Tag: Gentleness

Saturday Strands

On By BrianIn Saturday Strands

Here are some loose strands for our growth:

Living From Approval, Not For Approval – Dave Harvey
Let me ask you a question: What do you think God feels about you right now? Irritation over your flaws — that tendency towards gluttony, or your inconsistency to getting up each morning to pray? Does God want to withdraw due to our failures — the impatient word with a wife or child; the angry outburst provoked by someone cutting you off on the freeway? Does he look down with a cosmic frown of disapproval on you, so prone to wander and full of weakness?

Love (All) Your Neighbors: A Surprising Test of True Faith – Scott Hubbard (DG)
So, if you want to see someone’s spiritual sincerity more clearly, don’t mainly watch him in church. Watch him with his children. Watch him at work. Watch him in traffic. Watch him when offended. For you will know him by his neighbor-love.

Can We Forgive When the Offender Doesn’t Repent? – Mike Wittmer (TGC)
Forgiveness means to pardon an offender by paying/absorbing his moral debt. When an offender repents, it’s clear we should both pay and pardon. We absorb the moral cost of being sinned against and assure the offender of our forgiveness. When the offender doesn’t repent for whatever reason—perhaps he’s hard-hearted or has died—we must separate the payment from the pardon. We don’t pardon him (and gloss over his offenses), because he hasn’t repented, yet we still must absorb the moral cost.

The Desecration of Man – Carl Trueman (First Things)
Contra Nietzsche, God is not dead. But we moderns have used Nietzsche’s claim as an excuse for desecrating man, for turning ourselves and others into insignificant, sexualized, animate lumps of meat. Only a reclamation, and a proclamation, of the living God in the vital worship of the Church will consecrate man and bring him back from the brink of a nihilistic, dehumanized abyss.

Flashback: Gentle Discipline
Paul is weary of Corinthians, who are like wayward children, and yet he wants to treat them with gentleness. He doesn’t want to come with a rod, but with gentle love. Notice he doesn’t demand, command, or threaten. But clothed with the gentleness of Christ, he entreats, he urges, he beseechs, he appeals to them. His discipline is gentle.

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

Saturday Strands

On By BrianIn Saturday Strands

Loose strands for our growth:

The Christian’s Keystone Habit – Reagan Rose (RP)
But if you begin by carefully identifying a single keystone habit and focusing all of your attention on that, you’ll discover that other good habits follow it. So, this leads to a very important question: What keystone habit should we begin with?

Hospitality: A Command for Our Joy – Kyleigh Dunn (GCD)
If I hadn’t grown up in a community that loved hospitality, I wouldn’t naturally think of having people over for a meal. I can cook, but most of what I make is not that exciting. I love being with others, but too much social interaction exhausts me. Despite those excuses and the uncertainties children add to the picture, we’ve chosen to prioritize hospitality. This is in part because of the joy it’s brought to our lives but also because Scripture commands us to.

A Deadly Foe of Spiritual Growth – Tim Challies
As we live out the Christian life and cooperate with the Holy Spirit through the precious means of grace, we face a number of foes, a number of enemies that mean to derail us from our pursuit of God. Of all those enemies, none may be more prevalent and none more deadly than complacency.

Everyone Has Their Own Facts Now – Patrick Miller (Endeavor)
Indeed, our very concept of “being informed” is changed by this context. We become misled in our opinions, not because someone lied to us (though plenty of that happens online) but because online information is disjointed, superficial, and contextless. It creates what Postman calls “the illusion knowledge” while leading its consumers further away from actual knowledge. As a result, Postman writes, “we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed.” The problem is that you can correct ignorance. “But what shall we do,” asks Postman, “if we take ignorance to be knowledge?”

Flashback: Gentle Marriage
This is the great test of gentleness. It is easy to put on show in public, but what are we like at home? Are we gentle with each other, or are we harsh, brawling, loud, or manipulative?

Saturday Strands

On By BrianIn Saturday Strands

Loose strands for our growth:

God Beckons Through Beauty: Where Our Deepest Longings Lead – Jon Bloom (DG)
We long to be in the place where — or more accurately, with the Person from whom — all the beauty, all the glory, comes from….

