Good morning. Grace and peace to you.
This is Victoria Day in Canada, a holiday that unofficially marks the beginning of summer. It’s the day when cottagers tend to open their cottages for the year and when gardeners tend to get their plants in the ground. I’m neither a cottager nor a gardener, but I am a reader, so I expect that’s how I’ll spend my day.
If you didn’t check in yesterday, you may enjoy my weekly Works & Wonders article, as I highlighted some interesting and uplifting things there.
Sales & Deals
Today’s Kindle deals include several volumes in Crossway’s tremendous New Testament Theology series. It’s a great time to start collecting the series or to get caught up on some of the early volumes.
Recommended Reading
I Am Not Enough for My Kids. I think this article will resonate with a lot of parents. “I can’t bind up all the wounds. I can’t protect them from all the bad things. I can’t make them love the things I love. I can’t keep the bullies away. I can’t always stop them from being the bully. I can’t force a (sincere) apology. I can’t change DNA. I can’t create motivation. I can’t make this world fair. I can’t keep them safe all the time. I can’t manifest love and security into their hearts. And of course, I can’t always be the kind, patient, and wise mother I imagined I would be.”
The Dangerous Days Past Middle Age. And this one will resonate with those who are a bit farther along in life—and challenge them too. “I have an image in my mind of the godly old lady I want to be someday: soft-spoken, kind to all, full of wisdom. Having logged half a century under God’s sanctifying sandpaper, I should be well on my way by now. And, taking stock, I can see that I don’t have to rein in my temper as much as I used to, and there’s precious little out there that tempts me to covet. What I am learning, however, is that as I age, I sin differently. Sin is still ‘crouching at the door.’ It just comes in a different form.”
Are You Really Filled With the Spirit? “When I was a college student, a classmate asked me whether I had been filled with the Holy Spirit. At that time, I wasn’t sure how to answer that question. Now, I know that the Bible tells me everything I need to know about the filling of the Spirit.” Guy Waters explains what it really means to be filled with the Spirit.
How You Can Give Away Lots of Money (And Be Happy About It). Michael Jensen tells how it’s possible for Christians to give away lots of money and be genuinely happy about it. “In Jesus Christ we receive what we need and more. We have become rich. Now, that’s not literally rich in material terms necessarily, but there’s something about the Christian mentality that is governed by this feeling of having been richly blessed. We are those who operate from a philosophy of abundance rather than scarcity. We see our earthly possessions in the context of our abundance in Christ.”
The Best Way to Resist Temptation. Here’s the thing about temptation: “The more you feed it, the stronger it grows. And the more it eats you, the weaker you become, and the harder it is to think of yourself at all without the monster that’s growling, shaking the bars of your rib-cage, breaking the chains of your self-control, eating every good intention for breakfast.”
A Year With Pope Leo. Evangelical Impressions. Leonardo De Chirico, an evangelical pastor-scholar in Rome, considers the first year of Pope Leo’s leadership of the Roman Catholic Church. Here’s one interesting observation, especially when considering that Leo is American: “And what about the Evangelicals? They do not seem to be on Pope Leo’s radar, aside from a few indirect critical remarks between the lines of his speeches in Cameroon and Angola. Even during his previous tenure as bishop in Peru, he showed no particular interest in the Evangelicals.”
Book Brief
The Guns at Last Light by Rick Atkinson. This is the third and final volume in Atkinson’s tremendous Liberation Trilogy. I really cannot say enough positive things about this series and recommend it to anyone with an interest in the Second World War. If there is one thing that I wish Atkinson had done better in this series, it would be to celebrate examples of not only military heroism but also moral heroism. He rightly tells of some of the Allied servicemen who disgraced themselves by their moral conduct, but gives few examples of those who maintained their virtue or who stood for the weak. You could also get the impression that every man let go of his morals when he reached Europe. Still, it’s my new favorite series on the war. (Amazon)
Flashback
The Dead Seriousness of Careless Words. Words can be a taste of life or a savor of death, a scent of heaven or a whiff of hell. They can do the work of God or of the devil, serve the cause of Christ or of his enemies. Words are so wonderful and so terrible, so beautiful and so horrible, so precious and so dreadful.
The dilution of understanding of worship is a direct result of the dilution of theology in the church.
—Jared Wilson
