11 Statistical Tips for a Healthy Marriage: Aaron Earls considers how much the research supports biblical wisdom for marriage. For instance, “Research finds couples are 31 percent less likely to get divorced if they have some pre-marriage training.”
5 Myths About Porn: Ray Ortlund debunks five lies. For instance, “Porn has no lasting impact. You can stop at any time. You are in control. The myth says, “You can even budget your porn use. Hold back during those times when you need to be at your best for Christ or for your family or whatever. But then, after you’ve been good for a while, you can jump back in—no problem.” Really? Sin is that easy, and our freedom is that negotiable?”
God’s View of Gender Dysphoria and the Transgender Movement: Eric Geiger begins, “Imagine being a teenager who doesn’t feel at home in your own body. You never felt you met the typical gender stereotypes of guys playing with trucks and rough sports and girls dressing up and play with dolls. You aren’t happy, and you so badly want to be happy. Like all teenagers through all generations, you want a sense of identity, of who you are. You would love to be known for something, to be celebrated. You watch lots of Tik-Tok videos about others who have changed their gender identity, and they recount stories of being celebrated and affirmed for their courage.”
The Great Deception: Kristin begins, “I have been told that my first sentence was this: I do it.”
Consider Suffering Joy? Robby Lashua asks, “What good might God be using suffering for?
The Tears of Success
Angel Mateo was 17 months old when he entered our lives. We were his first non-family placement, but his fourth placement in four months. He had been shipped from one family member to another until none were left. We expected a traumatized child to arrive at our front door. But Angel Mateo had almost no signs of trauma. He slept like a rock, met every strange new face with poise, and greeted every ball he saw with an enthusiastic “BALL!” as though it was the first time he had encountered this spherical admixture of magic and fun. Joy exuded through every pore of this boy.
We fell in love.
This Week's Recommendations
How Much Money Americans Say They Need to Feel Rich: Kamaron McNair reports (note how much one’s current income determines one’s response), “An annual income of $1 million or more was the most popular answer, with 22% of respondents saying they need to rake in seven figures to feel rich.”
Wrinkles in Time: Kristin reflects, “Stirred by her actions, I realized that I want to move happily ahead on the path called today, serving my family and friends, playing peekaboo with our grandson, and forgetting all about me. This does not happen naturally, does it?”
How the Doctrine of Exclusivity Made me a Christian: Mason Jones reflects on his conversion, “Before I became a Christian, I had a strictly physicalist worldview that left no room for objective moral principles. My biggest objection to such principles was that they’d require some absolute standard that transcended the physical universe.”
The Devil is Blinding You to Glory: Jacob Crouch begins, “Have you ever felt cold towards the gospel? Have you heard that Christ died for your sins and was raised from the dead and just felt blah. If that is you, because I know it has been me at times, then I want to alert you to something. This is more than just unfortunate; this is war. And this coldness to Christ is a direct attack from the enemy. The devil is blinding you to glory.”
The Prince: This podcast series on the backstory of the world’s most powerful man, Chinese Communist leader Xi Jinping, was an eye-opener for me.
My Son Can’t Ride a Bike: Failures in Parenting
Our son Soren is seventeen years old. And he doesn’t know how to ride his bike. I share this as a confession. Soren is more comfortable with this fact than I am. As parents, we feel responsible for equipping our kids for the world. But what does it mean to prepare our children for life? What does it mean to be a successful parent? When you think of it, the demands are overwhelming, isn’t it?
This Week's Recommendations
The Most Dangerous Type of Parenting: Aaron Earls explains, “Reputation parenting is primarily concerned with the spiritual reputation of the parent. We do what we do as a parent with the goal of having others see us as a respectable Christian parent.”
Why Do Christians Make Such a Big Deal About Sex? Rebecca McLaughlin responds, “Whenever people ask me why Christians are so weird about sex, I first point out that we’re weirder than they think. The fundamental reason why Christians believe that sex belongs only in the permanent bond of male-female marriage is because of the metaphor of Jesus’s love for his church.”
What does “the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective” mean? Kevin Halloran asks, “But what exactly does this phrase from James mean? Does it mean that we will receive everything we pray for, or that holiness strengthens our prayers?”
My Broken Engagement: Olivia Davis begins, “Has God forgotten me? No, my heart said. But it wasn’t a statement of faith. It was a cry of sorrow: I wish that he had. Because if he had forgotten me, it would mean that he didn’t know about my broken engagement, that he wasn’t an indifferent observer watching me sprawled out on my living room rug like a dead spider, sobbing until I had to run to the bathroom and vomit.”
Does Jesus Still Sympathize with Sinners? Mark Jones with a rich reflection concludes, “we can rejoice that his compassion to us is not mere sentiment, but a powerful compassion whereby he can supply us with his grace in our times of need, just as the Father supplied Christ with the Spirit in his time of need.”
This Week's Recommendations
Can Christians Date Nonbelievers? Marshall Seagal handles this question wisely, “Who you marry will likely shape who you become more than any other human relationship. If your husband runs from Jesus, you won’t be able to avoid the undertow of his lovelessness. If your wife runs from Jesus, you will live in the crossfire of her unrepentant sin. You may survive an unbelieving spouse, but only as through fire. Marriage under God would become a long and devastating war.”
