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A very important lesson in grammar

Who Can Baptize?

Kevin DeYoung:

Christians are used to debating the question “Who can be baptized?” But much less ink (digital or otherwise) has been spilled debating the question “Who can baptize?” Should baptism–and the Lord’s Supper for that matter–be administered only by ordained pastors (and possibly elders), or can any church member in good standing preside over the sacraments?

Get The Work of Christ in today’s $5 Friday at Ligonier.org

Today you can get The Work of Christ by R.C. Sproul (hardcover) for only $5 in today’s $5 Friday sale at Ligonier.org. Other items on sale:

  • Ultimate Issues teaching series by R.C. Sproul (DVD)
  • The Heroic Boldness of Martin Luther by Steven Lawson (ePub + MOBI)
  • Welcome to a Reformed Church by Daniel Hyde (paperback)

$5 Friday ends tonight at 11:59:59 PM Eastern.

How to preach with biblical fullness

Ray Ortlund:

My brother pastor, to preach with biblical fullness, rising above ourselves and our biases, let’s just preach through the Bible, passage by passage, letting each passage make its unique contribution, confident that over time the fullness of it all will serve people well with a massive vision of the Triune God.  But let us never force a passage to say what we think it ought to say and, in effect, correct God.

Kill Your Jesus Talisman

Jared C. Wilson:

I can win any slam dunk contest through him who gives me strength. If I will ask God for the ability to do so “in Jesus’ name,” of course.

When I was a kid I had a poster of Philippians 4:13 — “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” — with a photo of a guy dunking a basketball. You can bet I thought long and hard about how Jesus was gonna help me dunk on some fools.

Seven Characteristics of the Antichrist

David Murray:

Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m only following the Scriptural precedent of describing the characteristics to look out for rather than the Antichrist’s name and address.

But stay with me because you need to know what to look out for and, who knows, maybe someone will read the seven characteristics and think, “Hey I know that guy!” And remember, although THE Antichrist may not yet have arisen, John warns us that there are many antichrists already in the world. So what are we looking for?

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These Precious Days

Tim Challies:

One of the most exasperating parts of life in this world is that I must constantly choose the good things not to do. So much of life is not the choice between good and bad, but between good and good. Even in the joy of doing one good thing, there is the sorrow of not being able to do another good thing. Three days spent in Indiana, is three days spent apart from my wife and my children. It is three days away from the people I love; I will never get those days back. I have been given perhaps 7,000 or 8,000 days with my children before they move out to begin life on their own, and in going away, I permanently traded away three of those precious days.

Literally taking the Bible literally

Lyndon Unger:

When I was in high school, I took a class called “Western Civilization” from a teacher who was a Bahhai. He was one of the smartest folks I had ever met up unto that point and was an aggressive skeptic of Christianity…well, he was more of an enemy of Christianity. The class was called “Western Civilization” but was really an “Intro to ‘why Christianity is for idiots’ class”. That class was brutal hard for me, as my teacher waged an assault against Christianity that had me in a flurry to find answers; answers to questions about everything from creation to eschatology. That class is what got me into serious thinking about the scriptures and looking for answers beyond my youth pastor (who was more youth than pastor).

Hearing and Being God

Lore Ferguson:

Since the beginning of December I have been thinking about what it means to “hear” God’s voice. I cut my faith teeth in Charismatic circles, so hearing from God for ten years was commonplace in my life. I have pages full of things people heard from God about on my behalf and I am in Texas today because of a small feeling I had one June morning on my back stoop. He said, “Move to Texas,” and I said, “Hell, no.” But then I did.

I don’t handle His voice lightly, but I think I have handled the hearing of His voice lightly.

Get Life in Christ in today’s $5 Friday at Ligonier.org

Today you can get Life in Christ by Jeremy Walker (paperback) for only $5 in today’s $5 Friday sale at Ligonier.org. Other items on sale:

  • The Intimate Marriage teaching series by R.C. Sproul (audio and video download)
  • Pillars of Grace by Steven Lawson (ePub)
  • The Christian Lover by Michael Haykin (hardcover)

$5 Friday ends tonight at 11:59:59 PM Eastern.

What Sort of Man Is This?

