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A La Carte (January 28)

thursday

Good morning, and may the God of love and peace be with you today.

Today’s Kindle deals include a number of selections from Crossway with a few others besides.

(Yesterday on the blog: When We Failed to Count the Cost)

The False Gospel of Assuming the Worst of Others

“One reason conversations about hard topics like social justice tend to generate more heat than light, both within and beyond the church, is a phenomenon we may call ‘the Newman Effect.’” Thaddeus Williams explains the phenomenon and its importance.

Prayer Worrier

“I am, by nature, something of a worrier. In fact, I am the grandson of a worrier, who had a very worried son, who has passed that tendency on to me and which I have nobly engendered in my boy. Four generations of Kneale worry and counting. Telling us to just stop worrying doesn’t really help. It is sometimes impossible – particularly last thing at night – to turn the worries off.”

How To Survive Three Days In The Wild

If this ever comes in handy, I expect you to send me a thank you note.

Returning To Your First Love

Jim Elliff reflects on Revelation’s warning about losing our first love. “Are you and those who are with you dangerously close to experiencing this judgment? Is the Light of God’s presence dim, almost imperceptible? Do you have form without power and activity without fruit? If so, Christ says you must…”

Be Reasonable for the Sake of the Gospel

Melissa says that “hyperbole seems to be the rhetorical strategy of the day in Christian circles.” She warns that “these weird and wild comments do nothing for the spread of the gospel. They are usually indignant, entitled, arrogant, and overly opinionated, and they paint a completely insufficient picture of God’s grace.”

The Radical Incoherence of Biden’s Transgender Policy

Joe Carter points out the radical incoherence of Joe Biden’s transgender policy. “President Biden seems to think that his new policy is a mere reversion to the 2016 status quo, when President Obama allowed transgender people to serve under certain restrictive conditions. What he fails to understand is that the issue of transgenderism has evolved considerably over the past five years. Biden has adopted a policy that is not only radically incoherent but that will have profound effects on both the military and the American people.” (See also Rod Dreher’s The Tyranny Of Tech & Trans.)

An Open Letter to a Sinner

Are you a sinner? I rather suspect you are. Hence you may benefit from this open letter, written for people like you (and me).

Flashback: How Evangelism Is Kind of Like Fishing

Sharing the gospel is about more than just learning and reciting a generic gospel presentation. It’s about knowing people and loving people—about loving them enough to get to know them.

We can’t separate our home life from our Christian life without missing something that is critical to our fellowship with God and our usefulness to His mission in the world.

—Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth

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    Weekend A La Carte (March 14)

    A La Carte: The West’s strange genius / Healing the way women hurt each other / AI skeptics / The world after reading / What about the children? / What caregivers should know about dementia / and much more.

  • Sex and Self-Forgetfulness

    Sex, Self-Forgetfulness, and the Joy of Serving Your Spouse

    I often think there is a kind of paradoxical quality to sex within marriage. It’s paradoxical in that few things have greater ability to bring blessing (through its right use) or to bring cursing (through its misuse). Not only that, but few things bring greater joy to a marriage, and also, in so many cases,…

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    A La Carte (March 13)

    What happened to our pastor? / Youth ministry needs seasoned saints / God’s sovereignty when things don’t go as planned / Preach sermons that algorithms don’t reward / A pastor remains in Beirut / and more.

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    A La Carte (March 12)

    The grief ambush / Forgotten, and that’s good / The foibles and fallibility of Christian leaders / Welcome back, church planting / Weakness is not the enemy / Bad reasons to read the Bible / Bible and book sales.

  • Three Marks of a Good Christian Book

    Three Marks of a Good Christian Book

    Not every book marketed as ‘Christian’ is worth your time. Here are three marks—truth, love, and beauty—that can help you discern which Christian books are truly worth reading.