Laudable Linkage

Posted on June 11, 2016 by Barbara Harper

Here are some noteworthy reads discovered recently:

Antidote to False Teaching: Stability and Growth in The Knowledge of Christ. Quote: “The single most effective method for studying any book of the Bible is accessible to every believer.”

3 Truths to Speak to Your Temptation

Imagination and Evil. Quote: “Children’s books that scrub any evil from the story are burgeoning. The conflicts are based on misunderstandings or due to a different perspective. They are easily solved with a pleasant discussion. It’s very sanitary! But are we telling our children the truth by painting an evil-free, pain-free world? Stories are not innocuous; they convey a worldview just as powerfully, if not more so, than direct statements.”

Me Before You: Dear Hollywood, Why Do You Want Me Dead? “11-year-old wheelchair athlete tells the culture to get over itself”

Check Your Words at the Door

My Husband Doesn’t Put the Kids to Bed, and It’s Really Okay

I’m not sure why I keep reading Jess Connell. I enjoy her posts but she mainly writes about raising children, and I am past that stage. Maybe to recommend her to others? Anyway, here are three that struck a chord with me lately:

Motherhood 101: The Class We Never Got. Learning “on-the-job” while feeling overwhelmed.

How To Set Your Kids Up For Obedience.

Is Homeschooling a Safeguard Against Rebellion?

Praise Him in the Hallway.

More Weird Things Writers Say.

Imagine If Ebooks Came First.

And to end with a smile…

Happy Saturday!

Laudable Linkage

Posted on April 2, 2016 by Barbara Harper

Here are some noteworthy reads discovered in the last week or so:

The Christian Life Isn’t Meant to Be Effortless. Very helpful, especially dealing with a couple of ways of looking at Christian life that I thought were a little off but I couldn’t quite articulate why.

When God Gives Us Too Much to Handle.

Love and Entitlement. “But, you’re getting it all wrong, girls. Love isn’t a laundry list of behavior requirements.”

Member of the Family. Interesting thoughts about the difference between books where a child character feels like he is contributing to the family vs. the ones popular with the “misfit/outcast archetype in children’s literature. There is a strong trend in fiction for young people that consists of jettisoning of one’s God-given family and cobbling together a new one on a road trip.” I agree we need more of the former.

Expositional Imposters. Though this is written to preachers, I think the points he makes are good for general Bible study as well. We can pull the wrong lesson from a passage if we’re not reading it carefully.

I’m Done Making My Kid’s Childhood Magical, HT to Ann. Nothing wrong with a lot of what is mentioned, but I agree every day, every lunch, etc. doesn’t need to be Pinterest-worthy, and there’s a lot of magic for childhood in everyday life.

Your Middle-Aged Brain Is Not on the Decline, HT to Janet. That’s encouraging!

Bringing the Prairie to the Hood. “Black people (at least the ones I know) do not watch Little House on the Prairie.…So how did Little House on the Prairie mosey its way into my Southeast D.C. home?”

And to end with a smile:

Happy Saturday!

Laudable Linkage

Posted on February 27, 2016 by Barbara Harper

It’s been a little while since I have been able to share some noteworthy reads I’ve discovered the last few weeks online. Here is my latest accumulation:

Good Principle, Wrong Text. From my favorite in-real-life former Sunday School teacher. ” Every time we derive an interpretation and application of a text that is not native to the context — no matter how Biblical the concept itself may be — we are robbing that text, and ourselves in the process, of the meaning and applications that God intended when He gave it. The key is not to read any verse as a devotional island, isolated from its immediate and larger context.”

Getting Women Into the Word.

Love Serves: Showing Christ’s Love on Valentine’s Day. Ways a family can minister to others on that day in particular, but the ideas are good for any time.

4 Ways to Love Someone With Dementia or Alzheimer’s, Like God Loves Us.

To the Grown Daughter Who Has Failed to Love Her Mother Well.

In the Bleak Midwinter: When Your Heart Loses Its Song.

How Caring For Children Changes the World. Interesting consideration of the five women involved in saving the life of Moses.

Five Ways Christian Fiction Builds Faith.

Hillary, Bernie, Donald, and Me. Neat article by John Piper, not about these people’s politics, but about their and other people’s goals and accomplishments in their 60s and 70s. Encouraging as I am in the far side of my 50s.

And to end the day with a smile:

Happy Saturday!

Book Review: Knowing God

Posted on November 9, 2015 by Barbara Harper

Even though I’ve been posting weekly summaries of my reading from Knowing God by J. I. Packer, I still wanted to do a general review, partly for those who did not want to keep up with the weekly readings, and partly for me to have a general review to link back to.

