Category Archives: Laudable Linkage

Laudable Linkage

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Links of interest to Christians

Here’s my latest list if laudable links to good, thought-provoking, beneficial reading.

Staying on Your Feet is Really All About Grace. “God is not asking you to single-handedly plan a VBS, execute elaborate parties for your children, or maintain a spotless house.  He is not impressed by heroic efforts or long days or endless lists. He wants you to bend your knees.  He wants you to relax into the rhythm of his keeping.”

A Few Thoughts about Daily Devotions. “Taking time every day to draw near to God through His Word and prayer might be one of the most life-changing disciplines we can cultivate. Below are a few thoughts that I pray will help you develop the discipline of daily devotions.”

Read the Bible in Bigger Chunks, Too, HT to Challies. “Reading the Bible exclusively, or primarily, in small chunks is like that. When we do this, we’re spending our time focusing on the trees. And not only the trees, but the branches, and individual leaves of the trees. And we’re right to do this, of course. Those ‘small’ details matter. But when that’s all we focus on, if we don’t zoom out once in a while, we can miss the forest.”

7 Biblical Truths Countering the False Gospel of “Emotional Health and Wealth,” HT to Challies. We hear a lot about what’s wrong with the “prosperity gospel,” the false idea that God blesses those who obey Him with health and wealth. But sometimes we falsely believe that if we do everything “right,” God will take away any emotional distress as well.

Ten Diagnostic Questions for the Potential Ideologue, HT to Challies. “While boiling political positions and strategies down to binary choices may make for effective political campaigns, biblical faithfulness may not be so easily reduced.” Though this is mainly about handling differing political viewpoints with fairness and grace, the principles hold true for differences of opinion in any category.

When Your Kids Make Poor Parenting Choices, Do You Feel Like a Failure? “We forget that fulfillment for our kids and grandkids will be found only in obedience to God and not elsewhere. This may require that we get out of God’s way and trust his perfect parenting of our adult children.”

Laudable Linkage

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Here’s my latest list of good online reads:

My Grandmother Would Tell You That, HT to Challies. “I could write out my grandmother’s full name and you wouldn’t recognize it. She wasn’t famous, wealthy, accomplished, or well-known. But her unremarkable life was truly remarkable because of who Jesus was to her.”

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, April Witkowski & the Myth of the Wasted Ministry, HT to Challies. “Our lives today will not be defined by our dreams, hopes, or expectations of what is to come (of what may never come) but will be defined by our faithful execution of the life and ministry God has given us in this moment. If we are faithfully serving God today in accordance with his Word and our calling and gifting, our lives are not a waste but rather the very definition of success.”

What Pins Are You Juggling? A Parenting Story, HT to Challies. One of the hard things about children growing up: “‘I have all these pins that I’m juggling and I have to keep them all up in the air and I can’t let any of them drop.’ I ended with a little sob of self-pity and mom-guilt that I am oh so good at. She came over to my chair and looked me in the eye. ‘But they’re not your pins.’”

Evidence of God’s Faithfulness in Ukraine, HT to Challies. After praying for this country for months now, it’s good to get a peek at some ways God is working there.

From the Heavens to the Depths: Sparking Wonder for Him Through Science. “When we shy away from science, we miss a breathtaking opportunity to open our kids’ eyes to the true majesty, the wonder, the artistry, and the magnificence of our Creator. The very foundations of science require acceptance of our universe as ordered, discoverable, and characterizable — a philosophy that lends itself to a higher, intelligent power who put it all into order in the first place. When we guide our kids through the mysteries and splendors of creation, we give them a glimpse of the brilliance, mastery, and goodness of the Creator, a glimpse that complements rather than contradicts the attributes He reveals through Scripture.”

5 Steps to Break Free from To-Do List Overwhelm. “As Christians we want to be faithful in the tasks the Lord has given us. But often we mistake busyness for productivity. We think if our to-do lists are full, and we are frantically working on them each day, surely we must be on the right track.”