How to Reach Our Neighbors in a Post-Christian Culture? – Josh Butler (TGC)
For our neighbors to encounter Jesus and trust in him for salvation, the church must embody the reality of his kingdom in practical ways that bear witness to the good news of his reign. What would this look like in today’s post-Christian culture, where some have never heard Jesus’s gospel and most simply consider it irrelevant to modern life? Three themes are significant….

The Secret Of Contentment – Seth Lewis
Think about it: If you tie your contentment to anything in this world, then it will always be insecure. Everything we have and experience here on earth, no matter how wonderful, is temporary and fragile.

Understanding the Metamodern Mood – Brett McCracken (TGC)
Why, when we look at contemporary pop culture—movies, music, TV, campus protests, meme culture, and TikTok (especially TikTok)—does the word “incoherence” often come to mind? Why does so much today feel random, disconnected, contradictory, aimless, and altogether void of coherent logic and purpose?

Flashback: Gentle Words
Gentle words can diffuse an angry conflict and bring healing and life to the hurting. Harsh words can stir up conflict and break the spirit of the bruised and battered. God calls us to turn from harsh words and grow in gentleness.

Saturday Strands

On By BrianIn Saturday Strands

Loose strand for our growth:

Good News! You Can’t Engineer an Experience with God – Trevin Wax
The presence of God can feel elusive to us, even when we ask for it, because prayer isn’t magic. We aren’t conjurers. We cannot manufacture a true religious experience. Prayer is an encounter with the living God. The feeling that sometimes results from an encounter with God is uncontrollable because we’re dealing with a personal God, not a force we can harness through incantations.

Win the Next Generation with Love – Kevin DeYoung (Crossway)
Jesus said it best: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). Jesus did not say, “They will know you are my disciples by how attuned you are to new trends in youth culture.” Or “They will know you are my disciples by the hip atmosphere you create.” Give up on “relevance” and try love. If they see love in you, love for each other, love for the world, and love for them, they will listen. No matter who “they” are.

When Self-Centeredness Sets In – justinmykoagpangan (By Grace Alone)
We are naturally self-centered. We live as if we are the center of the universe. We live to achieve what we want in life. We live for the aim of our self-centered pursuits in life. Our dreams, wants, and longings revolve around us.

The Case Against the Abortion Pill – Rachel Roth Aldhizer (First Things)
In this story, medical abortions induce an unnatural process, one in which up to 20 percent of women experience a complication—four times the complication rate of surgical abortion. The medical abortion process is designed to hide adverse events and discourage patient follow-up. Women seeking abortion receive lower standards of care than do women suffering miscarriage….

Flashback: A Gentle Life
A gentle person doesn’t attack others with her words. She doesn’t speak evil of people, slandering and maligning them. She doesn’t fight with others, quarreling or brawling. A gentle person is courteous, considerate, and polite towards others.

Saturday Strands

On By BrianIn Saturday Strands

Loose strands for our growth:

The Awakening We Need: Why the Reformed Pray for Revival – Ray Ortlund (DG)
“Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?” May Psalm 85:6 grab our hearts and never let us go!

Is the ‘Silent Treatment’ a Godly Approach to Conflict? – Joe Carter (TGC)
Passive-aggressive tactics are ungodly because they promote division over unity, reflect anger rather than understanding, and withhold forgiveness and love in an effort to gain control.

How (and How Not) to Fight Sin – J. Garrett Kell (Crossway)
Fighting sin is spiritual warfare, and warfare requires a battle plan. If left to our own devices, we would have little success against our unseen enemy. Thankfully, God’s word supplies wisdom to assist us in eluding the evil one’s snares.

Rome Is Not Our Home: Live Counterculturally During Election Season – Pete Nicholas (TGC)
Charity is an underemphasized Christian virtue today, and to be charitable requires eschewing suspicion, cynicism, and laziness. It means good conversation and prayerful reflection to inhabit another’s point of view.

