The God of peace be with you today, my friends.
Today’s Kindle deals include several excellent books by and/or for women. You will also find a small collection related to Christianity and science.
If you’re looking for deals on printed books, perhaps as Christmas gifts, you might be interested in CBD’s Black Friday Kickoff sale which has a lot of good options for you. I’ve collected the best of them here.
(Yesterday on the blog: The Practice of Accepting Disappointment)
When the King Comes to Church
Aimee Gray reflects on the experience of welcoming King Charles III and Queen Camilla to her church. “The experience was everything you might expect. It was electric in atmosphere, a little bit pompous but tastefully polished—from the Bible readings to the hymn lyrics, and everything in between. The experience led me to reflect deeply on the King of kings, the Lord Jesus. We welcomed a majestic person—arguably, one of the most majestic in the world!—to our church. How can it be that afterward, I was left more in awe of Jesus than ever?”
Curiositas and the David Platt Documentary
I really appreciate what O. Alan Noble has to say about a recent documentary (and other recent situations and scandals). “Our social media algorithms, our sinful hearts, and our access to endless information all work together to develop inordinate desires to know titillating, scandalizing, shameful stories (whether true or false matters less than how scandalizing they appear to be). This is the vice of curiositas, a perverse, restless desire for knowledge that goes beyond what is respectable, reasonable, and appropriate, that goes beyond all limits. And the right response to curiositas is the virtue of temperance or self-control.”
Teasing Out Idolatry in Narcissism
Today we hear more and more charges of narcissism. In this article, Dr. Keith Evans, associate professor of biblical counseling at the Reformed Theological Seminary, tries to describe narcissism according to biblical terms. “For all the attention on narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder in our current culture, it is straightforward to see how the issue relates to biblical principles. Narcissism is but a half-step away from the concept of pride. More jarringly, it is an idolization of oneself.”
Can God Forgive Without Punishment? (Video)
Greg Koukl and Amy Hall tell why God cannot forgive without punishment—a common concern for people who are uncomfortable with Christ’s substitutionary death.
Making Sense of Christ’s Two Kingdoms
You’ve probably heard people speak of two kingdom theology, but perhaps haven’t known what it’s all about. Brad Littlejohn offers a brief (and a link to a less-brief) explanation. “Many Christians have some vague familiarity with the doctrine, and a general sense that it has something to do with the distinction of church and state, sacred and secular, or perhaps the authority of Scripture vs. natural law. And they’re not entirely wrong—it does have something to do with those distinctions, but it’s not quite that simple.”
Pastoring People Through Slow Change
The point of this one is clear and important: God calls us to love people through slow change.
Flashback: Does Premarital Pregnancy Nullify ‘Unequally Yoked’?
Disrupting a family is difficult and painful; marrying an unbeliever is bound to be difficult and painful. Sadly, sometimes the only options available to us are painful and less-than-perfect ones.
The more outrageous the wicked are against the truth, the more courageous the godly are for it.
—Thomas Watson
