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Blogs

A Letter to the Church: The Problems of Moral Failure and Misconduct Are Real and Must be Addressed Now
“Although quite simplified, let me offer a starting place for both pastors and church leaders who now face very difficult questions from their congregants and for congregants who have more questions than answers.”

After 50 Years of Ministry, 7 Things I Would Tell Ministerial Candidates Today
“From an older pastor to younger ones: some wise counsel from a pastor who served the Church faithfully for 50 year.”

Suicide, Depression, and Pastors: One Way Church Members Can Help
“Yet, these pastors tell us, the greatest pain is not the criticism and cynicism by some of the members. The greatest pain is when the “good members” remain silent, when they do nothing to come to the aid and defense of their pastors. The good members don’t want to rock the boat. They don’t want to incur the wrath of the pastor attackers. They think they are maintaining unity. Instead they are tearing down their pastor with their malignant silence. Their efforts to maintain peace sow the greatest seeds of destruction.”

How Reformed Churches Are Growing on the Arabian Peninsula
So encouraging.

Why Pastors Should Consider Preaching (At Least) 5 Minutes Shorter
“Here’s the bottom line: there’s no need to preach for an hour when 40 minutes will do. The truth is most people will be glad for a shorter sermon. The parents with children in the pew certainly will be. Your wife just might be too. And the nursery workers will rise up and call you blessed.”

Columns from Tabletalk Magazine, September 2018
The September issue of Tabletalk considers the Christian life as a life lived between two worlds.

Cringing at Church: What It’s Like as an Autistic Person in Your Congregation
What an eye-opener.

Real Sermons Are Not Lectures or Moral Stories | Desiring God
This is an important contribution from Burk Parsons:

“I think what happens is that pastors begin to feel the pressure to have this perfectly polished message, so it ends up looking more like a lecture, more like a lesson that could be taught really in any Sunday School class. It becomes that rather than a sermon as a part of the worship service.”

Kindle Books

The Forgotten Trinity by James R. White $1.99.

Called to Create: A Biblical Invitation to Create, Innovate, and Risk by Jordan Raynor $1.99.

 

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Blogs

My Top 10 Theology Stories of 2017
Collin Hansen with his annual review of the most important stories affecting the Church:

The emphasis of theological debate has shifted again. And it threatens once more to divide churches, families, and even networks and coalitions forged in previous generations. The topics that generate the most controversy now concern public theology—how we apply the Bible to contemporary ethics. How does our faith testify that it is genuine? How does it lead us to regard and love our neighbor? How does it shape our view of systems and patterns of behavior, deeply ingrained and often denied by people in power?

Ten Critical Trends for Churches in 2018
This would be a great conversation starter for pastors, elders, and deacons.

In the waves of these seas of negativity, are mercy drops of hope and possibilities. Look at these ten major trends carefully. See how God would have your church respond.

Anxiety and Depression, My Strange Friends
A pastor shares his story of how God has blessed seasons of anxiety and depression in his life.

Though I would not wish anxiety or depression on anyone, I am strangely thankful for the unique way that this affliction has led me, time and again, back into the rest of God.

A Master’s Degree in Counseling or Biblical Counseling?
Yes, I agree, lots of Christian women are asking this question and facing this dilemma:

I’ve noticed that female students who are considering a degree in biblical counseling, especially at the graduate level, are facing a dilemma. For some women, a degree in biblical counseling is not necessary for their job, but they want to gain more education for personal reasons or to complement their ministry skills. For most women, however, the prospect of finding a job is an important part of the equation in deciding on a degree.

Keys to a Fruitful—Not Busy—New Year
“As we head into 2018, could it be that doing less is actually doing more? Instead of trying to prove that you are not lazy, abide in the Lord, work from a place of rest and trust. We have nothing to prove, orly a God to serve, who loves us as His children and desires to see us live fruitful not busy lives.”

Evangelicals and Domestic Violence: Are Christian Men More Abusive?
Some myth-busting here. I suspect the same is true of porn stats and “Christians.”

