Some of the good reads found this week:

Have You Counted the Cost? HT to Challies. “Two things can be true at once. The gospel is absolutely free, and yet the gospel costs us everything.”

Why Do the New Testament Letters Sound Different from the Gospels? “The gospels do sound quite different from the New Testament letters. The simple parables and catchy teaching of Jesus give way to long doctrinal treatises on justification by faith, a theology of the body of Christ with its many members, or instructions for how households and churches should be governed. So how do we explain the difference? How did we go from stories about lost sheep, people planting seeds, or runaway sons to exalted discourses on theology?” I never thought about this before. This article gives some great answers.

I Will, If the Lord Permits, HT to Challies. “Here even the apostle Paul himself admits that his plans are fallible and must therefore be flexible. ‘I have made my very best plans,’ Paul says, ‘and am operating according to them to the best of my ability—but all the while in the recognition that my plans may not be God’s plans.'”

You’re Their Mom or Dad, Not Their Pastor or Evangelist. “Parents who love the Lord naturally long for their children to do the same. Their ‘heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved’ (Romans 10:1), and rightly so. And so they share the gospel with their kids and earnestly pray for them. But what are they to do when such attempts do not bear immediate fruit?”

Unreasonable Hospitality, HT to So She Reads. “This idea of unreasonable hospitality is found throughout the Bible. Think of killing the fatted calf for a stranger traveling through: giving of your best to someone you do not know and may never meet again; think of the widow’s last cruse of oil given to a prophet; think of five loaves and two fishes feeding 5000 people. This is the very embodiment of unreasonable hospitality.”

Story of Grace, HT to So She Reads. I have the famous print of an older man praying over the dinner table, as well as a companion piece of an older woman, in my dining area. It was neat to read the story behind it.

“Fear is a liar and a thief. A liar, because it fills our minds with
hypothetical horrors, and a thief because it steals precious hours we
can never get back and strips them of peace.” ~ Jeanne Damoff