Category Archives: Laudable Linkage

Laudable Linkage

Posted on by

Happy first Saturday of January! As might be expected, a lot of posts I found this week dealt with getting ready for a new year.

His Feet, HT to Challies. “I was fourteen and small for my age, a reserved shy shadow of the man I might one day grow into. Others struck me for an unknown reason, some imagined offence I had committed. Verbal assault soon became physical, yet it wasn’t the impact of fist on face that hurt most. I felt alone. I felt small. I felt undone. But then his feet were there.”

Say It, HT to Challies. A short account of Charles Spurgeon’s conversion, which is always delightful to read, but with a few good points added.

Grant Me One Muslim Friend, HT to Challies. “The most strategic thing we could do to reach the Muslim world is for every Muslim to simply have a believing friend.”

Three Faith-Focused Strategies to Welcome the New Year. “Some of us deliberate over annual goals or resolutions while others invite God to give us a word for the New Year. As we invest time in these pursuits, let’s walk through the following four steps as we consider how He led us through last year and as we seek His guidance in the New Year.

How Can We Have Peace and Confidence in the New Year? “With all the turmoil and instability over the last few years, most of us want more peace, more joy, and more confidence in the future. Are we at the mercy of the government or the economy or the culture around us if we’re to have those things? Or is it possible that the right goals and habits can play a big part? If so, what kind of goals and habits?”

5 Tips to Reinforce Your Bible Study and Prayer Routine, HT to Knowable Word. Although aimed at church leaders, these are good for anyone trying to develop a “sustainable habit for personal Bible study and prayer.”

7 Reasons Winter Reminds Us to Hold on to Hope, HT to Challies. “Many people suffer from seasonal depression or feel down in the winter. The trees seem lifeless, we spend a lot more time inside, and it gets darker earlier and for longer stretches of the day. It can also mean we spend more time pondering upon the difficult seasons in our own lives.”

Assign It a Day and Time. A great time management principle!

8 Tips to Have a More Productive Year, HT to Lisa. “I am all about To Do lists and planners! However, that doesn’t always make me as productive I could be. There has to be some follow-through to be productive. I am going to share 8 tips on how to have a more productive year in whatever area you are working.”

Gladys Hunt on Little Golden Books, HT to the Story Warren. I loved the little Golden books as a child and read many of them to my own children. It was interesting to read the story behind them.

Laudable Linkage

Posted on by

This has been a light blog reading week for me, but I did find a few things I wanted to share:

What I Long For More Than Miracles. “I suppose it is possible that I have witnessed a miracle in my lifetime, but if so, I’m not aware of it. . . . And if I’m honest, this doesn’t bother me in the least. It doesn’t bother me in the least because on many occasions I’ve witnessed something I count equally significant or perhaps even more so: I have witnessed the evidence and the intricacy and the perfect timing of God’s providence.”

Stooping to Filthy Feet, HT to Challies. “The man on his knees, rinsing sweat from Peter’s athlete’s foot and getting between Judas’s toes to wipe away the dung was our Creator, who is before all things and in him all things hold together; the hands that washed those verrucae and blisters would one day be the only ones qualified to break the seals and open the gates to the New Jerusalem.”

Winning Your Child’s Heart With Winsome Words, HT to Challies. “My years as a parent have helped me understand that my words do more than guide my children through their day. They shape how they think about themselves, other people, and how the world works. Most importantly, my words are one way my children learn about the gospel.” I wish I has this to read 40 years ago.

Bible Reading and Vain Vows. “We know the history of the people who made that vow at the foot of Mt. Sinai. Almost all of them ended up dead for disobedience and never set their feet in the promised land. They swore to do everything God told them to do, then they didn’t do it. We also know our own history when it comes to New Years Resolutions. These aren’t necessarily ‘vows,’ unless we actually vow something to the Lord, but we know that we are as frail as ancient Israel was. The spirit might be willing, but the flesh is exceedingly weak.” Includes several Bible reading plans.

Two sides of the issues from the same blogger: 3 Reasons Why You Should Make New Year’s Resolutions and 3 Reasons You Should NOT Make New Year’s Resolutions. HT to Challies.

I’d like to leave you with the last half of a poem by John Newton titled “At the Close of the Year.” (You can find the whole poem here.)

And since his name we knew,
How gracious has he been:
What dangers has he led us through,
What mercies have we seen!

Now through another year,
Supported by his care,
We raise our Ebenezer here,
“The Lord has help’d thus far.”

