Passion Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

7 Ways to Fight Distraction During Prayer – Gavin (Soliloquium)

Discontentment Says Something about You, Not Your Circumstances – Philip Graham Ryken (Crossway)

Beware the Busyness of Summer Break – Dave Zuleger (DG)

Why I Sit at the Front – Tim Chester

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

Passion Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

Making the Most of Your Bible Reading – Godwin Sathianathan (FTC)
God desires to speak something to you. He has something for you in His Word for your particular day. Do you believe that? Are you eagerly anticipating what He might say to you today?

3 Truths to Speak To Your Temptation – Tim Challies
Sin promises joy but brings pain, sin promises happiness but brings shame, sin promises life but brings death, sin promises freedom but brings guilt, sin promises heaven but brings hell. It is always, always a lie.

Play Hard – Jared Wilson
We need to remember to play hard. We need to take having fun seriously. This means….being mindful in our rest, play, and fun that these things are gifts from God meant to help us celebrate being made in God’s image as Creator and project in some way the creative story he is telling with the universe.

Ten Things I Learned at Church on Sunday – Erik Raymond
God met us as a church in the ordinary and showed us his extraordinary faithfulness, grace, beauty, and power.

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

Passion Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

Jerry Bridge’s Seven Standout Spiritual Lessons – Tim Challies
Lesson One: The Bible is meant to be applied to specific life situations. This includes both God’s commands to be obeyed and His promises to be relied upon…

Why Patience Doesn’t Come Naturally – Sam Storms
First, impatience is the product of selfish entitlement in the human soul. I get impatient because I actually believe I deserve better…

How to Kill Sinful Anger– Jon Bloom (DG)
All sinful anger is hard to fight. It’s a selfish, hot-blooded passion our flesh enjoys indulging. But I find it particularly difficult to fight the sinful anger that I feel I have a right to feel…

No Normal Sundays: Interview with Bob Kauflin– David Mathis (DG)
Worshiping Jesus together with his church is an awesome privilege…

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day!

Passion Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

4 Ways to Cling to the Lord – Sam Storms

Four Warning Signs You May Be Wandering from the Truth – Colin Smith

Who Will You Serve and Surprise This Week? – Tim Challies

Hearing the Voice of the Lord in Your Pastor’s Sermon – Danny Hyde

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day!

Passion Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

4 Ways to Cling to the Lord – Sam Storms (Crossway)
The temptation to forget God is always present. But there is a way to maintain one’s devotion to the Lord. Joshua’s counsel in Joshua 23:6-11 is especially helpful and can be summarized using four As.

How to Resist Temptation’s Mirage Moment– Jon Bloom (DG)
Temptation is a disorienting, defiling experience when evil is presented to us as good. Destruction comes dressed up to look like happiness.

5 Things You Can Give to God Every Day – Tim Challies
The heart of productivity is glorifying God by serving others. It is carefully and deliberately considering the things God calls us to do, and deploying all that we’ve got for his glory and the good of people made in his image. It is giving back to him what he has entrusted to each one of us.

Don’t Be Embarrassed by Your Ordinary Church – Erik Raymond (For the Church)
Is your church ordinary? Small? Well, my Christian friend, if it is preaching the gospel and endeavoring to help others to know and follow Jesus then it is not insignificant. It is powerfully important and surpassingly glorious.

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day with your ordinary church and your extraordinary God!

Passion Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

The Joy of Self-Discipline – Tim Challies

Four Steps to Kill Nagging Sins – Gavin Ortlund (DG)

15 Discernment Diagnostics – Kevin DeYoung

4 Essentials for Finishing Well – Jerry Bridges (Crossway)

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day growing in the truth of God’s Word with your local church!

Passion Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

5 Ways the Ascension Benefits You– Steve Mathewson (TGC)
His ascension wasn’t merely an exclamation point at the end of the resurrection; it provided his followers with power, grace, mercy, presence, gifts, and anticipation enabling them to advance his mission.

A Helpful Way To Think About Personal Discipleship – Mike Leake
First, I make a concentrated effort to spend time with people. Secondly, every time I spend time with them my goal is to leave them better than when we started—to help them take one step closer to Christ. That’s it. Every time I meet with you I want to love you and want to help you see Jesus a little better.