How to Create an Effective Weekly Schedule, HT to Redeeming Productivity. “Every Monday for the past 5 years, I’ve taken the first 15 minutes to plan the week ahead. For me, this has been my single greatest productivity routine.” Great tips here for how to implement.

The Art of Moving On: When and How to Disengage from a Goal, HT to Redeeming Productivity. “When discussing goals, we typically talk about employing perseverance and persistence, even in the face of adversity and setbacks. ‘Quitters never win, and winners never quit,’ and all that. While grit is essential to goal achievement, Wrosch argues that an equally important part of successful living is knowing when to give up and disengage from a goal. “

Laudable Linkage

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Here’s my latest list of noteworthy reads found this week.

What Do You Do When You Are Spiritually Dry? HT to Challies. “Often when we feel dry, we are tempted to neglect the one thing that will satisfy our souls. Think about it: When you feel dry, what things do you want to toss out? Bible reading, prayer, fellowship. But this is the problem. If you are dry, spiritually thirsty, the worst thing you can do is go to the desert! You need to go to the fountain! God calls Himself “the fountain of living waters” (Jer 2:13). If we do not desire God, we need to go to God!”

When We Fear the Worst, HT to Challies. “Friend, I don’t know what fears and worries weigh on your soul today. But I do know that they can feel heavy—sometimes debilitatingly so. They can nag at you and trip you up and keep you discouraged and despairing. But there is a sure foundation we stand on, a God who holds us fast even while the winds and waves beat down. And he will not let us go. Not now. Not ever.”

Where Do I Find the Grace to Forgive? “Christians should be the most gracious of people. But when we forget what we’ve received from God or minimize our need for salvation, we become bill collectors. We go through life trying to collect the love, respect, appreciation, apology, or attention we feel others owe us.”

Standing on the Promises Is More Active than it Sounds. “‘Standing on the promises of Christ the Lord/…Overcoming daily with the Spirit’s sword…’ Standing on a promise requires knowledge of what has been promised. Do you have a sufficient base in Scripture for your heart to rest upon?”

The Art of the Ebenezer, HT to the Story Warren. “He looked into the past and remembered Israel’s defeat and anguish. He wanted to memorialize their repentance, prayer, fasting, fighting, and victory. But by erecting the stone of remembrance, Samuel also looked toward the future, wanting to remind the next generations to look at that stone and remember God’s faithfulness and power when the next tough trial came their way.”

The Strangeness that Stands Out, HT to the Story Warren. “If we give up essential truths of the Christian faith in order to be culturally relevant, we make ourselves eternally irrelevant. We make the church boring. The world needs a church that does more than offer an echo of our own times.”

Ron Hamilton Has Come Forth as Gold. I wrote about Ron earlier this week, and I’m sure many tributes will be written. But I enjoyed this one from Chris Anderson about ways Ron ministered to us. And he rightly includes a note about Ron’s wife, Shelly, at the end.

Laudable Linkage

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It’s been a super-busy week, so I have just a few links for you. But I think they’re good ones.

Why We Follow Some Old Testament Laws But Not Others, HT to Challies. “Critics accuse Christians of conveniently picking and choosing from Old Testament laws. We’re quick to ‘clobber’ gay people with verses from Leviticus, they say, yet we don’t keep kosher ourselves. The complaint, though, is based on a misunderstanding about the Mosaic Covenant that even Christians fall prey to.”

“Where Is Your Faith?” HT to Challies. “How do you cling to belief amidst such turmoil of the heart? How do you survive the death of a child? I can tell you, it is not what happens in that moment of complete darkness or even in the months and years that follow. Survival is forged in the pew every Sunday. It is built on the truths of Scripture that you fill your mind with day by day. It comes through knowing Who God is.”

We’re Missing It. “He wants time to love us that way and it can’t happen if He is a ‘to do’ list item, or in sound bites only throughout our day, or only while we grab coffee on our way out the door.”

Well-Worn Boots. Lessons from a pair of faithful old work boots.

Laudable Linkage

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I don’t observe Lent in a formal way. But I do like to spend some time in the weeks leading up to Easter by reading either the gospel accounts of Jesus’ death and resurrection or a book on the subject.

