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A La Carte (November 17)

thursday

Good morning. Grace and peace to you.

(Yesterday on the blog: Let’s Hear It For the Failures)

Measure Your Heart of Thanksgiving

“I don’t know what your Thanksgiving season looks like. I sincerely hope you find thankfulness a happy overflow of God’s blessings this year. I hope your home fills with joy and laughter. But there are times in every person’s life when thanksgiving is an act of trust, when the measure with which we are measured tries our hearts.”

American Church, Don’t Listen to Eric Metaxas

This review engages with Eric Metaxas’ latest book. This is quite a group of people Metaxas calls out! “Metaxas doesn’t hesitate to call out pastors he judges to be weak, timid, cowardly, or so ‘theologically fussy’ (44) that they don’t join his movement. Men like Tim Keller, Alistair Begg, John Piper, and John MacArthur are not Bonhoeffer-ish enough for Metaxas (11, 44).”

Where did Satan come from? (Video)

Guy Richard (sort of) answers in this short video. (I say “sort of” because he perhaps discusses the origins of evil a bit more than of Satan.)

The Current State of Complementarity

John Piper discusses the current state of complementarity by discussing two statements: Nashville and Danvers. “Danvers confronts women who intend to be pastors, while Nashville confronts women who intend to be men. Danvers confronts men who are unwilling to lead their wives; Nashville confronts men who can’t lead their wives because they don’t have one — they are ‘married’ to men.”

The Serious Business Of Laughing At Myself

“If I can’t embrace my own smallness, my own humiliations, and my total dependence on the God who made me, then my pride has grown out of control. That’s a serious problem. And sometimes the solution is as simple as having a good, long laugh at my own little self.” Quite right.

The Gospel Never Does Nothing

What’s the one thing the gospel never does? Nothing.

Flashback: 3 Parenting Myths We Are All Tempted To Believe

“Our job is to discharge faithfully the duties God has given to us, leaving the results in God’s hands. Our goal is not ‘successful’ parenting per se, but faithful parenting.” This is a sweet, liberating truth.

The pastor doesn’t know what interventions to provide for a distressed soul until he first listens to that soul.

—Harold Senkbeil

  • The Path to Contentment

    The Path to Contentment

    I wonder if you have ever considered that the solution to discontentment almost always seems to be more. If I only had more money I would be content. If I only had more followers, more possessions, more beauty, then at last I would consider myself successful. If only my house was bigger, my influence wider,…

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    A La Carte (April 22)

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  • It Begins and Ends with Speaking

    It Begins and Ends with Speaking

    Part of the joy of reading biography is having the opportunity to learn about a person who lived before us. An exceptional biography makes us feel as if we have actually come to know its subject, so that we rejoice in that person’s triumphs, grieve over his failures, and weep at his death.

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    Weekend A La Carte (April 20)

    A La Carte: Living counterculturally during election season / Borrowing a death / The many ministries of godly women / When we lose loved ones and have regrets / Ethnicity and race and the colorblindness question / The case for children’s worship services / and more.

  • The Anxious Generation

    The Great Rewiring of Childhood

    I know I’m getting old and all that, and I’m aware this means that I’ll be tempted to look unfavorably at people who are younger than myself. I know I’ll be tempted to consider what people were like when I was young and to stand in judgment of what people are like today. Yet even…

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    A La Carte: The gateway drug to post-Christian paganism / You and I probably would have been nazis / Be doers of my preference / God can work through anyone and everything / the Bible does not say God is trans / Kindle deals / and more.