The Power of Rest: Why Sleep Alone Is Not Enough. A 30-Day Plan to Reset Your Body by Matthew Edlund M.D. Special Kindle price for limited time of $1.99.

I’ve been benefitting from this book’s comprehensive view of rest. As the sub-title says, “Why sleep alone is not enough.” But it is an important foundation as Edlund outlines in chapter 1. Here’s a summary:

1. Sleep Is Necessary for Weight Control

From 2003 to 2009 multiple population studies around the world have shown that people who sleep fewer than seven hours, especially those getting fewer than six hours of sleep, gain appreciable weight. In the small-scale, short-term studies done in 2008, sleeping an extra thirty to sixty minutes a night decreased weight. Some people rapidly shed ten to fifteen pounds.

2. Sleep Is Required for Memory and Learning

The better you sleep, the more you learn.  The deeper the sleep the better our learning. But research at Harvard has shown that short periods of daytime sleep— even as short as a six-minute nap — can improve memory.

3. Sleep Is Needed to Prevent Major Clinical Depression

When people sleep enough, their mood quickly improves.  And getting enough sleep should also go a long way toward preventing major clinical depression, an illness whose rates have been doubling and tripling among Americans over the last thirty years.

4. Sleep Is Required to Grow New Brain Cells

This has only been discovered in the past few years, overthrowing years of scientific dogma.

5. Sleep Is Needed to Avoid Colds and Fight Off Infection

Rest is more than restoration. Rest is on the front lines of your infection defense system. It keeps your immune system going. Rest prevents infection. Rest well, stay well.

6. Enough Sleep Prevents Plaque from Forming in Your Arteries, Preventing Heart Attack and Stroke

Arterial plaque is the basis of the majority of heart attacks and strokes, and fortunately for us, good sleep can prevent its even getting started.

7. Proper Sleep Is Required to Maintain and Strengthen the Inner Clocks That Regulate Our Lives

It doesn’t really matter when you sleep; what does matter is the regularity of your pattern, when you wake and when you sleep. Your clocks are regular in their timing for a reason. Life is rhythmic. So is sleep. To know when to sleep, it pays to know a little about your own inner music.

The Power of Rest: Why Sleep Alone Is Not Enough. A 30-Day Plan to Reset Your Body by Matthew Edlund M.D. $1.99.

Technology can be a wonderful servant but a terrible master. Nowhere is that more true than in the area of Christian ministry, especially for the preacher preparing sermons. My aim in this article is to help preachers use technology in such a way as to get the most out of this willing servant, but also to avoid it becoming a damaging tyrant. To do that, we will honestly face some of the dangers of technology in sermon preparation; then we will outline a number of ways technology can help in sermon preparation; finally, I’ll give you a brief description of the primary ways in which I use technology in sermon preparation.

THE DANGERS OF TECHNOLOGY

Distraction

Even someone writing sermons with a quill and parchment can be distracted from his task. However, the time and the effort it takes to get and read another scroll from the vault would usually be sufficient disincentive to distraction. Modern technology, however, makes it much easier to be distracted. We’re just a couple of finger movements and clicks away from Facebook, YouTube, blogs, and so on. It’s so fast, so quick, and so, so easy. And so damaging to deep thought. Thankfully, we can use technology to keep technology under control, by using software like LeechBlock to limit Internet access.

Dependence

When all the early preachers had was a Bible, they had to wrestle with the text and prayerfully seek the help of the Holy Spirit, especially in dealing with difficult passages. With the availability of the Internet and Bible software, it so much easier to ask Google than to ask God. Admittedly, books pose a similar danger, but the ease of Internet searching and the huge capacities of modern Bible software make it all the more tempting than the hard work of prayerfully striving to understand God’s Word in a dependent spirit.

Deception

Digital books and the Internet have made it so fearfully easy to simply cut and paste swathes of text that some preachers are just parroting collations of other men’s sermons and passing it off as their own. This is deception which not only damages the preacher’s relationship with God, but also undercuts his hope of God’s blessing.

