Been on a road trip from Arkansas to Oregon, we got some rest yesterday. Now here today’s edition of The Early Bird.

Daily Wisdom

Worth The Read

An Open Letter to Pastors about the Teens in Their Congregation

Most likely your church includes many teens (and adults!) who struggle with depression, anxiety, self-harm, PTSD, OCD, eating disorders, or any number of other invisible burdens. And these struggles come with a lot of shame.

Too often, the church is silent about these issues, and that just adds to the shame. Please, don’t be silent. Research it if you need to. Listen. Try to understand. These illnesses and disorders have both a spiritual and a physical side—prayer and the word are essential, but they won’t make clinical depression go away. 

How Porn Makes Us Less Human and Humane

The path toward seeing how pornography dehumanizes begins here, in thinking about the death of wonder in our hearts and our lives. But I do not speak of wonder about sex—not yet, anyway. The death of mystery in that realm is only one manifestation of a more general disease, a pornification of our eyes and our minds that extends well beyond the realm of sexual stimulation. Whether pornography is to blame for this more general problem, or vice versa, may remain subject to debate; my only interest is in arguing that what happens in pornography is not limited to sex.

Hidden Dangers

Here are five significant hidden dangers that every God-called minister must be aware of.

Can A Christian Blaspheme The Holy Spirit?

It has always seemed to me that there is something about blaspheming the Spirit, as Jesus intended us to understand it, that has brought a person to the point where they are sinning in such a way that they are unwilling and unable to repent and believe. That is the way I am putting the two together.

3 Ways To Spoil The Gospel

It’s always a temptation in polemics to stress one thing to an excess when we view ourselves as correcting excesses elsewhere. But over-correction tends to do harm as well. We have to prayerfully work against such extremes or we risk imbalances that harm the gospel.