Good morning. The God of peace be with you today.
Remember that tomorrow’s Weekend A La Carte will feature reader recommendations for all kinds of books, products, and other material. There will also be a collection of links to think pieces and long-form content. Sunday’s Works & Wonders will attempt to encourage and delight you.
Sales & Deals
Today’s Kindle deals include several good titles from Christian Focus, and other options as well, of course.
Westminster Books has great pricing on Jen Wilkin’s new Dust to Dust, which I have reviewed today, as it happens.
Recommended Reading
The Biblical Pattern of Terrible Fathers. Writing for 9Marks, “Dave Kiehn traces the pattern of unfaithful fathers throughout the Old Testament, highlighting various features of these men, including passivity, indulgence, partiality, worldliness, distraction, insecurity, compromise, and shortsightedness. These negative examples serve not only as warnings but also to remind us of our insufficiency and need for God’s grace. Through faith in Christ, Christians have a heavenly Father who is perfect and good in all that he does.”
Six Ways to Shepherd Kids Through Loss. Sadly, most parents will have to help shepherd their children through loss at some point. Kirsten Black offers some ways to do so faithfully. “Shepherding our kids through pain and suffering is hard. For parents, it can feel like we carry a double portion of grief—our own and that of our grieving kids. Whatever may come, as parents we are called to lovingly ‘train up [our children]’ whom God has entrusted to our care through every high and low. What a privilege to walk with them, pointing them to Christ, despite the pain that often accompanies this calling.”
Test Yourself, but Trust in Jesus. Here’s a simple two-part imperative: test yourself, but trust in Jesus. “Anyone would agree that to lose a single battle in a war, after having won hundreds before, is no reason to assume utter defeat. Certainly the war goes on, and so we should not rest on our laurels. But how encouraging our past victories should be to us! We should learn from our defeat and try not to allow Satan to successfully use the same tactic against us again; we certainly should not throw up our hands in defeat either.”
7 Tips for Getting More Out of Sunday Sermons. With Sunday fast approaching, it would be good to consider these 7 ways to get more out of this week’s sermon. “What if we heard his preached Word like ‘[our] very life’? What if we opened our Bibles each Sunday expecting a taste like honey and a treasure like gold? What would it look like to get the most from our pastors’ sermons? Here are some small practices that can strengthen our grasp on the precious truths being handed to us in these moments.”
Why We Pay to Be Scared. Horror movies seem to be having their day now, and Daniel Darling attempts to explain their appeal. “We willingly submit to fear and pay to have it managed for our pleasure. In our late-modern culture, described by Paul Virilio as an ‘administration of fear’—a world where terrors and horrors are legion, where we feel ‘bewitched, bothered, and bewildered’—you’d expect us to seek distraction from all that.”
The Remarkably Ordinary Church. Darryl visited a remarkably ordinary church and celebrates the fact. “I used to think we needed extraordinary churches. I don’t anymore. I think we need churches that don’t get tired of doing the same things week after week: gathering to sing, opening the word, praying together, hearing God’s word, pointing to Christ, eating and drinking the bread and cup.”
The Funnies
My friend Chris Martin maintains a Substack called The Funnies, and every Saturday he shares a few fun and silly things he found on the Internet—something I see as a modern equivalent to the comics pages that used to be in every newspaper. I asked him to share a couple with you.
Small print: The inclusion of someone’s “funny” here is neither an endorsement of that person nor a recommendation that you follow them on social media. Just laugh or roll your eyes and then move on.
A La Quiz
Did you read the best of this week’s A La Carte? Test yourself:
Chris Hutchison wrote about finding gospel hope when confronted with a common silent struggle. What is that struggle? (find out)
Joel Ellis distinguished between a prayer life and what related term? (find out)
Jacob Crouch warned against being unduly influenced by the disgruntled and encouraged his readers to spend time with a different group, for whom he coined a word. What was it? (find out)
Flashback
In a Distant Land. Even as we make every effort we lament how poor our efforts are and even as we bear fruit we lament how little fruit we bear. Even as we rejoice in every one of God’s blessings and celebrate every evidence of his grace, still we long to be in that new land.
Everyone is looking for power in a program, in a methodology, in a technique, in anything and everything but that in which God has placed it—His Word. He alone has the power to change lives for eternity, and that power is focused on the Scriptures.
—R.C. Sproul
