A La Carte (December 12)

Today’s Kindle deals include lots of good books with the highlight being all kinds of great stuff by J.R.R. Tolkien.

There’s lots of good books from Christian Focus on sale at Westminster Books.

(Yesterday on the blog: The 2019 Christian Reading Challenge)

A Different Kind of Profanity

“In contemporary American culture grumbling is often ingrained as a way of life and many treat it as harmless personal therapy. We tend to rename it as something like venting in order to remove the stigma. Grumbling is so habitual that we often miss the irony of our words when we stand in front of closets full of clothes and murmur that we do not have anything to wear. Or when we stand before refrigerators packed with food and say we don’t have anything to eat.”

Education in a Fallen World

This is a really helpful perspective on education. “Often when we talk about education, we talk about it in ideological terms (how we want/believe it should be) and not in practical/realistic terms (how it really is). Don’t get me wrong, ideology is important. We didn’t choose to put our kids in public school devoid of ideological reasons (and we will share them if people ask!). But we also made the decision from a realistic perspective. We put both our ideology and our real life circumstances on the table and public school is what we came up with.”

Is Porn Addiction Just a Medical Problem?

“For the believer, every single day there are moments of clarity and good godly desires that need to be nurtured. The battle against addiction is not won or lost when you are faced with severe temptation, it’s determined by a multitude of choices we make each and every day. These choices include laying aside every weight that hinders us (Hebrews 12:1), like getting rid of unfettered internet access. They also include the good choices to invest time in prayer, the Word, service, and intentional fellowship and accountability with members of Christ’s body.”

Greenland- The Land of Ice (Video)

Here’s a stunning video displaying the beauty of Greenland.

The Pastor’s Wife Who Scraped Gum Off the Floor

“And may we who lead, lead in serving. May pastors and elders and deacons and directors and coordinators be the first to change diapers, to greet at the door, to teach in the children’s ministry, to clean up after service, to scrub toilets, to hold teething babies, to comfort falling toddlers, to chase down and welcome messy families, to sit with the emotional teen, to comfort the ailing elderly.” Yes, may we all…

The Pastor and Difficult Bioethical Decision Making

Pastors need to be equipped to guide people in this area. “My goal in this article is to help pastors who must shepherd and live alongside those who face bioethical dilemmas. This is an important topic for at least two reasons. First, understanding these situations well will be of great pastoral and evangelistic benefit. Second, I’m a pastor who has a degree in bioethics, and through the years I’ve realized that Christians rarely think any better than non-Christians about these topics. We need to do better. We need to become wiser—to serve both our churches and our neighbors.”

The Mature Christian’s Struggle

“Romans 7 is one of the most controversial passages in Scripture as far as debates are concerned. The big question people ask is, is Paul referring to a believer as he talks through Romans 7:14-25? Even among those who agree that he is speaking about a believer, there is much debate as to whether the person described is a mature or an immature Christian. I take the view that this is describing the type of Christian we should all strive to be. This, in other words, is the most mature of believers, and I have four reasons why.”