Barnabas Piper:

This question, on the heels of Jesus calming a storm, rings through the gospel of Matthew. It comes from those who know Him, not from a stranger. What sort of man is he? A good one? A powerful one, certainly. A wizard or a prophet? Self-serving or benevolent? Many of us call ourselves disciples of Jesus, but have we ever been stunned enough at Him to rock back on our heels and ask “What sort of man is this?”

5 Sure-Fire Ways to Motivate Your Son to Use Pornography

Rick Thomas:

Porn is first and foremost about the theater of the mind, where the young male can enter into his virtual world and be king for a day—or, in this case, king for a few minutes—as he satiates his mind with the risk-free intrigue of the cyber conquest.

And in most cases, the porn addict’s allurement began in the theater of his mind while he was a child. This is a consistent pattern I’ve seen in counseling.

You’ll see in my five sure-fire ways to motivate your child to use porn how any child can be in porn training without his parents realizing it.

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The Stealth Prosperity Gospel

Jared Wilson:

The real devil in the details of the prosperity-type teaching permeating so much of evangelicalism is not really that it skips over the stuff about sin. Sure, it does that too, but the pernicious paradox of this stuff is that it champions “victorious Christian living” yet does not equip believers for sustainable discipleship. It emphasizes feelings and “outlook,” not the power of the Spirit, which is hard for some folks to notice since the latter is often conflated with the former (so that being optimistic or a go-getter is ipso facto being Spirit-empowered). The problem over time is that, going from victory to victory, expecting victory after victory, cultivates a contagious form of spiritual greed. (Is it any wonder that this sort of teaching often goes hand and hand with talk of financial riches and prosperity?) The real stuff of discipleship — what Eugene Peterson calls “a long obedience in the same direction” — involves hard stuff like discipline and the fruit of the Spirit. In pop discipleship discipline is replaced by steps, tips, and amazing supercolossal breakthroughs.

Get God in our Midst in today’s $5 Friday at Ligonier.org

Today you can get God in our Midst by Daniel Hyde (ePub and MOBI) for only $5 in today’s $5 Friday sale at Ligonier.org. Other items on sale:

  • Bound for Glory teaching series by R.C. Sproul Jr. (audio and video download)
  • Feed My Sheep by various authors (hardcover)
  • Who is the Holy Spirit teaching series by Sinclair Ferguson (CD)

$5 Friday ends tonight at 11:59:59 PM Eastern.

Why Calvinism not Lutheranism?

Wherever you land on Calvinism, you’ll hopefully find this piece by Derek Rishmawy interesting:

When I was doing my theological searching early on, I found myself initially more attracted to Lutheranism given their apparent lack of emphasis on predestination as well as Luther’s fiery wit. (Also, I was in my anti-Piper phase.) In fact, many of us raised in more a-historical, non-denominational Evangelical backgrounds are likely to hear of Martin Luther as the Reformer, instead of Calvin, just because of the 95 theses and the issue of justification by faith. So why is it that so many of us end up learning the Westminster or Heidelberg catechism, instead of Luther’s?

How to Recognize a Spirit-Filled Church

Eric Davis

Church advertisements can be interesting. I’ve seen things like, “Always an open door,” one that advertised a concealed weapons class, and “You have a friend request from Jesus: Accept? Ignore?” But one that confused me the first time I saw it was “Spirit-filled.” What does that mean? And are only some churches Spirit-filled? Or all of them? Or partially filled? What’s the difference between a Spirit-filled and non-Spirit-filled church?

Generally, the advertisement means that the Holy Spirit’s power and presence are observable in that local church. Praise God if that’s true. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with such advertising. But, assuming accurate advertising, what ought we expect from such a church? What will that look like?

Why We Cannot Coexist

Jeff Medders:

All religions cannot be true. As much as people preach from their bumpers on how we should all coexist, if we are intellectual honest with the tenets of each religion, we simply can’t hold hands and ride off into the ecumenical sunset.

How I Beat Back the Darkness after Rape

Halee Gray Scott:

I was 21-years old, barely five months after returning to the Christian faith. My rapist lived in the parsonage. He was young, serving as a youth pastor while attending a nearby seminary. I’d come roaring back to the faith after a brief dalliance with atheism and agnosticism. My enthusiasm quickly secured me a position on the leadership team for the youth group, within close working conditions of the youth pastor.

