Blogs

Reclaiming Your Eyes from Pornography | Kole Farney, For The Church
“The antidote for images you used to look at is the new and better image—the glory of Christ. ”

Living under Authority | R.C. Sproul, Ligonier
“The world has gone crazy in lawlessness, but we’re to be different. Wherever we find ourselves under authority—and we all find ourselves submitting to various authorities—we’re to submit to that authority.”

The Day of Trouble | Right With God
“Few christians go through the whole of their christian lives without experiencing a time of trouble. Some, like our beloved brethren in foreign countries where it is forbidden to practice christianity, have never known a time of peace and freedom from danger. Some who have enjoyed years of blessing under the hand of God are suddenly hit by a time of trouble.”

Four Ways Not to Work | Dr. Stephen R. Graves
“So ask yourself: Are you settled in your work, or is your soul full of turmoil and chaos from your work? Here are four ways not to work, or four ways work can increase your chaos (what I call ‘inner noise’)…”

5 Ways To Maximize Your Down Time | Clark Campbell, Lifeway Leadership
“While many of us have begun to do something about our lack of margin, we often “lose sight of what matters the most.” Maybe we’ve built-in adequate margin in our schedules but what are we actually filling up that valuable time with?”

The Role of Christian Journalism—and Its Place at TGC | Joe Carter, TGC
“Crouch says the role of the journalist is to ‘make complicated things clear, quickly, for people who could be doing something else, in the service of truth.’”

Open Arms to the Muslim World | Desiring God
The wonderful story of Samuel Zwemer.

New Book

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.

Learning to Love the Psalms by W. Robert Godfrey

Kindle Deals

Fierce Convictions – The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More: Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist by Karen Swallow Prior ($1.99)

Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World by Michael Horton ($2.99)

Preaching the Old Testament edited by Scott M. Gibson ($2.99)

Video

How did John MacArthur first become interested in doctrine?

Alan Burdick is a time researcher and the author of Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation. In a recent interview with Gretchen Rubin, he was asked what his most significant finding has been. His reply:

Until I began working on Why Time Flies, I hadn’t realized how deeply time is embedded in us. Each of our cells is basically a clock that beats out a firm twenty-four-hour rhythm; together these form bigger clocks — the liver, the kidneys — that also keep a twenty-four rhythm, and as group they’re responsible for running our physiology.

Basically, the sum of me, and you, is a clock, and respecting its rhythm is essential to one’s health. So, for instance, I’ve stopped eating late at night, as that’s the least efficient time of day to metabolize food. And I try to get outside for at least a few minutes every morning, because exposure to daylight at that time of day ultimately helps me sleep better. It’s a matter of listening to the clock that is me.

God has not only put eternity in our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11); he’s put time in our cells!

When I counsel depressed people, one of the first questions I ask is, “Tell me your daily routine.” In many cases, the answer is, “I don’t have one. Every day is different.”

Now sometimes there’s a good reason for that – perhaps it’s shift-worker or a mother nursing a baby. But these are rare exceptions. Usually, there’s no good reason, which means that it can be rapidly fixed by establishing a do-able daily schedule often with rapid improvements in mood.

Another article over at Mashable, How Weird Sleep Schedules Can Affect our Mental Health, notes how a growing number of studies in recent years indicate that maintaining our internal rhythm is important for our overall health. This has spawned a new range of depression treatments in the field of chronotherapy, which tries to help depressed people align their 24-hour circadian rhythm with the solar day.

This “natural” truth also transfers into other areas of our lives. My wife and I have often noticed that our marriage and family life goes best when we are all in a good routine, when life is predictable and ordinary. Boring is best!

It’s also true in our spiritual lives. The most holy Christians I’ve known are men and women whose spiritual disciplines are the most rhythmic and routine. “Routine” here does not mean formality. It means regular and predictable times of prayer Bible reading, family worship, and church worship.

God is a God of order not of confusion (1 Cor. 14:33), and, as his image-bearers, we flourish when our lives reflect God’s orderliness.

Blogs

Does Christology Matter? | Sinclair Ferguson, Ligonier Ministries 
“…Jesus Christ Himself is the gospel. Like loose threads in a tapestry—pull on any of these views, and the entire gospel will unravel. If the Christ we trust and preach is not qualified to save us, we have a false Christ.”

Where does happiness come from? | Denny Burk
“It is not an overstatement to say that happiness comes from the Bible—not the Bible as an end in itself, but the Bible as God’s written revelation and as our only means of knowing Him.”

GREEKONOMICS: How to set goals, manage your time, and grow your Greek | Robert L. Plummer
Robert L. Plummer gives you the tools and encouragement to keep your Greek New Testament open.

5 Types of Mental Health Professionals: Title, Education, and Purpose | Brad Hambrick
“The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) recognizes at least five areas of independent professional practice for the diagnosis and treatment of Mental Health issues. While NAMI’s recognition of professional Mental Health Practitioners may not be exhaustive, it is perhaps the most concise and descriptive of Mental Health services provided by different disciplines. It can be helpful for churches to be aware of the education and primary purposes of each type of mental health professional.”

How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Sermon | Marty Duren, LifeWay Pastors
“This post is not concerned with things outside the pastor’s control: people having coughing fits that go on for several minutes, children (or adults) making repeated restroom visits, Sister Sue clipping her fingernails, or someone snoring. We are considering only things the pastor/preacher might do to ruin a perfectly good sermon.”

The Sabbath Day Brings Real Rest and Refreshment | Sean Michael Lucas, Ligonier
“The grace of the fourth commandment is that God promises to give us real rest and real refreshment when we find our rest in Him. As we remember the Sabbath day, as we keep it holy to the Lord, we find that we begin to enter into the rest that God offers and gain a foretaste of the heavenly rest to come, the rest of the new heavens and new  earth.”