I had just read the gospel of John recently, so I didn’t want to go through it again so soon.

A couple of my favorite books for this time of year are The Women of Easter by Liz Curtis Higgs and Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross compiled by Nancy Guthrie. But I wasn’t inclined to pick up one of those again, and I didn’t have any new material I wanted to read. I’m in a number of books already and didn’t want to start something lengthy.

Then I saw that Revive Our Hearts recently posted about the seven last sayings of Christ on the cross. That series just fit my needs this year. If you have some time today and tomorrow, you might want to look at a few of them to prepare your heart for Easter:

Here are some of the other good reads I found this week:

You Know What’s Crazy? HT to Challies. “I had 13 hours to sit and think about the drama we’d just been involved in. I thought, ‘It’s crazy that this guy still thought he was all right to fly.  He was totally irrational. Any normal person could see that he was in a bad way. But he couldn’t see it. He thought he was fine.’ The thought occurred to me that this is a lot like the irrationality of sin and sinners.”

Intentional Gardening–and an Intentional Life–in Partnership with God. “Standing or stooping in my garden, I portray the work that’s required for spiritual cultivation, for I believe God is pleased when I come to spiritual disciplines with the same fervor I bring to the elimination of ragweed between my tomato plants.”

The Shadow Is a Small and Passing Thing, HT to Challies. “One evening, while Frodo slept and Sam watched, Sam looked up at a single star in the sky above Mordor. Thinking on that star, Tolkien wrote, ‘the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.'”

The Unexpected Beauty of Babel, HT to Challies. “It seems as if, as he so often does, God has chosen to bring beauty through judgment, a greater grace and glory than would have existed had the judgment never taken place. After all, this is the logic of the cross and salvation history. Yes, judgment falls. Yet amazingly God’s grace shines even brighter for it. Should we be surprised that God delights to also do this with the arc of language history?”

Overcome Your Enemies by Dying. “What do you do when people turn against you? When those who reject the Lord Jesus Christ come after you for daring to follow him? When nitpicking and backstabbing are the standard operating procedure in the workplace? When family members use guilt and pressure to manipulate you into doing what they want?”

Protect Teens from Sextortion, HT to Challies. “Last month, international law enforcement agencies released a warning: ‘In 2022, the FBI received thousands of reports related to the financial sextortion of minors, primarily boys, representing an exponential increase from previous years. Unfortunately, the FBI is also aware of more than a dozen suicides following these incidents.”

Laudable Linkage

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Some of the thought-provoking reads found this week:

So You Want to Be a Woman of the Word? “Women of the Word resist the world’s distractions and dedicate time to regular Bible study.”

Can Satan Put Thoughts into Our Heads? HT to Challies. “Yes, he can and he does. And of course, the urgent questions then are, How do we recognize them? And how do we resist them and not get controlled by them?”

Midlife, Christ Is. HT to Challies. This is very encouraging for those of us who are “middle-aged.”

The Wisdom of Avoiding Strife. “Sometimes Christians think God wants them to become punching bags. And at other times, perhaps in rejection of the punching-bag approach, Christians harden themselves to the point of arrogance and condescension toward their opponents. But what does it mean to fight like a Christian in situations of strife?”

I Just Need Something New! HT to Challies. “We know this right? It’s the gospel we have been told—perhaps for years. Yet we can so easily forget it. We get distracted by the shiny and new, and before we know it the false hope of man-centered change can push Christ to the background. We wonder if the novel is what we really need. This new Bible reading plan will get my act together. That new book will finally fix my parenting struggles. These new habits will refocus my heart through the day. Nehemiah 13 reminds us that mastery over outward disciplines just isn’t enough (Col. 2:23).”

Fear After Grief, HT to Challies. “Perhaps you’ve been walking through seasons of grief, as you mourn especially deep pain. The dark clouds have begun to shift, but you’re not sure if you can bear to greet the sun, lest you have to return to the dark.”

Yes, a Loved One Is Watching From Heaven, HT to Challies. “How has the Lord assured you he’s near in the deep grief that accompanies loss? The evidence of his presence is there if we look, but let’s not get confused about who’s watching over us. Look beyond your loved one to see and experience the love and kindness of our great God.”