Before long, I began to notice strange, questionable behaviors. Phone calls, flirtations, casual references to meeting with married women in the middle of the night. At first, I thought my perception unreliable—after all, he was the youth pastor, the seminarian. And I? A heathen whose discernment could hardly be trusted. But as the weeks wore on, I grew more confident in my assessment.

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3 Checkpoints for Spiritual Drift

Michael Kelley:

Drifting is something that happens over time. It’s slow and steady, almost imperceptible. It can happen so gradually in fact that it goes without notice. That’s the real problem with drifting spiritually – you don’t know it’s happening until it’s already happened.

But what if you could? Are there certain checkpoints that, if they appear in your life, you know that the drifting has started? That the rope tied to the anchor of faith has started to let out? That you are slowly moving in a direction that you didn’t intend to go? I think there are, and here’s three to think about.

Hurry!

Staci Eastin:

Busyness is talked about a lot. We take on too much. We don’t say no to anything, because being busy makes us feel important. Look how much I’m doing!

But for me? I rush because I’m lazy. I want to get done with the dull stuff so I can get to the important stuff. Like, I don’t know, reading. Or Candy Crush.

Kindle deals for Christian readers

A few Kindle deals for you:

Get The Hard Sayings of Jesus in today’s $5 Friday at Ligonier.org

Today you can get The Hard Sayings of Jesus teaching series by R.C. Sproul (audio download) for only $5 in today’s $5 Friday sale at Ligonier.org. Other items on sale:

  • Welcome to a Reformed Church by Daniel Hyde (ePub)
  • Are We Together? by R.C. Sproul (hardcover)
  • Anne Bradstreet: A Guided Tour of the Life and Thought of a Puritan Poet by Heidi Nichols (paperback)

$5 Friday ends tonight at 11:59:59 PM Eastern.

Why I Am a Cessationist

Thomas Schreiner:

Why would anyone think that some of the gifts have been withdrawn? I will argue that such a reading fits best with Scripture and experience. Scripture takes priority over experience, for it is the final authority, but Scripture must also correlate with life, and our experiences should provoke us to re-examine afresh whether we’ve read the Bible rightly. None of us reads the Bible in a vacuum, and hence we must return to the Scriptures repeatedly to ensure we’ve read them faithfully.

See also…

Why I Am a Continuationist

Sam Storms:

Let me begin with the consistent, indeed pervasive, and altogether positive presence throughout the New Testament (NT) of all spiritual gifts. The problems that emerged in the church at Corinth were not due to spiritual gifts, but to immature people. It wasn’t the gifts of God but the childish, ambitious, and prideful distortion of gifts on the part of some that accounts for Paul’s corrective comments.

Putting Off Cynicism

Paul Maxwell:

Cynicism is the attitude that encapsulates the ethos of twentysomethings par excellence. It is, I think, the most covert negative emotion. We harbor it in Christian garb: cynicism toward immature men (“man-boys”), hipsters, a denomination or movement, clichés, and a thousand other things.

Cynicism is so undetectable because it is so justifiable. It wears a mask of insight and godliness, but it conceals festering wounds of harbored bitterness against God and neighbor. We need to understand cynicism, because the masks we wear tell us about the wounds we hide, and point us to the Savior who yearns to mend them.

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Are Millennials Joining High Church Traditions?

Jake Meador:

There have always been magisterial Protestants in the United States as well, but there is a perpetual tendency for these traditions to slide toward radicalism as they adopt more characteristically American tendencies toward individualism and separating oneself from the past. As a result, traditions that ought to embrace the more liturgical, sacramental spirituality of the high church tradition will struggle to do so consistently. This is how, to take the most extreme example, an ostensibly Reformed pastor like Robert Schuller ends up creating the Crystal Cathedral and the Hour of Power. For magisterial Protestants there is a constant tug of war between certain hallmark attributes of the American political identity and the guiding principles of the magisterial tradition.

The Dark-Tinted, Truth-Filled Reading List We Owe Our Kids

N.D. Wilson:

In the Christian world, stories laced with dark content—especially for children—will always spook whole flocks of eyebrows into concerned flight. The “content” of a book or film is parsed out, every bit of shadow flagged and sniffed at by mothers like they’ve discovered a malicious growth hormone in a suspicious chicken nugget.