Sexual Liberation Has Failed Women: Andrew Wilson reviews Louise Perry’s intriguing new book, “Louise Perry has written a feminist critique of the sexual revolution, and it’s brave, excoriating, and magnificent. The Case Against the Sexual Revolution isn’t a Christian book. Perry’s critique is rooted in evolutionary biology, feminist passion, and empirical observation, not biblical interpretation or theology.”
Big Boys do Cry, After All: Tim Shorey shares his heartache as he navigates the ravages of cancer, “Gayline and I have not known a single day of adult life without each other. But now, unless God spares me, she’ll likely know a couple decades of adult life without me; with me as but a memory. I won’t be there with her and for her. I won’t be holding her hand, kissing her goodnight, and saying, as I always do when she turns over to sleep—'Good night. I love you! I can’t wait to see you in the morning!’”
God Wants You to be a Burden: This is a good reminder by Christine Gordon and Hope Blanton, “Burden bearing is a two-way street. The friend you hesitate to text with your bad news has the same call on her life that you do. Will you allow her the opportunity to obey or deny her the chance because you’ve decided she’s too busy?”
The Most Repeated Verse in the Bible: Sam Allberry helps us square God’s wrath and love. He explains, “But while both God’s love and wrath are undeniable and necessary features of his dealings with us, they are not symmetrical. They do not spring from the same central part of God’s being with equal force. The two are not parallel components of God’s work.”
This Week's Recommendations
The Worshipper: Jeremy Walker begins a post that comes with a twist, “He is a worshipper. His life revolves around his worship. Nothing stops him.”
The Serious Business of Laughing at Myself: Seth Lewis tells a very funny story about himself and concludes, “If I can’t embrace my own smallness, my own humiliations, and my total dependence on the God who made me, then my pride has grown out of control. That’s a serious problem.”
Unborn Images Matter: Alan Shlemon begins, “Abortionist Dr. Joan Fleischman says she sometimes shows her patients the pregnancy tissue she removes after an abortion. She says that post-abortive women are “stunned by what it actually looks like,” and the women “feel they’ve been deceived.””
16 Passages to Read to Fight Lust: These are worth memorizing.
A Spiritual MRI of the Heart: Warren Peel explains, “In Scripture, the word ‘heart’ is used more than 1000 times, but it almost never refers to the physical organ inside our chests. The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament sums up all the usages of the term in this way: it is ‘the richest, most all-encompassing biblical term for the totality of a man’s inner nature.’ The heart is said to do a wide range of things in the Bible, but all its many activities fall into one of the three main faculties of the soul: the mind, the affections and the will. It includes the mind—our thoughts, imagination, fantasies, judgments and attitudes. It encompasses the affections—our emotions, our desires and longings, our revulsions. And it describes the will—our choices, decisions and motivations.”
I Hope your Advent is In Tents
Our girl arrived home for Christmas last night. Everything feels better when we are all together. Camille headed off to college in Southern California this fall, and we have felt her absence. We missed her laugh, her hugs, and her quiet presence in the house, crafting on a quiet Sunday afternoon. But now she’s home! My heart swells to be able to squeeze her, to wake her up with a kiss on the forehead, to listen to her laugh at my dad jokes. Even in an era where we have technology like Facetime, there is nothing like being face-to-face. I feel joy to worship with her this Christmas Eve and look forward to having our family whole, enjoying cinnamon rolls and coffee in our pajamas on Christmas day, unwrapping one another’s gifts, and squeezing each other in thanks.
God concurs.
I Hope your Advent is In Tents
Our girl arrived home for Christmas last night. Everything feels better when we are all together. Camille headed off to college in Southern California this fall, and we have felt her absence. We missed her laugh, her hugs, and her quiet presence in the house, crafting on a quiet Sunday afternoon. But now she’s home! My heart swells to be able to squeeze her, to wake her up with a kiss on the forehead, to listen to her laugh at my dad jokes. Even in an era where we have technology like Facetime, there is nothing like being face-to-face. I feel joy to worship with her this Christmas Eve and look forward to having our family whole, enjoying cinnamon rolls and coffee in our pajamas on Christmas day, unwrapping one another’s gifts and squeezing each other in thanks.
God concurs.
This Week's Recommendations
Welcoming the World’s Oldest Babies: Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra shares a moving story of embryo adoption and the consequences of modern technology and fertility, “Nearly 30 years ago, Lydia Ann and Timothy Ronald were conceived in a fertility clinic. Hours later, they were frozen.”
Come Thou Long Expected Judgment: Jonathan Warren Pagan reminds us to look forward, not just backward this Advent season. Advent hope is preeminently about hope for the return of Jesus. Even now, in the Advent liturgies of the Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox churches, the prayers and Scripture readings have a laser-like focus on the judgment of Christ that is to come. This message doesn’t align with the affected excitement and coziness of secular Advent or Christmas.”
Social Anxiety and the God Who Held Mary: Lara d’Entremont always has great stuff. Here she shares about her social anxiety and Christmas. She shares, “God must have rows of my bottled tears by now—tears that I shed over my anxiety where I begged him to take it all away. Yet the anxiety remains. I don’t understand why, and in those moments of looking at my life and wondering why God’s hand has not lifted the anxiety from me, doubt has snaked around my heart. Where is God’s love? Why has he abandoned me?”
Christianity Today’s Playlist: Some nice gems here.
The Gospel Coalition 2022 Book Awards: Lots of good stuff here.