I mentioned last week that after 20 years of wanting to rid our house of its 70s-era parquet floors, Aileen and I are finally getting rid of the last of it. We worked hard over the weekend, and things are proceeding apace. We should finish the floors tomorrow, then begin turning to the doors and baseboards. We are doing it all ourselves and so far managing fine (though, admittedly, we are more than a mite sore).
Sales & Deals
Today’s Kindle deals include some excellent choices like Saints, Sufferers, and Sinners and How to Teach Kids Theology.
Recommended Reading
Deleting “Sacrifice” From Our Vision of Service. Dave Harvey: “Let’s be honest. Most of us live by an unwritten 11th commandment: Control thy time. We manage our calendars with precision. We protect our rest and guard our weekends like sacred ground. But Christ exemplifies service when it is sacrificial–even disruptive to life. I think that’s the point. What makes good works sacrificial –and therefore true service–is that it violates our preferred schedule.”
Sleepless Nights and What God Has to Say About Them. “The house is quiet. The lights are off. The responsibilities of the day have ended. Yet the mind refuses to rest. We replay conversations we wish had gone differently. We anticipate outcomes we cannot control. We revisit wounds we thought had healed. We carry burdens into the darkness that seemed manageable in the daylight. Many of us know what it is to stare at the ceiling while the hours slowly pass, wondering why sleep will not come.” Danson Ottawa explains what the Bible says about sleepless nights.
Get Joshua: The Christian Standard Commentary today! Written by David M. Howard, Jr., Joshua is part of the Christian Standard Commentary (CSC) series. By balancing rigorous scholarship with practical application, this series helps readers understand each biblical book’s theology, its place in the broader narrative of Scripture, and its importance for the church today. (Sponsored)
Was the Multiplication of the Early Church a Miraculous Movement? This is a helpful look at a way Christians can misunderstand the early church and, therefore, misunderstand modern missions. “In keeping with this view, many missionaries today feel that to return to true, Early Church missions and church planting, we should also be aiming for exponential multiplication in terms that can only be described as miraculous. Faithful missions should look like the early church and the early church saw miraculous multiplication; ergo, we should also be seeing miraculous multiplication if we are truly ministering like the Early Church.” (Also on the topic of missions, In Praise of a Sending Church.)
Three Things to Remember When Evangelism Is Dispiriting. Evangelism can definitely be dispiriting at times, and that is why Stephen Kneale wrote this article. “Just this week I was speaking with someone about yet another person who had professed faith and seemed to be seeking to engage the gospel who then turned round and jacked it all in. Our church has also seen a fair share of Iranian brother and sisters join with us who, for a range of different reasons, end up drifting away. These things can be quite discouraging when we see them happen again and again. The question is, how do we respond to them? What should we think about it? Here are some key things to bear in mind.”
Don’t Overlook Hell’s Evangelistic Appeal. “In the past, I’ve been skeptical about people coming to Christ not because they’ve seen his beauty but because they’ve only seen their sin’s ugly fruit. Such people have identified what they’re running from, but I’ve doubted their faith in the One they’re running to. While I still think Christ’s positive pull is more powerful than sin’s repelling nature, our current cultural landscape has me reevaluating an unlikely evangelism tool: hellfire and brimstone.”
The Fiery Darts. Here is a very practical look at what Satan’s metaphorical fiery darts can look like in real life. “What do your fiery darts look like? Mine are doubts about God’s love for me, intrusive thoughts, and temptations to flash my pride, anger and selfishness. What trips you up, and how does our enemy exploit your weaknesses? More importantly, what counters his lies and is essential for our resistance?”
The Years of Preparation
I have known many people to wrestle with the years of preparation required to prepare a man for ministry. As I make my way through the sermons of De Witt Talmage, I realize people have always wrestled with this. Here is his counsel to those who think so much time dedicated to preparation may be unnecessary or wasteful.
If we do not want ourselves to be thrown in this wrestle with the sin and error of the world, we had better get ready by Christian discipline, by holy self-denial, by constant practice, by submitting to divine supervisal and direction. Do not begrudge the time and the money for that young man who is in preparation for the ministry, spending two years in grammar school and four years in college and three years in theological seminary. I know that nine years are a big slice to take off a man’s active life, but if you realized the height and strength of the archangels of evil in our time with which that young man is going to wrestle, you would not think nine years of preparation were too much.
Flashback
When Christians Just Don’t Read the Bible. Don’t assume that the congregation has spent as much time in the Word that week as their pastor (hopefully) has. This ought to shape the way you construct your services and the way you prepare your sermons.
A man who has his eye on his future state of glorification will spend his time in preparing himself for it.
—Martyn Lloyd-Jones
