This is a guest post by Sarah Ivill (B.A., University of Georgia; Th.M. Dallas Theological Seminary) who has been leading, teaching or writing women’s Bible Studies since she was eighteen.  She is the author of Hebrews: His Hope, An Anchor for our Souls; Revelation: Let the One Who is Thirsty Come; Judges & Ruth: There Is A Redeemer; and 1 Peter, 2 Peter and Jude: Steadfast in the Faith.  Presently a stay-at-home mom, she continues writing and teaching Reformed Bible Studies for women.  A member of Christ Covenant Church (PCA), Sarah lives with her husband and four children in a suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina. You can find more information about Sarah and her ministry by visiting www.sarahivill.com.

Besides Sunday, my favorite day of the week is Thursday morning. As hard as it is to get four children out the door to women’s Bible study, it is an effort that bears much fruit. I’ve been involved in women’s Bible studies for over twenty years, and over those years I’ve been richly blessed by how it’s anchored me to truth and anchored me to community.

This has been true for several reasons, but here are six:

(1) Scripture alone teaches us what we are to believe about God and how we are to live in relation to Him and others. There is no other book that is more worthy of our study, time or attention than the Bible. We need to challenge one another to spend more time reading Scripture, verse-by-verse, book-by-book. This guards us against empty words that threaten to tickle our ears and starve our hearts.

(2) The Scriptures bear witness about Jesus. We can’t know Jesus without studying the Bible. From Genesis to Revelation each passage of Scripture reveals who God’s Son is so that we might know Him more, love Him more and serve Him more. Such a Christ-centered study of Scripture keeps us from buying into a legalistic lesson (do this and you will live), a moralistic lesson (be a good person and you’ll be saved), a therapeutic lesson (I’m good, you’re good, God’s good, everything’s okay), or an allegorical lesson (I’m going to make this verse about Christ no matter what interpretive principles I have to ignore).

(3) Older women in the faith are to teach the younger women (Titus 2:3-5). The foundation of older women teaching younger women is sound doctrine. If we don’t have sound doctrine, then we can’t teach younger women in the faith what is good, we can’t train younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, to be pure, to be working at home, and to be submissive to their husbands in a way that will not discredit the word of God. The difference isn’t whether or not we will teach them or train them. The difference is whether or not we will teach them and train them in a Christ-centered way.

(4) Studying God’s Word in the context of community sharpens me. Not only do I learn from my sisters’ answers to the exegetical and theological questions, I learn from my sisters’ shared struggles with suffering, sin, and service.

(5) Praying with my sisters one day a week and praying for my sisters the rest of the week cultivates a love for them rooted in God’s grace.

(6) I am my sister’s keeper. Cain’s question to the Lord, “Am I my brother’s keeper” (Gen. 4:9) is answered in 1 John 3:11, the context of which is John’s exhortation to the church to love one another. We are to know who our sisters are and what they are doing so that we can encourage and exhort them in the ways of the Lord.

In a nutshell then, Women’s Bible studies help to drive out the individualism and isolationism that has plagued mankind all through the history of redemption, pointing us to Jesus Christ, who took the curse of our sin upon Himself, freeing us from self-reliance to God-reliance, and freeing us from isolation to interdependence in the community of grace.

1 Peter, 2 Peter and Jude: Steadfast in the Faith by Sarah Ivill (Published by Reformation Heritage Books).

What are the two core abilities that you must have to thrive in the new digital economy?

According to Cal Newport, author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World they are:

1. The ability to quickly master hard things. To put it bluntly, if you can’t learn, you can’t thrive.

2. The ability to produce at an elite level, in terms of both quality and speed. If you don’t produce, you won’t thrive – no matter how skilled or talented you are.

And how do we cultivate these core abilities? Surprise, surprise – they depend on our ability to perform deep work, that is the ability to concentrate for long periods of time without interruption or distraction.

Newport uses the example of the hyper-productive Wharton Business School professor, Adam Grant, to prove his point. Grant’s secret is “the batching of hard but important intellectual work into long, uninterrupted stretches.” He accomplishes this by ruthless organization of his schedule, email auto-responders, and blunt signs on his office door. He exemplifies the law of productivity:

High-Quality Work Produced = (Time Spent) x (Intensity of Focus).

By maximizing his intensity when he works, he maximizes the results he produces per unit of time spent working.

Newport’s research into high-scoring college undergraduates discovered that the best students actually worked fewer hours than the next group of students in the rankings. “That’s because the best students understood the role intensity plays in productivity and therefore went out of their way to maximize their concentration.”

Attention Residue

So what is it about deep work that makes it so productive? It’s the lack of “attention residue.” That’s the effect that Minnesota University business professor Sophie Leroy discovered in her work on multitasking – trying to accomplish multiple tasks simultaneously.

When you switch from some Task A to another Task B, your attention doesn’t immediately follow – a residue of your attention remains stuck thinking about the original task…People experiencing attention residue after switching tasks are likely to demonstrate poor performance on the next task.

