A La Carte (July 28)

Sales & Deals

Today’s Kindle deals include two more volumes in the excellent Reformed Expository commentary series (one of which is Philippians). There’s also a book by Tim Keller, one by Jerry Bridges, and one by Nicholas McDonald.

Westminster Books has a deal on Come, Thou Fount, a liturgy for daily worship with the Psalms. You can also get 50% off the entire 4-volume set it is part of.

Recommended Reading

Protecting the Sheep From Domineering Pastors. Steven J Willing writes about “holy tyrants.” “Every generation produces its version of the holy tyrant. The names change but not the pattern. Even the titles can vary: senior pastor, ruling elder, or influential layman with the loudest voice in the room. What they share is a widening circle of personal authority and the slow accumulation of wreckage that follows them: broken relationships, silenced dissent, fleeing members, shattered congregations.”

When Your Boss Expects You to Lie. John Piper helps a listener consider how to respond when his boss expects him to lie. “You’re sitting at your desk, running the numbers, and your boss has made it clear: If you want to hit your quotas, you’re going to have to bend the truth — just a little. Leave out a detail here; mislead a client there. If you don’t do it, you could lose your job, and your family is counting on you. But if you do do it, you would compromise the truth, and you know it. How can you survive a high-stress, cutthroat industry without selling out your soul?”

Distillation. I enjoyed Sidney Muntean’s consideration of the optimization of life. “My optimization bender left me overly caffeinated, constantly twitching, and with a habit of shutting my phone screen on and off over and over again. I ate foods that corresponded with my projected energy levels of the day. I studied in the morning when I was at my sharpest and let my creativity take the back burner since there was no direct way I could tangibly profit from it. Upon getting my feelings hurt, I surmised that the best way to cope was to take ice-cold showers to physically restart my nervous system and force neurotransmitters to surge and shake up my mind. I gained momentum, fervor, and boatloads of free time. But I lost slowness. And rituals. Tenacity to sit through discomfort. And the ability to repurpose that free time into something beautiful.”

How to Do a Tech Detox With Your Teen. Jean Twenge offers one methodology for doing a tech detox with your teen. “If you have school-aged kids, this is the time of the summer when things start to drag. Maybe they had a week of camp or family vacation, but now they’re sitting in their room on their phone, surfing the web on their laptop, or watching streaming on their tablet. And the start of school, with its inundation of school-issued devices and screen-based homework, is right around the corner.”

Faithful Femininity on the Field. Macey Robertson writes about faithful femininity on the mission field. “We are called to be faithful in sacrificially caring for the home, and stewarding the gifts that the Lord has given us. Faithful in using our resources, our time, and our money, to share what we have in ministering to those around us. Faithful in being the hands and feet of Christ, as we seek to share His love with the masses. Faithful in holding the rope of whom the Lord has sent into foreign contexts, whether it be through a quick encouraging email or sending a care package; carrying out the Great Commission simply requires being faithful.”

Poking Fun at Ourselves. Here’s something to ponder: “For most of history, when men got in shape, they didn’t have a public platform in their pocket to tell the world about it. They did it because it was good. They did it for their family. They did it for the Lord. No doubt they shared their progress with the bros. But they didn’t broadcast it to an indiscriminate audience of strangers.” The same could be true of many things beyond simply getting in shape.

CNN & Ligonier

It is difficult to imagine two organizations more different than Ligonier Ministries and CNN (not to mention two personalities more different than Sinclair Ferguson and Jake Tapper). What do they have in common? They both recently featured discussions or interviews with Ben Sasse.

First up is Reflections on the Christian Life with Sinclair Ferguson, W. Robert Godfrey, and Ben Sasse:

And then Ben Sasse Talks to Jake Tapper About His Terminal Cancer Diagnosis and Life After Death. This is just a preview, but that is all I have access to from Canada. If you’re in the US or elsewhere, you may be able to find the whole thing on the CNN site.

Flashback

Settlers in the Land of Love. We traded rags for riches, the finite for the infinite, what we cannot keep for what we cannot lose. We traded it all to become settlers in the Promised Land of God’s divine love.