“Although the empirical story of religion and domestic violence looks good for practicing believers, it’s much less rosy for others. My research suggests that the most violent husbands in America are nominal evangelical Protestants who attend church infrequently or not at all.”

I Shall Not Die But Live and Tell
I really enjoyed this moving testimony from Gordon Keddie:

As I thought later on these things, I could not but wonder at the fact that, days before my illness, I had finished a book on the prayers of the Bible, with a meditation on a prayer for every day of the year, and yet could not remember one of them! It was my faithful Savior who chose the Scripture prayer I needed in a moment when my life-time of memory of that very Scripture had apparently vanished from the scene. And this proved that his love never fails, and his promise ever stands, for he who keeps Israel “will neither slumber nor sleep.” When all you who are in Christ are at your most vulnerable, “he will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore” (Ps. 121:4, 7-8).

Is the Pope right about the Lord’s Prayer?
“Nevertheless, it is bad translation and bad discipleship to deny the meaning of biblical words simply because they don’t line up with human estimations of the way God ought to behave. In this case, it is hermeneutical malpractice to change the translation in an attempt to force God’s revelation onto a procrustean bed.”

Podcast

Trillia Newbell interviewed me about How to handle depression.

Kindle Books

For your non-Kindle book buying needs please consider using Reformation Heritage Books in the USA and Reformed Book Services in Canada. Good value prices and shipping.

Whiter Than Snow: Meditations on Sin and Mercy by Paul David Tripp $3.99.

A Shelter in the Time of Storm: Meditations on God and Trouble by Paul David Tripp $3.99.

Counsel from the Cross: Connecting Broken People to the Love of Christ by Elyse M. Fitzpatrick and‎ Dennis E. Johnson $2.99.

God Is Love: A Biblical and Systematic Theology by Gerald Bray $2.99.

New Book

O Death Where is Thy Sting: Collected Sermons of John MurrayDiscounted hardback at Westminster Books. My endorsement as follows:

I still remember the first time I heard a recording of a John Murray sermon and its impact upon me. I was a young Christian with a growing sense of God’s call to preach. This sermon was the clincher. Never before had I encountered such a unique combination of careful exegesis, profound theology, fresh insight, clear expression, and spiritual application. It inspired me with a vision of how glorious Reformed, experiential preaching could be. May this beautiful collection of Murray’s sermons touch and motivate a new generation of preachers and revive those who have lost sight of their high calling.

Video

The Danger of a Transgender Ideology

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Blogs

Your Brain Can Only Take So Much Focus | Srini Pillay, HBR
“In keeping with recent research, both focus and unfocus are vital. The brain operates optimally when it toggles between focus and unfocus, allowing you to develop resilience, enhance creativity, and make better decisions too.”

The Best Discoveries Begin as Problems: How to Read Proverbs | John Piper, Desiring God
Why would a book that aims to impart insight for wise living (Proverbs 1:2–3) put contradictory instructions back-to-back? I can think of at least seven reasons.

The Kids Are Not Okay—and Neither Is America | Collin Hansen, TGC
A review of Senator Ben Sasse’s new book The Vanishing American Adult. And Alex Chediak offers his own take in Sen. Ben Sasse’s The Vanishing American Adult Offers Timely Solutions.

Do we really need another book about entitled millennials? Or about the helicopter parents who raise these precious darlings? Senator Ben Sasse’s The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis — and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance exceeds expectations. It challenges both parents and our culture, offering compelling and timely solutions.

Andy Crouch on How to Become a Tech-Wise Family | Collin Hansen, TGC
“In order to survive and even thrive in our information age, Andy Crouch believes the church must become more like a family, and the family must become more like a church. His new book, The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place, explains how wise, discerning handling of new-media technology will cultivate wisdom and courage. The home, he says, must limit technology in order to delight in God, neighbor, family, and nature. The church, he says, will not enjoy authentic community unless it disciples Christians in countercultural living when it comes to our TVs, video games, and smartphones.”