Our lot in future years
Unable to foresee,
He kindly, to prevent our fears,
Says, “Leave it all to me.”

Yea, Lord, we wish to cast
Our cares upon thy breast!
Help us to praise thee for the past,
And trust thee for the rest.

Laudable Linkage

Posted on by

I haven’t been reading online much this week, but here are some good things I found::

Delayed Obedience Is Disobedience (Except When It Isn’t). “Though Ezra called the people to act and seemed to do so right away, they pushed back, not because they wanted to delay their obedience, but because they knew the matter was complicated and that it was important to handle it with wisdom, care, and prudence.”

Honoring Dishonorable Parents, HT to Challies. “The holiday season is one in which happy families get together to eat lovely meals and have laughter-filled conversations followed by games of charades or meaningful talks around a fireplace – or at least that’s how Hallmark portrays the holidays. For many of us, however, the holiday season is one in which we face a very difficult problem.”

3 Misconceptions That Many Muslims Have About Christianity and constructive ways to talk to them, HT to Challies.

When Christmas Is Hard, HT to The Story Warren. “This season can be hard. When you’re broken or hurting, the celebrations and decorations can just make you hurt more. The Christmas carols remind you of everything and everyone you’re missing.”

Oh Holy Night, HT to The Story Warren. “It’s neat to think back to the depth of theology I was singing as a young child, having little to no understanding of the true meaning of those lyrics. Yet something resonated.”

18 Games for the Car (Or Any Kind of Travel, HT to The Story Warren. Just in time for Christmas trips.

9 Bible Reading Plans for 2023. Right after Christmas, we start planning for the new year. One of the most frequent resolutions for Christians is to read the Bible regularly.If you don’t have a regular Bible reading plan, or you’d like to change things up, this post offers several options.

Laudable Linkage

Posted on by

I don’t want to “laud” my own link. But I did want to share a post I’ve shared many times before. My mom passed away 17 years ago today. It seems like every holiday season, someone else I know has lost a loved one that year. So I have shared Christmas Grief, Christmas Hope, Christmas Joy at intervals as an encouragement to those whose loved ones have passed on and who especially miss them this time of year.

I’m once again behind on some blog reading during this busy time, but here are a few posts I enjoyed this week:

What Does It Mean to Enter Into Temptation? HT to Challies. “Jesus doesn’t say, ‘Watch and pray, so you won’t be tempted.’ There is no way you can get into a place in the Christian life where you are no longer tempted. He says, ‘Watch and pray, so that you will not fall into temptation.’ Literally it says, ‘so that you will not enter into temptation.'”

Do You Hear the Bells of Christmas? HT to The Story Warren. “Henry Longfellow was one of the most widely known American poets in the 19th century. What’s not as well-known is a poem he wrote called, I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day which was eventually put to music and has since become a cherished Christmas hymn. What’s beautiful about this Christmas melody is the incredible story that led him to put his pen to paper on Christmas morning, 1863”

Grammar Crash Course: Clauses. “Distinguishing dependent clauses from independent clauses may seem like an obscure and academic thing to do. Not the most thrilling way to occupy one’s morning. But this is perhaps the most important grammatical skill to master for your Bible study.”

Three Biblical Ways to Pray for Your Adult Children. “Prayers for strong marriages, safety on the job, or wisdom in college selection are all good requests from the heart of a Christian mum, but Paul’s three-verse, single-sentence outpouring to God challenges me to lift my sights to motivation and to pray about the drive behind my adult children’s following lives — and to take a careful look at my own.”

African Christianity Thrived Long Before White Men Arrived, HT to Challies. “Crudely put, Christianity is the white man’s religion and has no place amongst true Africans. In an era where forming an African identity aside from Colonialism is high on people’s agenda, it’s a compelling argument to some. Except that it’s not true. For Christianity was present in Africa 1000 years before the first European Colonialists arrived on African shores.”

Laudable Linkage

Posted on by

I am way behind on my blog reading. But here are a few posts that ministered to me this week:

Your Spouse is God’s Creation: Celebrating Differences in Marriage, HT to Challies. “God created every aspect of your spouse’s personhood. He administrated every choice of hardwiring, tone of voice, innate personality, natural gifts, and whether he or she is mechanical, analytical, or relational. Neither you nor your spouse chose any of these qualities.”

Gradual Emancipation: A Parent’s Sacrifice. “Parenting is the long goodbye. It is a gradual emancipation, because chicks were never created to stay in the nest. Everything about their growing years is preparing them for the day they will leave the nest. But as parents we have a choice. We can allow our fears to create a cage for our children.”

