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A La Carte (January 27)

Today’s Kindle deals include The Faith of Christopher Hitchens, an interesting and excellent book. There are also a number of titles related to abortion.

Logos has put together a list of their most popular products for 2016. Quite a lot of them are for sale, so it’s worth giving the list a look.

The Awkward 17th-Century Dating Practice

If you’ve ever read about Jonathan Edwards, you’ve read about the bizarre practice of bundling. Atlas Obscura has just written a great article on a dumb practice.

A Plea for Pastoral Prayer

“Pastoral prayer—the part of the worship service where a pastor stands before the congregation and leads them in prayer as part of the worship service—seems to have fallen on hard times.” Indeed. It’s increasingly rare to find any substantial prayer in a church service.

2016: The Year in Language

Google has done a neat job in putting together a display of 2016’s top rising words. “These 10 words led the pack: Triggered, Shook, Juju, Broccoli, Woke, Holosexual, Shill, Gaslighting, Bigly, and SJW.”

Make America Unified Again

Bruce Ashford highlights 3 social divisions that America will need to overcome to become a unified nation.

Only 1 in 7 Senior Pastors Is Under 40

Here’s an interesting and important report from Christianity Today. “As clergy live longer and stay in ministry longer, the average age of Protestant senior pastors has risen to 54—a decade older than 25 years before, when the average age was 44.” There’s lots more to chew on in the report.

This Day in 1839. 178 years ago today famed English authority on hymns, John Julian, was born. His undoubted masterpiece is the monumental “Dictionary of Hymnology” which was published in 1892. *

The Surprising Ingenuity Behind “Goodnight Moon”

Here’s the sad, surprisingly story behind that book you probably memorized when your children were tiny. I think I can still recite most of it.

The Early Symptoms of Spiritual Danger

This is an important pastoral word from Sinclair Ferguson. Is it possible that you are showing some of the early symptoms of spiritual danger?

Pray With Your Spouse 31 Day Challenge

Couples may be interested in participating in Mike Leake’s 31-day challenge to pray with your spouse.

Flashback: 13 Ways You Waste Your Money

Money has many ways of disappearing. Here are a few of them.

Sin is not superficial to us, a mere flesh wound. It is a deep distortion, a twisted hostility toward God and his reign over us.

—Sinclair Ferguson

  • A Collection of Random Thoughts on Christian Living

    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 (December 16)

    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.

  • Undermines

    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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    Weekend A La Carte (December 14)

    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.

  • Free Stuff Fridays (Propempo International)

    This week the blog is sponsored by Propempo International. Missions on Point by David C. Meade, founder of Propempo International and Send Forward, seeks to spotlight the local church’s biblical role in world missions. Missions on Point awakens and challenges church leaders, missions leaders, missionaries, and everyone involved in the support and execution of missions…

  • Questions To Ask a Man Who Would Like To Marry Your Daughter

    Questions For the Man Who Wants To Marry Your Daughter

    It is the conversation every father of daughters anticipates having at one time or another—the conversation with the young man who has expressed interest in securing her hand in marriage and who now seeks dad’s permission. Apart from those few men who have been blessed with many daughters, most of us have just one or…