Flashback: The Spirit’s Fruit
And the gentle Spirit works in our lives to make us a gentle people in the image of our Triune God. The gentle Spirit works in our lives to make us gentle in situations where we otherwise couldn’t on our own. The Spirit works to replace our tendency towards harshness, loudness, and quarrelsomeness with a Spirit-led gentleness.

Saturday Strands

On By BrianIn Saturday Strands

Loose strands for our growth:

Ask God for More of God: Lessons for a Better Prayer Life – Matt Smethurst (DG)
The ability to converse with the King of the universe isn’t just an honor — it’s the glorious union of two disparate truths: awe before an infinite being and intimacy with a personal friend. Because we’re made to know a triune God — a merry, generous, hospitable community of persons — prayer is the furthest thing from a sterile concept or boring duty. It’s an invitation into unimaginable joy.

The Soundtrack of Heaven – Tim Challies
God is the master of transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary, the mundane into the miraculous. God is the master of accepting little and multiplying it to much. God is the master of taking our little contributions and making them the great means through which he blesses his people and brings glory to his name. And I am convinced we will one day learn that the soundtrack of heaven is made up of the simplest of sounds that God has joined together into the most stirring of symphonies.

We Need Restorative Rest – Jonathan Noyes (STR)
But we weren’t created to be “on” all the time. Part of the health of a Sabbath is the “ceasing from” so that we might attend to other things that get drowned out by our connection addiction. Entire aspects of our humanity are withering because we’re neglecting them in favor of swiping and scrolling through curated social media pages.

Evil Doesn’t Always Show Up Waving a Flag – Trevin Wax
When we look at evil up close, we hope to walk away with a greater sense of moral clarity, and part of that clarity is the realization we’re all capable of justifying, minimizing, or engaging in evil.

Flashback: The Savior’s Example, Part 2
More often than we think, the people around us are bruised, battered, smoldering, weary, tired, and fragile. We need to follow Jesus’ example and treat one another carefully, with great gentleness that builds up and gives life.

Saturday Strands

On By BrianIn Saturday Strands1 Comment

Here are some loose strands from various places for your growth:

How to Draw Near to God: Learning Prayer from the Puritans – Jeremy Walker (DG)
As we listen to Puritan and Puritanesque praying, putting our ears to their doors, what do we hear? What can we seek to imitate?

Radical Christian Gentleness in an Era of Addictive Outrage – George Marsden (TGC)
…we live in an age when social media puts an immense premium on cultivating anger and indignation. We’re experiencing a pandemic of addictive outrage that spreads uncontrollably on the internet. Polarized political hostilities have made the situation worse, and Christians of all sorts, whether on the right or left, are hardly immune.

Are You a “Yeah, But…” Christian? – Tim Challies
I have long observed a fascinating but concerning tendency when I read one of the Bible’s clear commands. I have observed it in myself and I have observed it in others. It’s the tendency to turn quickly from what the Bible does command to what it does not, from the plainest sense of one of God’s directions to a list of exceptions or exclusions. It’s the tendency to hear what God says and immediately reply, “Yeah, but…”

The Spiritual Promise the Cinema Can’t Deliver – Trevin Wax
All this is spiritual language. When the lights dim, spiritual illumination begins. All this is tapping into the deepest longings of humanity—for connection, for growth, for inspiration, and for stories that bring resolution.

Flashback: The Savior’s Example
If you think him a harsh taskmaster, then that is how you will treat others. But if we grasp that Jesus is gentle towards us – if we rest in his gentle heart, then we can learn from him and share his gentleness with those around us.

Saturday Strands

On By BrianIn Uncategorized

Here are some loose strands from various places for your growth:

The Difficult Discipline of Joy: What Keeps Us from Seeing God? – Clinton Manley (DG)
Joy is indeed a difficult discipline. Greed, self-centeredness, and the relentless pull of inattention constantly creep in and cut us off from divine delights.

With Friendship in Decline, Belonging Is a Powerful Apologetic – Sam Allberry (TGC)
What will show the presence of heaven itself among God’s people? What will show that God is alive and well and right here? It’s our love for one another. This isn’t an afterthought, as though what really mattered were other things and our love for one another was the icing on the cake. No, the quality of our relational life is to be an apologetic to the world around us.