I Took a Week Off from Social Media (and Survived) | Brandon D. Smith, Patheos
“…after that week off, I decided to keep my social media accounts, hoping to absorb the good and reject the bad that comes along with them. But in the week I spent almost entirely away from them, I counted the cost of a life with almost no social media engagement, and I was richer for it. And if you asked my family, friends, and people I do offline life with, they’d agree.”

Fast from Food, Not Facebook | Tim Challies
I’m almost convinced by Tim’s argument here:

“…we are to fast from food for this simple reason: Food is something we need, not merely something we want. You may want to use Facebook, but you need to eat food. Thus, in fasting you are withholding from yourself something you need (food) in order to pursue something you need even more (communion with God).”

How the Average Working Adult Spends Days | FlowingData

How I Leverage My Autism for Pastoral Ministry | Lamar Hardwick, CT Pastors
“On Monday, December 22, 2014, I walked into the office of my therapist. I sat down on her couch with my wife by my side. I took a long deep breath and slowly exhaled, waiting for answers to my 36-year-long question. She grabbed her clip board, glanced over the assessments we had completed in weeks prior, looked me in the eye, and uttered three words that changed my life: ‘autism spectrum disorder.’ While the diagnosis didn’t change who I was, it did change my understanding of who I had been. In many ways, I have spent the years since that diagnosis learning myself all over again.”

Kindle Deals

For your non-Kindle book buying needs please consider using Reformation Heritage Books in the USA and Reformed Book Services in Canada. Good value prices and shipping.


The Art of Neighboring: Building Genuine Relationships Right Outside your Door by Jay Pathak and Dave Runyon ($1.99)


Drawn By The Father by James R. White ($2.99)


Judges For You (God’s Word For You) by Timothy Keller ($2.99)

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Blogs

How to Master Audience Engagement When You Present | Duarte
On the importance of introductions from a presentation guru.

If you want to engage your audience in a presentation, you have a little less than 9 seconds to make it happen. Recent studies show that the average human attention span is 8.25 seconds—if you don’t get listeners engaged that quickly, there’s a good chance you’ll lose their focus to their phone, laptop, reading materials, daydreams, etc.

Suffering Opens a Door for the Gospel | Desiring God
“It’s illegal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ to Muslims in Tehran, Iran. So when I think of gutsy women I think of Maryam Rostampour and Marziyeh Amirizadeh.”

Opportunity amid Secularism by Collin Hansen
“The rise of the nones and secularism, along with the decline of the mushy middle, poses a challenge that many American evangelicals have never before faced. In a culture that broadly reinforced Christian values, purity did not need to distinguish the church. And if we didn’t think of ourselves as outsiders to the culture, we didn’t need to reflect on how our dignified behavior would set us apart, either.”

Chasing Contentment: Trusting God in a Discontented Age | TGC
Erik Raymond fills in the backstory to his book Chasing Contentment: Trusting God in a Discontented Age:

The story for this book was painfully sweet and stitched to my soul. A couple of years ago I was enduring a particularly difficult season. It seemed as though God had allowed affliction to hover like a rain cloud over my life. Pastoral ministry was especially trying even as I encountered a number of new health problems. This, along with the regular stiff headwind of living in a fallen world, had me weary. But I was more than weary. I was restless. And, upon further review, I was discontent”

Here’s my commendation of Erik’s book:

“Does any word better define our culture than ‘chasing’? Does any word better describe what’s missing in our culture than ‘contentment’? By pairing these seemingly contradictory words, Erik calls us to end our pursuit of more and to begin our pursuit of enough. Read this engaging and enjoyable exploration of Christian contentment and decide, as I did, that this chase is well worth the effort.”

You Cannot Raise Snowflakes in Jesus’ Name
An excellent word to snowflakes and their parents from David Prince:

A mildly teased child is not a victim, but rather a human being learning how to interact with other humans in a sinful world.