Degradation

The more we depend on electronic resources and the more we simply cut and paste, the more we degrade our own thinking abilities. The less thinking we do for ourselves and the more we let others do our thinking for us, the harder and harder it becomes for us to think. Yes, it’s easier just to lazily reach for the commentary or to open Bible software, but we must resist that in order to develop the muscle of our own mind which, like all muscles, gets stronger with use.

Division

In my 13 years of teaching Seminary students, I’ve noticed that students take much less notes in class than they used to. One reason for this is that they think they know where they can find information on the Internet when they need it. However, there’s a big difference between knowing where to find something and knowing something. Also, by taking knowledge into our minds, information on one subject is no longer separated from another subject as it is on the Internet. Instead, the knowledge of different subjects is mingling in our minds, cross-pollinating and fertilizing, and also renewing our minds, and building a godly worldview.

Devotion

Many preachers will concede that there is often a devotional deficit associated with using technology to prepare sermons, compared to writing with pen and paper. I’m not sure why that should be, apart from it just takes longer to write things out and we write more carefully than we type. Somehow, using a computer can make sermon writing a more mechanical and automated process rather than a spiritual and devotional exercise.

Despising

If we’re older, there’s the danger that we’ll despise the use of technology in ministry. If we’re younger, there’s the danger of despising those who don’t use technology much at all. It’s important that we don’t make our preference the rule for others, but find whatever works best for our minds, talents, and methods. Let’s be careful that we don’t let use lead to abuse, or abuse lead to non-use.

THE BENEFITS OF TECHNOLOGY

Affordability

Although some modern Bible software is expensive to buy and some of the books are also quite expensive, on the whole they are good value. If you keep your eye open, you can usually pick up software packages and individual books at significant discounts. There are also websites that offer many free books for Logos. Also, if you use the Kindle App on your computer, you will be able to buy some of the quality Christian books that Amazon offers daily.

Accessibility

With the help of my Mac and my Kindle, I can now carry thousands of books with me wherever I go and access my books even without Internet access. That allows me to prepare sermons in airports, on planes, hotel rooms, etc. Logos also syncs its software with its tablet and smartphone app.

Accuracy

Most Bible software and some online software are regularly updated with the latest morphological, syntactical, and archeological research, lending increased accuracy to our studies. That helps us to avoid relying on dated information that is no longer credible. Remember, the wide availability of Bible software has also made it easier for people to check what we are saying on their smartphones in their pews as they listen to us. That should challenge us to do thorough research!

Efficiency

Technology has the potential to save us hours of time. It is simply much quicker to hover over a word on Logos and get immediate parsing and lexical information than to do this using parsing guides and lexicons. Same goes for counting up how many times a word is used in a chapter, a book, or in the whole Bible. Some software will even present this information in color on pie and bar charts.

Searchability

If I want to study something like justification, I can enter that word on Logos and it will open every resource in my library that refers to justification. It’s like standing in front of a library of hundreds of books, saying “Justification,” and all the books in our library immediately open on our desk at that subject. In addition, I have all my preached sermons filed in Evernote, which allows me to search all my previous sermons for specific words, phrases, or topics.

Linguistic Ability

Although it might be thought that the use of technology for original language study might undermine  a preacher’s ongoing development in Greek and Hebrew, I’ve found the opposite to be the case. Most “purists” who don’t use technology for this, eventually discover their approach is unsustainable in pastoral ministry, and not only give up their idealism but also their Greek and Hebrew. Those who take a more pragmatic approach, using some of the God-given tools to make the task easier, usually find that over the years they are using the technology less as they have absorbed so much Greek and Hebrew through regular exposure to the languages through the technology.

Durability

Technology allows us to extend the life and usefulness of sermons by uploading them to sites like sermonaudio.com. We might also use parts of some sermons as blog posts or take out certain sentences to use as quotations on Twitter or Facebook. I know many ministers who use the Logos notes feature to attach their sermons to specific texts, so that if they are studying them in future, the notes are right there for them to access, again extending their usefulness into the future.