A Workaday Faith, HT to Challies. “How do we deal with the fact that most of us will live our lives and then go to our reward without anything impressive to be rewarded for?”

Money Problems? “I firmly believe the ‘labourer is worthy of his hire’ (Luke 10:7, KJV). You and I earn our wages. There is no entitlement or handout. If I represent a weak project, it won’t sell; and I won’t be paid. If you write a weak project, it won’t sell either. The problem comes when money, usually a lack thereof, becomes a distraction.”

President Lincoln’s Proclamation Appointing a National Fast Day. Part of this was referred to in the post above about money. I looked up the rest. These lines in particular stood out to me:

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

Laudable Linkage

Posted on by

Here are a few of the thought-provoking reads found this week:

Peace That Passes All Understanding, HT to Challies. “Now what? I just tried one of the classic passages on anxiety and it didn’t work. A-ha, there is a clue. I was looking for a pill. I visited God-my-pharmacist and asked what to take for my anxiety. That’s not the way Scripture works. I should have noticed it when I reduced the passage to a formula.”

Trusting God Through Terminal Illness, HT to Challies. “I am very thankful that I have an eye-tracking device so that I can still use a computer and turn on the TV. When my voice gives up, I can use my eyes to slowly type a few phrases which my mechanical voice speaks out loud. It would be easy to look at me and feel that there was no purpose to my life, but that’s not what God says.”

To the Impetuous and Impulsive. “As people repent of their sins and profess their loyalty to him, he does not eradicate their personalities as if he created them wrong in the first place or as if there is nothing within them he can use or redeem. Rather, he channels their personality, he redirects it, masters it, perfects it. Though he does sanctify his people, he does not completely destroy and then recreate them in such a way that they are all the same.”

Four Practical Ways to Cultivate Personal Evangelism, HT to Challies. “Let’s be honest, evangelism can be intimidating. For most, it can induce certain anxiety that can be crippling. It is easy to leave this high call that every believer has to a select few – elders, extroverts, or “experts.” Where does this intimidation come from when it comes to evangelism?”

Can Christians Date Nonbelievers? HT to Challies. The author answers from passages other than the usual go-to verse on this issue.

Eleven Factors for Helpful Short Term Mission Trips from one who has been on both sides of such trips, HT to Challies.

Welcoming the World’s Oldest Babies, HT to Challies. “Three weeks ago—on Monday, October 31—Rachel Ridgeway gave birth to the oldest babies in the world. Nearly 30 years ago, Lydia Ann and Timothy Ronald were conceived in a fertility clinic. Hours later, they were frozen.”

Gray Hair Is a Crown of Glory, HT to Challies. “This age-group will never be the “target” group for church growth strategists. However, if you want a church that actually does the work of the church and gives back to you as a pastor and to the congregants on the whole – then pray for a group of elderly saints.”

How Jesus Cares for Caregivers, HT to Story Warren. “Caregiving is hard. Not only do we grieve the suffering of our loved one, but we also process our own losses. Caregiving requires us to lay down our preferences and plans and pick up the holy calling of meeting the needs of another.”

Chosen Isn’t So Special If You’re a Turkey, HT to Challies. “My kids used to say I should write a how-to-hide-the-turkey-recipe book. We ate a lot of turkey when we lived in Italy. Affordable and easily available, I disguised wings, thighs and breast, every possible way. But turkey, as often as it showed up at our house, didn’t come whole.” A fun story with a great application.

The quote above is from Joy: The Godly Woman’s Adornment by Lydia Brownback.

Laudable Linkage

Posted on by

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

Love Is a Skill, HT to Challies. “Anyone who has tried very hard to love other people well will know that love doesn’t always feel very natural. A lot of times it feels more like hard work.”

The Problem with Reading the Bible Verse-by-Verse, HT to Knowable Word. The verses divisions, subheadings, footnotes, charts, etc., in most of our Bibles “break up the text into little chunks (often arbitrarily), and we do not naturally read in little chunks, we read in big chunks. You read ordinary books section by section, not word by word, but all the footnotes and verse numbers condition us to read the Bible verse by verse.” Those tools are good for study later, “but the first and most important rule for interpreting and appropriating any biblical book is to actually read the book.”

Dig Deeper, HT to Challies. “Think of the scriptures like a fancy layered dessert — maybe a cake or parfait. There are several layers, and each offers new delights. If you don’t dig down into all the layers, you’re missing out.”

