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A La Carte (October 25)

tuesday

Blessings to you today!

There is yet another batch of Kindle deals for you this morning.

(Yesterday on the blog: Shaken to Bear Fruit)

Who Was David Brainerd?

Dustin Benge has written a nice little introduction to David Brainerd. “On a spring day in 1747, mounted on his horse, a frail twenty-nine year old David Brainerd (1718–1747) rode into the yard of the Northampton parsonage of New England pastor Jonathan Edwards. Before this day, Brainerd and Edwards were relative strangers to one another. However, the summer of 1747 nurtured a growing friendship between the two men culminating in one of the most influential missionary biographies in the history of American evangelicalism.”

Love Without Limits

This is sweet. “I learned that the heart is infinitely expandable—limitless, even—with no bottom or edges or measuring devices attached. I learned that I could add and add and add people to my circle of family or friends and I would never run out of love to give. I learned that I could love many people equally, and loving one person intensely due to some temporary circumstance never had to mean that another would suffer from any lack of love from me. I learned that even when I thought I couldn’t love any harder, or more expansively, or deeper … I could.”

We Love to Give Gold Stars

Ryan Higginbottom: “When we obsess about the ethics of every action of a character in a Bible passage, we are likely to miss the main point. We should investigate why the author wrote this passage in this way; if they were not concerned with parsing the moral grade of a character’s actions, we should not be either.”

What South Asian Christians Do During Diwali

“It’s Diwali,” Aileen told me early yesterday morning when fireworks woke us up just after midnight. This article from CT tells what Christians in South Asia do during the holiday. And the article makes me think of what I’ve taken for granted: that the holidays in Canada are all just fine for Christians to celebrate. Not so everywhere in the world!

How Tall Was Goliath? A Textual Dilemma

How tall was Goliath? The answer isn’t quite as straightforward as we may think.

Greek Grammar and Trinitarian Worship

This is a good article from Adriel Sanchez.

Flashback: Why I Owe Everything To Don Lewis

If we trace the Christian faith of all these people—perhaps 40 or 50 of us now—they all eventually converge on Don Lewis. They all converge on a young man who simply and faithfully shared the gospel.

Persecution has never hurt the church…only prosperity.

—Paul Washer

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    A La Carte (April 23)

    A La Carte: Climate anxiety paralyzes, gospel hope propels / Living what God has written / How should I engage my rebellious child? / Satan hates your pastor / How to navigate our spiritual highs / The art of extemporaneous preaching / and more.

  • 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

    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…