These guides have been designed so that men’s groups can go through Reset and women’s groups can go through Refresh. However, the questions have also been composed in such a way that men and women can discuss the books in mixed groups, with only a few questions here and there (marked with an asterisk) that are significantly different.
It also allows a husband and wife to work through Reset and Refresh together using the Study Guides to compare notes and discuss the differences between men and women’s experiences of stress, burnout, anxiety, depression, etc.
As with yesterday’s Study Guide, there is no copyright on these, so print and photocopy at will!
Here’s a message from my colleague, Chris Hanna, Director of Development and Marketing at PRTS.
Dear PRTS Partner,
The end of 2017 is just about here, and it has been a remarkable year. There has been joy and sorrow, but throughout it all the Lord has reigned from on high. He is still sovereign!
I want to take a moment to once again say thank you. Every time you donate to PRTS you are working alongside us to train students from around the world to serve Christ and His church. You are helping to equip them with a biblical, Reformed, and historic faith.
It is people like you that are making a lasting investment in the lives of our students, their families, and those whom they will serve as pastors and educators for decades to come.
I recently spoke with a student who will shortly be returning with his family to Singapore. There he will again serve the church he left to attend PRTS. He is grateful for his theological education and for the tremendous outpouring of love he and his family experienced while studying at the seminary.
Maybe you’ve given to the seminary in the past, or considering a first-time donation, and you’re wondering what donation options are available. You can give a one-time gift or become a monthly partner through the seminary website or by calling the Development Office at 616.432.3407. In fact, a gift given by December 31 will be generously matched by loving partners of PRTS. We are hoping to raise $400,000 by year end so as to have a two-month balance for the opening lean months of 2018. Please remember that no gift is too small. Your $50 donation will become a $100 gift to the seminary.
You can also give a gift of appreciated assets. To start this process, please contact the Barnabas Foundation – a PRTS partner – at 888.448.3040 and ask for Cindi Riemersma. If you’re in Canada, please contact our Canadian Development Coordinator, Corney Les, at 604.795.6938 or email him today at cles@shaw.ca.
If you or your spouse is 70 ½ or older, you may consider an IRA Charitable Rollover. As of 2015, the US tax code allows seniors of this age to donate tax-free up to $100,000 in IRA assets. The Charitable IRA Rollover is tax-free and will not be included in your adjusted gross income. Once again, please contact Cindi Riemersma at 888.448.3040 for more information.
By supporting PRTS you will be stewarding your resources in a lasting ministry, a ministry that the apostle Paul instructed Timothy to pass on to others (2 Tim. 2:2). Thank you again for prayerfully considering a matching gift to PRTS before December 31.
In the bonds of our Savior,
Chris Hanna
Director of Development & Marketing
The #MeToo Movement Is Destroying Trust Between Men And Women I don’t agree with everything in this article, and it shouldn’t be used as a weapon against legitimate complaints. But it shows how the devil can use good movements with worthy aims to ultimately destroy one of the building blocks of civil society.
Like a disease, distrust is infecting our most foundational relationship as a people, the building block of a free, civil society—the relationship between men and women.
How Christianity Gave Rise to Modern Science “There were a number of ways in which Christianity gave rise to modern science, and the idea that a set of naturalistic assumptions is necessary to do science is just historically false.”
Disability makes us ask a lot of questions though. Did God make a mistake when He sewed together the little girl with Patau Syndrome? Did He miss a stitch? The short answer is no. God has His own purposes in mind when He created our friends with disabilities. For instance, “Then the LORD said to him, ‘Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD?’” (Exodus 4:11). These are God’s words to the disabled Moses, the man with some form of speech impediment, but they hold true for us all. God did not make a mistake when He made the disabled. He did not momentarily lose focus or find His power eclipsed by some interfering evil force. At no point does the Bible teach that the disabled lack or lost the image of God.
One Man Faithfully Loving His Wife Through Early Onset Dementia “Six years ago, a neurologist gave Debbie Echternach, then age 56, a diagnosis no one wants to hear: “Your brain has atrophied. You have early onset dementia.” Since that time, her husband Jay, a good friend and an EPM board member, has written eloquently about their experience. Each time he sends an update about Debbie, I’ve deeply appreciated his heartfelt insights, and faithful love for his precious wife.”
Three Ways The Devil Uses Social Media “If the Apostles walked among us today, they would warn the church of the following spiritual dangers faced posed by social media”
The Work of the Holy Spirit and the Christian Therapist I came across this article while researching the work of the Holy Spirit in counseling. I’m linking to it to show how, contrary to some caricatures, Christian counselors outside the biblical counseling movement also rely on the work and ministry of the Holy Spirit in their practice.
Extraordinary Lives: The Art and Craft of American Biography by William Zinsser $1.99. Not a Christian book but six eminent biographers pull back the curtain to explain the pleasures and problems of their craft of reconstructing other people’s lives.
The Study Guide has been designed to help individual readers apply the book to their own lives and assist the process of moving from theory to practice.
It has also been written to enable couples to work through Reset (for men) and Refresh (for women) in tandem. Tomorrow, I’ll be publishing a separate Study Guide for Refresh that reflects the differences between the male and female experience of stress, anxiety, burnout, depression, etc. However, both the books and the Study Guides have been written to help couples work through them together. The handful of Study guide questions that are slightly different for Reset and Refresh are marked by an asterisk (*).
The Study Guides for both Reset and Refresh have also been composed to facilitate group discussion of the material. Again, this could be done in separate men’s and women’s groups or together.
I hope the timing of the Study Guide, coinciding with the end of an old year and the beginning of a new one, will encourage many to “reset” their lives and make 2018 more grace-paced than race-paced.
There is no copyright on the Study Guide, so print and photocopy as many as you need.
How to Read Jonathan Edwards “The first point to get clear in our minds is not how to read Jonathan Edwards but why. And here is why. He turns our postcard views of Christ and the beauty of authentic Christian living into an experience of the real thing. What we had only smelled we now see. What we heard others call magnificent and considered overstatement we now see as magnificent and recognize as understatement.”
According a new analysis of life satisfaction from the National Bureau of Economic Research, which encompasses seven massive surveys and 1.3 million randomly sampled people from 51 countries, rock bottom is somewhere around the early 50s for most folks. On the other hand, people report being pretty happy in their early 20s and their 60s once retirement kicks in.
Introducing Hope Barlanark This gives me great hope for my motherland, and especially for one of the most depressed and deprived areas of it.
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?
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.
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.
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.”
“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.”
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.”
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.
