Tag: Church

Passion Points

On By BrianIn PASSION Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

What Dulls Your Appetite for God? – Marshall Segal (DG)
We are prone to let the pleasures and burdens of daily life become excuses for putting off Christ and his commands. When the cost of discipleship rises, when the cross we bear weighs heavier and heavier, we are tempted to scramble for excuses not to come.

Scripture Before Phone, and Other Habits That Could Change Your Life – Trevin Wax
We underestimate the power of habits, especially those we adopt unconsciously, as a result of our busy and hurried lives. We like to think of ourselves as spontaneous and authentic in our worship and work, when in reality we’re enslaved to habits and patterns that dominate our waking moments. As a consequence, we are wonderless in an age of wonders. Our technology has only freed us up . . . to live like slaves.

Lord, Deliver Me from Distraction – Jon Bloom (DG)
We’re becoming conditioned to distraction, and it’s harming our ability to listen and think carefully, to be still, to pray, and to meditate. Which means it is a spiritual danger, an evil from which we need God’s deliverance.

How to Encourage that Preacher – Tim Challies
These are just a few examples of the kind of encouragement preachers love to hear. I expect you’ve noticed that the best ways to encourage a pastor about his preaching are also the best ways to personally gain the most benefit from it. Prepare yourself to bring this kind of encouragement and you’ll prepare yourself to see Jesus instead of the preacher, to better understand the passage, to apply it to your life, and to discuss it with others so you can apply it together.

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day hungry for God and His Word!

Passion Points

On By BrianIn PASSION Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

God Has a Plan Through Your Life – Trevin Wax
We might say, then, that God doesn’t have just a plan for your life, but also a plan through your life. His master plan involves not only the circumstances you will confront, but also the good works you will accomplish. God will bless others through you.

What I Pack In My Spiritual First Aid Kit – Tim Challies
As I journey round the world, I know I need to carry a medical first aid kit with me. As I journey through this life, I know I need the spiritual equivalent. It has served me well and, I trust, will continue to as I plod on in this great pilgrimage.

What Our Anger Is Telling Us – Jonathan Parnell (DG)
If we find ourselves angry about getting snubbed in social media, or being cut off in traffic, or going unrecognized for work, or having an idea shut down, or feeling underappreciated by our spouse — the problem might be that we love ourselves too much.

Enjoy Your Summer Vacation—Just Don’t Vacate The Church – Benjamin Inglas (TGC)
The last few years, however, I’ve noticed a trend. It almost seems that as students return home, cottages open, and lakes warm up, Christians begin to adopt a vacational mindset towards the church. The problem here is not planning a few weeks away with the family but the symptoms that emerge when church fellowship is viewed as optional, inconvenient, or even unhelpful. Convinced of the danger of this trend and convicted by my own failure in the matter, here are five reasons why I believe we should all make church a priority not only for the summertime but throughout the year.

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day!

Passion Points

On By BrianIn PASSION Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

Why We Grow So Slowly – Ray Ortlund
In his Thoughts on Religious Experience, Archibald Alexander asked why we grow so slowly as Christians….

Let’s Just Be Honest and Admit We Hate One Another – Mike Leake
…hatred does four things. First, it keeps alive ill feelings towards others. It keeps stoking the flames. Secondly, it continually finds faults at the infirmities of others. Thirdly, it turns the least little slip into a big deal. And lastly, it has deep bitterness toward the most trifling or even imaginary thing—it wants to be mad.

Six Steps Out of Disappointment – David Murray (DG)
Our hopes are dashed. Our dreams are shattered. Our expectations are unfulfilled. External events and the decisions of others produce the agony of disappointment….how do we recover from it?

The Key To Making the Most Out of Congregational Singing – Tim Challies
When you know the people, you know their song. While you sing with them, you sing for them. You sing not as fifty or a hundred individuals, but as a single community. You sing to minister and you sing to be ministered to.

Hope you have a great Lord’s Day!

Passion Points

On 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!