Today’s Kindle deals include, among other things, a long list of issues of Matthias Media’s excellent The Briefing magazine.
Logos users will probably want to check out the annual 12 Days of Logos and other Christmas deals.
(Yesterday on the blog: God Alone Can Save: A Prayer)
Every Pastor Needs a Lula Mae Pryor: A Eulogy
What a sweet eulogy! “Lula Mae was one of the few people I’ve known who never seemed like she wished she had a life other than the one she had. She spent decades as the staff person who cleaned the church. She loved it! That is not an embellished assertion. She actually loved it and felt honored to do it. For thirty-one years it was her ministry.”
He Made Them Male and Female
“Although the modern West has lost its boundaries and celebrates a plethora of so-called gender options, how should Christians understand and critique today’s concepts of gender in light of Scripture? We begin with understanding, and not conflating, four categories: sex, gender, norms, and callings.” Christopher Yuan is always worth reading.
Double Giveaway: Puritan Paperbacks & Martyn Lloyd-Jones Romans Set (SPONSORED LINK)
Description: AccelerateBooks is hosting another giveaway. This time they’re giving away both the Puritan Paperbacks and Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ Romans set to one winner. It ends Jan. 1st, so don’t miss this!
You’re Not a Healthy Church Unless You Care About Titus 2
“If you don’t care about equipping women to teach other women you’re not a healthy church. Many recent conversations about women in the local church focus on matters of representation or the need for more prominent female voices in the church’s life. Those are important matters. But the main reason your church should care about women discipling women is because God cares about it: it’s in the Bible.”
Where Christmas Trees Come From
Where do all those Christmas trees come from? “Before the 1930s, Christmas trees typically were cut down on an individual’s property or out in the wild. Now, tree farms in all 50 states (yes, Hawaii too) are where most Christmas trees come from, accounting for 98 percent of live Christmas trees brought into homes.”
4 Reasons Christians Should Support Banning Pornography
Joe Carter: “While we may express concern about the nefarious effect of porn our actions reveal what we truly believe. Here are four reasons we Christians should once again seek to rid our country from the poison of pornography.”
1 Simple Step to Encouragement
“I was thinking of writing the next how to book for church. I know there is a useful little course out called six steps to encouragement, though the fact we need a course on this suggests to me that there is something wrong with our discipling and our church culture that we have to teach this and its not simply absorbed through the church culture, but I have a better idea. It’s much simpler, much more streamlined, but I’m not sure you can call it a course, or turn it into a course – it’s called one step to encouragement.”
Flashback: The Visionary Worrywart
Worriers live in the future, and they see that future in minute, gory detail. I cannot say it better than Welch: “Worriers are visionaries minus the optimism.”
I maintain that people—truly born-again, genuinely Christian people—often do not pray simply because they do not feel like it. And the reason they don’t feel like praying is that when they do pray, they tend to say the same old things about the same old things. —Donald Whitney