“By working on a single hard task for a long time without switching, we can minimize the negative effect of attention residue from other obligations, allowing maximal performance on one task.” The attention residue concept implies that the common habit of working in a state of semi-distraction is potentially devastating to performance.

“To produce at your peak level you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction.”

Blogs

Will Every Jew Be Saved?
I share John Piper’s hope that a day is coming when a great number of Jews will turn to the Lord. Here’s a follow-up article: Jews Come Home to Jesus.

4 Frameworks for Fighting Fear
The Bible presents us with four unique frameworks for confronting fear.

5 Suggestions for Pastors Dealing with Pressure
And here are Ten Joy Stealers in Ministry…and Getting Your Joy Back.

Worldviews Video
Justin Taylor says that this 20-minute youth seminar at the Ligonier National Conference (February 26, 2016) may be the best little introduction to “worldview” that you’ll find.

Free ANE Timeline
“The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago is providing a free full-color PDF timeline of the ancient Near East here.”

Like Scales and Jazz: How to Preach Christ from Psalms
A review of Sidney Greidanus’s new book on preaching Christ from the Psalms.

12 Stories of the Determination of Famous Stutterers
A new book about Famous Stutterers: Twelve Inspiring People Who Achieved Great Things While Struggling with an Impediment.

If you stutter, this book is for you; if you know folks who stutter, this book is for you; if you minister in a church, this book is for you. I see this book the way I see Adam McHugh’s book on introversion. The book will awaken you to a world around you

Pixar Studios Offer Free Storytelling Lessons Online

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.

Impossible People: Christian Courage and the Struggle for the Soul of Civilization by Os Guinness $5.99.

iGods: How Technology Shapes Our Spiritual and Social Lives by Craig Detweiler $1.99.

Ashamed of the Gospel: When the Church Becomes Like the World by John Macarthur $1.99.

Video

Meat Plant Raises the Steaks for Freedom
This family-run Christian business in Grand Rapids is on the frontlines in the fight for religious freedom. The owner placed an article against gay marriage on the break-room table and USDA meat inspectors tried to shut down his business. Video here.

In his new book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Cal Newport defines “Deep Work” as: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capacities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.

It’s what’s necessary not only to wring every last drop of value out of your current intellectual capacity, but it also creates the state of mental strain that is necessary to improve intellectual abilities.

Newport argues that a commitment to deep work is a common theme in the lives of influential figures both past and present including Carl Jung, Michael de Montaigne, Mark Twain, Woody Allen, J. K. Rowling, Bill Gates, etc.

This contrasts sharply with most modern knowledge workers whose use of digital devices has fragmented their attention span into slivers. Instead, they are pre-occupied with “Shallow Work” which Newport defines as: Noncognitively demanding, logisitical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.

Most worryingly, there’s evidence that this shift to shallow work cannot be easily reversed but rather produces a permanent reduction in the capacity to do deep work.

However, like all changes, this produces opportunities as well as problems. As Newport put it:

Our work culture’s shift toward the shallow is exposing a massive economic and personal opportunity for the few who recognize the potential of resisting this trend and prioritizing depth.

The main reason for this is that due to the rapidly changing world and workplace, to remain valuable you have to learn complicated things quickly and that requires deep work. Deep work is so important that business writer Eric Barker has called it “the superpower of the 21st century.”

Newport concludes his introduction with this “Deep Work Hypothesis.”

The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport.

We start this week’s digital detox round up with a couple of websites with resources to tackle digital addiction. More digital detox resources here.

Fight the New Drug
This addresses porn addiction and if you click through you’ll find peer-reviewed research on how porn harms the brain, porn affects relationships, and porn affects society.

Real Battle Ministries
This website has it’s own digital detox battle plan here. They highly recommend the book Reset Your Child’s Brain: A Four-Week Plan to End Meltdowns, Raise Grades, and Boost Social Skills by Reversing the Effects of Electronic Screen-Time by Dr. Victoria Dunckley.

Dr. Dunckley has found that everyday use of interactive screen devices — such as computers, video games, smartphones, and tablets — can easily overstimulate a child’s nervous system, triggering a variety of stubborn symptoms. In contrast, she’s discovered that a strict electronic fast single-handedly improves mood, focus, sleep, and behavior, regardless of the child’s diagnosis.

How Social Media Impacts Our News Consumption, Behavior, And Productivity
A podcast interview with Cal Newport, author of Deep Work: Rules for Success in a Distracted World.

Goodbye Smart Phone, Hello Books
Katie Hughes resolves to get back to the reading habit she developed in childhood but that was suffocated by her smartphone.

So here’s the plan, and if you find yourself in the same boat with your evil siren of a cell phone, you can join along and we’ll see how it goes.

I will read at least 30 minutes per day. I will stick my phone in a drawer and refuse to even acknowledge it’s presence for the entirety of that 30 minutes. That 30 minutes is for me and my book, and the phone is not invited.

