Cream of blog 12.15.11
December 15, 2011
Scotty Smith, with “An Advent Prayer for Our Children and Grandchildren”
Gene Edward Veith shares a brother’s sharp view on whose job it is to “keep Christ in Christmas.”
The Resurgence tempts you to consider the lesson we can learn about God’s law from kids and forbidden marshmallows.
Cream of blog 12.5.11
December 5, 2011
Make a PLAN
November 16, 2011
From Kevin DeYoung’s blog:
A PLAN for Giving Generously
P – Pray for a generous heart. Make people a priority over prosperity. Don’t think: “How much do I have to give away in order to be obedient?” Ask: “Give me opportunities to sow.”
L – Lifestyle cap. As we earn more, we should give more. If you are wealthier than you used to be, have you done more to increase your standard of living or your standard of giving?
A – Accountability. Set goals and find someone you can trust who won’t be threatened by talking frankly about finances. Sex and money–we don’t talk about them nearly as much as Jesus did.
N – No less than a tithe. Whether the Old Testament requirement is a binding prescription or not, I find it hard to imagine that Western Christians who have seen the glory of God in the face of Christ and enjoy great prosperity, would want to give less than was required of the poorest Israelite. Statistics consistently show that Protestants give less than 3% of their income to their churches. A tithe, for most churchgoers, would be a huge step in the right direction.
Cream of blog 11.03.21
March 21, 2011
Here are some niceties:
- Photos and brief introductions to the ten oldest surviving church buildings in the world.
- Great biographical introduction to Patrick, written by Mark Driscoll. I didn’t know Patrick was never canonized by the Church of Rome.
- “A Prayer about God’s Sovereignty and Our Sanity” by Scotty Smith. Does watching FoxNews or MSNBC make you nervous or angry? If so, meditate on this.
Paul Tripp has written a short piece about how the gospel affects life right now. The original appears at Desiring God.
Jason sat in front of me with the head-down, humped-shouldered posture of a confused and disappointed man. It wasn’t that Jason’s life had been a sad narrative of personal suffering. Sure, he had faced some hard things, but they were the typical things that you face when you’re living in a world that has been broken by sin. It wasn’t that Jason was alienated and friendless. He was surrounded by a group of less than perfect, but pretty faithful companions. It wasn’t that Jason was impoverished or homeless. No, he had a decent job and an adequate condo.
Jason’s problem was that he was lost in the middle of his own faith. It had become harder and harder for him to connect the beauty of what he believed to the gritty and often difficulty realities of his daily life. Jason’s problem was that he carried a gospel around with him that had a great big hole in the middle of it.
Jason could explain to you what it meant to say that he had been “saved by grace,” and he knew that he was going to spend eternity with his Savior. His problem was in the here and now. Day after day, in situation after situation and relationship after relationship, Jason didn’t carry with him a vibrant and practical sense of the nowism of the grace of Jesus Christ. Yes, Jason believed in life after death, but he desperately needed to understand life before death; the kind of radical life you will live when you understand what Christ has given you for the life he has called you to right here, right now.
Let me suggest four critical aspects of the nowism of the gospel (there are more) that Jason seemed functionally blind to.
1. Grace will decimate what you think of you, while it gives you a security of identity you’ve never had.
Grace will expose your sin, but it will not leave you without identity. Grace had liberated Jason, but he didn’t know it or live like it. He had not only been forgiven and empowered, but he had been given a brand new identity. Jason had been freed from looking inward for his identity. No longer did he have to measure his potential by his track record or the size of the problems he was facing.
His potential was as great as the grace of Christ. He had been freed from looking outward for his identity. No longer did he have to search for identity in his Read the rest of this entry »
Cream of blog 07.22.10
July 22, 2010
- Advice for parents of college-bound students from John Mark Reynolds.
- Shared link from Dr. David Jones on the Christian ethics of cremation.
- C.J. Mahaney answers a father’s question about the heart issues behind a son’s obsession with video games.
- Owen Strachan gathers some powerful points from Jonathan Edwards on the question of how you can discern if you truly are a Christian.
Cream of blog 10.05.11
May 11, 2010
A few blog posts worthy of your time
- Kevin DeYoung on that feeling of perpetual guilt you may have.
- Kevin DeYoung on questions we should ask when people are disappointed with the church. (part one, two, and three)
- Got a “Swagger Wagon”? You might want one after watching these two videos.
- And another thing: Is your worship contemporvant? Let these guys show you how to fix that.
- Jonathan Dodson on 5 reasons you may not be seeing spiritual growth.
Cream of blog 01.14.10
January 14, 2010
Some blog posts worthy of your time…
- Kevin DeYoung (Gospel Coalition) on the easily-offended spirit (a must-read!).
- Allen Yeh (Scriptorium Daily) with a theory on how Mao inadvertently paved the way for the gospel to travel swiftly through China.
- Winford Bevins (Resurgence) gives a concise summary of what intercessory prayer is all about.
- Fred Sanders (Scriptorium Daily) shares a Charles Wesley hymn about earthquakes. Wesley’s entire collection of hymns about earthquakes can be found here.
Cream of blog 12.01.09
December 1, 2009
A few blog posts worth reading…
Two sharp barbs re: prayer
October 19, 2009
The next sermon in the Jesus Unplugged series is on Luke 11:1-13, in which Jesus’ disciples want him to teach them how to pray. Below are two sharp barbs about prayer–the first from Paul E. Miller’s recent release, A Praying Life,
“The quest for a contemplative life can actually be self-absorbed, focused on my quiet and me. If we love people and have the power to help, then we are going to be busy. Learning to pray doesn’t offer us a less busy life; it offers us a less busy heart. In the midst of outer busyness we can develop an inner quiet. Because we are less hectic on the inside, we have a greater capacity to love…and thus to be busy, which in turn drives us even more into a life of prayer. By spending time with our Father in prayer, we integrate our lives with his, with what he is doing in us. Our lives become more coherent. They feel calmer, more ordered, even in the midst of confusion and pressure.”
The second is a humorous-but-deadly-serious observation from Jonathan Acuff’s site Stuff Christians Like. Acuff addresses a frequent prayer meeting and intercessory prayer technique: Praying that God will fix a situation as long as you are not part of the solution. (I dare you to click it and read.) More and more often I find myself coming back to that as I pray and as I lead others in praying, “Father, use us–our words and actions–as part of your gracious answer to these prayers….”