Get When Worlds Collide in today’s $5 Friday at Ligonier.org

Today you can get When World’s Collide by R.C. Sproul (ePub) for only $5 in today’s $5 Friday sale at Ligonier.org. Other items on sale:

  • In Christ Alone by Sinclair Ferguson (ePub)
  • A Blueprint for Thinking teaching series by R.C. Sproul (audio download)
  • The Gospel Focus of Charles Spurgeon by Steven Lawson (hardcover)

$5 Friday ends tonight at 11:59:59 PM Eastern.

Mortifying the Fear of Academic Books

Jared Oliphint:

But the trudge is an illusion, a feeling, an attitude, and a state of mind. You created it, and you can exercise a surprising amount of control over it in the long run. The skills that built and stacked internal walls meant to protect your own ego against the barrage of heavy, theological terms are the same skills that can sack those walls and command those technical terms for your spiritual benefit.

Abortion Meets a New Generation

Dan Darling and Andrew Walker:

And that leads us to the pro-life movement, dating back to the 1970s. Being pro-life was missional, incarnational, and radical way before those terms became evangelical buzzwords. And yet, caring for and advocating on behalf of the unborn remains controversial.

Thankfully, its controversial status may be a thing of the past if trend lines continue. Younger generations are markedly more pro-life than their parents. We’re observing a rising generation of pro-life Americans, many of whom (though not all) identify as Christian.

But sadly, among progressive evangelicals, there’s a reflexive hesitancy to tout or raise the banner of human life as a preeminent justice issue. You’ll hear individuals in this camp dance around the sanctity of life—writing it off as “political” or “complicated.”

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Why Do So Many People Hate Optimists?

David Murray:

Reuters blogger Zachary Karabell has never had so much hate mail in his life. His offense? Highlighting some good news here and there which may indicate the US and World economy is turning the corner.

His “pen-pals” don’t just disagree with him. They hate him. He says he wouldn’t mind people saying he’s wrong, or even ridiculing him, but it’s the rage he was unprepared for. He tries to explain this inexplicable hostility…

Your Systematic Theology is Showing

Barnabas Piper:

Systematic Theology is math, a skeleton. It is a system of organizing thoughts so that finite minds can begin to understand an infinite God (in a distinctly western way, mind you). Systematic theology is a support system for the reality of relationship with God. Too often, though, it is put forth as the face of faith instead of being the framework of it. All the “ologies” (soteriology, eschatology, pneumatology, Christology, etc.) you know are not your relationship with God. They are not the true story of God. They support those things for you. They need muscles and veins and organs and skin to make them alive, to adorn them in beauty.

Get The Holy Spirit teaching series in today’s $5 Friday at Ligonier.org

Today you can get The Holy Spirit teaching series by R.C. Sproul (audio download) for only $5 in today’s $5 Friday sale at Ligonier.org. Other items on sale:

  • Why We Trust the Bible teaching series by Stephen Nichols (audio and video download)
  • The Spirit of Revival: Discovering the Wisdom of Jonathan Edwards by various authors (ePub)
  • Believing God by R.C. Sproul Jr. (ePub)

$5 Friday ends tonight at 11:59:59 PM Eastern.

14 Resolutions for Writers

Nicholas McDonald:

Okay, it’s a new year, and aspiring writers world-wide are mentally gearing up for finally taking the plunge into Wonderland – being published. Here are some motivational ideas to jot down before you move ahead.

The Promise of Place

Lore Ferguson:

The truth is I feel misplaced these days. Misplaced by God, misplaced by men, misplaced, mostly, by myself. I have never felt comfortable in my own skin, but these past months I have felt a foreigner even to myself.

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The Soil of the Prosperity Gospel

Jonathan Baer:

It is a tempting and intoxicating brew, appealing to basic human inclinations and culturally conditioned desires, offering a quick high but a nasty hangover. And it’s extremely lucrative for its purveyors, since one of the principal ways to demonstrate faith is to sow financial seeds, which is to say, give gifts to prosperity preachers or purchase their products. The resulting fleets of luxury automobiles, massive homes, and Italian suits might strike critics as garish, but prosperity preachers retort with a smile that their lives and bank accounts merely verify the truth of their messages.

How did we get to a place where such a clearly debased form of Christianity holds sway with so many people?

