Passion Points

On March 16, 2019March 16, 2019 By BrianIn PASSION Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

The Cumulative Effect of Our Little Choices – Randy Alcorn (EPM)
Following Christ isn’t magic. It requires repeated actions on our part, which develop into habits and life disciplines. Our spirituality hinges on the development of these little habits, such as Bible reading and memorization and prayer. In putting one foot in front of the other day after day, we become the kind of person who grows in Christlikeness.

Your Sin Begins with a Felt Need – David Bowden (DG)
The more we put our faith in the truth of who God is for us in Christ, the more he fills in the places within us that are lacking. As he does this, the Holy Spirit creates new desires within our hearts (Romans 8:1–11). These new desires cut temptation’s legs out from under it and lead us away from sin and toward holiness.

Who Was Saint Patrick and Should Christians Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day? – Stephen Nichols (Ligonier)
Perhaps we remember him best by reflecting on the “St. Patrick’s Breastplate,” which has traditionally been attributed to him. The word breastplate is a translation of the Latin word lorica, a prayer, especially for protection. These prayers would be written out and at times placed on shields of soldiers and knights as they went out to battle. St. Patrick’s Lorica points beyond himself and his adventurous life. It points to Christ, the one he proclaimed to the people who had taken him captive….

Instructive Worship – Andrew Roycroft
The beauty of true worship is that we address ourselves to God, but we also address one another with who God is and what he has said. We worship in our spirits, by the power of the Holy Spirit, but also with deep intellectual investment, with an eye fixed on the glory of the gospel as well as a heart tuned to its sentiments. Such worship is deeply didactic, it retrains the flagging disciple, it prohibits empty sentiment, it draws our attention and our affection towards the God in whose presence and power we are meeting.

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day!

Books Collection

On March 13, 2019March 11, 2019 By BrianIn Book Look, PASSION Collections

Here are some good posts about reading books:

8 Ways to Read (a Lot) More Books This Year – Neil Pasricha (HBR)

10 Tips For Reading In 2019 – Jon Coombs

How to Remember What You Read – David Qaoud (GR)

5 Questions to Ask of a Book – Tim Challies

Ministry Collection

On March 6, 2019March 4, 2019 By BrianIn Ministry Moments

Here are some good posts on preaching from 9Marks:

Pastor, Aim to Preach Simple Sermons – Jeff Wiesner

Preacher, Study the Text—But Also Study Your People – Sean DeMars

What Makes a Good Sermon? Five Questions to Ask – Josh Vincent

Passion Points

On March 2, 2019 By BrianIn PASSION Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

Why You’ll Never Be Free Until You Start Obeying God – Kevin DeYoung (Crossway)
We sometimes define freedom as the ability to do whatever we want to do, but that’s not really how the Bible understands freedom. Freedom is the ability to do what we ought to do—that’s real freedom.

God’s Hidden Purposes in Your Suffering – Leah Baugh (Core Christianity)
God is often working not just for our good but for the good of others through us. Sometimes in our American context, we can get a little wrapped up in our own little world. We can think that our suffering is just all about us and God, that God is only doing something in my life. But as Dr. Ferguson also points out in his sermon, the truth is that God is always working in multiple lives and in multiple ways all at once.

How Evangelism Is Kind of Like Fishing – Tim Challies
The great work God is accomplishing in this world is catching people for himself. He’s saving them by his grace and for his glory. What’s amazing is that he uses people like you and me to help accomplish that. He saves people through the good news of the gospel and he tells you and me to speak out that news. He calls us to be fishers of men, to catch people alive.

Desperately Seeking Transcendence – Own Strachan
When we gather for the weekly worship service, we gather as those starved for God, and starved for transcendence. We have been swimming all week in the normal, trivial, earthly, ordinary, and natural. We need the abnormal. We need the essential. We need the heavenly. We need the extraordinary. We need what is above nature. We need the supernatural. This is what weekly worship gives us. It does not fundamentally give us a little “touch from the Lord,” as if all we need is a divine pat on the shoulder, a quick grin from a hall-crossing deity. It gives us a brush with God. We hide besides Moses in the cleft of the rock, expectantly and reverently awaiting the passing-by of the radiance of the appearing of God’s glory.

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day with the Lord!

Passion Points

On February 9, 2019February 9, 2019 By BrianIn PASSION Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

The Spiritual Dangers of Disconnecting from Creation – Scott Martin (TGC)
Creation is not an end in itself, something to be worshiped in place of the Creator. It is rather something that points us—if we are willing to pay attention—to a good, gracious, powerful, extravagant, and loving God. A world that disregards or distances itself from creation is a world that will naturally disregard and distance itself from God.

Quiet and Deep Christianity – Andrew Roycroft (Thinking Pastorally)
Ours is an age of fragmentation, of intellectual hopscotch, of results-oriented activity on the one hand and mindless entertainment on the other. We have demolished the stonewalls and uprooted the hedgerows of our intellectual past in favour of speed, convenience, and leisure; the mass production of information on which to gorge ourselves, without a thought for the mental and emotional habitats which have been destroyed in the process. Sooner or later we will have accommodated these changes to such a degree that we won’t even know to feel regret, and by the time my young children reach adulthood the concepts of silence, stillness, meditation, deep reading, and unbroken thought will be so far back in our history that they may scarcely seem real…. A huge, and largely unaddressed, issue is what kind of effect will this tempo and tone have on the life and work of the local church?

An Open Letter to the Timid Evangelist – Brian Hedges (Crossway)
In diagnosing our evangelistic disorders, it helps to remember that effective personal evangelism depends on the convergence of multiple factors including opportunity, character, and skill. Here are a few thoughts about each.

We Don’t Sing for Fun – Tim Challies
One of the trends that has swept our society through the past decades is the “funification” of pretty much everything….Yet singing is not prescribed for Christian worship for the purpose of fun. It actually serves a far higher purpose…

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day!

Book Collection

On January 30, 2019 By BrianIn Book Look, PASSION Collections

This is a bit late, but here are the top five books I read in 2018, followed by links to other best books of 2018 posts. You are bound to find some good suggestions.

My Top Five Books

1. Faithfulness and Holiness – J. I. Packer & J. C. Ryle

2. How Should We Develop Biblical Friendship – Michael Haykin & Joel Beeke

3. Reset – David Murray

4. The Rest of God – Mark Buchanan

5. The Art of Rest – Adam Mabry

Other Lists

Tim Challies (includes lists from several bloggers)

Happy reading!

Passion Points

On January 19, 2019 By BrianIn PASSION Points1 Comment

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

End of Year Check-Up Questions For Christians – David Qaoud (GR)
In no particular order, here are some questions to help gauge your spiritual health:

Every Sin / Every Temptation Not Taken – Jamsco
Every time you sin, it is an act of …
Every time you’re tempted to sin and resist it, it is an act of …

You Can Memorize Scripture This Year – Andy Naselli (DG)
With the New Year here, I want to encourage you: you can memorize Scripture this year. It does not take superhuman skill or fanatic devotion to write God’s word on your mind and heart. It requires some passion, planning, and persistence.

What’s Encouraging You at Your Church? – Tim Challies
A couple of days ago I was eager for some encouragement, so put the question out to Twitter: What’s something encouraging you’ve seen in your church over the past few months? The answers were a blessing to me! And, just so you can be encouraged as well, I thought I’d share some of them with you. Here’s how the Lord is at work in churches around the world…

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day celebrating our great God with your local church!