A new month brings some new book deals. Mark Dever’s 9 Marks of a Healthy Church is down to $3.99 and makes a great read for church leaders or anyone else. Meanwhile, this month’s free book from ChristianAudio is The Sword from Bryan M. Litfin. “This novel of page-turning action and adventure poses the question, If a society had no knowledge of Christianity, and then a Bible were discovered, what would happen?” This is part one of a trilogy.

Sexting Rates - This is one to read if you’ve got a teenaged kid (or will soon have a teenaged kid). “Nearly 30% of U.S. teenagers are sexting, sending nude photos via email or text, according to a study that shows the behavior is more common than previously thought.”

Grow Up? - Much has been written about people refusing to grow up these days. Mark Bauerlein summarizes some of the current research in an interesting and somewhat exasperating article.

Muslim Persecution of Christians - “Because the persecution of Christians in the Islamic world is on its way to reaching epidemic proportions, ‘Muslim Persecution of Christians’ was developed to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that surface each month.”

Wildfires - The Big Picture has a roundup of photos from the fires in the western US.

Mormons on Facebook - Here is something to be aware of: “Mormon missionaries are now using Facebook to try to convert new members - and have taken part in more than 1 million online chats in the last year alone.”

Temple Mount - This video provides a reconstruction of the temple at the time of Jesus. (HT)

The issue of faith is not so much whether we believe in God, but whether we believe the God we believe in. —R.C. Sproul