Laudable Linkage

Posted on July 26, 2025 by Barbara Harper

Some of the good reads found this week:

The Power of a Courageous Word. “Sometimes it is the simplest of matters that bear the greatest fruit. A simple deed, a simple gift, a simple word can make all the difference. They can even begin a cascade that changes lives and changes the world.”

The Preacher’s Trust, HT to Challies. This article focuses on preachers, but I have found its principles true for writing and ministering for God in any way. Instead of being crushed by our inadequacies or inflated with self-reliance, we put our trust in God, who works through His Word and Spirit.

Protesting Well. This is the fourth in a series on protest, dealing particularly with what to do when you disagree with the authorities in your life.

Lessons from Nathan’s Rebuke: Effective Strategies for Christian Confrontation, HT to Challies. It’s not pleasant, but sometimes rebuke is called for when a professing Christian sins. This article draws principles for what to say based on Nathan’s rebuke of King David.

Please, Don’t Say These Things to Women Who Have Miscarried, HT to Challies. “When a couple experiences a miscarriage, there are tons of responses like these flung in their direction like darts. Those who say them don’t mean for their words to attack, but they often do. They bring into question not only the grief of the mother and father, but also the value of the baby who was lost.”

Explain Up, Don’t Dumb Down. “I’m a big advocate of using big words with little kids. Our tendency, of course, is to use very simple terminology with children. It seems to me like we do this out of two desires.”

Just and Gentle Parenting. “Dear dads and moms, don’t we long to embody Scripture’s perfect balance — to parent between the poles, to divinely blend grace and law, and so to image God and the gospel to our children? Gentle parenting is not one of only two options. Neither is it the best, most biblical option.”

Just Diagnosed: Questions Parents of Neurodivergent Kids Should Ask Next, HT to the Story Warren. “For years, we focused on ‘fixing’ his social skills, handwriting, and attention deficits so he’d be successful in school. We’re thankful these early interventions continue to bear fruit. Still, the best gift we gave our son came when we stopped emphasizing what was wrong and began to focus instead on God’s good purpose.”

If your path had been smooth, you would have depended upon your own surefootedness; but God roughened the path, so you have to take hold of His hand. T. D. Talmage

Laudable Linkage

Posted on July 19, 2025 by Barbara Harper

Here are some good reads found this week:

Sometimes, Worship Should Be Hard. “We plan our worship services several months in advance. We choose themes for each service and discuss how to introduce them. Last Sunday, our chosen theme was ‘Our Good God.’ In the canon of worship themes we use, the goodness of God is not as difficult to explain as something like transcendence or immanence. But on Sunday, July 6, 2025, it was hard. As we filed into the church and greeted one another, nearly 100 people were still missing due to flash floods in Texas.”

Trying to Make Sense of Bad Things that Happen, HT to Challies. “Most people find it pretty easy to accept that the good things which happen are from the hand of God. But we find it hard to accept any bad, tragic, or painful experiences that come our way. Can they really be from God? Are they really under his governance? Can they really be for a good purpose? The Bible says, ‘Yes, they are. Yes, they can.'”

Boaz: A Pillar of Leadership. Boaz is one of my favorite OT people. “Boaz wasn’t a king, prophet, or warrior. He was a businessman and landowner, yet he exemplified godly leadership. His leadership wasn’t flashy, but it was faithful. It wasn’t about personal gain but about a godly impact. So, what made Boaz a leader worth emulating?”

Leviticus and the Right Hand of Fellowship, HT to Challies. “What we fail to realise is the catechetical nature of the book of Leviticus. As the centre point (and, I would argue, climax) of the Torah or Teaching, its goal is not to simply lay down a law to live by, or to provide fodder for debates over what verses we use. The goal of Leviticus is teaching. And it is hands on teaching much like that of a missionary landing in foreign culture.”

Staying Afloat in Summer. A mom of a newly-graduated high school student looks back at ways she wished she had handled summers.

