Hope y’all had a great weekend. Here’s some links to start your week.

Your Truth is Too Small

When it comes to skeptical challenges against the Christian faith, though, I find an interesting thing going on: Without exception, as far as I can recall, they’re based on small truths, partial truths.

Four Categories to “Act the Miracle”

So much of the Christian life comes down to the matter of identity. At heart, who are we? Who or what has the right to define us? What is our deepest identity? Identity is at the core of many issues, not the least of which is same-sex attraction. In her book Gay Girl, Good God, Jackie Hill Perry offers four “categories” to guide our thinking about identity as we “act the miracle” of sanctification. Though she applies them specifically to Christians who struggle with same-sex attraction, in various ways they pertain to every believer and every temptation.

The Bible Never Ignores Our Feelings

Healing the Wounds of Shame

I heard a counselor describe it this way: Guilt is like a stain on a shirt. The stain may be difficult to remove, but it can be washed. Shame, by contrast, would be a disfigured face. It feels like a permanent part of who you are, and it prevents you from ever attempting to draw near to others.
Shame says, “I am defective. I am damaged. I am dirty. I am ugly. I am worthless. I am pitiful. I am insignificant, unlovable, unwanted.”
Christian counselors say the person held captive by shame needs three things, and they are all in the story from Luke 8 of the bleeding woman who touches Jesus’ robe and is healed.

Broken, Authentic, Surrender: The Problem of Christian Jargon

It’s easy, perhaps even necessary, to mock Christian jargon from time to time. As George Orwell said decades ago, jargon first obscures—and then prevents—thought and communication. And that’s intolerable if we are, in Paul’s words, to be transformed by the renewal of our minds.

Happy Friday! As I drove in to work this morning I was listening to Vet a new album by DA Truth. Worth the listen! When you get a chance put on some fresh tunes, you can stream from Spotify or Apple Music or buy the album and support the artist.

Does Jesus Commend Dishonesty in Luke 16?

Over a dozen email questions have arrived in the inbox from listeners who want to better understand Jesus’s parable in the first half of Luke 16. Isn’t Jesus celebrating dishonesty? Matt in Oklahoma writes us: “Hello, Pastor John! How do you understand and explain the parable of the dishonest manager in Luke 16:1–13? This one is a real head-scratcher for me. What does it mean? And what are the implications for Christians today?”

A Biblical Theology of Cities

Developing Healthy Leaders in Underserved Contexts

Listen to this podcast! “In some contexts, we can’t assume students have access to certain resources (like books and online material) due to financial or language issues. We can’t assume every aspiring leader in underserved contexts has a basic theological understanding of key doctrines. And often our illustrations and applications of ministry principles don’t connect well in poor or dangerous places of ministry.”

Is an Elephant Running Your Life?

The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always trust your feelings.
This chapter sets out to dismantle this Great Untruth by insisting that while feelings are always compelling, they are not always reliable. “Often they distort reality, deprive us of insight, and needlessly damage our relationships. Happiness, maturity, and even enlightenment require rejecting the Untruth of Emotional Reasoning and learning instead to question our feelings.”

Why Is Friendship Hard for Men?

Many factors combine to make friendship difficult for men. Personally, time for friends seems unrealistic in light of work or family responsibilities. Culturally, we don’t have a shared understanding of what friendships among men should look like. We also find ourselves connecting more digitally than deeply. We’ve lost a vision for strong, warm, face-to-face and side-by-side male friendship.
But God made us for more. He made us in his own image, the image of a triune God who exists in communal love. Therefore, friendship is not a luxury; it’s a relational necessity. We glorify God by enjoying him and reflecting his relational love with one another. If you are a man who has struggled to go deeper with other men, here are five concrete steps to cultivate deeper friendships.

Hope you are having a good week.

Jesus’ Surprising Response to Doubt

If you are doubting your faith, maybe you need to spend less time reaching for greater heights of faith by sheer willpower.

How God Changes Our “Why Me?” Questions in Suffering

Something to think about in the tough times.

3 Things American Citizens Could Learn from Christian Missionaries

Instead, missionaries generally do three things that we—everyday Americans—ought to imitate in our coffee shop conversations, Facebook updates, blog posts, and other forms of public discourse.

The Identity Merry Go Round

Pretending something is that isn’t is a kind of theft. Emile Ratelband, and all of us, should live honestly. Truthfulness is a much better improver of life than living a lie.

8 Reminders Before You Comment on Social Media

Going off half-cocked is now widely perceived as a virtue, and the disinclination to do so as a vice. Moreover, that poorly informed and probably inflammatory statement of Your Incontrovertibly Correct Position must be on the internet . . . or it doesn’t count towards your treasury of merit.

Don’t know about you, but I am glad we don’t have to watch campaign commercials anymore. Maybe we should make the Wednesday after an election a national holiday. Here are your links for today.

5 Things Christians Should Do After the Election

Fortunately, there are a few more things we Christians can do, small steps we can take to make things better for ourselves and our country.

Apostasy and How it Happens

On occasion we wonder if an individual really has been converted. And sometimes we have an inexplicable, ill-defined sense that something is missing. But we cannot read the heart. Even so, we hear of friends—whose faith we never doubted—turning away from Christ.