Restoration as a gospel priority

Ray Ortlund:

“Aim for restoration” was highly relevant to this community in Corinth. They were broken at multiple levels. They were making progress, but there was much good still to accomplish. So, “aim for restoration” was ideal as an all-encompassing intention.  For any gospel-defined church, then or now, restoration is an obvious priority.

But is it obvious? Or, is it obvious to us today?

Get 1-2 Peter in today’s $5 Friday at Ligonier.org

Today you can get 1-2 Peter by R.C. Sproul (ePub) for only $5 in today’s $5 Friday sale at Ligonier.org. Other items on sale:

  • Hell teaching series by R.C. Sproul (audio download)
  • The Unwavering Resolve of Jonathan Edwards by Steven Lawson (ePub)
  • Creation and Re-Creation, the 2013 Fall Conference at Reformation Bible College (audio and video download)

$5 Friday ends tonight at 11:59:59 PM Eastern.

Kindle deals for Christian readers

In addition to yesterday’s giant list, here are a few other ones to consider:

How to read the Bible in 2014

Justin Taylor:

The average person reads 200 to 250 words per minute; there are about 775,000 words in the Bible; therefore it takes less than 10 minutes a day to read the whole Bible in a year.… Audio Bibles are usually about 75 hours long, so you can listen to it in just over 12 minutes a day.

But the point is not merely to read the whole thing to say you’ve done it or to check it off a list. The Bible itself never commands that we read the Bible through in a year. What is commends is knowing the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27) and meditating or storing or ruminating upon God’s self-disclosure to us in written form (Deut. 6:7; 32:46;Ps. 119:11, 15, 23, 93, 99; 143:5).

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Kindle deals for Christian readers

Zondervan and Thomas Nelson have put a ton of titles on sale from their catalogue. Obviously, it’s going to be a bit hit-and-miss, but here are a few worth checking out:

The Culture of Like

Aimee Byrd:

Really, what’s going on beneath much of our playful, self-indulgent, liking banter ruse is the fact that it’s all a marketing ploy. Is it a coincidence that I liked a fitness website and now I get ads run on my page for losing weight and breast implants? I don’t know, maybe some comments I’ve made about exercise also contributed. But the point is, advertisers are trying to customize to our liking. Every commercial on TV now wants us to like them on Facebook. Their crazy computer spiders (how creepy is that?) skulk on our every cyber-move and pounce in with the customized add. Liking a website is their free ticket to advertise their latest sell.

Merry Christmas from Chuck Norris

Remember Van Damme’s ultimate splits commercial? I think CGI Chuck’s got him beat:

When nothing created everything

Joe Carter:

Throughout history people have been awed and thrilled by retellings of their culture’s creation story.

Aztecs would tell of the Lady of the Skirt of Snakes, Phoenicians about the Zophashamin, and Jews and Christians about the one true God—Yahweh. But there is one unfortunate group—the children of atheistic materialists—that has no creation myth to call its own. When an inquisitive tyke asks who created the sun, the animals, and mankind, their materialist parents can only tell them to read a book by Carl Sagan or Richard Dawkins.

But what sort of story are they likely to find? Should they be told, as famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking claims in his book The Grand Design, that “the universe . . . create[d] itself from nothing”?

Since Hawking’s explanation is a bit too drab and not specific enough for bedtime reading, I’ve decided to take the elements of materialism and shape them into a purportedly accurate, though mythic, narrative. This is what our culture has been missing for far too long—a creation story for young atheistic materialists.

Get Saved From What? in today’s $5 Friday at Ligonier.org

Today you can get Saved From What? by R.C. Sproul (ePub) for only $5 in today’s $5 Friday sale at Ligonier.org. Other items on sale:

  • Who is the Holy Spirit teaching series by Sinclair Ferguson (audio and video download)
  • The Truth of the Cross by R.C. Sproul (audiobook)
  • Reformation Profiles teaching series by Stephen Nichols (audio and video download)

$5 Friday ends tonight at 11:59:59 PM Eastern.

22 Productivity Principles from the Book of Proverbs

Eric McKiddie:

Some of these principles you can find in secular productivity literature today. (Indeed, many of the proverbs can be found in secular ancient Near East literature, verbatim.) But seeing them in God-breathed Scripture reminds us to adopt those principles with a God-centered perspective. Other principles in the list don’t get as much ink or pixels in productivity books or blogs. Let us consider how to incorporate those in our mindset and our workflow, so that we can glorify God all the more in the work that we do.

