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A La Carte (May 9)

thursday

I was not able to track down any particularly interesting Kindle deals for today. We’ll try again on Friday!

(Yesterday on the blog: The Wonderful, Glorious Jesus)

When Contentment Sneaks Up on You

“I haven’t arrived at full contentment yet. I’d say nobody ever will, until we all have our sins completely washed away on that final day. Some mornings I wake up feeling particularly weak, having to rip myself from some fantasy world in my dreams. It takes a huge effort to drag myself to my Bible, open it up, and allow God to reorient my heart.”

The Making of Amazon Prime

“It’s easy to forget now, but Amazon wasn’t always the king of online shopping. In the fall of 2004, Jeff Bezos’s company was still mostly selling just books and DVDs.” This interesting article traces the rise of Amazon Prime.

Saved by Grace But Entertained by Sin

“For the past decade, God has been doing a work in my heart that has revolutionized the way I look at my pursuit of entertainment. Rather than establishing a complex set of standards in the spirit of the Scribes and Pharisees, I have learned to ask some simple yet powerful questions about what it means for me to find pleasure in entertainment.”

A Letter To My Aging Friends

I enjoyed Abby’s attempt here to imagine some of what God might say to our aging friends.

Must We Pay Poor Pastors Poorly?

This comes from 20schemes which knows a thing or two about ministering among the poor. “I observe men sent out to pastor in poor areas of South Africa, this thinking appears to persist – ‘be poor, for the people among whom you work are poor!’ No doubt, such thinking probably stems from a desire to remove barriers for ministry and help the man relate well to the community. But I am with the locals: it’s a strange move.”

12 “Hard Truths” For Graduates to Help Them Not Be Broke

There’s great advice here for younger folk. “Love God and not money. Steward all of your resources (time, talents, and treasure) well, and use them as a way to worship and serve God and to bless others, not just for yourself. Do this, and you will probably not be broke financially, nor will you be ‘broke in spirit.’”

A Censorious Spirit

Here’s one to work on for a social media world. “Sinclair Ferguson once lamented the fact that whenever he overheard others discussing some public theologian or individual at a conference, the statements were almost always prefaced with a negative comment such as, ‘Well, you know, the problem with him is…’ Sadly, those sorts of conversations are far from uncommon among those of us who have been in the church for any length of time.”

Flashback: Just Forget About Marriage for a Minute!

Ephesians 5 tells a husband he must love his wife as Jesus Christ loves his church. So let’s forget about marriage for a minute and reflect simply on how we are loved by our great Savior.

Startle not when I say it,—I fear that many men proudly ask to be humble: they desire to be humble in order that they may be admired for it.

—C.H. Spurgeon

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    Identity matters for at least two key reasons. First, understanding our identity—our true God-given identity—is vital to understand why we exist and what we’re to do in life, as it is likewise essential for framing a fitting perspective of others.

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    A Collection of Random Thoughts on Christian Living

    Not every thought makes a good article and sometimes an entire article can be distilled down to a single thought. For those reasons, I like to occasionally create what I have created here–a roundup of brief, random thoughts about Christian living. Some of these are original and some are drawn from articles I’ve written in…

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    A La Carte: Have you lost the ability to think deeply? / Does God command me to trust my spouse? / Thoughts on suicide / Preaching from a manuscript / God is not in a good mood / Kindle deals / and more.

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    Undermining the Bible

    There is an entire sector of the publishing industry that is dedicated to undermining people’s confidence in the Bible. Many of these books shoot to the top of the bestseller lists with their novel conspiracies about the Bible’s origins, their theories about its hidden secrets, or their conviction that it is a mess of contradictions.

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    A La Carte: Male and female forever? / The shortcomings of Jordan Peterson / The thief who steals joy / Letter to a progressive Christian / The weary world rejoices / and more.