not dismayed when their spouse disappoints them or sins against them but are challenged to love all the more. They do not retaliate when sinned against but extend mercy, grace, and love.

Marriage does, indeed, give us many opportunities to peacefully and proactively grow in holiness. But being the kind of people we are, it also gives us opportunities to love despite being treated poorly, to care despite being treated unfairly, and to be devoted despite receiving little in return. And it is especially in moments and situations like these that God shapes us, molds us, and makes us more like him. It is especially in moments and situations like these that we put on the greatest of all attributes: the love of God.

For another take on this subject, see my previous article The Great Challenge of Every Marriage

The strange machine along the streets of Madrid seized my attention.

Its long arms reached out and wrapped themselves around the trunk of a tree. Its motor vibrated those arms at high speeds so they could shake the tree violently. Its net sat suspended just beneath the lowest branches. As the machine buzzed and roared, a hundred ripe oranges fell from the branches to land in the net below — a hundred ripe oranges that could feed and satisfy a hundred people. That machine was carefully designed to release the fruit from the tree — to release it by shaking.
The nets filled with oranges remind me of something the apostle Paul once wrote about times of trial and tribulation, of deep sorrow and loss. He contended that Christians must be prepared to be afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, and even struck down — a collection of words meant to display the variety of ways in which God may call us to suffer (2 Corinthians 4:8–9).
The God who is sovereign over all things may lead us into times and contexts that are deeply painful. Yet we can be confident that our suffering is never arbitrary and never meaningless, for God always has a purpose in mind. Hence, Paul says more: we will be “afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.” For those in Christ, God’s purpose is never to harm us and never to ruin us.
So what is God’s purpose in our suffering? Why does God sometimes lead us away from the green pastures and still waters to call us instead to follow him into deep and dark valleys (Psalm 23)? These were questions that were much on my mind in the days, weeks, and months following the Lord’s decision to call my son to himself.
(Note: this article was commissioned by Desiring God and posted to their site last month)
God Left Us Sonless
Nick, age 20, was at seminary and taking a break from his studies to play a game with a group of his friends when, in an instant, his heart stopped, his body fell to the ground, and his soul went to heaven. His friends tried to revive him, a passing doctor tried to revive him, responding paramedics and emergency-room doctors tried to revive him. But it was to no avail. God had called him home. And since God had summoned him to heaven, there was no doctor, no medication, and no procedure that could keep my son here on earth.
I don’t know why God determined that Nick would live so short a life, why he would leave this world with so little accomplished and so much left undone. I don’t know why God determined to leave Aileen and me sonless, Abby and Michaela brotherless, Ryn fiancéless and ultimately husbandless. I don’t know why God did it — why God exercised his sovereignty in taking away a young man who was so dearly loved, who was so committed to serving Jesus, and who had so much promise. But I don’t need to know, for, as Moses said, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God” (Deuteronomy 29:29).
While I don’t know why God did it, I am already beginning to understand how God is using it.
Lamentation Without Resentment
On the streets of Madrid, a machine shakes the orange trees to cause them to release their fruit. It shakes them violently, shakes them so hard that it almost looks as if the branches must snap, as if the trunk must splinter, as if the entire tree must be uprooted. Yet this is the way it must be done, for the delicious fruit is connected tightly to the inedible branches. And the moment the machine has collected the fruit, I observe, it ceases its shaking, it furls up its net, it withdraws its arms, and it backs away, leaving the tree healthy and well, prepared to bear yet another harvest.
And just like that machine shook the orange tree, Nick’s death has shaken me and shaken my family and shaken my church and shaken Nick’s friends and shaken his school — shaken us to our very core. Yet this shaking, though it has been violent and exceedingly painful, has not caused us to break. We have raised our voices in lamentation, but never in rebellion. We have raised hands of worship, but never fists of rage. We have asked questions, but have never expressed resentment.
To the contrary, as I look at those who love Nick most, I see them displaying fresh evidences of God’s grace. I see them growing in love for God, in the joy of their salvation, in the peace of the gospel, in their patience with God’s purposes, in kindness toward others, in the goodness of personal holiness, in faithfulness to all God has called them to, in gentleness with other people’s sins and foibles, and in that rare, blessed virtue of self-control. I see them bearing the precious fruit of the Spirit as never before (Galatians 5:22–23).
Shaken to Bear Fruit
Just as the fruit of the tree clings tightly to the branch, the evil within us clings tightly to the good, the vices to the virtues, the immoral to the upright. God does not mean to harm us when he shakes us, but simply to release the fruit — to do what is necessary to separate what is earthly from what is heavenly, what dishonors him from what delights his heart.
As I consider my wife, as I consider my girls, as I consider Nick’s precious fiancée, as I consider his friends and fellow church members, I see that they have been deeply shaken by his death — shaken by God’s sovereign hand. But I see as well that they have been shaken for a beautiful purpose. They have been shaken to bear fruit.