Humility and Overcommitted Busyness – Alasdair Groves (Ligonier)
I want to direct our gaze to a significant blemish on humility in our own generation where we need further chipping and sanding: our overcommitted busyness.

Unpacking “Look inside Yourself” – Brian Rosner (Crossway)
Humans are not self-defining, isolated units. The biggest problem with only looking inside to find yourself is that it is hopelessly reductionistic, ignoring crucial dimensions of what it means to be a human being. Human identity does not exist in isolation, it cannot be defined without reference to the narrative in which it finds itself. We know ourselves by looking around to our closest relationships, back and forward to our shared life stories, and upward to something bigger than ourselves. We are profoundly social, deeply story-driven, and we have eternity in our hearts.

Flashback: The Shepherd’s Care
Is this how you think of God – as a gentle shepherd?

Passion Points

On By BrianIn PASSION Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

Big Thanks for Little Things – Trevin Wax
Grief is good. Lament is appropriate. But gratitude-infused grief and hopeful lament—that’s even better. So, think twice next time you pour that cup of coffee, or slice that delicious pineapple, or open that God-breathed Book on your desk. And give God thanks. He sees you. He loves you. And every good and perfect gift comes from him.

My Gratitude List – Tim Gombis
Each morning I take a very long walk and I begin it by mentally rehearsing my gratitude list. This is important because it reminds me of my identity and the narrative I inhabit. I live in a world of plenty, filled with rich gifts. And I am someone dearly loved by God and I am the recipient of so many good things.

Embracing Fragility – Y. Bonesteele
Have we forgotten that we are not all-powerful? That we are not all-knowing? That we are not in control? Only God is.

Gentleness Amid the Germs – Kristin Pichura
We can and must speak and act with gentleness: with a humble spirit that is strengthened by God’s grace (Heb. 13:9) and motivated by His amazing love that has been poured into our hearts (Romans 5:5).

10 Ways to Thrive in Quarantine – Mark Oden & Stefano Mariotti (TGC)
Here people are finding various ways to survive, but wouldn’t it be good to not only survive, but to redeem it as a gift from a generous heavenly Father?

How to Care for Friends with Anxiety and Depression – Emma Scrivener
“Social distancing” has become the phrase of the day, but what we really need is physical distancing. Socially, we need to be reaching out, more than ever before.

Church, Don’t Let Coronavirus Divide You – Brett McCracken (TGC)
In such a precarious and polarizing environment, how can churches move forward in beautiful unity (Ps. 133) rather than ugly division? It won’t be easy. But by God’s grace and the power of the Holy Spirit working to unify us in ways our flesh resists, the opportunity is there for us to be a countercultural model for the rest of the world. 

Hope you have a good Lord’s Day!

Passion Points

On By BrianIn PASSION Points

Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:

10 Things You Should Know about the Presence of God – J. Ryan Lister (Crossway)
The church has two clear purposes: 1) the church works within itself for the sanctification of its members to prepare God’s people for God’s present and future presence; and 2) the church works externally to share the gospel so that the lost may enjoy God’s presence now and forever as well.

Masters of Self: Cultivating Gentleness in an Age of Outrage – Scott Swain (DG)
When the vice of anger is the spiritual diagnosis, Holy Scripture prescribes the virtue of gentleness or meekness as the spiritual medicine. Gentleness is the spiritual virtue that tempers or moderates the desire for vengeance we experience when we suffer or witness injustice. According to Protestant moral theologian Niels Hemmingsen, gentleness is “the virtue by which minds that have been rashly stirred up toward hatred of someone are restrained by kindness.”

Six Marks of Maturity to Look for in Your Life – Colin Marshall (SA)
So, who are the really mature Christians in your church? What’s the grid that we use to measure maturity?

One of the Church’s Greatest Needs – R. Kent Hughes (Crossway)
The church cannot prosper with deception among its members—and God wanted to make this clear for all time. Deception wounds the body of Christ—makes it dysfunctional—and is a sin against God! This is why Peter cried to Ananias at the moment of his death, “You have not lied to man but to God” (Acts 5:4).

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