Behind-the-Scenes: Endorsements. A look at why publishers require endorsements, what they mean, how to regard them.

Laudable Linkage

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Here are some of the posts that especially resonated with me this week:

If God Would Outsource His Sovereignty. “I want you to imagine that, at least for a time, the Lord would see fit to involve us in selecting the providences we would receive from his hand. I want you to imagine that through one of his deputies—an angel perhaps—he would approach us to ask how we would prefer to serve him.”

Struggling with the Struggle. “The main feeling that is overwhelming me right now is guilt. After all, shouldn’t I be overjoyed that God is teaching me intense lessons right now? And then I judge myself harshly for thinking that hard times are actually hard and not much fun.”

There Is Something Better Than Never Suffering, HT to Challies. “To suffer, with Christ, is a vastly superior to a life of comfort without him. And if he has saved you through his death, manifesting all his divine power in his own human weakness unto death, do you not think he can be your power in your suffering?”

It All Holds True, HT to Challies. “We want to shield our kids from pain. We want them to learn perseverance and endurance and real, personal faith without having to go through anything hard. That’s not quite how it works in the Christian life. Perseverance is cultivated in adversity.”

He Is Not an It: Understanding the Person of the Holy Spirit. “The Holy Spirit is not a force, feeling, or phenomenon. He is not a ghost or an “it.” He is a Person that we should know and love.”

On Being the Main Character in Your Own Sermon. I can identify with this, even though I am not a preacher. “I pray for the humility to go unseen, unacknowledged, and unremembered, so long as Christ is seen, acknowledged, and remembered. In fact, I pray that Christ would be so present and so visible that people would fail to think of me at all.”

Where Do You Get That From the Text? HT to Knowable Word. “This matters because not every comment in every bible study is of equal worth. Not every application of scripture is a valid application of scripture.”

Why Read If You Forget Most Everything Anyway? HT to Challies. “If you can’t remember most of what you read, why even bother? Aren’t there better ways to use your time?”

God's Word is a treasure

Laudable Linkage

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Here’s my latest set of interesting reads discovered this week.

The Courage of Confession. “The gift of repentance only comes to the penitent heart, providing the courage of confession. Yet instead of coming to God in sorrow and humility, we come bearing an armload of excuses for our sin, finding true confession and subsequent forgiveness difficult.”

The Gospel of Self-Forgiveness, HT to Challies. “Can you point me to one example of someone forgiving themselves in the Bible? There is no category of self-forgiveness in the Bible. And that is a freeing truth! Your shame and guilt is not dependent upon your ability to forgive yourself.”

See Me, HT to Challies. “We all have a need–a craving–to be noticed. And in the noticing, praised. Esteemed. Wanted. Loved. But too often our parents disappoint us. And our friends become our competition.”

Squinting for the Glory of God, HT to Challies. “Your greatest weakness may be the kingdom’s greatest asset since it can become an occasion for God to flex his might.”

Your Past Does Not Have to Be Your Future, HT to Challies. “Are you on the sidelines because you messed up? Have you checked out because something went wrong? Do you believe you are damaged goods because of your failures?”

Encouragement for Fainting Disciplers. It’s hard when you work with someone to help them come to know the Lord and grow in Him, and then they suddenly seem to lose interest. This article offers some help for that scenario.

Laudable Linkage

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Here’s a list of some of the good reads found online this week:

The Scariest Thing Jesus Ever Said, HT to Challies. “Both Jesus and James are putting a spotlight on our inclination to replace Jesus’ call to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow him. We replace his call with a self-serving path in which we deny our neighbors, take up our comforts, and follow our dreams. When we do this, we exchange true faith for a counterfeit.”

Don’t Be a Fig Leaf, HT to Challies. “The inadequate fig leaves of ‘don’t beat yourself up,’ ‘you did your best,’ or ‘It’s okay’ pale in comparison to the robe that Christ puts on us.”