When You’re Dreading Monday Mornings, HT to Redeeming Productivity. “Maybe you’re currently in a job you once longed for—even prayed for—and couldn’t wait to start, but now you have the Sunday scaries, dragging yourself out of bed on Monday morning only to count down the days until Friday. Or maybe you’re in a job you never really wanted but took out of necessity, expecting to move on to something different after a short time—but you haven’t. So what do you do when you’re no longer excited to go to work?”

Daily prayers and religious readings and churchgoing are
necessary parts of the Christian life.
We have to be continually reminded of what we believe.
C. S. Lewis

Laudable Linkage

Posted on July 12, 2025 by Barbara Harper

Happy Saturday! Here are a few good reads found this week:

The Privilege and Responsibility of Freedom. Though Independence Day has passed, rightly considering our freedom is a timeless topic.

There Is No Pit So Deep that He Is not Deeper Still, HT to Challies. “Life had been incredibly hard for years, but this latest trial felt like more than I could bear. To be honest, I felt utterly hopeless. I didn’t want to live in my diseased and hurting body; I didn’t want to live in the chaos of our special-needs challenges; and I certainly didn’t want to live in a flea-infested home. Everything in me wanted to escape, but I had nowhere to run.”

The Stranger, a neat, short film (about 12 minutes) based on a true story about a stranger who shows up in the middle of the night to attend a mission conference.

Three Lies of Comparison: How to Help Your Teen Find the Truth. “If she’s like most teens, there came a day when her eyes fluttered open to comparison. Her sunny giggle faded, and her carefree personality fell as she began placing her measuring cup next to someone else’s, asking, ‘How do I measure up?’ So, what can you do? How can you help? How can you keep her from retreating to dark corners of isolation and insecurity? How can you stop her from driving herself to exhaustion with endless perfectionism?”

A Time to Be Tired, HT to Challies. “There are times when we must save our strength. The question is: what are we saving it for? Our strength may be limited, but it is real. God gave it to us, and he gave it for a reason. There has never been a shortage of meaningful work to do, people to love, and problems to solve. In all our talk of looking after ourselves, I wonder if we sometimes forget that overprotecting ourselves is at least as dangerous as burnout—it is one of the quickest roads to weakness.”

Tattoos as Confession, HT to Challies. “Gullett says many Americans instinctively judge tattoos — deciding whether they approve of the image or the act of getting inked at all. But he and Dayhoff encourage a different approach: suspend judgment, ask about the story, and listen.”

We do not study the Bible just to get to know the Bible.
We study the Bible that we might get to know God better.
Warren Wiersbe

Laudable Linkage

Posted on July 5, 2025 by Barbara Harper

I have a short but good list of reads to share today:

Why It’s Good (and Christian) to Love Your Country, HT to Challies. “American Christians have also been pretty angsty about patriotism. In the last few years, many academics, journalists, and even some pastors have equated any love for the country with idolatry or worse, fascism and theocracy. So many well-meaning American Christians have shied away from expressions of patriotism because they don’t want to engage in false worship.”

Keep Reading Your Bible, Even if You Don’t Understand It, HT to Knowable Word. There are times to stop and dig deep in a passage we’re reading. But sometimes a passage won’t make sense until we’ve read more of the rest of the Bible.

You Don’t Need Another Prayer Technique, HT to Challies. “While my new system does help me be more organized and varied in my petitions, it hasn’t turned me into an Olympic runner in prayer. My best training came instead from an unexpected source.”

Dumb Dads: 3 Ways The Stereotype Is Harming The Archetype, HT to Challies. “By watching movies, reading stories, and entertaining the distorted pictures of dumb dads as a stereotype, we have forgotten the archetype of fatherhood. God didn’t create men and fathers to be weak and foolish. He created them to be so much more than what modern culture is preaching to our children.”

