Today’s Kindle deals include just a few books (and a Bible). Usually Crossway has a nice list for us on Mondays, but it looks like maybe someone forgot to flip the switch this week!
I realized as I was putting together today’s selection that I had found articles from 7 different countries. So just for fun, I made a note of each country.
(Yesterday on the blog: A Pastoral Prayer)
Move Over, Sex and Drugs. Ease Is the New Vice.
Canada. “The decline in sexual activity and cereal sales hardly seem correlated, but both seem to point to one of the most seductive promises of a technological age: that ours should be an unbothered life. As our lives (at least in the developed world) get easier, we are increasingly formed by the desire for ease. Of all the cautions we raise about technology—its distractions and temptations, its loneliness and superficiality—this promise of unencumbered living is perhaps the most insidious danger and also the one we talk the least about.”
What Adoption Has Taught Me About Abortion
Tanzania. “She may even tell everyone the baby died, but she knows, niggling around in her mind, refusing to be ignored, that her baby is out there, growing up somewhere. I think about that often as I look into the faces of my children who spent nine months growing in the body of another woman, their blood flowing alongside hers, listening to her voice, feeling her joy and sadness and fear. My children wish for one glimpse of her face; I wish for one chance to tell her that her baby is okay.”
The Golfless Millennials
Australia. “The fact is many a big church is filling up with people who, like the Millennials with golf, haven’t got – or won’t give – the six hours a week that is required for smaller, local churches to survive. Those smaller churches are the spiritual equivalent of a nine hole course in your average suburb.”
Why The End Is The Beginning
India. “In these last days of January, I’ve felt like things have started to click into place. The words of my mouth were a visible display of the very things my heart was focused on—my feelings and emotions, which don’t always lead me down the right paths. And as someone who is teaching others, my words can either bring unity in the body or disunity, even if it’s just a momentary vent about a legitimate concern.”
3 Reasons I Hold To Exclusive Psalmody
Scotland. While I don’t hold to exclusive psalmody, I appreciate some of the arguments of those who do. And it’s definitely true that most churches have gone way too far in the opposite direction by never singing psalms at all.
Andrew Sullivan: The Nature of Sex
America. There is so much Andrew Sullivan and I would disagree about. But I think he’s made some very astute observations here about the growing conflict between homosexuality and transgenderism.
Making it Personal
England. “The lecturer talks about the Bible, what God did long ago and far away to the Israelites, and in the third person (he, they). The lecturer acts as the knowledgeable expert, he has information to convey, and invites the congregation to come and listen to him explain to them what they did not formerly know. … Here’s the difference. The preacher talks to the congregation about themselves from the Bible. He talks about what God is doing and what they ought to be doing, and speaks in the second person (you) style.”
Flashback: The Character of the Christian: Sound Judgment
God does not call only elders or prospective elders to be “sober-minded, self-controlled, and respectable”—He calls every Christian to pursue these traits.
Godliness is more easily feigned in words than in actions.
—Jonathan Edwards