EXAMPLES OF HOW I USE TECHNOLOGY

Although Logos is more expensive than other options, and it’s bulky and frustrating at times, on balance it’s the best option for me. Following are some of the ways I use Logos in weekly sermon preparation (although much of what I write here is also transferrable to other Bible Software programs such as Bibleworks and Accordance).

Delimiting the text

Once I have spent some time working on delimiting my text, I usually check it using the Logos Compare Pericope tool which lets me compare how different Bible versions have decided where the paragraph begins or ends. That can either confirm me in my decision or else challenge me to think further.

Comparing the text

Before beginning to look at the text in Greek or Hebrew, I usually use the Logos Text Comparison tool to study five or six different English versions of the passage, looking for how different versions use different words, tenses, order, missed words, added words, etc. I do this to make my original language study more efficient by focusing my study on the words and phrases where there is some significant disagreement. It’s not that I don’t spend any time studying the words and phrases that are uniformly translated; rather, it helps me know where I have to spend most of my time.

Word Study

Logos allows me to hover over a word, discover its lemma, and then do a number of different kinds of word studies of varying complexity using different tools. Each word study probably takes about 5-10 minutes compared to perhaps an hour of similar study using books and concordances, and produces far more accurate, independent, and comprehensive results.

Grammar and Syntax

Depending on which version of Logos that you use, and which additional books you have bought, you may be able to access Greek and Hebrew grammars that make reference to the specific text you are studying. By looking up these links each time a sermon is prepared, our Greek and Hebrew knowledge will be gradually expanded as well as helping in our immediate sermon preparation.

Annotation

I use the Visual Filters tool on Logos to automatically color code Greek and Hebrew verbs, pronouns, and conjunctions according to my presets. If I choose to see the verbs, Logos puts colored highlights, boxes, and under-linings on each word so that I can immediately see their stems, tenses, voices, etc., and any significant patterns and sequences. I can also add notes to the text as I go on. I will sometimes print out this color coded annotated version of the text in Greek or Hebrew and carry it around with me so that I can familiarize myself with it at various points in the week.

Outline

Logos offers a number of outlining tools from simple block diagramming, to sentence diagramming, to much more complex line diagramming. Although, of course, this can also be done on paper, using technology allows much greater trial and error in trying to decide how words relate to one another. As a check on your work in Greek, you can buy the Lexham Clausal Outlines add-on for Logos.

Cross references

With Logos, it’s easy and quick to bring up a range of cross references relevant to the passage, and also any parallel passages to compare two accounts of the one event.

Commentary

Most Logos packages come with a number of commentaries. Although the quality of them varies, they can be supplemented with a good range of excellent modern commentaries that Logos offers as standalone volumes. And, of course, you can access many commentaries and sermons online. The only thing to emphasize here is to delay this step until as late as possible in the sermon preparation process so that you have struggled with the text yourself before reading commentaries and sermons, so that you don’t just copy what others have said. Wrestling with the text yourself will make your sermons more original, more personal, and more authoritative.

This article was first published in The Expositor Magazine. You can subscribe here.

Blogs

6 Reasons Why Anxiety, Worry, & Fear are Particular Problems for Christians | Ron Edmondson
Can you “over-spiritualize” fear and anxiety?

The Dominant Medium We Neglect | Bob Allen, The Gospel Coalition
In short: Television. Bob examines the current state of Christian television.

James Is, You Know, in the Bible | Rick Phillips, Reformation21
Rick wrestles with Faith and Works.

How An Affair Really Begins | Tim Challies
It’s not with sex.

Reaching a Boiling Point | Barry York, Gentle Reformation
What Deuteronomy 14:21 (“You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk”) has to do with us today.

I Went To Planned Parenthood For Birth Control, But They Pushed Abortion | Sarah Owens, The Federalist
Sarah outlines her personal experience with Planned Parenthood as a teenager and her changing views on a woman’s “right to choose.”

Recommended New Book

Happiness by Randy Alcorn. Although I have a couple of reservations about this book, which I’ll explain in my upcoming review, on the whole I am very positive about it.

Kindle Books

God’s Design for Man and Woman: A Biblical-Theological Survey by Andreas and Margaret Kostenberger $2.99.