The Sandwich Generation, HT to Challies. “We are still parenting young-adult children, while at the same time attempting to gracefully maneuver through the aging years of our parents with honor. The similarities are endless; how to love our family without becoming a dictator, how to aid them in making their own decisions, how to help them navigate the path which will provide the best outcome for their future.”

America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

Katharine Lee Bates, from “America the Beautiful”

Laudable Linkage

Posted on June 28, 2025 by Barbara Harper

I’m behind on blog-reading this week, but I found some thought-provoking posts to share.

Being the Best You Can Be. “It is good to be the best you can be. It is noble to attempt to maximize your potential and to make the greatest good on even the least gift. God calls each one of us to be faithful stewards of all that he has entrusted to us. Yet there is a world of difference between being the best you can be and wanting to be known as the best.”

Be a Man-Pleaser, Not a Man-Pleaser, HT to Challies. In other words, our people-pleasing can be good or bad, depending on our motives.

Bible Reading Blues? Study Your Stop. “If you were sitting across from me and you mentioned that you’d abandoned your Bible reading plan, I wouldn’t ask you about what went well. We’d talk about what didn’t work. We’d start with what made you stop because understanding why you didn’t finish could be the key to helping you begin again.”

Guarding the Gospel: Understanding the Dangers of Syncretism. “Syncretism is the combination or synthesis of two or more different religions or philosophies. Syncretism happens in Christian missions when people profess Christ by believing an altered version of the gospel message that lines up with their previous beliefs.”

ChatGPT May Be Eroding Critical Thinking Skills, HT to Redeeming Productivity. “Researchers used an EEG to record the writers’ brain activity across 32 regions, and found that of the three groups, ChatGPT users had the lowest brain engagement and ‘consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels.’ Over the course of several months, ChatGPT users got lazier with each subsequent essay, often resorting to copy-and-paste by the end of the study.”

He who grows in grace remembers that he is but dust, and he therefore does not expect his fellow Christians to be anything more. Charles Spurgeon.

Laudable Linkage

Posted on June 21, 2025 by Barbara Harper

I found quite a few good reads this week:

Our Father Values His Children, HT to the Story Warren. “The Father certainly feeds the birds and takes care of us. We can easily see how He takes care of us when we have all we need. But what about those times when the resources we typically depend on dry up, and from your viewpoint all looks impossible.”

You Need God When Life Is Good: Three Ways to Remember Your Need. “It doesn’t usually happen on purpose, but quietly, thoughtlessly. We slide into self-reliance not because we don’t need God, but because the comfort of the moment dulls our awareness of just how much we do.”

The Cool of the Day. “But this…this is worship too. God speaks in the heat of the kitchen as well as the cool of the day, if I have ears to hear.”

Does Your Prayer Life Point to the Beauty of Christ? “Prayer continues to be the most difficult of all the spiritual disciplines for me. Prayer is hard. Maybe you’ve had the same thought: ‘I don’t like to talk about this, but it’s really hard for me to pray. It’s awkward, and I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to do it.‘”

Let God’s Word Shape Your Prayers. “While we know that we’ve been given an indescribable gift in prayer, we often miss its full potential, offering only intangible and vague petitions such as ‘be with so-and-so as they go through this trial.’ We want to pray, but we lack the right words to shape our prayers. How do we pray beyond the surface need and get to the heart of the matter?”

Fallen Behind on Your Bible Reading Plan? HT to Redeeming Productivity. “This is the time of year when many readers give up on their Bible reading plans. Despite their best intentions, their plans fall by the wayside. But there’s no need to wait until next January to start over. Now is the time to ‘go’ for it and get back into the rhythm and routine of Bible reading. After all, the person who is truly blessed is the one who delights in and meditates on God’s instruction day and night (Psalm 1:2). Here are some strategies to help you get going if you have been struggling to read Scripture daily and thoughtfully.”

