Blogs

What Would God Say to Your Anxiety?
It’s not the whole answer but it’s a large part of it.

A Controversial Article and What We Can Learn
Following a barrage of criticism, TGC removed a recent article that described the author’s experience of inter-racial marriage in her family. Here, TGC hosts a podcast to discuss why the article was taken down and what lessons can be learned. Thabiti makes a valiant attempt to put some of the broken pieces back together again here: In Praise of Gaye Clark (and Others Like Her). But my fear of the resulting fallout is many silenced white voices, especially of those working to bridge the terrible divides. And, worse, many blocked white ears. And, worst of all, disengagement and withdrawal.

R.C. Sproul’s Crucial Questions eBooks Now Free Forever
Here is a complete list of the 25 free ebooks in the Crucial Questions series.

Whose hate? Which victims?
Carl Trueman makes the case for more hate crimes (or at least different ones).

Partial Victory for California Christian Universities
A step in the right direction, for once.

Kindle Books

Tough Topics 2: Answers to 25 Challenging Questions by Sam Storms $2.99.

Everything you Ever Wanted to Know about God but were Afraid to Ask by Eric Metaxes $1.99.

Mea Culpa: Learning from Mistakes in Ministry by Kyle MccLellan $1.99.

New Book

On Pastoring: A Short Guide to Living, Leading, and Ministering to Pastors by H B Charles.

Video

A Conversation with Phil Ryken about the Darkest Period of his Life

You can read about this in Dr. Ryken’s new book, When Trouble Comes.

Blogs

Book up for a longer life: readers die later, study finds
Looks like I’m going to live for a couple of thousand years.

A new study found that people who read books for 30 minutes a day lived longer than those who didn’t read at all. The study, which is published in the September issue of the journal Social Science & Medicine, looked at the reading patterns of 3,635 people who were 50 or older. On average, book readers were found to live for almost two years longer than non-readers.”

‘Hillbilly Elegy’ Hits Close to Home
Whoa! A powerful moving story from Lore Ferguson.

Tuned in Parents on the Technological Frontier
Nick Batzig on parenting our kids through the digital minefields.

John MacArthur’s 9 Tips on Self-Discipline
#5 “Do the most difficult tasks first” has yielded the most fruit in my life over the past year.

Themelios 41.2
The Gospel Coalition just released the August 2016 issue of Themelios, which has 197 pages of editorials, articles, and book reviews. And it’s free.

12 Observations after reading The Porn Phenomenon
Josh McDowell partnered with the Barna Research group to survey nearly 3,000 U.S. teens, adults and Protestant youth and senior pastors about their perceptions, use, and feelings about pornography. The summary of their findings was published in a 150-page study called The Porn Phenomenon. It’s worse than you could have ever imagined.

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.

The Big Book of Christian Apologetics by Norman Geisler $1.99.

Jonathan Edwards and Justification by Josh Moody $4.99.

How to Stay Christian in College $2.99.

Video

Trailer for Animated Version of The Biggest Story

A film version of Kevin DeYoung’s children’s book The Biggest Story is being launched.

The Biggest Story: The Animated Short Film (Trailer) from Crossway on Vimeo.

Blogs

Man’s complaint about dead worm in his cucumber escalated hilariously
If you want to start your day with a good laugh…

God Is Sovereign, We Are Responsible: Thoughts on Keeping Kids Safe
Balancing God’s sovereignty and human responsibility when protecting our kids.

William Ames on Singing Imprecatory Psalms
A puritan answer the the question of whether we should sing the imprecatory psalms.

When God Sends Your White Daughter a Black Husband
“To the parent like me who never envisioned her daughter in an interracial marriage, here are eight things to remember when your white daughter brings a black man home for dinner.”

Your Pastor’s Wife Should Have Church Friends
Three reasons why a pastor’s wife should cultivate friendships within the congregation.

The Two Things Killing Your Ability to Focus
“Five practical techniques that will help you stay on task, accomplish what matters, and enjoy yourself more throughout the day.”