Hurt, Injustice, and Dealing with Reality, HT to Challies. “As much as I don’t want to diminish the reality of bad experiences, I also think there is some balance needed in how we think about these things. None of what I am about to say is meant to undercut real experience of hurtful things. None of what I am about to say is intended to say that when people have hurt us it isn’t real. But, nevertheless, I did want to make some broad observations.

Bible Engagement for Those Who Struggle to Read, HT to Challies. “When I first became a Christian, I was told that reading the Bible was like food and prayer was like breathing. That was great advice, but there was a problem. I’m not a good reader. I have gotten better over the years, but I wouldn’t say I’m a great reader even now. So how do I and others like me get the Bible into our minds, hearts and spirits?”

Whining vs. Biblical Complaint in Caregiving, HT to Challies. Though the context is caregiving, the principles can apply to distinguish whining vs. Biblical lament in any situation.

The Grandmother Who Helped a Child See. I’ve read and heard hymn writer Fanny Crosby’s biography, but don’t remember anything about her grandmother’s influence. I’m glad someone shared about her.

Never Underestimate the Power of a Handwritten Note, HT to Challies. “We live in a day and time where life is lived digitally more than ever before. We communicate primarily through apps, texts, and emails. Businesses increasingly send advertisements, bills, and communications via email than snail mail. Even birthday cards are now sent virtually. This means, a handwritten note is a rare gift.” Christina includes some tips for what to write in notes.

Laudable Linkage

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Here are some of the good reads found this week:

Do You Want to Be Well? “Jesus specialized in asking simple, straightforward questions.  They weren’t designed to trick people and went straight to the heart of the matter.  They invited people to pause and look deep inside at their aching spiritual poverty. John 5:6 says, ‘would you like to get well?’ or ‘wilt thou be made whole?’ Well, of course we want to be well.  Why would He even ask?” Plus, Linda links to this printable of verses that share Who Am I in Christ?

How to Transform Your Personal Bible Study with an Easy Perspective Shift. “I tossed my Bible aside in frustration. What on earth did Jeroboam, Rehoboam, Abijam, Asa, Nadab, and a series of other kings whose names I couldn’t pronounce have to do with me?“

How Can We Avoid Putting a Band-Aid on Others’ Grief and Pain? “A reader recently asked me a searching question about this scene from Mark’s Gospel: ‘Mark describes Jesus as greatly distressed and troubled, sorrowful to death. If Jesus felt this way, why do we, as Christians, often just try to put a band-aid on others’ grief and pain?'”

Learning a Lesson from Scandals Close to Home. “Though we would never wish for a scandal to take place and make its way into the headlines, and while we should always regret the circumstances that bring one about, a scandal does offer the opportunity for personal introspection. A wise man will heed its lessons, for it inevitably provides the context to consider whether sin is sneaking up on us as it has on someone else, to practice the biblical admonition ‘let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall’ (1 Corinthians 10:12).”

“No Celebrities Except Jesus”: How Asbury Protected the Revival, HT to Challies. Interesting article about how school officials responded and some of the behind-the-scenes logistics.

More Than Music: How the Congregation Plays a Part in Every Element of Worship, HT to Challies. “We equate worship with music because we have been trained to think that singing is the only way in which congregations actually participate in worship. But Scripture is clear: corporate worship encompasses much more than music. In fact, every element of Christian worship involves the active participation of the entire congregation.”

Weaknesses: Our Unlikely Ally, HT to Challies. “If you want to turn the world’s wisdom on its head completely, this is it. The Apostle Paul says he will boast about his weaknesses (2 Cor. 12:9). We do not boast of weaknesses; we hide them because they hold us back from being who we should be. They threaten our competence. They are faults and defects. Instead, we boast of accomplishments, skills, talents, and abilities, but biblical wisdom says this is backward.”

Thoughts on Lent. I appreciate the balanced approach here.

Split or Stay: Encouragement for Anglican Pastors, HT to Challies. Though the context here is Anglican pastors, the principles about considering separation from one’s denomination or church are very helpful.

This as as good a time as any for my occasional reminder that a link here does not mean 100% endorsement of everything on the site.