As an aside, this is one of many problems that result from the constant presence of a phone, but there are many wonderful, positive things I enjoy because of it as well. As with all things in life, we ought to learn how to receive it with thanksgiving and discard any aspect of it which cannot be received in such a way.

But right now I’m mad at my phone and it is not welcome. Goodbye mindless cell phone scrolling, hello loving to read again.

How tech ate the media and our minds – Axios
Every day there are:

• 1.2 billion web pageviews, per Chartbeat
• Billions of Google searches, per Google
• 13.8 billion hours + of video shared on YouTube, per Google
• 13M audio/video calls made on Facebook Messenger, per Facebook
• 50 billion messages sent on WhatsApp, per Facebook
• 500 million Tweets sent, per Twitter

Our brains have been literally swamped and reprogrammed. On average, we check our phones 50 times each day — with some studies suggesting it could three times that amount. We spend around 6 hours per day consuming digital media. As a result, the human attention span has fallen from 12 seconds to eight seconds since 2000, while the goldfish attention span is nine seconds. And we just mindlessly pass along information without reading or checking it. Columbia University found that nearly 60 percent of all social media posts are shared without being clicked on.

“Social Media” Networks and the Christian Movement: Three Phases
George Guthrie surveys how Christians used such media for the sake of the gospel and the church.

Phase 1: Hand-written Documents: One Message, Many Places & Times

Phase 2: The Printing Press: A Rapid Medium for the Masses

Phase 3: Internet: Immediate and Constant Access

He concludes on a positive:

Yet, who can deny the positive benefits of being made aware of profoundly helpful articles, audios, and videos with the push of a button. The gospel is going forth to dark corners of the world in ways that were before unimaginable. Access to Christian education has entered a new phase around the world as remote peoples can take advantage of high quality teachings half a world away.

Nevertheless, how will we steward the social media of our own age? How might we address the down sides of such media, even as our forefathers and mothers did in the age of Paul, or Augustine, or Luther? Let’s thank God for social media through the ages, even as we seek diligently to use it wisely.

We conclude with another positive note: Relax, Your Smartphone Probably Isn’t Destroying Your Relationships.  This article argues that there are some hidden social upsides to screen time.

• One study of more than 600 Internet users found that half had turned online connections into physical interactions, and 22% of those later became serious relationships (engaged, married, or living together). And a two-year follow-up study confirmed that those partnerships were just as stable as relationships initiated the old-fashioned way.
• In a 2012 Pew study of more than 2,200 Americans, 55% of internet users said their email exchanges had improved their connections to family members, and 66% say the same thing when it came to their good friends.”

Blogs

Watch an Entirely Free, Seminary-Level Course on the Reformation
Justin Taylor links to the syllabi, reading list, and videos of Carl Truman’s course on Reformation history.

8 Ways to Read (a Lot) More Books This Year
“Here’s my advice for fitting more reading into your own life, based on the behaviors that I changed:”

1. Centralize reading in your home.
2. Make a public commitment.
3. Find a few trusted, curated lists.
4. Change your mindset about quitting.
5. Take a “news fast” and channel your reading dollars.
6. Triple your churn rate.
7. Read physical books.
8. Reapply the 10,000 steps rule.

New Research Debunks The ‘Ball And Chain’ Myth
Contrary to the common view among men that marriage is an “expensive encumbrance on their freedom and their sex lives,” new research finds married men have more money, better sex, and a longer life than their single peers.

How Not to Help a Sufferer
Four ways we, like Job’s friends, can pour burning coals on the heads of those already sitting in ashes:

1. Appeal too quickly to God’s sovereignty.
2. Launch into a story of how God used your suffering.
3. Minimize the wrongdoing that caused the suffering.
4. Emphasize character formation while neglecting comfort and compassion.

4 Barriers to Effective Pastoral Ministry – LifeWay Pastors
And how to remove them:

1. Busyness is a barrier to effectiveness.
2. Interruptions are a barrier to effectiveness.
3. Lack of a clear personal mission is a barrier to effectiveness.
4. Lack of personal organization is a barrier to effectiveness.

3 Ways Busyness Is Destroying You And Your Relationships
While on the subject of busyness:

1. Busyness creates an inner turmoil because our work, even our work for that which is good, cannot satisfy us.
2. Busyness creates an irritability with and sense of moral superiority over others, including God.
3. Busyness leads us to question God’s character.

5 Things Singles Wish Married Couples Knew

1. God settles the solitary in a family—and it might be yours.
2. Marriage is sanctifying, but so is singleness.
3. Our singleness doesn’t define us. You can help us remember that.
4. Culture lies to us a lot.
5. Don’t expect all your single friends to get married.

Kindle Books

Union and Communion with Christ by Maurice Roberts $2.99.

Who Made God?: And Answers to Over 100 Other Tough Questions of Faith by Ravi Zacharias $6.99.

Good News About Injustice: A Witness of Courage in a Hurting World $3.99.