A La Carte (March 23)

Good morning. Grace and peace to you.

Today’s Kindle deals include some solid books by Rosaria Butterfield, Christopher Ash, Jen Wilkin, Mark Dever, and others. And all of them are at great prices.

(Yesterday on the blog, the debut of something new: Works & Wonders

Equipping Your Children to Navigate a Hostile World

Stephen has a helpful metaphor and sound counsel to help guide parents as they equip their children to navigate this hostile world. “Children are not expected to remain children forever, but to grow and mature, to be strengthened to withstand the world on their own. The end game is not to shield a child from the world for their entire life, but to shield them from the world until they are released into that very same corrupted world. So our parental responsibility must therefore be two-fold, not merely to shield the child, but to both shield them from the world and to prepare them to live in that very same world.”

What Will We Do With What We Know?

Melissa reflects on all we come to know about a spouse over many years of marriage, then asks a good question: What will we do with all that knowledge? “We can’t forget that one mission God has given us as believing husbands and wives is to love each other well. What better way to do that than through loving actions that speak specifically to what we know about each other? Effort matters, whether we’re three years or 33 years or 53 years into our lifetime together. What will we do with what we know?”

The Tyranny of the ‘Christian Experience’

Michael Jensen writes about the bondage of felt authenticity—the way we may anchor our Christian confidence in the authenticity of our feelings. I appreciate that he specifically mentions neurodivergent people as those who may especially struggle in this way. “However, for many neurodivergent people (and, frankly, many others), the expected emotional script doesn’t occur or occurs differently. Or is simply not central to how they process reality.”

From Marching to Murmuring

Todd Boone: “We know that trials often strengthen our faith. Yet those seasons are precisely when we are most tempted to complain. Like Israel, we can receive daily bread from God while grumbling about the form in which it arrives. I have prayed for opportunities in ministry, only to grumble when those opportunities brought difficulty. I have asked God for provision, relationships, and open doors—only to find myself dissatisfied when his answers stretched my faith.”

The Bible Isn’t a Smartphone

Obviously we know that the Bible isn’t a smartphone, but perhaps it would be useful for us to consider the ways in which the Bible is different from a smartphone. “Instruments change us but require us to grow in skill to use them. Their formation of us may not always be positive but has much to do with us and our own virtue and virtuous use of them. Devices change us without requiring skill from us. Their formation of us can still be positive but has much more to do with the device itself than with our use of it.”

Love the Hard Ones

Reuben Bredenhof reminds pastors (and everyone else) that there is a special challenge and special joy in loving the hard ones. “His Spirit is clearly at work in them. But the Spirit is working in others too, even the opinionated and ungrateful. These men and women may not be a joy to pastor. They like to argue, or they’re grumpy, or they chronically complain—or all of the above.” (I think it’s neat when I find multiple people covering the same theme or even quoting the same author. That’s the case between the last article and this one, from Benjamin Vrbicek. Both quote Craig Barnes and expand on some of what he says. See The Cost of Pastoral Ministry: A Psalm.)

Flashback: Life Has Not Been Easy

If you truly believe that God’s providence brings about every circumstance, then it becomes your responsibility to worship God in whatever he brings.