Even though this book has been considered a classic and has been in print for over 40 years, somehow I had never gotten around to reading it before, though I had heard of it and wanted to.

Packer says the most basic definition of a Christian is that he or she is a person who has God as Father. We are not all God’s children: we become His when we believe on Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.

Packer begins with the virtues of studying about God as well as the warning not to stop with just the academics, but to use what we learn to get to know God personally.

To be preoccupied with getting theological knowledge as an end in itself, to approach Bible study with no higher a motive than a desire to know all the answers, is the direct route to a state of self-satisfied self-deception. We need to guard our hearts against such an attitude, and pray to be kept from it (p. 22).

The psalmist [of Psalm 119] was interested in truth and orthodoxy, in biblical teaching and theology, not as ends in themselves, but as means to the further ends of life and godliness. His ultimate concern was with the knowledge and service of the great God whose truth he sought to understand (pp. 22-23).

He talks about what it means to know God, how knowing Him differs from knowing others, the different analogies the Scriptures use to illustrate our relationship to Him.

John 17:3: “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”

Knowing God is more than knowing about him; it is a matter of dealing with him as he opens up to you, and being dealt with by him as he takes knowledge of you. Knowing about him is a necessary precondition of trusting in him (‘how could they have faith in one they had never heard of?’ [Romans 10:4 NEB]), but the width of our knowledge about him is no gauge of the depth of our knowledge of him (pp. 39-40).

He discusses the need to know God as He truly is, not as our mental picture of Him is nor as He has been falsely portrayed by others.

All speculative theology, which rests on philosophical reasoning rather than biblical revelation, is at fault here [emphasis mine here]. Paul tells us where this sort of theology ends: “The world by wisdom knew not God” (1 Cor 1:21 KJV). To follow the imagination of one’s heart in the realm of theology is the way to remain ignorant of God, and to become an idol-worshipper, the idol in this case being a false mental image of God, made by one’s own speculation and imagination (p. 48).

He discusses what it means to believe that Jesus is God Incarnate and yet also fully man, the person and ministry of the Holy Spirit, the truth of the Bible, the need for and nature of propitiation, what the Bible means by adoption, how God guides us, why we still have trials if we know Him and He loves us, and His full adequacy to handle whatever He allows in our lives. He covers in great detail several of God’s attributes: His immutability (His unchanging nature), His majesty, wisdom, love, grace, judgment, wrath, goodness, severity, and jealousy. Each of those topics is the subject of a whole chapter, and it’s impossible to give an overview of them here, but they were quite beneficial and helpful.

As I said in one week’s summaries, sometimes in the middle of a given chapter, it was easy to get occupied with the individual topics or chapters and forget that they are there in connection with how we know God, so it helped me to stop periodically and remember to tie the individual chapters back to the main point of the book. They do all have that connection even though it might not seem like it from the titles.

Though I didn’t agree with every single little point, especially those emphasizing a Calvinistic viewpoint, I did benefit from and can highly recommend the book. I appreciate that it is not full of theologicalese – terminology that only an academic could understand. I wouldn’t call it simple reading: there were a few places that were a little hard to follow. But for the most part I think an average reader could handle it fairly easily.

I am glad I finally made time for this book and thoroughly understand why it is considered a Christian classic. There were multitudes of places I marked and many memorable and helpful quotes in the book, many more than I can possibly recount here. But I’ll close with this one:

In the New Testament, grace means God’s love in action toward people who merited the opposite of love. Grace means God moving heaven and earth to save sinners who could not lift a finger to save themselves. Grace means God sending his only Son to the cross to descend into hell so that we guilty ones might be reconciled to God and received into heaven (p. 249).

For more information, my thoughts on a couple of chapters a week are as follows:

Chapters 1 and 2, “The Study of God” and “The People Who Know Their God”
Chapters 3 and 4, “Knowing and Being Known” and “The Only True God”
Chapters 5 and 6: “God Incarnate” and “He Shall Testify”
Chapters 7 and 8: “God Unchanging” and “The Majesty of God”
Chapters 9 and 10: “God Only Wise” and “God’s Wisdom and Ours”
Chapters 11 and 12: “Thy Word Is Truth” and “The Love of God”
Chapters 13 and 14: “The Grace of God” and “God the Judge”
Chapters 15 and 16: “The Wrath of God” and “Goodness and Severity”
Chapters 17 and 18: “The Jealous God” and “The Heart of the Gospel” (Propitiation)
Chapters 19 and 20: “Sons of God” and “Thou Our Guide”
Chapters 21 and 22: “These Inward Trials” and “The Adequacy of God”

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Laudable Linkage

Posted on November 7, 2015 by Barbara Harper

It has been a few weeks since I have been able to share with you some interesting things found around the internet. Perhaps you’ll find something of interest in the following:

3 Things to Tell Yourself When Others Prosper While You Suffer.

Thank God for Your Normal, Boring Life.

