Skip to content ↓

A La Carte (August 4)

thursday

Grace and peace to you today, my friends.

There are not quite as many Kindle deals today as in the past couple of days, but there are still a few worth checking out.

(Yesterday on the blog: Once Again Honestly Assessing Our Decision to Public School Our Kids)

Seeking and Following God’s Guidance

Vance Christie: “Recently while seeking God’s direction about quite a significant ministry decision in my own life, I was encouraged by going back and reviewing some of the specific details of how the Lord led George Muller into his great orphan ministry.” That turned out to be a good idea.

Entrusting My Treasure

Jennifer McPhail explains how she came to entrust her treasure to the Lord and his purposes.

Honour & respect are culturally bound

“Honouring one another is most definitely a biblical concept.” But, as Stephen explains here, it’s also a concept that needs to be worked out according to context and culture. (I especially enjoyed his discussion of the difference between American and British/Canadian forms of giving honor.)

This Journal Fought Beside Me

I appreciate Grace sharing this account of throwing away a journal—a particularly significant journal.

Newsletters aren’t news anymore. But they’re not going away.

Here’s an interesting take on the rise (and perhaps settling) of the email newsletter. “The Substack frenzy seems like a thing of the past. But lots of publishers are still leaning into newsletters. ‘They’re a great minimally viable product.’”

The Filthy Will Still Be Filthy

“Sin is filth. It is soul pollution. It makes us vile in the eyes of God, and no matter how much pride we take in our sin now, we will one day even be offensive in our own eyes. As sinners, we may do everything we can to maintain our delusion that we are honorable, but every one of us has fallen short of God’s glory. We cannot roll in the mire without eventually being repulsed by our condition.”

Flashback: Who Gave You The Right?

The sanctified instinct of the Christian heart should not be to discourage but to encourage, not to further demoralize other people but to give them strength, to give them heart, to give them courage.


  • New and Notable Christian Books for January 2025

    As you know, I like to do my best to sort through the new Christian books that are released each month to see what stands out as being not only new, but also particularly notable. I received quite a number of books in January and narrowed the list down to the ones below. I have…

  • A La Carte Collection cover image

    A La Carte (January 30)

    A La Carte: Small injustices / Is it necessary to be a church member? / How to make friends at college / My letter about a transgender teacher / Prayerless theologians / Deepening fellowship / Kindle deals / and more.

  • Throw Out the Buoys

    Throw Out the Buoys!

    When I was young, my family owned a cottage on a lake. From a young age, I loved to head out in our little motorboat so I could explore that lake and the others that were connected to it. I could easily make a day out of slipping into little inlets to see where they…

  • A La Carte Collection cover image

    A La Carte (January 29)

    A La Carte: Your phone habits / A guide for single women / JFK, conspiracy theories, and the Deep State / So what if you’re bored? / God’s a writer / Hard relationships / Kindle deals / and more.

  • Happy Lies

    Happy Lies

    I’m quite certain you have heard of the New Age movement. Though its popularity seems to have crested and begun to wane some time ago, it continues to wield a good bit of influence. But I wonder if you’ve heard of another similarly-named but quite different movement called New Thought.

  • A La Carte Collection cover image

    A La Carte (January 28)

    A La Carte: Parenting is hard / The wildness of orthodoxy / Rubbing shoulders throughout eternity / Glorifying ourselves / The middle of somewhere / Is Roman Catholic baptism valid? / Excellent Kindle deals / and more.