Today’s Kindle deals include Tim Keller’s book on prayer. And, at least for now, not a whole lot else!
Resolutions
“Do you remember what resolutions you were making this time last year? Perhaps they included losing weight, or eating healthier meals, or putting aside some money. Those are all good things when life’s bumps are relatively minor and we believe there to be some semblance of order and prosperity undergirding our lives. But in 2020, it wasn’t long before life as we knew it fell apart…”
Godlier Than Last Year
Speaking of resolutions, here’s a good one: to be godlier than the year before.
15 Good News Trends from 2020
Joe Carter has a roundup of some of the good news trends from the year that was.
A Guide to Documentary Filmmaking
Anyone interested in creating a documentary will benefit from reading Stephen McCaskell’s three-part series on the topic. (Stephen accompanied me for the Epic documentary.)
Refugee? Mixed-Race? Please Stop Co-opting Christ
Jordan Standridge is concerned about the way some people co-opt Christ. “One article called Jesus the Mixed-raced savior, pointing to some of the non-Israelite women found in the genealogy of Jesus, others, especially around Christmas, have have written on social media pointing out the fact that Jesus himself was a refugee, having escaped from Herod as he sought to put Him to death. Many other articles and posts have been written using Christ as a prop for political and sociological beliefs.”
Life Lessons In A Church Parking Lot
“He was old. But, since I was six, everyone seemed old. In retrospect, I suppose he must have been in his sixties. He smoked brown cigarettes. I remember that they were brown because he sat down in the dirt with me and my brother and pulled one of those lit cigarettes from his mouth and mounded up dirt around it to make a volcano complete with fire and smoke.”
2020 as Existential Crisis
“Nearly eight out of 10 Americans (77%) believe that 2020 has put the country into an ‘existential crisis.’ And nearly two out of three (65%) say that they themselves have experienced such a crisis. What do they mean by that? ‘Existential’ in this context can be taken in two ways.” Gene Edward Veith explains…
Flashback: Strength = Good, Weakness = Bad
Consider all the ways you were weak in the year that is now behind us. Consider how God can and will work in you in the year ahead if only you will be weak. Make this the year where you will rejoice in weakness so you can rely on God’s strength.
Faith is the evidence of new birth, not the cause of it.
—John Piper
