Thin Is A Western Cult - Sam Kee “As I listened, I noticed that a huge assumption was driving their defense: thin is beautiful. I thought to myself, “You’ve bought into the lie!” I was hoping they’d refuse to acknowledge the premise of “thin,” which has become a Western cult.”
Gentle Selfishness - “But a gentle selfishness, because of its very gentleness, is subtle, deceptive, and far more difficult to detect than the blatant kind.”
“Gentle selfishness is dangerous exactly because others can’t always see it and it seems harmless, so it hardens us in our sinful inward focus. It is the subtlety of this selfishness that is the problem, and we all have it. Godly gentleness will actually help us kill selfishness, because it is not weakness, but controlled strength. Christ displayed this perfectly; selflessness that was gentle even in the face of crucifixion, so that He could pray, “Father, forgive them.” His saving selflessness is not only the source of our forgiveness, but also the power to break even the gentle selfishness in our own lives.”
Loving Without Hypocrisy - John MacArthur “The authenticating mark of our Christianity, before an unbelieving world, is our love for other believers. Jesus affirmed this when He said; “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another””
But what does this kind of love look like? A brief survey of the one anothers in the New Testament gives an excellent picture. We are commanded to: Build up one another (Romans 14:19); serve one another (Galatians 5:13); bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2); be subject to one another (Ephesians 5:21); forgive one another (Colossians 3:13); teach one another (Colossians 3:16); comfort one another (1 Thessalonians 4:18); rebuke one another (Titus 1:13); encourage one another to do good (Hebrews 10:24-25); confess our sins to one another (James 5:16); pray for one another (James 5:16); and be hospitable to one another (1 Peter 4:9-10).
Be Careful of Nice People – Tim Challis “As human beings, it seems that we are drawn to niceness. We like nice people and encourage people to behave in nice ways. We dislike people who aren’t nice or who don’t behave in nice ways. We teach our children to be nice and juxtapose niceness with a host of vices: grumpiness, cruelty, mean-spiritedness.”
“Why isn’t niceness a fruit of the Spirit? Because niceness is a hollow trait that a human can generate even without the inner working of the Holy Spirit. Niceness may require some force of will in the face of disagreement or controversy. It may require restraint. But it does not require an inward transformation.”
How to Repent Without Really Repenting – Jim Elliff
Vintage Kindness – Bryan Loritts “Kindness has often been confused with niceness, and this is unfortunate.”
2 Ways a Christian Can Defeat Himself – Trevin Wax quotes Francis Schaeffer
A Christian can defeat himself in two ways: one is to forget the holiness of God and the fact that sin is sin. The Bible calls us to an ever deeper commitment in giving ourselves to Christ for him to produce his fruit through us.
The other is to allow himself to be worn out by Christians who turn Christianity into a romanticism. The realism of the Bible is that God does not excuse sin, but neither is he finished with us when he finds sin in us. And for this we should be thankful.
– Francis Schaeffer, No Little People
Jesus is Praying For You – John Piper - Great video! “In five minutes, John Piper talks about the daily warfare for your faith. With Satan against you, and temptation around every corner, how do you know you will be a believer tomorrow morning? Piper reminds us about the seriousness of Satan’s desire for you and the absolute security we have in Christ.”
Jesus And The Journey To Joy - John Piper - “If it’s true that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him, as we saw in Philippians 1:20–21, then joy or satisfaction in God is a mandate. It’s not optional. If we say joy in God is icing on the cake or a caboose on the train, then we’re saying glorifying God fully is icing on the cake. It isn’t.” Read more at http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/what-is-the-secret-of-joy-in-suffering
Watershed Differences Between Calvinists and Arminians – John Piper (audio and transcript) “Or I might say it like this: You can tell if someone is an Arminian or a Calvinist by how they answer the question, “What was the decisive cause of your faith in Christ?” So you go up to somebody and you ask, “What was the decisive cause of your faith in Christ? Was it God or was it yourself?” And the Calvinist says, “The decisive cause of my faith was God” and the Arminian says, “The decisive cause of my faith in Christ is myself.”
The Way Is Hard But He Is Strong – Jon Bloom “Hell’s one primary objective is to destroy faith in God. All of its elaborate strategies and all of its diabolical energies are focused on one thing: breaking the power of the word of the Lord by undermining our trust in it. The universe was created and is upheld by the Word of God (John 1:3, Hebrews 1:3), so hell must break the power of the Word of the God, if it wants to win.”3 Things To Remember Before You Criticize – Justin Taylor “Critique done poorly—whether through overstatement, misunderstanding, caricature—is a losing proposition for all. It undermines the credibility of the critic and deprives the one being criticized from the opportunity to improve his or her position.”
Inhabiting The Psalms – Heather Walker Peterson “The Psalms were the hymnbook of Jesus’ time, and the Scripture most quoted by him in the Gospels.”
The Armour of God - Doug Batchelor
Finding Truth, by Nancy Pearcy - Book Review by Tim Challis.
