The internet is filled with many things and none of us have time to read it all. However, I do try to read some of what is being published each week in order to keep up with the conversations that are happening in the world as well as to grow in my understanding and knowledge.
Here are a few articles that I found particularly helpful and/or interesting this week:
This is a great article for any of us who struggle with body image and weight. I’ve been listening to Lisa-Jo’s podcast with Christie Purifoy for several months now, and she is such an encouragement.
In the midst of reading and studying Jen Wilkin’s Women of the Word this summer, I am becoming increasingly convicted that regular time in God’s Word is essential and that studying with others is better than going it alone. This article has good reasons why we should start a Bible Study group.
Since I am at work all day, it is easy to lose sight of what I was meditating on in the morning, writing the day before, or reading last night at bedtime. This article was encouraging to me and gave me ideas for refreshing my thinking and creative thoughts even in the middle of a workday.
Anyone who knows me has probably heard me talk about this podcast. It covers theology, Bible knowledge and understanding, and more theology. The banter is fun but not mean-spirited and the three hosts, Jen Wilkin, JT English, and Kyle Worley, know their stuff. This is the most recent podcast with special guest Dr. Ligon Duncan from Reformed Theological Seminary. I can’t recommend this podcast highly enough.
I first heard about Finding God in the Ordinary by Pierce Taylor Hibbs while listening to the podcast Mortification of Spin. As the author spoke about his book, I knew that this was something I would love to read since looking for God in the small things is an activity I have long practiced.
My copy is a beautiful hard-bound book with a lovely cover and easily readable fonts. However, the treasure is in the words. Pierce Taylor Hibbs takes ordinary events like drinking coffee, shadows, dust, birds on a telephone wire, snow falling, wind, and light and shows the reader how to find God in these every day, ordinary events.
It’s not just that his prose is delightful, but his choice of words approaches poetry in many places within these essays. And his references to the Trinity, creation, language, God’s majesty and providence, and other theological subjects within his musings about “ordinary” events so enrich those events that I will never look at dust floating in the air or shadows on the grass the same again.
Let me share just a few quotes:
In the greatness of God, the smallest of things is given tremendous weight. p. 6
The beating heart of the Trinity is thumping underneath every human word, no matter how trivial or commonplace. p. 16
While darkness is an arena for the light of faith, it is the Lord of light himself that brings our feeble faith to fruition. pp. 26-27
Mistakes are not just markers of our depravity. They are more than that. They are the triune God’s spadework in the soil of the soul. They are opportunities for the great gardener to tend our lives and help us grow. p. 32
I highly recommend this book and plan to re-read these essays over and over again.
A few months ago, I received a call from one of my children. He was sitting in a parking lot an hour away from school with a smoking vehicle. The car was dead.
Usually, this particular young man is more than capable. However, this situation was beyond his experience, and he was unsure about what to do next. After discussing the situation, we agreed that the only thing to do was to call a tow truck. I had to leave for a meeting with my pastor and said I would call him later to decide the next step.
As I drove to my meeting, I worried and prayed. I told the Lord how J needed a car to work this last year in school. I told Him that he had food to buy and school bills to pay. Without that car, J couldn’t get to work. What if he would be forced to drop out of school a semester before graduation? None of us had the money to buy him even a junker car to last until May. What were we going to do?
At my meeting, I shared my anxiety. My pastor prayed with me for my son and his situation. As I was leaving, he said, “This is an opportunity to trust, to trust that God will provide for J’s needs.”
An opportunity to trust. How often do we see difficult or perplexing circumstances as opportunities to worry and to fuss and to run around, crying and complaining instead of seeing them as opportunities to trust God? We can have faith that our loving Heavenly Father, who created the world, who owns all things, and knows our needs before we are even aware of them, has every new circumstance in control. He wasn’t caught by surprise when J’s car broke down. He wasn’t wringing His hands in heaven because of the school bills or food needs or lack of transportation.
No, God had all of this in His sovereign control. He knew the exact minute that car would die, and He allowed it to happen for His own glory and J’s good. The Lord already had the provision ready to meet J’s need before the circumstance occurred. He wants His children to depend on Him just as the sparrows depend on him for food and the lilies of the field depend on Him for clothing. He wants us to depend on Him for our daily bread and for our every need.
Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your Heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. [Matthew 6:31-32]
Give us this day our daily bread. [Matthew 6:11]
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? [Romans 8:31-32]
In our proud independence, we think that we need to take care of our own needs, to “pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps”, instead of relying on God’s gracious, abundant provision. Scripture says that the Lord doesn’t let the children of the righteous beg for bread I have been young, and now am old; Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, Nor his descendants begging bread. [Psalm 37:25].
Here I was anxiously seeking provision for my son when God has promised to take of J. In myself, I am not righteous, but because of Christ, God the Father regards me as righteous so I can trust Him to not allow my children to be in need, physically or spiritually.
How many times over the years have I seen His provision! Over and over again I have been in need, sometimes financially, sometimes emotionally, often spiritually. Yet, I have never been abandoned by our God. He has always supplied my every need in His perfect time and usually gave me more than I asked for. His generosity never fails. Sometimes His timing wasn’t what I thought it should be, but it was always exactly right for the situation.
There is a hymn that I would sing with my children when they were small. The words even now remind me of the Lord’s provision when my faith is weak:
Children of the heav?nly Father Safely in His bosom gather Nestling bird nor star in Heaven Such a refuge e?er was given
God, His own doth tend and nourish In His holy courts they flourish From all evil things He spares them In His mighty arms He bears them
Neither life nor death shall ever From the Lord, His children sever Unto them His grace He showeth And their sorrows all He knoweth
Though He giveth or He taketh God His children ne?er forsaketh His, the loving purpose solely To preserve them, pure and holy
Lo, their very hairs He numbers And no daily care encumbers Them that share His ev?ry blessing And His help in woes distressing
Praise the Lord in joyful numbers Your Protector never slumbers At the will of your Defender Ev?ry foeman must surrender
Children of the heav?nly Father Safely in His bosom gather Nestling bird nor star in Heaven Such a refuge e?er was given –Caroline V. Sandell-Berg
Christian friend, are you in need today? Is there a circumstance in your life where you are poor and needy. Go to your Heavenly Father. Take this opportunity to trust Him. He loves you with an everlasting love, and He always gives good gifts to His children.
For my readers who don’t yet have the Lord as your Heavenly Father, are you in need today? He is willing to meet your needs—spiritually in Christ first and also physically and emotionally and in every other way. Go to the Lord, ask Him to save your soul and to provide for your needs. You can list those needs, but He already knows exactly what you are lacking in your life. Take this opportunity to trust that Jesus died for you, that He rose again from the dead to save you, and that He will lead you for the rest of your life.
As for J’s need, a friend had a van that he is not using. He graciously loaned it to J for the remainder of the school year until J graduates and can buy a new car.
God provided quickly and abundantly. He will provide for you, too. The next time a need arises, remember my pastor’s words: “It is an opportunity to trust.”
500 years ago today, Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses to the church door in Wittenburg, Germany, which sparked the Protestant Reformation. I wrote more about the event here, but I want to focus more on why the Reformation matters to us today.
Why does it matter that the Protestant Reformation happened? Will it make a difference in your life or mine?
Aside from the amazing learning and science and art and political frameworks that resulted from the Reformation, the theology that came out of the Reformation makes a difference in my daily Christian walk and can in yours, too. On my way to work last week, I was listening to this lecture by R.C. Sproul and it suddenly struck me, like it struck Luther centuries ago, that if my salvation rests on my own works, then I am lost. I cannot possibly be good enough to merit God’s acceptance on my own. But if my righteousness is not mine, but Christ’s, then I can rest in His good works, I can trust in His righteousness, and I can be saved because of His sacrifice. (Read more here.)
The Apostle Paul wrote:
“I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (vv. 8b–9).
The five solas of the Reformation (Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, Solus Christus, and Soli Deo Gloria), that God has saved us by faith alone, that our authority is Scripture alone, that we are saved by God’s grace alone, that only Christ is our Savior, and that we live for the glory of God alone are our glorious inheritance. Let us thank God for the reminder of His great love for us in Christ, especially on this anniversary of the Reformation.
The internet is filled with many things and none of us have time to read it all. However, I do try to read some of what is being published each week in order to keep up with the conversations that are happening in the world as well as to grow in my understanding and knowledge.
Myriads of Thoughts 