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Are We Raising a Generation of Helpless Kids?

Mickey Goodman writes a fascinating piece:

When a college freshman received a C- on her first test, she literally had a meltdown in class. Sobbing, she texted her mother who called back, demanding to talk to the professorimmediately (he, of course, declined). Another mother accompanied her child on a job interview, then wondered why he didn’t get the job.

A major employer reported that during a job interview, a potential employee told him that she would have his job within 18 months. It didn’t even cross her mind that he had worked 20 years to achieve his goal.

The Power of Just Showing Up

Michael Kelley:

All of us know the feeling of kicking yourself for missing something. Sometimes it’s as simple as going to sleep before the 4th quarter of a football game; other times it’s that you make the conscious choice to one place instead of another – maybe it’s staying at the office instead of being at the ball game or the dance recital – and then knowing immediately that you missed something big. Something important. Of second guessing yourself, over and over again, knowing that you could have made different scheduling choices to be where you ought to have been but you didn’t.

Get Defending Your Faith in today’s $5 Friday at Ligonier.org

Today you can get Defending Your Faith teaching series by R.C. Sproul (audio & video download) for only $5 in today’s $5 Friday sale at Ligonier.org. Other items on sale:

  • Sammy and His Shepherd by Susan Hunt (hardcover)
  • Blood Work by Anthony Carter (ePub + MOBI)
  • Gospel Wakefulness by Jared Wilson (ePub)

$5 Friday ends tonight at 11:59:59 PM Eastern.

Why Lies Digest So Well

Douglas Wilson:

As Flannery O’Connor put it, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” But a falsehood, as Chesterton notes, is engineered precisely so that the listeners would in fact be able to stomach it. Stomachability is a design feature when it comes to a lie. Who would invent lies that nobody is going to want to believe?

Lessons From The Ringmaster

Kim Shay:

We are not obliged to give famous Christians blind loyalty. We can read their books and enjoy their preaching, and maybe we’ll get weak-kneed if one of them tweets at us. But we don’t owe them anything other than the exhortation Christ gave us to love our neighbours as ourselves. We owe them kindness and consideration, and treatment fitting a brother or sister in the Lord. But we don’t have to follow them, constantly applaud them, or in contrast, constantly castigate them when they do the unthinkable and act like humans. And yes, we should expect them to act with integrity in their dealings, and no, we should not make excuses for them when they do not.

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10 Steps to Preach From Your iPad

Tim Challies:

About a year ago, or maybe a little more, Paul Martin (the Senior Pastor at Grace Fellowship Church) went away for a couple of weeks and left me to preach. Because I prepare my sermons digitally, I was finding it increasingly silly to convert them into the older medium of paper. They say that “while the cat’s away the mice will play,” so I took this as an opportunity to begin preaching from an iPad instead of a paper manuscript. I have been preaching from that iPad ever since.

There are many ways to go about it, but I will tell you about the system I have been using for the past year or so. I have found that it works very well. You need only two programs to do this: Pages and GoodReader (or Word and GoodReader if you use a PC). While I continue to use a full-size iPad, this system will work just as well with the Mini.

Note: this is more or less what I do, except I convert my notes to an ePub file and have my manuscript open in iBooks.

Zondervan’s perspective series on sale for the Kindle

Zondervan has put a number of their multi-view books on sale for $2.99:

Also on sale:

Is It Actually Hard to Be a Pastor?

Mike Niebauer:

As a pastor who often hears other ministers teach and preach, I am disturbed by the number of times pastors allude to their jobs as being particularly difficult. Yes, we face many challenges—ministry may involve times of high emotional and spiritual duress—but I don’t think these difficulties merit special recognition with regard to other vocations. After all, being a pastor involves almost no manual labor, which makes it physically easier than most other occupations in history. It doesn’t require a 60- to 80-hour work week, unless you somehow equate longer working hours with more of the Holy Spirit’s presence. And although the emotional and spiritual challenges faced are difficult, teachers and social workers—to take just two examples—face similar or greater obstacles.