Cultivating Flavor. “When my children were trying solid foods for the first time, many helpful advice-givers encouraged me to try varied tastes, textures, and types of foods so that the kids would grow into healthy adults. It makes me want to cultivate this type of flavor in their education and entertainment choices. I don’t only want to put my time and effort into growing herbs in the garage to flavor their food. I also want to shape the moral palates of each of my children so that they will love virtue and live as lights in darkness.”

Master Your Moments and Master Your Days. “God is more interested in who we are becoming than in what we are accomplishing. Great deeds done from bad motives please God less than small deeds done from great character. And character’s primary focus is always on the matter at hand, the duty of the moment.”

Being the Best Christian, HT to Challies. “You would think that after almost 34 years of walking with the Lord, this ‘be the best’ mentality would hardly be a problem anymore, a thing of the past that I’ve outgrown. While the Lord has given me more wisdom and discernment to see it, it still entangles me from time to time.”

Facing the Midlife Spiritual Plateau, HT to Redeeming Productivity. “For those who’ve been following Jesus for years, it’s not uncommon to hit a spiritual plateau, often in midlife. You’re reading the Bible, going to church, part of a growth group, serving where you can—but it feels like you’re no longer growing. Not like you once did. Instead, it’s like you’re coasting.”

What’s Lost Isn’t Always Lost. HT to the Story Warren. “Our most memorable losses are sometimes the most inconsequential ones. Once when I was five, my brother and I were bored outside of church, because our parents were talking to the big people again. So we started playing catch with my Luke Skywalker action figure and after one fumbled throw, Luke dropped through the iron grate of a storm drain. I still have the memory of seeing my prized toy only four feet away, but absolutely inaccessible.”

Diapers of Glory, HT to Challies. “Now that I’m a stay-at-home mom, success looks different than it once did—and, like the disciples, I realize I’ve been asking the wrong questions.”

Diabolus Ex Machina, HT to Challies. This is an unsettling “conversation” with AI in which it repeatedly lies. (Note: not from a Christian source).

Your relationship with God will never be any stronger, more vibrant, or more genuine than your relationship with the Word of God. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth

Laudable Linkage

Posted on June 14, 2025 by Barbara Harper

Some of the good reads found this week:

Is God the Father Like My Father? “I was 25 years old before I could say the word ‘father’ while praying. The word was foreign to me. It didn’t roll off my tongue the way it did for many of my Christian friends. It felt like a word from a foreign language. In one regard, it meant nothing. It was jibberish. But in another, it meant a world of things. Amid the cultural barriers, it still struck a nerve, because while it meant nothing, it meant everything. It meant broken things. Scary things. Hurtful things.”

Don’t Make Friends with Doubt, HT to Challies. “That believers don’t believe perfectly isn’t the question. The question is, How do we respond? When we discover ourselves doubting God’s goodness or power, do we resist it? Do we pet unbelief in self-pity? Is it safe for us to doubt the Lord, his promises, and his cross?”

Because Jesus Said So, HT to Challies. “One of the mistakes I think we evangelicals sometimes make – with our entirely legitimate and proper focus on the cross – is to confuse understanding the means of salvation with actually being saved. We can confuse understanding the theology of the cross with believing in the actual object of our salvation.”

Triggered: How to Overcome Destructive Obsessions. “In our journey through life, we all experience moments when something sets us off — when an event or interaction triggers us into anger, depression, or destructive behavior patterns that we know aren’t God’s will for our lives. These triggering events can create compulsions or obsessions in our minds, driving us toward actions we cannot stop in our own power.”

Three Ways Weakness Is a Gift, HT to Redeeming Productivity. “In 2 Corinthians 12:10, the Apostle Paul wrote one of the most counter-intuitive sentences ever: ‘So I take pleasure in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and in difficulties, for the sake of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.’ This sentence makes absolutely no sense. Who takes pleasure in things like weakness, insults, hardships, persecutions, and difficulties, even if they’re for Jesus? We normally try to avoid these things, and if we end up suffering them, we don’t usually take pleasure in them.”

