I’m grateful to The Gospel Coalition for sponsoring the blog this week with news of a new group study that may interest you: Making Sense of Us.
Today’s Kindle deals include some excellent choices like Randy Alcorn’s Ninety Days of God’s Goodness and K.J. Ramsey’s This Too Shall Last.
(Yesterday on the blog: The Suffering of a Child)
On Saving the World
I think we all grapple with this issue from time to time, don’t we? “How to deal with this fact: the world is filled with suffering and you are only one person. And most days you don’t even feel like one person. You feel like half a person or a quarter of a person, pulled multiple directions at once by competing demands: friends, spouse, children, work, school, church. Always something. And yet the suffering remains.”
We Are Not Workhorses
I enjoyed this reflection on horses, on what they mean in Chinese culture, and how we are not like them. “The danger lies not in the hard work we do in building up the kingdom of God, but in allowing this work to become ultimate. Work without reliance and rest quietly shifts faith from God to human capability.”
You Will Regret Your Public Outbursts of Anger
Kenneth is absolutely correct when he says that the day will come when you will regret your public outbursts of anger. “There is coming a day—a day not far off—when you will regret your public expressions of anger and rancor. Whatever your motivations, whatever your political associations, whatever settings you have expressed these words, not too far in the future, you will regret all those irate words you have been writing—and all those heated videos you have been recording (or the videos of others you have been sharing). You will regret all those vindictive comments you have posted in response to others you disagree with.”
Witchcraft in the Church
Barry York: “As a Christian leader, who has seen too many harden their hearts in this manner, I have wondered and prayed about what happens in a man’s heart that leads him down the path of rebellion. Are there safeguards and warning signs the Lord has in place to halt us from this treacherous way of self-delusion? I definitely believe so. I offer the five below as Biblical practices that can prevent the seeds of pride and rebellion from developing in leaders’ hearts.”
Embrace Your Life by Enjoying Quiddity
Justin explains how to embrace your life as it is, by enjoying quiddity—a word that demands an explanation! “How do you become a deep person? You can hear it in the word itself—it’s the desire to mine, uncover, excavate. That doesn’t happen in 14 seconds. One method, then, is through reading great books, but it’s not the only way. Lewis presents a method available to any person at any point in his or her day…”
How Is AI Shaping You? Three Principles for Wise Use
“Artificial intelligence technology has evolved faster than most Christians have been able to think about it. For many of us, by the time we learned that these systems could write a funny short story in a few seconds, the age of generative AI was upon us. When this kind of massive cultural change happens so quickly, most people tend to go along with it automatically. ‘This is new’ becomes synonymous with ‘This is good.’” Samuel is no Luddite, but still expresses caution.
Flashback: I Feel I Think I Believe
…we as Christians must know what we believe and we must believe these things with strength and confidence. It is not wrong to feel, but it is not enough. Feelings will not sustain us when the world turns against us.
Sin is ugly. It should be killed daily. I die every day, because Jesus said, “Take up your cross daily” and crosses are for dying.
—John Piper