Apostasy is the old, vigorous word to describe this abandonment of Christ. The New Testament church was familiar with it. It was a major concern of the author of Hebrews.

Voting Your Faith

This was an interesting article. “The only way for a Christian to ensure that their decision on who to vote for reflects the teachings of Christ and the values of the Bible is to allow these teachings and values to fundamentally shape their character and mindset over a long period of time, and in community with other disciples,” Boyd says.

Why God’s Work in You Sometimes Hurts and Doesn’t Make Sense at First

Some insights from CS Lewis.

God Knows What You Don’t Have

What exactly does Paul mean when he promises, “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19)?

Get out and vote today.

A Tale of Two Numbers

There are two numbers in the life of the church that are too often miles apart. Although there are legitimate reasons why one number would be generally greater than the other. There is almost no good reason why there should be a vast gulf between the two figures.

5 Myths about Angels and Demons

There is no indication that our world’s fascination with angels and demons is in decline. Rarely does a day pass that we don’t hear of someone’s alleged encounter with either a holy angel or a fallen demon, together with news that a new TV show or film on Netflix will feature either or both of these species of spiritual beings. Sadly, though, there is a lot of confusion about angels and demons and certain myths that simply won’t die. Here are five of them.

Should Christians abandon Christmas?

Speaking for myself, the more I have been able to hear or preach about Christ’s coming the more help I have received to focus on what really matters during December.  Otherwise I’m swimming against the tide with a Scrooge-like spirit (“Bah! humbug!”). And if so I not only have no joy in celebrating the incarnation—I lose all sense of joy completely! 

Pediatricians say spanking is bad. Are they right?

In any case, Americans have widely divergent views on the matter. Even evangelical Christians have seen some divisionover the issue over the years. In light of this, Christians need to be ready to engage this discussion in a biblical way, insisting on the protection of children from abuse while also pursuing biblical truth concerning discipline.

How to Vote Today

I will say, as a way to love your neighbor and do justice, which are biblical imperatives, you should vote if you can. In a democracy, rendering to Caesar what is Caesar’s involves voting.

The question is, how should you vote today? The adverbs of how we do something are always important for the Christian.

Hope you had a blessed weekend.

An Invitation to a Land Beyond ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ Politics

Indeed, some are called to a life of public service in elected or appointed office. Others are called to advocacy work, thought leadership, or journalism. For most Christians, though, politics is not an everyday calling. But none of us, I believe, can afford to be completely disengaged. Here are three reasons why.

7 Unbiblical Statements Christians Believe

However, there are many things that Jesus-following, Church-going, Bible-believing Christians believe that are completely unbiblical. How does this happen? Often, we’ll hear someone quote a statement that sounds nice to us, and we’ll begin repeating it as though it’s biblical truth without ever researching it in Scripture.
Several of these unbiblical statements have gained enough traction that many people believe they’re actually Bible verses. Not only are the statements unbiblical; some of them teach the opposite of what the Bible teaches.

How to Escape Addiction to Anxiety

Isn’t it strange how addictive anxiety can be? It’s almost as if we sense that by devoting energy to anxiety, we are somehow doing something about whatever we are worried about. But if you’ve struggled with anxiety at all, you know that on its own, anxiety only offers false solutions, false promises, and false predictions. It is, in fact, a modern-day false prophet.

What Role Can Satan and Demons Have in the Life of a Believer?

These are important questions to consider. Theologian G. C. Berkouwer said, “There can be no sound theology without a sound demonology.” Some deny the existence of demons, regarding them as mere symbols of man’s inhumanity to man. But even those who believe the Bible tend to develop sloppy demonology. Often our understanding of fallen angels is based more on superstition, tradition, and assumptions than on the Scriptures.

Happy Friday!

Marks of a Spirit-Filled Mother-in-Law

Just as I have prayed for 25 years for grace to be a good mother, I am now trusting for grace to be a good mother-in-law. Wisdom for this challenge flows in abundance from one of Paul’s lists in the book of Romans. Some translators have labeled Romans 12:9–21 as “Marks of the True Christian.” I can’t think of any better advice for women striving to be good Christian mothers-in-law.

The Old Covenant Is Over. The Old Testament Is Authoritative.

Saying that the old covenant has passed away doesn’t mean the Old Testament is no longer (or somehow less) the Word of God. All of the Scriptures, both Old and New Testament, are the final authority as God’s infallible and inerrant word. All of the Old Testament has a revelatory and pedagogical authority for believers in Jesus Christ. We must interpret the Old Testament in terms of God’s progressive revelation in his covenants in order to discern how to apply it today.

You Are Not Timeless or Placeless

In a society that forgets its past and doesn’t think much about its future, in which geographical heritage has little to no hold on a person, the dominant feeling of many is disorientation.

How Do You Respond to God’s Word?

Which way are you turning? How you respond to the Word of God is how you respond to God. Not everything in the Bible is easy to accept, but if we refuse it as an outdated interpretation or backward view of life, we will find ourselves walking out of the presence of God and into the presence of Satan.