The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you today, my friends.
Sales & Deals
Today’s Kindle deals include two volumes in the excellent Reformed Expository Commentary series. You’ll also find Chris Braun’s Bound Together and Shenvi and Sawyer’s Post Woke (which I believe is on sale for the first time).
If you’re looking to try something new for your devotions, the ESV Spiral-Bound Journaling Bibles are on sale at Westminster Books.
Recommended Reading
Zeal for God Gone Wrong. A listener of Ask Pastor John writes in to ask a very good question: “How do we guard ourselves against the self-deception of believing we are serving God passionately — even doing big things for him — when in reality our zeal is just performative, half-hearted, or driven by something other than true love for him?”
Four Opportunities for Christians to Be Salt and Light During Pride Month. Randy Alcorn teams up with Garrett Kell to offer a few ways that Christians can be salt and light during pride month. “We don’t need a pride month. We need a humility month in which we align ourselves as with God, not against Him. ‘…be clothed with humility, for ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’ Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time’.”
Communism Tried and Found Lethal. Daniel Darling expresses concern at the way communist ideas are being embraced by young people. “Ironically, today in a land where decades of communist rule has sought to eliminate or control Christianity, the Church, even while enduring severe persecution, is growing. Meeting underground, in secret, and at threat of death, God’s people gather, and those who yearn for hope beyond the hollow promises of the state find salvation in Christ. Billy Graham once said, ‘Either Communism must die or Christianity must die, because it’s actually a battle between Christ and Anti-Christ.’”
Separate Ways. I always enjoy J.V. Fesko’s short reflections on areas of pastoral concern. In this one he considers what a church can do when one spouse has embraced theology but not the other. “One of the regular patterns I observed in my pastorate was the mismatched married couple. I’m not talking about a mismatched couple in terms of personalities or interests, but rather a theologically mismatched couple.”
Dear Dementia. Katie Laitkep makes an interesting writing decision here by writing to, rather than about, dementia. “You took a quiet woman on a wild ride, dragging her from denial in the morning to anger in the evening, abandoning her to sweet oblivion for all the hours in between. You ransacked her house and left her there, lost in her own home. You turned familiar faces into strangers, leaving her unstable and afraid. You locked her mind and allowed her body to decay, day by day.”
Honesty About Our Habits. Joel M. Ellis is blunt and correct in this article about honestly assessing our spiritual habits. “Life is like swimming in a river. You cannot simply tread water and stay in one place. You are either exerting yourself in order to swim upstream, against the current, or you are being driven downstream by the forces that surround you. We are becoming more like Christ or less like him, every day. We are resisting the flesh or relenting to it, dying to our sin or dying from it.”
Headlines
SBC Complementarianism. Christianity Today reports on the recent Southern Baptist Convention and the overwhelming support for Al Mohler’s Truth and Unity Amendment. “A proposal by the nation’s largest Protestant denomination to ban churches that have women pastors or let women preach on Sunday mornings passed overwhelmingly on Wednesday, marking the first step toward enshrining the ban in the Southern Baptist Convention’s constitution.” However, as Denny Burk points out, actually passing it will depend upon next year’s convention.
Our Hearts Are Broken. The Christian Post reports on a tragedy at an outdoor church event in Virginia. “Pastor Troy Keaton of Eastlake Community Church in Moneta, Virginia, said his church family was grieving after one person died and more than 20 others were injured when a burst of wind lifted a tent during an outdoor 20th-anniversary service.” H.B. Charles Jr. posted about it on X, since he was a guest preacher at the event.
Flashback
Master Your Moments and Master Your Days. Great deeds done from bad motives please God less than small deeds done from great character. And character’s primary focus is always on the matter at hand, the duty of the moment.
Our preaching is not the reason the Word works. The Word is the reason our preaching works.
—H.B. Charles Jr.
