Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:
When Things Get Complicated, Remember The Basics – Trevin Wax
9 Things You Need To Know About Widows – Gaye Clark (TGC)
Why You May Be Tempted To Neglect Your Church – Tim Challies
10 Love Challenges – David Murray
Hope you have a great Lord’s Day living out a passion for God and compassion for people!
Here are some good posts on the family:
Marriage on the Edge of Eternity – Francis Chan
(It might be time to rethink our focus…)
10 Ways to Exercise Christlike Headship – Owen Strachan
(It may not be what you think…)
5 Reasons We Eat Together as a Family – Tim Challies
(Some good reasons for an important family practice…)
Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:
Heaven Will Never Be Boring – Dave Radford (DG)
Because God is infinite, he can be infinitely enjoyed. Jesus Christ is not concerned about running out of ways to keep up with your ever-increasing ability to enjoy him. His character is endlessly deep, unsearchable, and inexhaustible. Imagine the scope of the entire universe: trillions of shining stars, burning brighter than the sun; magnificent constellations; billions of spinning galaxies, all magnificent and vast, colorful and mysterious. Yet, they are finite. Brilliant, though they are, they fall utterly short in comparison to the breadth, length, height, and depth of the love of Christ. His love, grace, kindness, wisdom, power, and mercy each stand as never-ending, infinite universes for all your affections to delight in.
All Of Us Need A Friend Like Martin Luther Once In A While – Justin Taylor
All of us need a Martin Luther in our lives now and then—a friend who is not afraid to stand on gospel promises and get in our face with gospel truth when we would rather wallow in self-pity.
Why the Church Needs Intergenerational Friendships – Joseph Rhea (TGC) Intergenerational community is part of God’s vision for the church (see Titus 2). It’s a beautiful one, and friendship is the key. When individual Christians believe it’s worth sacrificing for, our churches will begin reflecting that multigenerational beauty.
5 Reasons to Pray for Other Churches – Eric Bancroft (Ligonier)
When natural disasters take place, churches act lovingly to care for other affected churches. But why must we wait until problems strike and only help in physical ways? I propose that we act now with the greatest resource we have and for the greatest goal: that churches reflect the character of God.
Hope you have a great Lord’s Day in fellowship with God’s people of all ages as you gather to worship our great Lord!
Here are two FREE devotionals you might find useful for the coming year:
Morning and Evening – Charles Spurgeon (audio)
TableTalk – January only (e-book)
And then here are a couple of good posts for your weekend reading:
Ten Practical Ways to Control Spending and Wisely Manage God’s Money – Randy Alcorn
Three Reasons to Attend Corporate Worship – Matthew Westerholm (DG)
Hope you have a great Lord’s Day in corporate worship with your local church!
Here are some good posts to consider as we enter the new year:
How To Make A New Year’s Resolution That Sticks – Tim Challies
10 Questions To Ask at the Start of a New Year – Donald Whitney
3 Reminders as You Enter the New Year 2015 – Brian Najapfour
A Holy and Happy 2015 To You – David Murray
Planning for the New Year – (My collection of new year links from last year)
Here are some good posts for Christmas:
Christmas Is the Greatest Mystery – David Mathis (DG)
No Low Too Low – Tim Challies
10 Ways We Can Remember To Be Christians This Christmas – Kevin DeYoung
The Story of Pain and Hope Behind “I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day” – Justin Taylor
Of The Father’s Love Begotten – Kevin DeYoung
I hope you have a merry Christmas celebrating the birth of our Savior!
It has been a busy week, so I haven’t had much chance for blogging. Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:
6 Great Reasons To Study Doctrine – Tim Challies
Six Truths about Sickness – Brian G. Najapfour
How to Use the Back of a Napkin to Prove to a Jehovah’s Witness That Jesus Is God – Greg Koukl (via Justin Taylor)
Don’t Give Up Meeting Together – Michael Kelley (IX Marks)
Hope you have a great Lord’s Day meeting together with your local church to worship our great God!
Here are some good posts on pastoral ministry:
What Is a Pastor’s True Calling? – Brian Croft (Practical Shepherding)
Advice to Young Pastors from Paul Tripp, John Frame, and John Yates – Matt Smethurst (TGC)
Over-Pastoring and Under-Pastoring – Tim Chester (Lifeway)
Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:
Take a Break from the Chaos – David Mathis (DG)
You need a break from the chaos, from the noise and the crowds, more than you may think at first. You need the spiritual disciplines of silence and solitude.
John Macarthur on Helps and Hindrances to Joy – David Murray
In a sermon on Rejoice Always (1 Thess. 5:16), John Macarthur listed eight sources of joy and then six thieves of joy. I’ve summarized them…
Discipleship in the “Age of Authenticity” – Trevin Wax
The church’s response must be to proclaim a gospel that comes from outside ourselves – no matter how countercultural this may seem. When people in our culture discover how exhausting it is to try to be “true to themselves,” when looking further and further inward eventually shows them they haven’t the resources to transform their own lives, the church must be ready to break in with good news that life change isn’t mustered up from within but granted through grace from without. We are to challenge the narrative that happiness is found solely in self-expression. The biblical view of the self is that we are broken, twisted, and sinful. The self is something that needs redemption, not expression.
Spurgeon’s Three R’s: A Useful Method for Evangelism – Jeff Robinson (TGC)
But recently, in my regular reading of C. H. Spurgeon’s sermons, I have discovered an excellent and pithy approach to the gospel, one that is fully biblical and establishes both man’s universal dilemma and God’s antidote in Christ: Spurgeon’s “Three R’s”: ruin, redemption, and regeneration. I like Spurgeon’s outline for several reasons: it is simple, the alliteration makes it easy to remember, the biblical texts all surround the number three (another aid to memory for the throes of nerve-busting, face-to-face evangelism).
Hope you have a great Lord’s Day with your local church exalting our great God!
To follow up on my last post, here are some helpful thoughts on the homosexuality issue:
Not That Kind of Homosexuality? – Kevin DeYoung
The Myth of Hate – Alan Shlemon (Stand To Reason)
Same-Sex Attraction in the Church – Sam Allberry
Five Commitments To Those Struggling With Same Sex Attraction In Our Midst – Kevin DeYoung
Brian J. Mikul 