A Call for Endurance and Faith, HT to Challies. “We are not without encouragement in times like these, and sometimes the call for endurance comes in ways that seem strange to the contemporary churchgoer who has enjoyed religious freedom all their lives.”

What Does God Want of Me? HT to Challies. “But what I do remember are the three questions that came out of this difficulty, questions that my husband raised in the midst of this trial to help provide us with direction and guidance. These questions have stayed with me ever since, and have given me clarity and lessened my burden in a wide variety of situations: problems with children or other family members, issues in my marriage, dilemmas in church, personal trials, and more.”

Is Your Way Really God’s Way? ‘While the Bible is heavy on function (what we are to do) it is light on form (how we are to do it).” This article helps discern between form and function and the errors of insisting on our form of doing things.

Protecting Your Teenagers Online, HT to Proclaim and Defend. “We have a pool in our backyard. We also have young children. What steps do we take to protect them? 1. A fence; 2. Swim lessons; 3. Supervision.” Kristopher Schaal then applies these three levels of protection to internet usage.

Cultivating Attention: The Challenge of Reading Great Literature, HT to Linda. “As a literary critic, writer, and professor, I have the great privilege of working with literature every day, and helping others to encounter the beauty of great stories as well. Evangelization and discipleship through beauty is vitally important for our modern culture, for God is perfect Beauty as well as perfect Goodness and Truth. Stories, poetry, and all the arts can help us both to grow in our own faith and to share that faith with others in a compelling way . . . But it’s not easy. Many readers find themselves discouraged, encountering a gap between their desire to engage with great tales and the rather more difficult reality of the experience.”

Why the World Needs Readers (Like You), HT to Linda. “I’ll be honest. It’s in my own self-interest to say that reading is important. I am the author of a book blog, after all. But I believe—passionately—that reading is more than your average pastime. Much more. Here’s why I think that readers, people like you and me, are critical to preserving civilization—and helping it flourish.”

How an Introvert Does Thanksgiving, HT to Linda. “As a large and diverse group, we introverts love our families and the holidays no more or less than anyone else. So the fear and loathing with which we sometimes face this season is not an intro-aversion to the whole concept of family or holidays. It’s more the specifics of the experience that exhaust us; many of us are right now anticipating Thanksgiving with equal parts of delight and anxiety. Yes, pie. But also forced togetherness, lots of chitchat, and old family scripts replaying again and again. It’s a tradeoff. So, before the holidays flatten you like a runaway truck, perhaps take a minute to sort through their delights and the stresses to sketch out some strategies for Thanksgiving so you can enjoy more of the former and less of the latter.”

I Could Never Get Grandma’s Dressing Quite Right—Until She Was Gone, HT to Linda. “Back then I hadn’t yet learned that the most important thing about cooking for other people is the joy your food can bring them. . . .that on Thanksgiving, it’s a waste of time to roast a whole entire pumpkin for pie (the canned stuff is superior anyway!), and that investing in six great dishes is far better than churning out 12 I’m too exhausted to actually eat, and that turkey tastes approximately the same no matter what you do to it.”

thankful heart

Laudable Linkage

Posted on by

Some of the thought-provoking reads from this week:

The Worshiper, HT to Challies. Interesting twist at the end of this one.

How to Make the Bible Come Alive. I always cringe at this phrase, because the Bible IS living (Hebrews 4:12)–we don’t make it come alive. But that’s exactly what Ryan Higginbottom talks about here: how to deal with and present the Bible in the faith that it is living and active. I especially liked this: “Some leaders break out the bells and whistles. They think that if they jazz up the setting, or the presentation, or the activities, then people will really pay attention and get a lot out of the Bible study. However, this approach is doomed from the start. It presumes that the Bible is (at worst) boring or (at best) inert, and that what God really needs is a good carnival barker.”

The Halloween Night That Changed My Life, HT to Challies. I loved reading this testimony that “God’s grace is stronger than the hardest heart.”

When Art Reminds Us of Eternal Truth, HT to the Story Warren. “‘…The Lion of Lucerne is the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world.’ —Mark Twain. Art has a transcendent quality. It can cause us to contemplate the struggles and joys of human experience. Sometimes it overwhelms us with the beauty of the mundane or the eternal. I believe that the search for truth, beauty, and goodness is inherent to the artistic process and is so embedded in the human heart that even if artists do not acknowledge the Creator in their hearts, their art often communicates some truth of the Divine.”