An FAQ on The Collected Works of John Piper (3 Million Words over 13 volumes + an Index Volume)
Required reading for anyone who wants to fully understand the rise of New Calvinism.

To read all of Piper’s published writings individually would require the acquisition of more than one hundred volumes, along with tracking down dozens of older articles and reviews in obscure publications. By editing, assembling, and standardizing these volumes in one definitive set, we hope to provide convenient access to the work of a proven and trustworthy teacher. We also hope that the hundreds of pages of indices—tracking every Scripture passage, author cited, and subject matter—will be a helpful too for preachers and all students of God’s Word.

Violent Peace | Gentle Reformation
“Peacekeepers often demand silence.  They will ask you to act (pretend) like everything is okay.  They will change subjects, misdirect conversation, formulate incoherent narratives.  They will sometimes make ungodly compromises to keep the illusion of peace. Peacekeepers are self-protective instead of other-protective. Peacemakers will fight for truth.  They will disrupt.  They will say what is uncomfortable, what may cause friction and even pain if it seeks that which is just and right in God’s eyes.   And they will often be vilified and labeled as trouble-makers.”

Kindle Books

The Money Answer Book: Quick Answers to Everyday Financial Questions by Dave Ramsey $1.99.

The Story of Reality: How the World Began, How It Ends, and Everything Important that Happens in Between by Gregory Koukl $3.99.

Faith Alone—The Doctrine of Justification: What the Reformers Taught…and Why It Still Matters by Tom Scheiner $3.99.

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Blogs

How To (Finally) Quit Multitasking In These Five Daily Activities
The alternative to multitasking is called “monotasking” or “single-tasking.” Here are five situations in which to try it out, and why it might be the answer to helping you survive a jam-packed schedule—without sacrificing time, energy, or quality.”

Proverbs 8:23, the Eternal Generation of the Son and the History of Reformed Exegesis
Nick Batzig surveys reformed exegesis of Proverbs 8 and concludes that it is speaking of the Son of God.

Be a Parent Worthy of Honor
I usually find that those who most insist on their being honored are the least worthy of it:

Children do not bear the full responsibility of the fifth commandment. If children are to extend honor to their parents, parents are to make it easy for them by living honorable lives.

The Necessity of Prayer in Sermon Prep
“Do we give our study proportional prayer?” asks Erik Raymond.

Most preachers I know spend about 10 to 15 hours a week in sermon preparation in order to preach for 30 to 45 minutes. This means our preaching is about 5 percent of our preparation.

Simplicity in Preaching
Kevin DeYoung summarizes J. C. Ryle’s republished booklet on simplicity in preaching.

It’s short and so helpful that I think I can say without exaggeration that every preacher should try to read J.C. Ryle’s Simplicity in Preaching.

I’m Exhausted — How Do I Recharge My Body Without Neglecting My Soul?
John Piper answers a common question:

Hello Pastor John, I’m 41 years old and have been a pastor for nine years, leading a small but growing church of 120 people in Wales. As I have served as a pastor and leader over this time I have found that due to the spiritually, emotionally, and mentally draining nature of the work, whenever I have spare time (an evening off, a Saturday free) all I want to do is switch off and do trivial stuff like watch sports. I feel like I should be doing more personal reading or devotional, God-pursuing stuff, but I can’t find the energy or desire. Ministry is hard work, so when I have opportunity, I want to escape from things connected to it. How do you handle this tension between ministry as part of your work that you give your time and attention to for much of the day and then the need to have energy to pursue God personally outside of your formal ministry activities? Have you felt this tension and do you have any advice for a young, and already tired, pastor?

Kindle Books

Here’s a recap of the books offered for sale this week.

For your non-Kindle book buying needs please consider using Reformation Heritage Books in the USA and Reformed Book Services in Canada. Good value prices and shipping.

Against the Gods: The Polemical Theology of the Old Testament $1.99.