New Research: Discipleship in Canada

Ed Stetzer:

Two-thirds (66 percent) of churchgoers surveyed agree with the statement, “I desire to please and honour Jesus in all I do.”

However, when asked how often they read the Bible outside of church, a third (34 percent) say rarely or never. Only 11 percent read the Bible daily. Just over a quarter (27 percent) read it at least a few times a week or once a month.

Only 3 percent say they do in-depth Bible study on a daily basis. More than half (53 percent) rarely or never study the Bible.

Most didn’t seem to feel bad about skipping the Bible reading.

Sixty-two percent disagree with the statement, “If I go several days without reading the Bible, I find myself unfulfilled.”

Get Blood Work in today’s $5 Friday at Ligonier.org

Today you can get Blood Work by Anthony Carter (ePub and MOBI) for only $5 in today’s $5 Friday sale at Ligonier.org. Other items on sale:

  • Contentment, Prosperity, and God’s Glory by Jeremiah Borroughs (paperback)
  • The God in Our Midst by Daniel Hyde (hardcover)
  • Sola Scriptura (paperback)

$5 Friday ends tonight at 11:59:59 PM Eastern.

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I Get Very Suspicious When…

Stephen Altrogge:

My generation is infatuated with the new and immediate. We love the newest gadgets and newest movies and newest theological ideas. We would be wise, to paraphrase C.S. Lewis, to let the fresh winds of church history blow through our musty brains.

I’m about 95% sure that at least one person who reads this post will remind me of the fact that many Christians owned slaves. In response I would say two things. First, it is my educated guess that many men and women throughout church history who have defended sinful practices were not born again. This is the case when it comes to the Crusades, slavery, the Spanish Inquisition, and many other sad events. These events and practices were promoted by those who embraced cultural Christianity not true Christianity.

But this is not always the case.

Get The Heroic Boldness of Martin Luther in today’s $5 Friday at Ligonier.org

Today you can get The Heroic Boldness of Martin Luther by Steven Lawson (hardcover) for only $5 in today’s $5 Friday sale at Ligonier.org. Other items on sale:

  • John by R.C. Sproul (ePub)
  • Together for the Gospel 2006 (audio & video download)
  • Are We Together? by R.C. Sproul (ePub and MOBI)

$5 Friday ends tonight at 11:59:59 PM Eastern. And don’t forget—Ligonier is also offering The Gospel Focus of Charles Spurgeon by Steven Lawson is free until the end of the month.

What does it mean to be gospel-centered?

Progressing Downward

Tullian Tchividjian:

A couple weeks ago I talked about Reader’s Digest Christianity, and how it reduced the Christian faith to pithy, easily-achievable goals that ensure our personal improvement. Here, I have a different (though depressingly similar) target: “LiveStrong” Christianity. LiveStrong bracelets are today even more popular than the infamous WWJD bracelets were 10 years ago, despite the public fall from grace of their namesake, Lance Armstrong.

A Free Gift to Celebrate Crossway’s 75th Anniversary

…we’re giving away the ESV Study Bible Web App for FREE through the end of November. This award-winning resource features the study notes, maps, charts, illustrations, and theological articles found in the print edition—all integrated intoESVBible.org’s easy-to-use web interface.

 The Value of Shutting Up

Mike Leake:

I know that “shut up” isn’t a nice term. We discourage our kids from using that term. But I think a violent term like that is needed here. “Shut up” is what you tell yourself to do when a million feelings are running wild in your heart and you know that it wouldn’t be good to share those feelings.

Oh, wait. Do people still do that? Or have we bought into the idea that letting our feelings fly is always the best course of action?

Links I like

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Piper on Pastors’ Pay

Great interview with Collin Hansen. For example:

Why shouldn’t a pastor of a growing and thriving church earn more money as a reward for his hard work and incentive to stay around? After all, the church would probably suffer financially and numerically if he left.

I never felt that I was the church’s privilege, but that she is mine. To be at Bethlehem was gift, all gift. The mindset that I am so valuable I deserve any benefits that come from my ministry is alien to the spirit of Christ. He came to serve and give his life a ransom for many. Jesus was absolutely indispensable in the ministry he came to achieve, and the whole orientation of it was give, give, give—not get, get, get.

My question is: Why would a pastor want to get rich?