Toxic, HT to Challies. “‘Toxic’. It’s a word that has invaded Christian speech, but could I suggest a moratorium on this adjective, please? For two reasons: . .” I especially like the second one.

In the End, There Are Yellow Tulips, HT to Challies. “When I walked into the church, she stood there with an apron on and a bouquet of yellow tulips extended towards me. I put my hands out and took them as she pulled me close in a hug. She knew those yellow tulips wouldn’t fix the hurt. She knew those yellow tulips would die in a few days. But that wasn’t the point. She saw me.”

A Grandmother’s Heart for Her Loved Ones, HT to Challies. “Grandmama bear wanted to confront those who’d wreaked havoc, demand an explanation, and describe the painful aftermath of their actions. But in the two decades since the horn-blowing incident, my spirit has become quieter and gentler because of the influence of the Spirit that dwells within me. So instead of lashing out, I took my jumbled emotions to the One who hears it all and bears it all.”

Should I Charge Other Christians for My Expertise? HT to Challies. “People just ask them to do little jobs or little consultations, say, in the evening or after church — it’s their gift, after all — without even thinking how this may be unbiblical by mooching or exploiting.”

It’s not about the nail, HT to Tammy. This video is a hilarious take on the “Don’t try to fix it, just listen” stance.

Thankful quote from Spurgeon

Laudable Linkage

Posted on by

Here are a few good reads found this week:

Ordinary Chores, Extraordinary Love: Imaging God’s Care for Us, HT the Story Warren. “If God himself works every single day in billions of small, repetitive ways to care for his creation and his children, then maybe our mundane to-do lists are more important than we realize.”

There Are No Insignificant Christians, HT to Challies. “The person sitting in the other pew at church is more glorious than you realize. It is easy for us to look at some of the other people in our church and think, ‘I am glad they are part of this church, but they are not that significant.’ If we feel like that, it exposes a biblical blindness on our part that we need to correct as soon as possible.”

Top 10 Things I wish Worship Leaders would Stop Saying. Yes! I don’t hear all of these, but the ones I do hear bug me. I wrote a post on #3 a while back: God does so much more than show up.

The Body Is Bigger Than You Think, HT to Challies. “One of the best things that could happen to the rank-and-file churchgoing Christian is to get a better sense of the bigness of the Body of Christ. The Church is bigger than your church. The kingdom is bigger than your denomination. God’s people are all over the world, united by a shared love for Jesus and confession of his lordship.”

Four Ways to Help Your Children Love the Church More, HT to Challies. “It pays to ask the question, before our children drift away, how we can help them love the local church. Here are a bunch of ways we might do that.”

The Scariest Story and the Greatest Hero. I haven’t read the book or seen the movie mentioned, but I appreciated these thoughts on helping kids navigate and learn from scary things.

Laudable Linkage

Posted on by

Here are some of the good reads found this week:

5 Effects of Expository Preaching, HT to Challies. “To publicly herald God’s Word is an act of worship (2 Tim. 2:15), and a stewardship for which we’ll give an account. Here are five ways expository preaching beautifies Christ’s bride.”

Growth: Potential vs. Actual. A tale of two fig trees, one flourishing and one not, and what we can learn from them.

3 Ways to Turn Against Your Pastor, HT to Challies. “How do otherwise good Christians turn against otherwise good pastors? Here are three very common ways it happens.”

Not as the World: Finding Peace in Motherhood, HT to The Story Warren. “The sun dips and light filters through the back window, washing my kitchen in a warm shade of orange. It would be peaceful, except for the teething baby screeching in his highchair. The sizzling of a half-cooked dinner on the stove. The drumming in my head from sleeplessness. Fading light reminds me that the day is closing, but my responsibilities are endless.”

Why We Must Teach Our Kids Safety Skills, HT to Challies. “Young people are growing up in an increasing godless world, while also in deep need for wisdom and discernment to navigate it. More than ever, they need to know how to traverse the dangers around them.”

Truth and Story, HT to The Story Warren. “‘The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein…’ Psalm 24:1 (ESV). This verse applies to books and readers, too. This is the foundation of why we read to the glory of God, because we have Him to thank for excellent literature.”

I’ve read parts of The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Poems and Devotions, but not the whole book. Hope’s review mentions an interesting article about who collected and edited the prayers in the book.

I heard a great message from Adrian Rogers on the radio yesterday while working in the kitchen. The overall message was about burdens, but the section on today’s broadcast was about restoration after one has fallen. The audio is here and an outline and transcript are here.