Searching for Jesus: New Discoveries in the Quest for Jesus of Nazareth—and How They Confirm the Gospel Accounts $1.99.


Do Historical Matters Matter to Faith?: A Critical Appraisal of Modern and Postmodern Approaches to Scripture by James K. Hoffmeier and Dennis R. Magary ($5.99)


Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better by Brant Hansen ($0.99)


Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books by Michael J. Kruger ($5.99)


Perspectives Series on sale, $2.99-$9.99


Your New Money Mindset: Create a Healthy Relationship with Money by Brad Hewitt and James Moline ($3.99)


Grief Undone: A Journey with God and Cancer by Elizabeth W. D. Groves ($2.99)


Boring: Finding an Extraordinary God in an Ordinary Life by Michael Kelley ($0.99)

Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes $2.99.

A History of Christianity: An Introductory Survey $2.99.

Rediscovering Holiness: Know the Fullness of Life with God by J I Packer $1.99

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Blogs

How to Boost Your (and Others’) Emotional Intelligence | Harvard Business Review
Here are five critical steps for developing EQ.

Dealing with Abusive Men
A powerful, powerful blog post.

The Exponential Growth of Classical Christian Education | Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra, TGC
Here’s an encouraging education story — not many of these around:

On a Monday morning 17 years ago, Russ Gregg quit his job because of a sermon he’d heard the day before about ‘venturing something for God that’s a little bit crazy.’ So he left his position as development director for a Christian school in one of Minneapolis’s wealthiest suburbs in order to launch a classical Christian school in one of the city’s poorest, most violent neighborhoods. Without teachers, parents, a building, or financial support, Gregg was determined to love his neighbors as he loved himself. So he sought to give them the best education he could think of—a school like the one his own kids attended. Seventeen years later, Hope Academy has grown from 35 students in a church basement to 500 students in a seven-story school building. Among Hope’s five classes to date, 99 percent of students have graduated. In fact, almost every graduate (95 percent) was accepted at two- or four-year colleges, with a few receiving full-ride scholarships to private liberal arts colleges.

Grace-Fueled Obedience Is Absolutely Necessary for Christlikeness | Steven Lawson, Ligonier Ministries
“Many who profess Christ today emphasize a wrong view of grace that makes it a free pass to do whatever they please. Tragically, they have convinced themselves that the Christian life can be lived without any binding obligation to the moral law of God. In this hyper-grace distortion, the need for obedience has been neutered. The commandments of God are no longer in the driver’s seat of Christian living, but have been relegated to the backseat, if not the trunk—like a spare tire—to be used only in case of an emergency. With such a spirit of antinomianism, what needs to be reinforced again is the necessity of obedience.”

Opposites Attract | Leslie Schmucker, Desiring God
Well, this is raw. Not 100% sure about putting these kinds of things “out there,” but I link to it because it might be the means of keeping other couples together.

“I Got Gay Married. I Got Gay Divorced. I Regret Both.” | Denny Burk
“Many of those who marched for legal gay marriage in our country weren’t really that concerned about adding traditional marriage norms to gay relationships—norms of permanence, covenant, fidelity, etc. What they wanted was social acceptance of their relationships as they were already configured—many of which were admittedly ‘monogamish’ rather than monogamous. The legal recognition served to remove a stigma, not to convert ‘dexterity’ into permanence.”

New Book


War Psalms of the Prince of Peace: Lessons from the Imprecatory Psalms by James E. Adams. A second edition of a book that proved to be a breakthrough for me in understanding the Psalms.

Kindle Deals


Do Historical Matters Matter to Faith?: A Critical Appraisal of Modern and Postmodern Approaches to Scripture by James K. Hoffmeier and Dennis R. Magary ($5.99)


Unoffendable: How Just One Change Can Make All of Life Better by Brant Hansen ($0.99)


Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books by Michael J. Kruger ($5.99)

Video

A peak at the Family Worship Bible Guide from Reformation Heritage Books