Truth in a Culture of Doubt: Engaging Skeptical Challenges to the Bible by Andreas Kostenberger $2.99.

How Do Preaching and Corporate Prayer Work Together? by Ryan McGraw

Video

God in Our Midst: A New Teaching Series from Daniel Hyde | Ligonier
Exciting series from Ligonier and Danny Hyde centering on understanding Jesus through understanding of the Old Testament tabernacle.

In preparing counseling lectures about anger, I came across some horrifying statistics.

• 32% of people say that they have a close friend of family member who has trouble containing their anger.
• 12% say they have trouble containing their own anger.
• Only 13% of that 12% have sought help with their anger problems.
• 28% say they worry about how angry they sometimes feel.
• 20% have ended a relationship or friendship with someone when they saw how they behaved when they were angry.
• 64% strongly agree or agree that people in general are getting angrier.
• 45% regularly lose their temper at work.
• 64% of officeworkers have had office rage.
• 27% of nurses have been attacked at work.
• 33% of Britons are not on speaking terms with their neighbors.
• 80% of drivers say they have been involved in road-rage incidents.
• 25% have committed an act of road rage themselves.
• Every nine seconds in America, a woman is assaulted or beaten.
• 56% of fatal auto accidents are caused by road rage or aggressive driving.
• 72% of internet users admit to having suffered net rage.
• 50% of us have reacted to computer problems by hitting our PC, hurling parts of it around, screaming or abusing our colleagues (which is simply one more argument for an Apple Mac).
• 65% of people are more likely to express anger over the phone compared to 26% in writing and 9% face to face.

The saddest thing about angry people is that they are not only destroying others, they are damaging themselves.

• Aggressive personalities are more susceptible to heart attacks and clogged arteries.
• An angry person with a history of heart problems is five times more likely to suffer a heart attack than someone who is not.
• The risk of stroke is more than three-fold in the couple of hours following any outburst.

Youth Statistics

In the US, nearly one in 12 adolescents – close to six million young people – meet criteria for a diagnosis of Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED), “a syndrome characterized by persistent uncontrollable anger attacks not accounted for by other mental disorders.”

• 66% of U.S. adolescents have experienced an anger attack in their lives that involved threatening violence or violent behavior.
• More than 1 in 3 high school students, both male and female, have been involved in a physical fight.
• 1 in 9 of those students have been injured badly enough to need medical treatment.
• 1 in 3 teens, both male and female, have experienced some sort of violent behavior from a dating partner.

I’ll come back to this subject with some analysis of where anger really comes from, as well as hope for change, both for the angry person and their victims. In the meantime, some heavenly wisdom:

But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’ shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire (Matt. 5:22). 

So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God. (James 1:19-20).

Do not hasten in your spirit to be angry, for anger rests in the bosom of fools (Eccl. 7:9).

Make no friendship with an angry man, and with a furious man do not go (Prov. 22:24).

With one very small edit (for clarity), below are the chapter headings for 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do. Though not an overtly Christian book, the author does speak of how her faith in God helped her through the sudden loss of her mother and then, soon after, her 27-year-old husband.

Read it through the lens of Scripture to weed out anything contrary to Scripture, to identify principles and guidance that are consistent with Scripture (see chapter headings below), and to have these principles explained in more detail.

It’s on that latter point that I found the book most helpful. Many of these 13 strategies are biblical. But the Bible doesn’t give us all the detail about how to argue ourselves out of self-pity, how to set boundaries, etc. That’s where this book excels. Read it with Biblical spectacles, add spiritual analysis, spiritual motivation, and spiritual empowerment, and you have a God-designed package that combines the best of God’s special grace with the best of His common grace. As Jay Adams wrote (in a paragraph that I wish was more consistently applied in the rest of his writing):

I do not wish to disregard science, but rather I welcome it as a useful adjunct for the purposes of illustrating, filling in generalizations with specifics, and challenging wrong human interpretations of Scripture, thereby forcing the student to restudy the Scriptures (Competent to Counsel, 1970, xxi).

