Today’s Kindle deals include a long list of interesting titles. Aaron Renn’s Life in the Negative World is back on sale. You’ll also find Jonas Hensworth’s new Radical Discipleship, a book for parents who feel like failures, and much else. On the general market side, David McCullough’s amazing 1776 is on sale.
Encouraging Your Congregation to Sing
This is a super helpful article on congregational singing. “Every worship leader faces the same challenge: How do you help your congregation move from passive listening to active singing? Forget gimmicks or manipulation. Try these strategies based on fundamental principles and the unique character of your local congregation.”
Six Ways to Improve Your Church’s Prayer Meeting
From congregational singing we go to congregational praying and this list of ways to improve your church’s prayer meeting.
Will I Ever Love a Church Again?
Brittany Allen tells how she learned to love church again after being hurt. “After all we’d endured, could I ever allow myself to open my heart enough to let people in again? Could I reclaim that vulnerability that once came so naturally to me after it had been used as a weapon pointed at my own heart? Could God rebuild my faith in his Bride and redeem what had been lost?”
God’s Love Is Sufficient to Help You Fight Porn
“Pornography breeds darkness, yet amazingly, God’s grace remains sufficient for those in Christ Jesus. As God’s deeply loved children, we’re never alone in this battle against the Enemy. The Lord promises that nothing ‘will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’”
‘You Help Us by Your Prayers’
This is well worth pondering: “The great killer in the Christian life is not doubt. It sometimes can be quite healthy to doubt. If we handle doubts properly they will strengthen our faith. The thing that will destroy our faith is self-reliance.”
Discipline, Delight, and Staying on the Path
Glenna Marshall explains why we must not resist God’s discipline when it comes upon us but also how we must not feel condemned by it.
Flashback: When Failure Saves and Success Destroys
God’s care for us may be better expressed in allowing us to fail than permitting us to succeed. That’s because we’re often better at handling failure than success. Failure has a way of bringing us to the end of ourselves, of causing us to rely even more on the Lord.
Being a disciple of Jesus means orienting our lives toward others, just as Jesus did. It means laboring for the sake of others. This love for others is at the heart of discipling.
—Mark Dever