Grieving Over the Holidays – What You Need to Know.

14 Reasons to Memorize an Entire Book of the Bible. Though some of this addressed to preachers, other parts of it are applicable to us all.

“Mama, What Does $*@#%! Mean?” Wise advice for how to handle those times when, no matter how protective you’ve been, your child overhears a bad word.

Why I Show Children Hospitality (Even Though I Am Not a Parent), HT to The Story Warren.

Please Don’t Be Intolerant. As Inigo Montoya says, I think many people use that word without knowing what it really means.

Why Readers Are Skipping Crucial Parts of Your Story.

The Most Instagrammed Location In Every State.

12 Ridiculously Warm Products For People Who Are Always Ridiculously Cold. I am usually warmer than everyone else, but I know people who are always cold and could use some of these.

There were so many more Write 31 Days series than I could possibly read, and I dipped in here and there with quite a few, but a few I kept up with almost daily were:

Tools to Memorize a Bible Chapter.

31 Days of Hope for Caregivers.

31 Glimpses Into the Unquiet Mind. A mother and daughter share the daughter’s journey with bipolar disorder and the long journey to diagnosis and treatment.

31 Uplifting Quote Graphics.

31 Ways to Snag a Literary Agent.

Happy Saturday!

Laudable Linkage

Posted on October 17, 2015 by Barbara Harper

With the 31 Days With Elisabeth Elliot series going on every day, I wasn’t sure whether additional posts during the week might be a bit much to keep up with; on the other hand, I don’t want to have an excessively long list of links to share at the end of the month, because I know that can be a bit much, too. So here are a few things I found of interest in the last couple of weeks:

How Your Bible Study Shapes Your Theology.

Hand in Hand, Heart Linked to Heart. A sweet piece about C. H. Spurgeon and his wife.

Why Modesty Scares Me.

Why Christians should Paint, Dance, Quilt, Act, Compose Music, Write Stories, Decorate Cookies, and Participate in the Arts.

The Pinterest feed changes: How to see more of what you want to see. And why you’ll never see all of it. If, like me, you have been frustrated with changes at Pinterest, this article shares how to fix a couple of them, and the powers that be at Pinterest seem to have reached out to this blogger with an interest, so maybe some of the comments there will reach the ears of someone who can and will do something about it.

Happy Saturday!

Reading Classics Together: Knowing God

Posted on August 19, 2015 by Barbara Harper

Somehow I have never read Knowing God by J. I. Packer, though I have heard it is wonderful. The title came to my attention again a few weeks ago, and I thought it might be a good time to start it. Then I saw that Tim Challies was leading readers through the book for his Reading Classics Together Series on Thursdays, and that added impetus to read it now, along with the fact that a few blog friends will be reading it at this time as well.

I’ve only participated in Tim’s Reading Classics Together one other time, with The Disciples of Grace by Jerry Bridges. I had decided I wasn’t going to blog about this book every week like I did then, especially since Tim has closed comments on his blog and readers can only participate via a Facebook group for that purpose. I’m really sad about that, for a number of reasons. But as I read the first chapter, I decided it would help me get more out of it and cement what I was learning to keep notes from each chapter rather than just trying to tie it all together at the end.

Chapter 1 is “The Study of God.” I don’t think I am going to summarize or outline each chapter, as Tim will probably do that. I’m just going to share a few things that stood out to me.

Packer starts out with a lengthy quote from Spurgeon extolling the virtues of studying God, reproduced here. Packer counters charges that such a study would be boring, impractical, and irrelevant and instead asserts that “it is the most practical project anyone can engage in” (p. 19).

He talks in the preface and some in the chapter about the spirit of the modern age of skepticism, and here comments, “I ask you for the moment to stop your ears to those who tell you there is no road to knowledge about God, and come a little way with me and see. After all, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and anyone who is actually following a recognized road will not be too worried if he hears nontravelers telling each other that no such road exists” (p. 19).

Packer warns that, “To be preoccupied with getting theological knowledge as an end in itself, to approach Bible study with no higher a motive than a desire to know all the answers, is the direct route to a state of self-satisfied self-deception. We need to guard our hearts against such an attitude, and pray to be kept from it” (p. 22).