It’s not a book just for those who are feeling mentally weak; it’s also for those who want to improve their mental strength and to prepare for times when their resilience will be sorely tested. It will also help you minister to people who are struggling in these areas. Here are the chapter headings:

1. They don’t waste time feeling sorry for themselves.

2. They don’t allow everyone else to set their boundaries and expectations.

3. They don’t shy away from change.

4. They don’t focus on things they can’t control.

5. They don’t worry about pleasing everyone.

6. They don’t fear taking calculated risks.

7. They don’t dwell on the past.

8. They don’t make the same mistakes over and over.

9. They don’t resent other people’s success.

10. They don’t give up after the first failure.

11. They don’t fear alone time.

12. They don’t feel the world owes them anything.

13. They don’t expect immediate results.

13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do by Amy Morin.

Judging by the levels of support for the insurgent campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, many voters on the right and the left are totally disgusted with the two political parties and their candidates. Americans want to punish the political establishment, both red and blue, for their multiple failures and are looking for someone, anyone, to be a battering ram through politics as usual. As someone said, trying to explain Trump’s popularity, “He’s giving voice to what millions of Americans are yelling at the TV’s every night.”

As a conservative, I must admit I was initially intrigued by Trump. I share the widespread frustration with the political culture, especially the disconnect between elite politicians and ordinary people, and the ever-rising taxes and living costs for the squeezed middle-class. I too long for an outsider to come in and shake things up. I’m fed up with the Republicans’ cowardly surrenders to the slightest media criticism, and admire Trump’s disregard for what mainstream journalists think of him. Like Trump, I’m sick of all the promises that never seem to produce any action, and I’m angry at the use of political correctness to silence debate and sideline Christian views.

Trump Troubles
Was I troubled about Trump’s three marriages, his multiple casinos, his bullying arrogance, his Clinton donations, his anti-Mexican rhetoric, and his support of single payer health care (despite his remarks at the debate, he clearly knows nothing about Scottish healthcare)? Sure; I was and am deeply concerned about all that. Even one of these problems would have sunk him in the polls in the past. In the past; but not now, apparently.

Surely it demonstrates the level of animosity towards the political class and system that someone with so many fatal flaws has become so popular with a large section of the electorate.

Like many, I doubt I could ever ultimately vote for him as President, but he’s been a useful way of registering a protest and disgust at so many of the politicians, judges, and journalists who are so out of touch with, and even hostile to, ordinary Americans and their everyday concerns.

Many who would ordinarily have been turned off by Trump’s many inconsistencies and glaring weaknesses have said they would vote for him, perhaps with the hope that his business skills would get the economy moving again, or maybe just to exact vengeance on the political classes and commentators.

Trump Damaged
Until now that is. Trump’s debate performance was extremely disappointing, with little substance or coherence to his answers. And then came his appalling post-debate comments about Megyn Kelly.

If that doesn’t fatally damage him, then nothing will. If he survives this, the Republican establishment will have to face up to the fact that people are even more disgusted with them than with one of the most vulgar and crude individuals in public life.

Trump initially tried to defend his comments about Kelly, other women, Mexicans, and other targets of his vicious tongue, by using the “anti-political-correctness” defense, another indicator of his skillful political instincts. He knows that many Americans are infuriated at the way the left has used political correctness to shame, sideline, shut-down, silence, and even prosecute voices and views that dissent from liberal dogma. We’re glad to have a champion who will just say what he thinks and “tell it as it is” regardless of what the media and the political establishment think.

Plain Rudeness
However we must not use our opposition to political correctness to justify plain rudeness. There are Christians and even some pastors I know who also use “the Donald defense” to excuse their lack of kindness, tact, and gentleness in witnessing, preaching, and pastoring.

But there’s a difference between fighting for free speech and using filthy speech. There’s a difference between telling the truth and simply insulting opponents. There’s a difference between ridiculing policies and ridiculing people. There’s a difference between breaking liberal control of politics and losing all self-control in the process. There’s a difference between highlighting bias and resenting any challenge to explain ourselves. There’s a difference between bravery and bluster. There’s a difference between being fearless and being foolish.

 Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you (Eph. 4:29-32)