Motherhood in the Cosmic War
“In the footsteps of the serpent-crusher, Eve’s daughters of faith are called to nurture (mother) life in the face of death. Our mothering work is cross-shaped. That means we fight in this war by grace through faith. As “earth-bound” as our work may seem, we remember that we are not wrestling against flesh and blood as we nurture life both inside and outside the womb. Our God-designed maternal instinct is a matter of spiritual warfare. Over all of the pan-ethnic cultural expressions in the global body of Christ, we all put on God’s own spiritual armor (Eph. 6:10-18). ”

New Book

How to Preach and Teach the Old Testament for all its Worth by Christopher Wright.

Kindle Books

Unmasking Narcissism: A Guide to Understanding the Narcissist in Your Life $0.99. Not a Christian book but many accurate observations and analyses.

Beating the College Debt Trap: Getting a Degree without Going Broke by Alex Chediak $1.99.

Video 

18 Ways Singapore Suites Will Blow Your Mind
Sigh! Maybe one day this will be economy class.

I will be as the dew to Israel. (Hosea 14:5)

Dry, dry, dry. Have you ever felt like that? Has your soul ever seemed like a desert? You look at the wastelands within your soul and you can’t find any bud or blossom, never mind any fruit. There is no refreshing, encouraging oasis anywhere. It wasn’t always like that. You can remember a time when there was bud, blossom, and fruit everywhere. There was a little oasis here and a little stream there. Spiritual life and liveliness flowed in your blood and all was well with your soul.

What happened? Well, many things happened, didn’t they? But the more important question is, how do you get out of this? We turn to Hosea to find the answer.

God gave Israel the land of Canaan as promised, a land which flowed with milk and honey. Under His blessing, they had known many years of fruitfulness and fertility. However, their disobedience had brought them and their land under the divinely promised curse. God withheld water from the land and the result was desert-dryness everywhere.

But, when this divine chastisement had humbled Israel and brought her to see her need of the Lord, He promised He would return with His dew. “I will be as the dew to Israel.” This is sovereign dew; God creates it, sends it, and controls it. This is softening dew; it soaks into the hardest soul and breaks the hardest clods. It is stimulating dew. It refreshes and invigorates. It is saving dew; it is God Himself who will be the dew. “I will be as the dew to Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon.”

So, dry soul, look up. It is the Lord alone who can refresh you and reinvigorate you. He can make the desert sand blossom into a rose. Each of His three Persons can drench you with dew. Even one of His attributes can saturate your soul. Just one of His words can break the hardest clod. “Lord, come, beautify and fructify me with yourself.”

Blogs

Rosaria Butterfield: No free passes | WORLD
Marvin Olasky interviews Rosaria Butterfield about how her life has been transformed since the publication of her biography.

How Much Sleep Do You Really Need To Work As Productively As Possible? | Lifehacker
A fascinating collection of the latest research.

10 Ways for Pastors to Continue Learning
“In addition to growing in the knowledge of God through reading Scripture, here are 10 ways a pastor may stay sharp after seminary.”

4 Ways the World Will Pressure You to Conform | Trevin Wax
“In every age, the world implements strategies of isolation, indoctrination, assimilation, and confusion, and in every age, the church must resist with confidence and courage, trusting that our faithfulness will be a gift to the nations we know will one day bow before the world’s true King.”

25 (Really) Lame Excuses for Not Following Your Calling. | Scribblepreach.com
“I’ve found over the years that I hinder my own calling with excuses. Identifying them, however, helps me annihilate them. So let me do that for you, by sharing my top 25 lame excuses for not working out my calling:”

Bunyan’s Arrest and Post-Pluralism Persecution in America – Meet the Puritans
“I want to encourage us in our twenty-first-century context, as different as it might be from Bunyan’s, to observe what we share in common with him. First, notice how quickly religious liberties can disappear in spite of promises to the contrary.”

Killing Envy | The Christward Collective
“Chief among those sins that we tend to tolerate in our lives is covetousness, jealousy and envy. According to Scripture, jealousy is one of the most damaging of all heart sins.”

The Psalter Project | Gentle Reformation
“There’s nothing that makes me happier than helping people sing the psalms. It may seem hard, awkward, and even dull at times. But if we persevere, I am confident we will not be disappointed. Choose to sing the psalms!”

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.

How Could a Loving God? by Ken Ham $2.99.

The 100 Most Important Events in Church History $1.99

Unwind: 7 Principles for a Stress-Free Life by Michael Olpin $2.00. Not a Christian book but I usually pick up a few valuable directions from these kinds of books.