God gave us regular, weekly times to stop in order to know (because we’re bound to forget) that it is God who is God, not us.
– Adam Mabry in The Art of Rest
The Need to Stop
Tag: God
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
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.
Abundantly
This is profound consolation for us as we find ourselves time and again wandering away from the Father, looking for soul calm anywhere but in his embrace and instruction. Returning to God in fresh contrition, however ashamed and disgusted with ourselves, he will not tepidly pardon. He will abundantly pardon. He does not merely accept us. He sweeps us up in his arms again.
– Dane Ortlund in Gentle and Lowly
Infinite
Christianity is not about coming to God so that he can direct us to something or someone better than himself, some other thing that will make us ultimately happy. No, God himself is the one in whom all our joy, pleasure, and happiness are found. If we are made for infinite happiness – and that is what every person in the world is groping after – then the only place one will find it is in the one, and only one, who is infinite.
– Matthew Barrett in None Greater
Grasping For God
…no one can know or see the very essence of God. He is so glorious, and his glory so infinite, that we would be consumed.
– Matthew Barrett in None Greater
God Loves You
God loves you. He proved it by coming to earth as a baby for you. He proved it by dying on a cross for you. He proved it by forgiving your sin, and giving you a new life with Him now and forevermore.
God loves you – that might be most important you hear today.
God loves you. But maybe you doubt it because of some sin in your life, and you wonder how he could love someone like you. But he came and died to pay for that sin, to wash away all the shame and guilt of that sin. That sin is gone. And he did it, because he loves you.
God loves you. But maybe you doubt it because of some suffering in your life. If God loved me, why am I going through this?
But his love is not found in keeping us from suffering. We live in a fallen world, and because of that, there is sickness and death and tragedy and terrible actions by others. We will suffer.
Jesus suffered, and we will suffer too.
But his love is not found in keeping us from suffering. Rather, his love is found in being there to help us in our suffering. He will never leave you nor forsake you. He is with you always to end of age.
And at end the end of the age, He will come again and bring all of our suffering to an end.
He came for you. He died for you. He washed away all your sins. He purchased a new life for you. He is with you in your trials. And he is coming again for you. All because he loves you.
Grasping for God
What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.
– A.W. Tozer in The Knowledge of the Holy
God Never Sleep
God never sleeps. God has been alert, fully functioning, and perfectly attentive for every single nanosecond of history. What’s more, not sleeping has never caused him to become anything less than perfect for even a moment. I get grumpy and irritable when I have to wake up half an hour early; God has never slept, yet remains utterly flawless.
– Geoff Robson in Thank God for Bedtime
An Expression of Trust
The willingness to lie down and sleep is itself an expression of trust in the sovereign hand of God.
– Adrian Reynolds in And So To Bed…
Brian J. Mikul 