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A La Carte (September 30)

I’m writing today from Heathrow Airport in London, as I stop over briefly while journeying up to Edinburgh, Scotland. I am looking forward to visiting my friends at 20schemes and attending their upcoming weekender. I’ll also be preaching this Sunday at Duncan Street Baptist Church.

Today’s Kindle deals include : Beating the College Debt Trap by Alex Chediak, The Envy of Eve by Melissa Kruger, The Search for God and Guinness by Stephen Mansfield, and Crossing the Divide by Jake Hanson.

Westminster Books has a sale on one of my favorite commentary series: The Focus on the Bible commentaries. All the ones I’ve read are good, but Dale Ralph Davis’s Old Testament are especially invaluable, usually considered among the top for those books of the Bible (Joshua, Judges, 1&2 Samuel, 1&2 Kings).

How Christianity Flourishes

Jared Wilson: “I once heard Steve Brown relate this story on the radio: ‘A Muslim scholar once said to a Christian, I cannot find anywhere in the Quran that it teaches Muslims how to be a minority presence in the world. And I cannot find anywhere in the New Testament where it teaches Christians how to be a majority presence in the world.’” Hmm…

The OT Prophets and the Presidential Election

What might the Old Testament prophets have to say about the presidential election? George Guthrie answers.

Old Hollywood’s Abortion Secret

It probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise that behind all the glamor was a lot of pain and abuse. “Much like today, in Old Hollywood, the decisions being made about women’s bodies were made in the interests of men—the powerful heads of motion pictures studios MGM, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., and RKO.”

Remembering the Reformation but Celebrating What?

Carl Trueman offers a rather pessimistic take on the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. But it’s a point well taken. “While evangelicals will be remembering the Reformation, what will they actually be celebrating? I suspect the answer is this: They will be celebrating the ability of American evangelicalism to recreate the past in its own image and thereby domesticate any figures whom it wishes to appropriate into its own pantheon of heroes.”

Today. September 30 marks the release of several new books from Crossway including Parenting by Paul Tripp and Why the Reformation Still Matters by Michael Reeves & Tim Chester.

You Know You’re Really Preaching the Gospel When…

“God doesn’t operate like a professional baseball team. He doesn’t call the best and the brightest to the big stage. Rather, he calls the weak and lowly to salvation and then deploys them into ministry. If you’ve been called to ministry, it’s not because God needed you on his team. It’s because he delights in you and wanted you in his family.”

How McNuggets Are Made

This is McDonald’s propaganda, I’m sure. But I still love eating there…

God Wants You To Find Your Happy Place

Here’s an interview with Randy Alcorn in which he explains why God is so concerned with your happiness.

Flashback: Two Surefire Ways to Avoid Persecution

As Christians we know to expect some measure of suffering, yet we learn there are ways to avoid it. Here are two of them…

Our capacity for faithfulness makes marriage possible, but our capacity for unfaithfulness makes marriage necessary.

—Christopher Ash

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    Christianity under the progressive gaze / Why Christians must reject the conspiratorial mind / Wise people strive to be wiser / The pro-life movement’s midterm reckoning / How evil works / Preaching in paragraphs / Kindle deals / and more.

  • Works and Wonders November 8

    Works & Wonders (November 8)

    This week’s Works & Wonders: the power of God, Nikon’s microscope photos, three Come, Thou Founts, a brain-injured musical genius, and Prepare Him Room live.

  • Weekend A La Carte (November 7)

    The Hutterites’ guide to technology / Searching for jobs, Gen Z feels like it’s staring into ‘the void’ / The gospel according to Peter (Thiel) / Scientism and the allure of control / Can science explain sparkling rivers? / What led to Christianity Today’s crisis?

  • I Regret to Inform You That Heaven Tourism Is Back

    I Regret to Inform You That Heaven Tourism Is Back

    I regret to inform you, dear reader, that heaven tourism is back. The genre possibly never went away entirely, but it did at least disappear from the bestseller lists for several years. Sadly, it has returned in Gabe Poirot’s 18 Days in Heaven.

  • A La Carte (November 6)

    Don’t despise the red flags / Your thoughts are shaping your life / Can’t you just love everyone? / Selfies are not the self: forming embodied youth in a disembodied age / Effective altruists and the spreadsheet gospel / 4 Applications for the order of love—from the home to the ends of the earth /…