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A La Carte (May 11)

thursday

It was a tremendous honor to learn that Seasons of Sorrow has received the annual Christian Book Award for biography & memoir (from the The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association). You can see the winners in other categories here.

There are a few new Kindle deals that are worth considering.

The Inner Circle

“It’s all who you know,” they say. Yet, as Seth Lewis says, “the trouble is that most of us were not born into powerful families. We don’t naturally rub shoulders with people in influential positions. Which means that if you want to get ahead professionally, socially, or any other way, you have to start with the people you already know, and work from their circles of influence into the more powerful circles above them.”

A Response to an Employer’s Request for Pronouns

This aptly shows one way employees can respond to requests for pronouns. Unfortunately I don’t expect that all will meet with the same level of success, though.

Confronting those who sin against us

We know there are times when we must confront other people for their sin. Yet we all learn that “we can ‘go and tell’ or ‘rebuke’ others and end up making the situation far worse than it was before by doing these things in an unhelpful way. We can further damage the relationship, and we can even make the prospect of reconciliation less likely than ever by ‘telling’ and ‘rebuking’ in ways that hurt rather than heal.”

We may need to re-learn the basics

“There are some basic things in churches that we can neglect to do for a whole host of reasons. Not doing them for some time can lead us to forget how to do them altogether. Worse, as we forget how to do some of these basic things, they may have a knock on impact on everything else we might hope to do.”

In Secret

Derek Thomas reminds us that “according to Jesus, it is what we do in secret that matters most.”

The Valley of Humiliation is Green

“Few things strike our sensibilities quite as harshly as humiliation. To be brought low, to fall down, to struggle, to run out of answers, to become weak and poor—this is a hard place to fall into. But what if I told you the ‘valley of humiliation’ is really green?”

Flashback: The One Sure Mark of Christian Maturity

…spiritual maturity is better displayed in acts than in facts. You can know everything there is to know about theology, you can be a walking systematic theology, you can spend a lifetime training others in seminary, and still be desperately immature.

Not going to God because your faith is weak is like not going to the doctor because you feel sick.

—Steve Fuller

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    Weekend A La Carte (March 28)

    Make cousins great again / The empty promises of sentimentalism / AI is creeping into the news / Why should we just accept AI? / The end of the free-range childhood / Michael Horton and John Mark Comer / TBN headquarters / and more.

  • Considering Sparrows

    Considering Sparrows

    Explore how Kevin Burrell’s Considering Sparrows brings birds, Philippians, and the joy of following Jesus together in a warm, accessible work of ‘ornitheology.’

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    A La Carte (March 27)

    Protestants and the pill / Pastoring the scrupulous conscience / Ben Shapiro mocked this couple (so Ray Comfort interviewed them) / Made lonely by holiness / Two pressures of age / Teaching teens digital discernment / and more.

  • Gods Great Big Global Church

    Announcing: God’s Great Big Global Church

    Coming soon: God’s Great Big Global Church—my new children’s book that introduces kids to ten churches around the world and the joy of worshiping God together. Pre‑order is now open.

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    A La Carte (March 26)

    Decisions in the room / What does the Bible say about demons? / Why rationalists are asking AI to read their future / Tiny changes, massive payoffs / Stop scrolling and start singing / Kindle and commentary deals / and more.