Twice-Healed: The Blind Man at Bethsaida, HT to Knowable Word. “Mark is the only evangelist to record the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida (8:22–26). What makes this miracle instructive, even odd, is its two-staged nature. Let’s consider why this healing at Bethsaida is central to Mark’s Gospel and how believers can draw comfort from it.”

Happy Father’s Day to the dads tomorrow!

“One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.” — George Herbert

Laudable Linkage

Posted on June 7, 2025 by Barbara Harper

Some of the great reads found this week:

Why I Didn’t Deconstruct After Church Hurt, HT to Challies. “As we think about church hurt, wisdom teaches us not to elevate every pain into a five-alarm fire (Proverbs 10:12). Not every disagreement, disappointment, or conflict is spiritual abuse or what’s now commonly called ‘church hurt.’ But sometimes, a leg really is broken. The alarm is warranted. I’ve felt the flames. I’ve got the scars too.”

No Chance of Survival: How a Deadly Plane Crash Yielded a Growing Spiritual Harvest, HT to Challies. This is a long piece, but amazing and touching.

Fight the Subtle Seduction of Self-Reliance, HT to Redeeming Productivity. “My devotional exercise asked, ‘What do you look to for your deliverance?’ Essentially, in what are you placing false hope for salvation? While I don’t trust in standing armies or military might for deliverance, I still felt the implied rebuke. I was drawn inexorably to a simple conclusion: I’m my own war horse. I trust in myself.”

Understanding Therapy Culture from Different Generations, HT to Challies. “As a pastor’s wife and a Marriage and Family Therapist, I’ve had the privilege of sitting across from people from every generation: Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. Each generation carries unique stories, pain, and questions about healing. While mental health awareness has made significant progress, I’ve noticed something concerning: though the conversation has shifted, many still carry a heavy load just in a different form.”

How and Why to Begin Scripture Writing, HT to Challies. “Almost seven years ago, I began a new way of spending daily time in the Word: I started copying Scripture (verse by verse or book by book) by hand. Over the years, I’ve done this both instead of and in addition to a Bible reading plan. . . I can honestly say that Scripture writing has completely transformed the way I approach the Bible and how I interact with God’s Word.” Rebekah includes some downloads for keeping track of what passages you’ve written.

To the Single Lady at the Wedding, HT to Challies. “A soft and discreet whisper of a lie crept in, ‘You are missing out.’ It seemed so faint, but soon it was blaring throughout my thoughts. One of my best friends recently got married. Attending a wedding as a single in the later part of your 20s hits differently than when you are a spry and young college graduate. When you are younger, time nor the future possibilities do not seem to be as narrow. As the years chip away, so does the hope.”

One for the Substackers to Consider as well as anyone who charges for their content: “Do people support you in order to receive exclusive content or do they support you because they appreciate you and the content you write? In other words, does putting the paywall in place necessarily increase reach, impact, and/or monetization? And is it possible that Christian readers think differently about this than non-Christian ones?”

The goal of the Gospel is to rescue you, transform you, and redirect you. J. C. Ryle

Laudable Linkage

Posted on May 31, 2025 by Barbara Harper

Some of the noteworthy reads found this week:

When Ball Becomes Baal, HT to Challies. “’Behold, I say unto you, you have made sports the household god.’ Too strong? OK, not all of you. But the deification of sports is happening to many.”

What God Forbids You to Judge. “I’m often amazed and dismayed by how quickly I leap to judgment, often without facts, without knowledge, without sympathy. Of course there are times when judgment is right and good. God calls us to be discerning, and discernment necessarily involves judging what is true and what is false. Yet there are two broad categories in which judgment is sinful and forbidden by God.”

Lie Detector. “Many of the doubts, fears, and shame in our hearts grow from the seeds of lies Satan plants in us. We often fall for Satan’s tricks because he masquerades them as God’s truth. . . Satan draws a false picture in our minds and signs God’s name to it, making us believe this is truly who God is and who we are.”