Governed by Bad News or Good News? – David Prince
Like Paul, we must make a radical commitment to be governed by Gospel truth, rather than our emotions, or the bad news on the 24-hour news shows. If bad news becomes our most prevalent reality, then our emotions will enslave us. But Gospel truth will always set us free. Paul is moved by the bad news he saw, but he was not governed by it.

3 Reasons You Should See Going to Church as a Privilege, Not a Chore – Trevin Wax
Church attendance is not a chore. It’s a gift. Therefore, it should elicit gratitude, not griping.

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

Passion Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

The Character of the Christian: Respected by Outsiders – Tim Challies
What kind of reputation do you have among the unbelievers you work with? Do you work hard and avoid meddling?

How Your Habits Show and Shape Your Heart – David Mathis (TGC)
The danger with having to make the decision all over again every time about these vital means of God’s ongoing grace is our wandering hearts may choose not to avail ourselves of his goodness. These are habits worth forming, because hearing his voice (in his Word), having his ear (in prayer), and belonging to his body (in the local church) are the lifeblood for the Christian life….  The signal joy in forming “habits of grace” is being freed from focus on self, on our technique, to turn our soul’s gaze to Jesus. After all, the great goal of the spiritual disciplines—the end of the means of grace—is knowing and enjoying Jesus.

Three Biblical Practices for Prayer – Colin Smith (UTB)
How easy it is to grow weary, lose focus, and become ungrateful. And yet, these very weaknesses—the same weaknesses faced by the disciples—point us to the One who prays for us. Like the disciples, let us be encouraged by Christ’s reminder to watch and pray. His example of steadfastness, watchfulness, and thankfulness teaches us to rely on what God can do through prayer rather than rely on ourselves.

Isolation from the Church Is Dangerous – Josh Buice (DBG)
We must learn to see the church as a blessing from God rather than an inconvenience. We must never look at the church as a violation to our spiritual privacy fence. We were never called to walk the journey of the Christian life alone. Surround yourself with gospel preaching, gospel singing, and gospel friends…

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

Passion Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

Forgetting the Past – Ed Welch (CCEF)
Scripture does help us with our painful pasts, but it does more than that. It tells us to forget things we want to remember, and remember things we are likely to forget.

The Character of the Christian: Mature and Humble – Tim Challies
Christian leaders—and all Christians—are to strive to become more like Christ—they are to grow in spiritual maturity. As they grow in maturity, they will necessarily grow in humility.

10 Things to Remember When Reading the Bible – Vern Poythress (Crossway)
God’s redemption takes place in history. Christianity is not merely a religious philosophy, a set of general truths about God and the world. At its heart is the gospel, the good news that Christ has come and has lived and died and has risen from the dead, and now lives to intercede for us. God has worked out our salvation by coming in the person of Christ and acting in time and space. The message of what he has done now goes out to the nations…

18 Things to Pray for Your Church – Jonathan Leeman (TGC)
It’s comparatively easy for you and me to pray for ourselves, our families, and our friends. But how can we learn how to pray more fervently and consistently for our local churches?

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day!

Passion Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

The Character of the Christian: Family Leaders – Tim Challies
From beginning to end the Bible places upon every parent the responsibility to teach and train children and in that way to exercise kind, caring, loving oversight of them.

The Unappreciated Blessing of Busyness – David Qaoud (GR)
See, there’s a difference between busy and hurry. Busy is when you have a lot on your plate. Hurry is when you have too much on your plate.

What is grumbling? The seditious sin of grumbling pt 1
Contagion of Complaint: The seditious sin of grumbling pt 2
Can griping be godly? The seditious sin of grumbling pt 3
– Clint Archer (Cripplegate)
To God, our complaining about a situation he has allowed into our life is offensive. Because of Jesus’ death, we are in a relationship with God, he is our Father, we are his children, he loves us and he provides for us. To complain about what he has handed to us is to slap away the gracious hand of providence….  Are Christians just always supposed to suck it up? No. You can respond without sinful grumbling and disputing, just bear these five principles in mind…

5 Distinguishing Marks of a Fruitful Church – Jared Wilson
Do the people of the church speak more highly of Jesus than simply doing good or knowing the right doctrine? Do the pastors exhibit high esteem of Jesus? Are they Jesusy people?

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day!