“There can be no spiritual health without doctrinal knowledge; but it is equally true that there can be no spiritual health with it, if it is sought for the wrong purpose and valued by the wrong standard” (p. 22). I very much appreciate that he doesn’t downplay Bible study or knowledge – too many people today, trying to make the same point Packer does, tend to set up false dichotomies about whether we love God or the Bible when we actually learn to love God through the Bible. Rather, he says, yes, study God’s Word – that’s how we learn what He wants us to know about Him – but don’t stop with the academics and the facts. Yearn to get to know God Himself through your study of His Word.

One of the ways we do this is by meditation, “the activity of calling to mind, and thinking over, and dwelling on, and applying to oneself, the various things that one knows about the works and ways and purposes and promises of God. It is an activity of holy thought, consciously performed in the presence of God, under the eye of God, by the help of God, and as a means of communion with God. Its purpose is to clear one’s mental and spiritual vision of God, and to let His truth make its full and proper impact on one’s mind and heart. It is a matter of talking to oneself about God and oneself; it is, indeed, often a matter of arguing with oneself, reasoning oneself out of moods of doubt and unbelief into a clear apprehension of God’s power and grace” (p. 23).

Chapter 2, “The People Who Know Their God,” Packer expands on the theme of knowing God vs. just knowing about Him. Daniel 11:32b says, “the people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits,” or, as another version states it, “shall stand firm and take action.” Drawing from the book of Daniel, he notes and discusses that:

Those who know their God have great energy for God.
Those who know their God have great thoughts of God.
Those who know their God have great boldness for God.Those who know their God have great contentment in God.

It’s not too late if you’d like to join in on this study. We’re reading and discussing two chapters a week, and the chapters are easy to read and not long. I am finding it very beneficial so far.

Laudable Linkage

Posted on July 10, 2015 by Barbara Harper

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve shared some links that caught my eye. Here are the latest – hope you find something of interest:

As Somebody Somewhere Said. Good reasons to read the Bible as a whole rather than only parts of it.

Hoaxes and Hermeneutics. The need for learning how to interpret the Bible rightly.

How To Complain Without Grumbling. There’s a difference, and I am so glad to see someone finally say so.

Jesus Speaks Out For Marriage.

How the Gospel Ended My Same-Sex Relationship.

Do You Treat Your Husband Worse Than a Stranger?

5 Questions I Wish My Accountability Partner Would Ask Me. I am wary of accountability partner set-ups for several reasons, and while the author still recommends them, he advocates facets that are much more in line with Biblical accountability and relationships that what I usually see.

Twenty Years. A man’s reflection on twenty years of marriage.

Mama, Are You Thinking Ahead?

Teach Your Children to Have Devotions. Wish I’d had something like this to read when mine were small.

It’s OK For Kids to Be Bored During Church.

Why Little Kids Need Big Biblical Words.

Cherishing and Protecting Our Freedoms.

4 Tips For Dealing With Procrastination.

Navigating the Challenges of Real Life Online. “If you share everything, you’re an exhibitionist. If you share nothing, you’re closed-off and unapproachable. If you share too many good things, you’re fake. If you share too many bad things, you’re a whiner.” Jenn discusses some principles and guidelines for finding balance here.

10 Things Photographers Hate With a Passion. I had never seen the dinosaur wedding thing before. Bizarre! I don’t agree with every point – I think some trendy or “as seen on Pinterest” requests are inevitable – but otherwise some good things for us to think about.

And I saw this on the C. S. Lewis Facebook Page.

Book Review: Women of the Word

Posted on July 14, 2014 by Barbara Harper

I have to confess that my first thought when I saw Women of the Word by Jen Wilkin mentioned favorably around the blogosphere was, “Hey! She took my title!” That’s not a very spiritual reaction, I know. 🙂 I’ve been blessed to have been able to compile a ladies’ newsletter for our current church for a couple of years and for a former church for about 9 years, and one column I’ve had in it for a long time has gone by that same title, “Women of the Word.” It began after a discussion about devotions during one of our ladies’ meetings and the realization that no matter how long one has been a believer, there are always going to be struggles either maintaining a devotional time or making it what it ought to be. So I began the column to encourage ladies along that line and have begun to wonder lately if perhaps I might put them all together and see if they might possibly form a book.

My second thought, after reading a little bit about this book, was that I must get it. Everything I’d heard about it indicated that the author had the same passion as I do for getting women into the Word of God.

And the book definitely did not disappoint in any way.

