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A La Carte (July 29)

thursday

Good morning. May the Lord bless and keep you today.

Logos users may want to check out the new deal on books by Zondervan. Many great resources are deeply discounted.

Today’s Kindle deals include lots of good books from Crossway, most of them geared to teens and young adults.

(Yesterday on the blog: Settlers in the Land of Love)

Samuel James shares a not-so-hypothetical short story.

When I Lived In A Barn

Seth Lewis includes a couple of great insights in this short article. “Beautiful things can’t make souls more beautiful. And valuable things can’t make people more valuable.”

Respecting Gas Station Attendants and The Importance of Toilet Shoes

I know I’ve said it before, but cross-cultural insights like these fascinate me. “I’ve been spending a lot of time this summer with *Darius, one of the faithful local men who is a part of our church plant. Darius has a wonderful gifting – that of a person who is becoming truly bicultural. People like him are able to function well in two or more very different cultural settings without rejecting either culture. They make great students if their teacher is, like me, from another culture. They also make wonderful teachers themselves, since they still deeply value their home culture and are willing to explain it.”

Should I Go on Mission?

Stephen Kneale has some simple guidance for people considering a short-term mission trip.

Distracting Ourselves to Death

“We all tend to do this. Whether we search on our phones, in our careers, or in our family life, we seem to be looking for something. It is as if an eternal ache has been implanted in our hearts.”

Teachable

“I spend most of my time teaching, but if there was one thing I wish I could teach people, it’s ‘teachability’! Teachability is a precious quality, that’s hard to cultivate. It’s like a large, highly absorbent sponge that soaks up all the water around it. It’s a spirit of learning, that is alert, keen, and hungry for the truth.”

Flashback: How To Respond to Social Media Enemies

Jesus tells you how to relate to people who harm you or who want to harm you, and his instructions provide crucial guidance as you relate to online enemies. He gives you a collection of verbs, a collection of actions to take: Love, do, bless, pray. Their verbs are hate, curse, and abuse; yours are love, do, bless, pray.

The sum and substance of the preparation needed for a coming eternity is that you believe what the Bible tells you, and do what the Bible bids you.

—Thomas Chalmers

  • Petty Fight

    Petty Annoyances and Minor Insults

    I wonder if you are like me in that, as you look back on your life, you realize that most of the circumstances that have troubled you, most of the annoyances and disgruntlements, were produced by circumstances that were hardly worth noticing.

  • A La Carte Collection cover image

    A La Carte (January 12)

    A La Carte: Happy 80th, John Piper / Practical principles for marriage / Benefits for daily Bible reading / Philip Yancey / Stingy-generous / From sermon to article / Kindle and Bible study deals / and more.

  • Table

    A Front Door and a Family Meal

    Baptism is a kind of front door to the local church, the God-ordained means through which a person identifies with Jesus Christ and formally comes to belong to Christ’s body, the church. Baptism is the church’s sign that this person is one of us, a brother or sister in the Lord, who has now been…

  • A La Carte Collection cover image

    Weekend A La Carte (January 10)

    A La Carte: An elder’s authority / Don’t use AI to cheat in school / Against the algorithm / An age of outrage / What’s weird? / The good news about bad days / and more.

  • Free Stuff Fridays (TGBC)

    Enter to win a practical, gentle, and honest resource offering hope and help for parents of non-believing children.

  • Power

    Power Dynamics within Marriage

    Any well-taught Christian should be able to speak of God’s attributes and to distinguish between those that are communicable (shared with other beings) and those that are incommunicable (unique to God alone). Among God’s communicable attributes is power. God, who has ultimate power, distributes limited power among human beings. This power is given to us…