Welcome to A La Carte, where I help you break free from the algorithm by carefully curating news, articles, and information that is of interest to people just like you.
Sales & Deals
The highlight of today’s Kindle deals is probably Matt Smethurst’s Tim Keller on the Christian Life. There are also a few books and biographies for children, a volume in the God’s Word for You series, and more. On the general market side, you can find volume 1 in Rick Atkinson’s amazing Liberation Trilogy.
Recommended Reading
Thinking About Eastern Orthodoxy: A Primer for Evangelicals. James White has written a helpful introduction to Eastern Orthodoxy. I think this is key: “We in the West think in a completely different manner than those in the East. Since most American evangelicals do not travel internationally, let alone globally, it is difficult to bridge the conceptual gap that separates us. We want to ask questions that Eastern Orthodoxy simply does not think relevant to answer. And it is this conceptual and linguistic barrier that we have to understand.”
What Is God’s Providence? “A missed flight. A delayed job offer. An unexpected illness. A chance conversation that alters the course of a life. Most Christians have experienced moments that prompted them to wonder whether God was somehow at work behind the scenes. Yet while many believers instinctively speak of God ‘opening doors,’ ‘closing doors,’ or ‘working things out,’ few have reflected deeply on the biblical doctrine that underlies such language.” Danson Ottawa addresses that well in this article.
Gather a Group for the 2026 Missionary National Conference: The Lord Who Sends. Sacrificial obedience to the One who sends is what it will take to reach every language. Gather your church, missions team, or small group to worship Christ and search God’s word together for what it means to serve the Lord who sends. Register your group by August 15 to save. (Sponsored)
The Bible Is Cessationist (And Wondrous!). Campbell Markham explains some of what we stand to lose if we proclaim non-existent miracles, and why we must handle the miraculous with an extra measure of care. “If God authenticates his Son by signs and wonders then a powerful way to arouse suspicion about these is to surround them with counterfeit miracles. The devil muddies the water in exactly this way. The Egyptian magicians wrought counterfeit wonders which comforted Pharaoh into dismissing Moses’ true miracles. So Jesus warned against false messiahs and prophets who would ‘perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect’ (Mat 24:24).” (Scroll down for a definition of cessationism.)
Virtue Signalling in the Church. I think Renee Zou is probably right that the church may be a place where we are especially tempted to virtue signal. “Is it possible for a Christian to be more concerned about the appearance of godliness in their own lives, rather than the existence of it? To sound like they love God, but deep down actually fear man? To talk of virtuous deeds yet be substantially empty of them? I am living proof that the answer to those questions is yes. The worst part is, I find myself obsessed with projecting virtue not just in the secular spaces in which I operate, but in the stomping ground of my local church.”
Restlessness. Chris Martin: “I’ve been thinking a lot lately about restlessness and consistency. It’s easy to get bored, to feel like life isn’t shaping up to be what you expected. We look out and see the kinds of lives others appear to be living and we wonder why ours may not be quite what we want.”
We Lost the Baby. Michael and Emily Foster just suffered a miscarriage, and Michael courageously expresses his love for God and confidence in him despite such hard circumstances. “How often have grieving people been told, ‘It’s okay to be mad at God’? No, it isn’t. It may be understandable, but it is not okay. A wise and compassionate person recognizes the frailty of the human heart. In times of suffering, we are tempted to doubt God’s goodness, wisdom, and love. We should not be surprised by those temptations. But neither should we indulge them.”
Currently
Reading. I sometimes like to pair biographies that tell the lives of completely unrelated characters. To that end, I am enjoying An Inconvenient Widow, which tells the life of Mary Todd Lincoln, and Nolan, which tells the life of Nolan Ryan. They are very different people who lived completely different lives! I am well into both of the biographies, and they are both proving enjoyable.
Eating. One of the joys of living in a world city like Toronto is that you can get authentic food representing pretty much every cuisine you could ever want. For whatever reason, it seems like Italian is always the safest for when eating with a crowd—nobody minds a good lasagne or fettuccine (not to mention pizza). But lately I am beginning to think that Middle Eastern cuisine may be the most accessible, the perfect balance of flavors that are both interesting and inoffensive. I enjoyed just such a meal with friends last night!
MCP. This is a little bit tech-geeky, but I’ve really been enjoying exploring the capabilities of MCP (Model Context Protocol), which is a standard used to connect applications to one another. Specifically, it’s for connecting applications to AI. If you think AI is powerful on its own (which it is), that power increases dramatically as it gains the ability to interoperate with other applications. Obviously, you need to be cautious and aware of privacy issues, but it’s not hard to see the possibilities. (It turns out the risks grow at exactly the same rate as the power grows!)
Definition
An earlier article references cessationism, a term that is often used wrongly. I think Gregg Allison defines it well in his Baker Compact Dictionary of Theological Terms, and I suspect the author of that article would affirm it:
With respect to spiritual gifts, the position that whereas many of the gifts continue to be exercised, the so-called miraculous gifts (prophecy, speaking in tongues, interpretation of tongues, word of knowledge, word of wisdom, miracles, healings) have ceased to operate in the church today. Their cessation is due to these gifts serving to confirm the gospel at the founding of the church and, with the church’s foundation having been laid, no longer being needed for its ongoing development. Cessationism does not deny that God heals and performs miracles, but it denies that he operates through people given such gifts.
The key is that cessationism teaches that the miraculous gift of working miracles has ceased, not miracles themselves. However, with the cessation of the gift and the primary need for it (confirming the gospel at the founding of the church), we no longer expect to see miracles with the frequency at which they occurred in the early church.
Flashback
Friends Astern & Friends Ahead. As time progresses and we make our way through the middle years, we can’t help but begin to think about friends ahead, for by this time we have lost so many of them. Companions we once counted dear have already lived and died.
The hour is coming when we shall be astonished to think what mere trifles were once capable of discouraging us.
—John Newton
