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Weekend A La Carte (April 21)

Today’s Kindle deals include a few books (including one classic) that are worth a look.

(Yesterday on the blog: Letters to the Editor: Sports, Hymns, and Hobbies, and Entertainment)

Jesus, Take the Control Wheel

I love this: “When members of First Baptist Church in Boerne, Texas, heard recordings of radio transmissions from a Southwest Airlines pilot who made a harrowing emergency landing this week in Philadelphia, they recognized the voice as one of their own.”

Paying Attention Is On the Nose

And speaking of Flight 1380, “Yep, after hundreds of flights, and an equal number of safety instruction demonstrations before the flight takes off, you know that you are supposed to put the oxygen mask around your mouth and nose.” There’s a lesson to learn from that.

How to Design Impenetrable Airport Security (Video)

And speaking of flying, here’s how to design impregnable airport security. Kind of. Even more, it’s about the impossibility of doing so.

Children’s Crusades

This is so true. “One clever little speciality of adult humans works like this: You very carefully (and, if you’re smart, very subtly) instruct children in the moral stances you’d like them to hold. Then, when they start to repeat what you’ve taught them, you cry ‘Out of the mouths of babes! And a little child shall lead them!’ And you very delicately maneuver the children to the front of your procession, so that they appear to be leading it — but of course you make sure all along that you’re steering them in the way that they should go.”

What Is Definite Atonement? (Video)

R.C. Sproul offers a brief (but excellent) answer.

His Suffering Sparked a Movement

John Piper remembers David Brainerd on his 300th birthday. “His life was short — 29 years, 5 months, and 19 days. And only eight of those years as a Christian. Only four as a missionary. And yet few lives have sent ripples so far and so wide as David Brainerd’s.”

The Theology and True-Life Tragedy behind Hallmark’s Hit Show, “When Calls the Heart”

This is the fascinating story of Janette Oke. “Oke, now 83, is the mother of evangelical romance novels. She wasn’t the first to write a romance novel with evangelical themes, but her success established the market for the genre, and made “evangelical romance” its own market category.”

What is the biggest problem facing Evangelicalism?

I think this is tough to deny. And it goes well beyond the UK. “The biggest problem facing the British Evangelical church today is, without doubt, our own personal comfort. Far too many of us are happy in our middle-class Christian enclaves, in comfortable areas of the country, going to churches full of people exactly like them.”

Flashback: One Very Good Reason to Study Church History

When you became a Christian, the history of Christianity became yours. You became a citizen of Christ’s kingdom and gained its past in all its glory and shame.

Why You Should Read the Westminster Confession of Faith

Thanks to Zondervan for sponsoring the blog this week with an excellent article (and video) on a key Protestant confession.

The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian Church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him.

—A.W. Tozer.

  • The Phrase that Altered My Thinking Forever

    This week the blog is sponsored by P&R Publishing and is written by Ralph Cunnington. Years ago, I stumbled repeatedly on an ancient phrase that altered my thinking forever.  Distinct yet inseparable. The first time I encountered this phrase was while studying the Council of Chalcedon’s description of the two natures of Christ. Soon after,…

  • Always Look for the Light

    Always Look for the Light

    For many years there was a little potted plant on our kitchen window sill, though I’ve long since forgotten the variety. Year after year that plant would put out a shoot and from the shoot would emerge a single flower. And I observed that no matter how I turned the pot, the flower would respond.…

  • A La Carte Collection cover image

    A La Carte (March 18)

    A La Carte: God is good and does good—even in our pain / Dear bride and groom / Sin won’t comfort you / Worthy of the gospel / From self-sufficiency to trusting God’s people / The gods fight for our devotion / and more.

  • Confidence

    God Takes Us Into His Confidence

    Here is another Sunday devotional—a brief thought to orient your heart toward the Lord. God takes the initiative in establishing relationship by reaching out to helpless humanity. He reveals himself to the creatures he has made. But what does it mean for him to provide such revelation of himself? John Calvin began his Institutes by…

  • A La Carte Collection cover image

    Weekend A La Carte (March 16)

    A La Carte: I believe in the death of Julius Caesar and the resurrection of Jesus Christ / Reasons students and pastors shouldn’t use ChatGPT / A 1.3 gigpixel photo of a supernova / What two raw vegans taught me about sharing Jesus / If we realize we’re undeserving, suddenly the world comes alive /…

  • Ask Pastor John

    Ask Pastor John

    I admit it: I felt a little skeptical about Ask Pastor John. To be fair, I feel skeptical about most books that begin in one medium before making the leap to another. Books based on sermons, for example, can often be pretty disappointing—a powerful sermon at a conference can make a bland chapter in a…