Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:
Why Believing That God Is Sovereign Makes All the Difference – Erik Raymond (Crossway)
Finding Peace When the Whole World Is Going To Pieces – Stephen Altrogge
10 Things You Should Know about Your Smartphone – Tony Reinke (Crossway)
2 Ways To Look at the People in Your Church – Tim Challies
Hope you have a great Lord’s Day with your local church!
Tim Challies recently finished an excellent series on eight things God hates. In Challies’ words:
The God who loves must also hate. The God who loves all that is good and pure and holy must hate all that is evil and defiled and perverse.
Last week I provided links to the first four posts. Below are links to the final four. Again I encourage you to take the time to read them, and examine your life. Where do you see these tendencies in your life? For which of these might you need to repent and find forgiveness in the sacrifice of our Savior?
Tim Challies recently finished an excellent series on eight things God hates. In Challies’ words:
The God who loves must also hate. The God who loves all that is good and pure and holy must hate all that is evil and defiled and perverse.
If we are going to love God, we must hate what he hates. If we are going to love people, we must hate what God hates since these things that he hates are also hurtful to people.
So below are links to the first four. I encourage you to take the time to read them, and examine your life. Where do you see these tendencies in your life? For which of these might you need to repent and find forgiveness in the sacrifice of our Savior?
(86, 89) How does God compare to other gods (86:8-10, 89:5-8)?
How should we respond?
81:8-10 –
82:1-8 –
83:18 –
86:9, 89:5 –
(90) How does God compare to people (v2-4)?
How should we respond (v12)? What does that mean?
(85-86, 89) What attributes of our great God do you find in 85:10-11, 86:5 & 15, 89:14?
How should we respond?
85:1-7 –
86:1-4, 16-17 –
89:1 –
(84, 89) Our great God is present with his people. How should we respond to his presence (84:1-12, 89:15)?
(89) Describe the covenant our great God made in v3-4, 19-37.
In what ways does this covenant point to Jesus?
What does it mean for us?
(81-90) Which verse(s) or psalm especially speaks to you, and why?
If we find that we are not at rest, it is because we are not resting in God’s goodness.– Philip Graham Ryken in Discovering God
The fruit of joy is not rooted in circumstances, but in God’s goodness and ultimately in God Himself.– Stanley Gale in A Vine-Ripened Life
Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:
How Scripture Empowers Personal Holiness – John MacArthur (Crossway)
Christian spirituality involves growing to be like God in character and conduct by personally submitting to the transforming work of God’s Word and God’s Spirit.
Words Matter: Recovering Godly Speech in a Culture of Profanity – Jon Payne (ref21)
Dear Christian, words matter. They have the power to build up and to tear down; to bless and to poison (c.f. James 3). Therefore, let us recover, cultivate, and model godly speech in our homes, schools, neighborhoods, communities, and churches.
The Case for Boredom – Kevin DeYoung
I don’t get bored as much as I should. Chances are neither do you. And the chances are exceedingly good that your children aren’t as bored as they should be.
More God in the Daily Grind – Joshua Bremerman (DG)
God has closely connected the way we work and how unbelievers view the gospel.
Hope you have a great Lord’s Day!
Here are some good posts for your weekend reading:
10 Things You Should Know about the Presence of God – J. Ryan Lister (Crossway)
Scripture is clear that all of life—and, principally, the gospel life—is about being in God’s relational presence.
Self-Control and the Power of Christ– David Mathis (DG)
True self-control is a gift from above, produced in and through us by the Holy Spirit. Until we own that it is received from outside ourselves, rather than whipped up from within, the effort we give to control our own selves will redound to our praise, rather than God’s. But we also need to note that self-control is not a gift we receive passively, but actively. We are not the source, but we are intimately involved. We open the gift and live it. Receiving the grace of self-control means taking it all the way in and then out into the actual exercise of the grace.
Things Christians Just Don’t Get To Do – Tim Challies
These are all things—just a few of the things—Christians don’t get to do. These are things we don’t get to do because they are associated with godlessness rather than godliness, with sin rather than salvation. In every case God has freed us by his gospel to a new and better way of living—a way of love, forgiveness, generosity, encouragement, community, submission, industry, purity, and freedom. We don’t get to do those things that would only ever harm us and the people around us.
Keeping Our Commitment – Jeremy Walker
Are you not part of the body? Are you not a living stone in that divinely-indwelt temple? Are you not covenanted together with those fellow saints to minister to them and to be ministered to by them? Are you not persuaded that in this service heaven will draw near to earth, that the Lord will speak, more or less powerfully, through the preaching of the Word? That you will genuinely and really render prayers and praises to the Most High God in your participation in the whole service? That heavenly manna will be there for you to eat? That this might be the morning or the evening when you might obtain an unusual blessing, or your friend, or your child, or your neighbour, attending with you, might be converted? That, if nothing else, you have said, more or less formally, that you will not forsake the assembling together of those saints to whom you have made a commitment to love them and to be loved by them?
Hope you have a great Lord’s Day with your local church in the presence of our great God!
[God] cannot change for the better, for He is already perfect; and being perfect, He cannot change for the worse.– A.W. Pink
The eternity of God is a mystery far beyond the mortal mind. But it is not beyond our worship.– Philip Graham Ryken in Discovering God
Brian J. Mikul 