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A La Carte (July 2)

friday

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Logos users will want to check out the great commentary sale they’ve got going on right now. (And, while you’re at it, maybe grab their free and nearly-free books.)

There are a couple of good Kindle deals today, including a relatively new title from Nancy Guthrie.

My Life as a Christian Under a Communist Regime

Zhang San reflects on living the Christian life under a communist regime. “It may surprise you, but from my perspective the main suffering for Chinese Christians is not physical persecution or lack of religious liberty but bad theology, though the reason behind bad theology is the lack of freedom.”

Critical Race Theory: Civil Rights Upside Down

Greg Koukl has a long article about CRT which is meant to be “not so much a critique of CRT as it is a clarification of its basic elements, a comparison between it and the ethics of the civil rights movement of the ’60s, and a caution regarding its totalitarian tendencies.”

IS YOUR WEBSITE SENDING THE RIGHT MESSAGE TO PEOPLE WHO VISIT?

Your website is most often the first impression people have of your church, ministry, or business. What are people seeing when they visit yours? Mere Agency knows how to build sites that make the right impression. They’ve done it for hundreds of organizations of all shapes and sizes and can do it for you. (Sponsored Link)

The Unbelief in My Belief

Glenna Marshall considers those little opportunities we get (and often fail to take) to share the gospel. “You are just a messenger of a good, good message. You can share it with hope instead of fear when you entrust every conversation to the Lord. His ways will not be thwarted by stammering or awkward silences.”

The Spleen, Once Regarded as Vestigial, Now Recognized as a Critically Important Organ

At AiG is a long and interesting article about the spleen, which was once regarded as vestigial and useless…until scientists looked a little closer. The article aptly shows the difference between looking at the body as evolved versus looking at it as designed.

Dust

T. M. Suffield: “There’s a feeling that comes with long difficult work that ends in forming something that you made. It’s hard to find the right words for it, but the nearest I can think of is transcendence. That incredible effort can be turned into something new, that speaks of you as its maker and bears your stamp on its every surface. That blood, sweat, and tears can be poured into a place until you have a form. As I write it is yet unfinished, but the shell is taking on warmth and life. Bricks are becoming a dwelling.”

Poena Cullei: The Worst Roman Punishment

I find articles like this one helpful in better understanding the context in which the Old Testament was written and the early church began.

Flashback: When Failure Saves and Success Destroys

Here’s something I’ve learned through 40 years of success and failure: God’s care for us may be better expressed in allowing us to fail than permitting us to succeed.

Though our innocency will not secure us from troubles, yet it will greatly support and comfort us under our troubles.

—Matthew Henry

  • When God Plants an Acorn

    When God Plants an Acorn, He Means an Oak

    We stood together on the crest of a hill, a gentle breeze rustling the meadow around our feet. The fields ran gently downward until they met a creek that gurgled happily in its course. A few years prior, an acorn had somehow made its way to the highest point of this hill, carelessly dropped there…

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    A La Carte (April 28)

    A La Carte: Protestantism’s Catholic converts / How healthy is your pursuit of health? / God’s special calling on your life / Considering a Christian university? / Testing the teachings of Catholicism / Kindle deals / and more.

  • New and Notable

    New and Notable Christian Books for April 2025

    It is surprisingly difficult to find a list of Christian books that have been released in any given month—especially if you want that list to be filtered by books released through particular publishers. That’s one of the reasons why I close each month by coming up with my list of New and Notable books. I…

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    Weekend A La Carte (April 26)

    A La Carte: Every pinch of pain has purpose / China closed Christian bookstores / Watch for the thing after the thing / For everything there is a time / Showers of blessing / What Pope Francis can teach us about preaching / and more.

  • What Makes You Beautiful

    What Makes You Beautiful

    I have often thought of a conversation that took place when my girls were little. Abby was perhaps 5 or 6 at the time and Michaela just working her way through the “terrible twos” (which for our kids always happened when they were three or four). A stranger saw me interacting with them one day…