Jen is not content to just get you into the Bible, however. She wants to equip women to dig for the true meaning of the Bible rather than using the Xanax approach (just seeking something to get through the day) or any number of other faulty approaches. She reminds us that God wants us to love Him not just with our hearts and souls, but also with our minds. She says that when she first began to read her Bible, she approached it with questions like, “Who am I?” and “What should I do?” Though the Bible did give her some insight for those questions, she eventually realized that “I held a subtle misunderstanding about the very nature of the Bible. I believed that the Bible was a book about me…I believed the purpose of the Bible was to help me” (p. 24). She learned that “We must read and study the Bible with our ears trained on hearing God’s declaration of Himself” (p. 26).

When I read that God is slow to anger, I realize that I am quick to anger. When I realize that God is just, I realize that I am unjust. Seeing who He is shows me who I am in a true light. A vision of God high and lifted up reveals to me my sin and increases my love for Him. Grief and love lead to genuine repentance, and I begin to be conformed to the image of the One I behold.

If I read the Bible looking for myself in the text before I look for God there, I may indeed learn that I should not be selfish. I may even try harder not to be selfish. But until I see my selfishness through the lens of the utter unselfishness of God, I have not properly understood its sinfulness (pp. 26-27).

“It’s possible to know Bible stories, yet miss the Bible story” (p. 11). In our quest for Biblical literacy, “we may develop habits of engaging the text that at best do nothing to increase literacy and at worst actually work against it” (p. 37). “We must be those who build on the rock-solid foundation of mind-engaging process, rather than on the shifting sands of ‘what this verse means to me’ subjectivity” (p. 87).

The author then shares ways to read the text within the context and to read it for comprehension, interpretation, and application. There is an excellent chapter as well for teachers, one section of which makes an excellent case for women Bible teachers. She appears to believe, as I do, that women should teach women rather than men, but she gives some excellent reasons why women should teach other women.

I also appreciated how she dealt with an issue in the conclusion that I have seen some up in just the last couple of years. These days, when you try to encourage Bible reading and study or try to bring to bear what the Bible says on a conversation, you can sometimes be accused of “worshiping the Bible.” Jen answers:

I want to be conformed to the image of God. How can I become conformed to an image I never behold? I am not a Bible-worshiper, but I cannot truly be a God-worshiper without loving the Bible deeply and reverently. Otherwise, I worship an unknown God. A Bible-worshiper loves an object. A God-worshiper loves a person (p. 147).

In short, I love this book and highly recommend it. I do more than recommend it: I don’t often do this, but I encourage you to get it. I’m more than happy that the title I was considering using for a book has been attached to such a one as this.

I’ll close with one last quote:

We must make a study of our God: what He loves, what He hates, how He speaks and acts. We cannot imitate a God whose features and habits we have never learned. We must make a study of Him if we want to be like Him. We must seek His face…

We see Him for who He is, which is certainly a reward in itself, but it is a reward with the secondary benefit of being forever altered by the vision (p. 150).

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Laudable Linkage

Posted on October 19, 2013 by Barbara Harper

There has been a lot of good reading on the Web this week. Here are some posts and articles that stood out to me:

Worship with our lives, not just while singing on Sunday morning. Good exposition of what worship actually is.

Bible Study: Working With God on Your Goal, HT to my friend Kim, who, by the way, is doing a 31 Day series on Scripture memory.

It’s Not Just a Guy Thing. Sometimes “the second glance has often already been decided long before the first.”

What If Knowing Your Spiritual Gift Doesn’t Matter? Sometimes we need to just step in to meet a need.

How do you train your children to manage their feelings? I think this is an sometimes an overlooked area of parenting.

When Your Friend Hurts. We need to weep with those who weep, not condemn them for hurting.

You can imagine that the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood would be at odds with A Year of Biblical Womanhood, but I thought this review was balanced and gracious, at least as far as the concerns I’ve had with the book just in the reviews I’ve read. I have it in my Kindle app to read myself some day.

Teaching Boys to Be Respectful.

The Philanthropists: John D. Rockefeller. Sometimes the rich are vilified just by virtue of being rich, but the Bible does not condemn riches: it does instruct us not to trust in them and how to use them. I found this short biography very interesting.

Put the book down. Much as I love books, some times they do get in the way.

The Ultimate Secret to Effective Writing and Preaching.

A Case For Cessationism. I’ve been enjoying Tim Challies’ live-blogging of the “Strange Fire” Conference John MacArthur is having concerning the charismatic movement.

Weight Loss Bible Study.

Hope you have a great weekend!