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.

Core Christianity: Finding Yourself in God’s Story by Michael Horton ($2.99)

A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering by Michael Horton ($1.99)

Conscience: What It Is, How to Train It, and Loving Those Who Differ by Andrew David Naselli and J. D. Crowley ($2.99)

Video

UW-Madison students support freedom for Muslim singers. What about Christian photographers? | Alliance Defending Freedom

What do you think it is?

Globalization? Population growth? Terrorism? Inequality?

Nope. None of these.

Technology.

Oh, Murray’s off on one of his digital tirades again, is he?

Nope. Ross Douthat, New York Times columnist, actually.

In his most recent column, Resist the Internet, Douthat argues that Internet enslavement is the biggest threat to the human future.

He highlights how “our day-to-day, minute-to-minute existence is dominated by a compulsion to check email and Twitter and Facebook and Instagram with a frequency that bears no relationship to any communicative need.”

Used within reasonable limits, of course, these devices also offer us new graces. But we are not using them within reasonable limits. They are the masters; we are not. They are built to addict us, as the social psychologist Adam Alter’s new book “Irresistible” points out — and to madden us, distract us, arouse us and deceive us. We primp and perform for them as for a lover; we surrender our privacy to their demands; we wait on tenterhooks for every “like.” The smartphone is in the saddle, and it rides mankind.

He calls for “a social and political movement — digital temperance, if you will — to take back some control.” Only a movement, he says, can save us from the tyrant in our pocket.

Some of the measures he advocates are:

• Create more spaces in which internet use is illegal, discouraged or taboo.
• Toughen laws against cellphone use in cars.
• Keep computers out of college lecture halls (I’ve already done this in my classes).
• Put special “phone boxes” in restaurants where patrons would be expected to deposit their devices.
• Confiscate smartphones being used in museums and libraries and cathedrals.
• Create corporate norms that strongly discourage checking email in a meeting.
• Get computers — all of them — out of elementary schools and let kids learn from books.
• The age of consent should be 16, not 13, for Facebook accounts.
• Kids under 16 shouldn’t be allowed on gaming networks.
• High school students shouldn’t bring smartphones to school.
• Kids under 13 shouldn’t have them at all.
• “Voice-only” phone plans available for minors.

That’s not just a movement; it’s not just a digital resistance; it’s a revolution, but one that’s sorely needed.

Resist the Internet by Ross Douthat.

For more resources on Digital Detox, click here.

Most of us have heard of the 80/20 rule, sometimes called the Pareto principle.

It was named after its “inventor,” Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto who noticed about 20% of the peapods in his garden contained 80% of the peas.

To put it more generally, it says that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. to put it more concretely:

• 80% of property is owned by 20% of the population
• 80% of sales come from 20% of the clients
• 80% of complaints come from 20% of a company’s customers
• 80% of problems come from 20% of causes.

Unless companies are aware of the 80/20 law, they can unwittingly expend 80% of their time and efforts on the 20% of customers who are producing 80% of the complaints and problems. This leaves only 20% of their time and effort to expend on the customers who are producing 80% of their sales and profits.

But churches and pastors can also succumb to this tendency of devoting the majority of their attention to problems and complaints at the expense of the vast majority who are living steady godly lives and serving the Lord fruitfully.

While we must not run away from problems and we must address legitimate complaints, church leaders must be resolute in their determination to prevent problems and complaints setting the agenda and dominating their time and attention.

Perhaps we could re-write the Pareto principle for churches. Give a maximum 20% of your time to the problems and a minimum 80% of your time to the fruitful and the faithful. 

Blogs

The High Cost of Free Porn
Three ways porn hinders Jesus’ mission in the world.

Saved and Depressed: A Real Conversation about Faith and Health
Touching and teaching:

When most people look at me, they see a successful, 20-something-year-old woman who is giving of herself and her time. In the past, they would only see a bubbly, out-going, praying and saved young lady who is grounded in her faith. When outsiders look at me, they often see someone with two degrees from two of America’s most prestigious institutions, an entrepreneur who prides herself on inspiring others to live life on purpose, and simply lets her light shine despite all obstacles.

However, what so many do not know is that there was a time when I was dying on the inside. On a beautiful summer morning, at the tender age of 25, I suddenly felt sick. It was not the kind of sick where one is coughing with a fever and chills. I felt as if there were a ton of bricks on top of my body and I could not move my feet from the bed to the floor.

Should We Preach like the Puritans?
Joel Beeke says “No!”

In critiquing Puritan preaching, we do not dishonor the Puritans as faithful servants of God, but only acknowledge that they were mere men, fallen and fallible, and men of a particular time and place. Even as we disagree with their methods, let us admire their zeal and effectiveness under the blessing of God’s Spirit.

Divine Affections Yes; Divine Passions No
Here’s a helpful distinction:

The post-Reformation Reformed theologians (late 16th and 17th centuries) approached the subject using two different term: affections and passions. They flat-out denied that God had passions, a word which strongly suggests “vehement commotions.” But they were able to talk very sagaciously about God’s affections.”

The Distinction between Deacons and Elders | Gentle Reformation
Hand this out to every elder and deacon in your church.

Psalms: When Our Words fail Us
Join Carl, Aimee & Todd as they discuss their own experiences wading through the Psalms seeking (and finding!) solace and strength through them.

Kindle Books

Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging by J I Packer $3.99.

Caring for a Loved One With Cancer by Jane Hunt $1.99.

Disability and the Gospel: How God Uses Our Brokenness to Display His Grace by Michael Beates $2.99.