At the end of the month I like to update a couple of the pages on this site, so I did that yesterday. The Best Commentaries page has been updated with commentaries for several books of the Bible, while the Book Recommendations page has some new titles added as well. I hope you find both resources helpful.
Sales & Deals
Today’s Kindle deals include MacArthur’s Fundamentals of the Faith, Newman’s Mere Evangelism, and Sayers’ Platforms to Pillars. Also, I linked to several commentaries earlier in the week, but their prices were slow to change, so I linked to them again today.
Westminster Books has a Fall Release Sale if you’re looking to get ahead of all the new releases (or some of them at least).
Recommended Reading
When Urgent Cries Are Met With Silence. Kimberly Wagner wonders aloud why God has not answered her earnest prayers. “Why does God seem to be silent when I’m begging Him, in anguish, to rescue my loved ones? When I ask Him to heal my husband? When I repeatedly lift the same cries? I’m unable to untangle all the theological complexities of intercession, so please give me grace as I attempt to share my heart on this: God desires for us to ask Him anything. Even when it seems that He doesn’t answer us, He is listening. He has a plan and it is good.”
What to Do Instead of Killing Your Wife. Brittany Allen writes about Caleb Flynn, whose murder trial has been headline news recently. “Don’t we all have a story we can point to in our own local context where we asked the same question? Haven’t we all been shocked by the grievous sin of someone we never would have believed could do such a thing? Haven’t we listened to their words and stood baffled? The justification of affairs because, ‘God would want me to be happy.’ Or having the audacity to hope that someone would leave their spouse and choose you. Men show up outside their affair partner’s house begging them to leave their husband, exhibiting stalker-like behavior.”
Give Up Your Ladders to Nowhere. Pierce Taylor Hibbs explains how David Powlison’s clever metaphor of climbing ladders to nowhere helps us identify what we’re chasing that can only lead to death. “We are all chasers and climbers, ever striving for the next thing. The human heart does not know what it means to be stationary. It is, by nature, a thing that seeks. What do you do with your ever-grasping heart? For most of us, we build ladders to nowhere.”
Your Marriage Fights Need a Thesaurus. Costi Hinn: “I believe that in order to fight fair, our marriage fights need a thesaurus. By that, I mean choosing words that actually fit the facts.” He provides some helpful examples.
Carlos Correa: ‘I’m Thankful I Almost Drowned’. I enjoyed Marvin Olasky’s column at Christianity Today that tells about the faith of Carlos Correa, who plays for the Houston Astros. “Since that afternoon, Correa says he has started hosting a Bible study in his home and teaching his teammates informally through a word game he now plays with half a dozen of them during plane travel. He’ll call out the name of a book of the Bible and ask the others for words they associate with it.”
4 Missionary Insights for Workplace Evangelism. Sam Chan, an Australia evangelist, addresses some of the complications that arise when evangelizing at work. “What if we reimagine evangelism as a conversation, where we evangelize like a counselor (with questions) or a chaplain (by building trust and social capital)? I want to reimagine workplace evangelism as trying to evangelize like a missionary. How would closed-country missionaries evangelize if they were placed in my job, in my secular workplace?”
Quote
One thing I appreciate about reading De Witt Talmage is his plain speaking, though that plain speech could also devolve into scolding at times. Anyway, I have observed exactly what he describes here: That those who are evasive with their language are almost always veering from what’s true.
The Gospel is plain. It is bread. There are no fogs hovering over this river of life. All the fogs hover over the marsh of human speculation. If you cannot tell, when you hear a man preach whether or not he believes in the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures, it is because he does not believe in it. If, when you hear a man preach, you cannot tell whether or not he believes that sin is inborn, it is because he does not think it is congenital. If, when you hear a man talk in pulpit or prayer meeting, you cannot make up your mind whether or not he believes in regeneration, it is because he does not believe in it. If, when you hear a man speak on religious themes, you cannot make up your mind whether or not he thinks the righteous and the wicked will come out at the same place, then it is because he really believes that their destinies are conterminous.
The truth is plain and obscuring the truth is often the same as denying it.
Flashback
Could There Be a Worse Home Than This? We speak a great deal … of the condescension of the eternal Son of God in coming to earth, to be born in a stable and cradled in a manger. Is it a less wonderful condescension, for the Holy Spirit to make your heart his home—and to live there as your guest?
A loyal few is better than a fickle multitude.
—Shai Linne