Get In Christ Alone in today’s $5 Friday at Ligonier.org

Today you can get In Christ Alone by Sinclair Ferguson for only $5 in today’s $5 Friday sale at Ligonier.org. Other items on sale:

  • 1-2 Peter by R.C. Sproul (ePub)
  • a gift certificate for the Ligonier store
  • Why Christ Came: 31 Meditations on the Incarnation (paperback)

$5 Friday ends tonight at 11:59:59 PM Eastern. And don’t forget—Ligonier is also offering The Gospel Focus of Charles Spurgeon by Steven Lawson is free until the end of the month.

Free Online Class with R.C. Sproul Jr. on God’s Sovereignty in Suffering

You’re invited to join a free online class from Ligonier Connect studying God’s sovereignty over our suffering, personally moderated by Dr. R.C. Sproul Jr. Whether you’ve recently experienced hardship in your life or would like to be better prepared for when it comes, this course will help you better understand God’s purpose in our pain and suffering.

What do Reformed guys mean by “Reformed”?

Interesting piece from Kevin DeYoung, using John Piper as an example:

For many people, John Piper is the most well known and most vigorous proponent of Reformed theology in the evangelical world today. He’s the guy who calls himself a seven point Calvinist. He exults in the sovereignty of God at every turn. He is, according to Mark Dever, “the single most potent factor in the recent rise of Reformed theology.” Of course, John Piper is Reformed.

But for others, it’s just as obvious that John Piper is not really Reformed. Reformed theology is defined by the Reformed confessions and finds its expression in Reformed and Presbyterian ecclesiastical structures, so clearly John Piper—as a credobapstist from the Baptist General Conference—is not Reformed. Why should “Reformed Baptist” sound any less strange than “Lutheran Baptist”?

God Better Save My Kids Because I Sure As Heck Can’t

Stephen Altrogge:

So often parenting doesn’t feel like parenting. It feels more like riot control, and I’m using the word “control” veeeeeerrrrry loosely.

Family devotions often feel the same way. I’ve got all the right resources. I’ve got the Jesus Storybook Bible and The Big Picture Story Bible and Big Thoughts for Little Thinkers. I’ve read Shepherding A Child’s Heart and am regularly trying to address heart matters with my kids. But despite all these great resources my family devotion times often feel more circus than sacred.

Luther and the Reformation: Free today from Ligonier Ministries

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To celebrate Reformation Day, Ligonier Ministries is offering an audio-video download of R.C. Sproul’s 10-part teaching series, Luther and the Reformation, free.

Centuries after his death, Martin Luther is celebrated as an intellectual giant, a brave opponent of corruption, a shaper of culture, indeed, as one of the most significant figures in Western history. Many people, however, are unaware of the events of Luther’s life that led him to make a courageous stand for the gospel in the sixteenth century. In this series, R.C. Sproul provides a thorough introduction to the life and thought of Martin Luther. With an eye to the lessons we can learn today, Dr. Sproul traces the major events of Luther’s life and explores the gospel recovered by Luther and the other Protestant Reformers.

Here’s a look at part one:

(RSS readers: click through to see the video)

This special offers ends tonight at 11:59 EDT, so act quickly.

Around the Interweb (08/01)

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D.A. Carson’s “The God Who Is There” Audio Now Available

The audio for D.A. Carson’s lecture series, The God Who Is There, is now up at the Gospel Coalition. A new DVD series is being released in the fall. Here’s a preview:

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.961150&w=425&h=350&fv=]
Audio and Video for D. A. Carson’s The God Who …, posted with vodpod

In Other News

Conference Message: Burk Parsons answers the question: “Is Calvinism good for the Church?”

News: Has the environmental damage from the BP oil spill been exaggerated?

Ministry Opportunities: Desiring God has a number of internships available. Check it out.

In Case You Missed It

Here are a few of this week’s notable posts:

The audio from July 25′s sermon, Spiritual Poverty and the Worship of God

A review of Andreas Kostenberger & Michael Kruger’s latest, The Heresy of Orthodoxy

John Piper answers the question, “Should Christians read the “holy” books of other religions?”

Some thoughts on Abigail’s favorite new record, Meet the Rizers

Eschatology Matters (even if we don’t want it to)

Calvin: Knowing yourself begins with knowing God