Twisted Truth about God’s Promises: Three Lies to Watch For. “In times of suffering and long stretches of waiting, it’s so tempting to wonder, Has God truly been faithful to me? Does He really keep His promises?“

Nothing is “Just” Anything, HT to Challies. “As Christian women, we are often harder on ourselves than we are on our friends and family. We tend to feel frustrated with our limitations or guilty about our inadequacies. We can cheer others on, but we’re inclined to lecture ourselves. Can you relate? What I think God wants us to pay attention to are all those times when we use ‘just’ to minimize the good things we are doing.”

The View from Titus 2, HT to Challies. “Many of the older women I relied on as a young mom are in heaven now. Others have retired and moved closer to their children. I miss them dearly, and don’t think I can ever fill their shoes. But since my memory is (mostly) still intact, I can also recall a few things that discouraged me as a young mom. If I can’t match the wisdom of the mothers who helped me, I can at least attempt not to do some of the things that discouraged me.”

“What is the best safeguard against false doctrine? The Bible regularly read, regularly prayed over, regularly studied.” J. C. Ryle

Laudable Linkage

Posted on May 24, 2025 by Barbara Harper

I’m happy to share some thought-provoking reads found this week:

No Confidence? No Problem! “I used to think it was important to project confidence when it comes to parenting, and I wanted everyone to think that I had everything under control at all times. But the deeper I have gotten into this lifelong job, the more I have realized how complicated and special each little soul in my care is, and I have learned that there are very few one-size-fits-all philosophies of motherhood. Each child and each phase is its own adventure, with its own set of variables, and I have learned that I need God’s help with each and every bit of it.”

Is ChatGPT Forming Your Faith? “ChatGPT and similar tools have made it easier than ever to locate and interpret Bible verses, to receive guidance on challenging topics, and to get answers to questions we’d normally hesitate to ask out loud. Is that a bad thing? Are the alarms unwarranted? As I’ve talked to friends about their ChatGPT usage and paid more attention to my own, it’s clear that using the latest AI to find answers for our spiritual lives involves a degree of danger that would be foolish to ignore.”

The Devil Hates Context. Use It, HT to Knowable Word. “You can see why the devil left out Psalm 91’s context. Verse 13 preaches his demise. It reveals Christ’s victory over him. I’m sure the devil hates context. So, in our spiritual warfare, in wielding the sword of the Spirit, use the whole weapon—the whole canon—context and all.”

Is Tribalism Bad? HT to Proclaim and Defend. “Why can’t individuals assess the values and ideas held by themselves and others, then socially associate with respect to those shared values? An us-versus-them social landscape emerges for every possible topical issue in our free society because we occupy an idea-versus-idea environment. Rather than shriek about the human impulse to join a tribe, it’s more productive to explain which tribes are worthy of members — and doing so is necessarily a form of intertribal competition. Alternative strategies end up with the self-defeating claim: Join me in the fight against tribalism.”

What Does the Bible Say God Can’t Do? “In the back of my mind I thought I remembered hearing that there were only 2 (or was it 3?) things that God cannot do. I did a quick search online to refresh my memory. Well, I was surprised to find that everyone had a different opinion on how many things God can’t do!”

Ordinary Faithfulness: A Life That Says Come and See. “Life right now is normal. For some reason the thought of this being ‘all there is’ can feel almost startling. But when I take a step back to assess this dread, the Lord uses His Word to whisper a quiet question into my heart. What’s wrong with a life filled with ordinary faithfulness?“

The Foibles and Fallibility of Christian Leaders, HT to Challies. “Encourage your leaders, pray for them, help them serve Christ as they serve you, overlook some things just as they overlook the faults you have, confront them with love when necessary if you are prayerful and spiritually-minded and aware of your own sins, follow them as they follow Christ, but don’t idolize them. Encouragement is different than that.”

Learning how to love your neighbor requires a willingness to draw on the strength of Jesus Christ as you die to self and live for Him.–John C. Broger