Aaron Armstrong

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productivity

Weekend reading (6/04)

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Weekend Reading at Blogging Theologically

Today is the last day to get these books on evangelism from Crossway:

Also check out Developments in Biblical Counseling by J. Cameron Fraser ($2.99) and two by David Sitton for 99¢ each:

The Oldest Lie and the Master Surgeon

Lore Wilbert:

I drove to New York on Tuesday for a quick respite in the hills and valleys of home and used the driving time to catch up with numerous friends on the phone. We all have had hopes dashed and disappointments furrowed deep within us and it reminded me nobody gets through unscathed. We are all the recipients of Adam’s sin, all billions and billions of us. To believe we alone are the only ones who get it, who have experienced this kind of acute pain, who feel alone in a world full of people who get everything they want is the enemy’s oldest lie. He told himself it first and then fell, and has been telling everyone else it since. “If you can’t beat ‘em, make ‘em join you,” is his mantra. If you have ever felt alone—if you feel alone today—then you have been on the listening end of the enemy’s bullhorn.

Politics Ought #NeverTrump Principle

Jared Wilson nails it:

I refuse to play this game. I refuse to see my right to cast a vote as a zero sum endeavor. In my estimation, the operating value in voting Trump/Clinton to ensure Clinton/Trump doesn’t win is not principle at all, but politics. It’s a power move. It’s believing that what matters is party control.

How to Get Your Email Inbox to Zero Every Day (Updated)

If this is a concern for you, you may want to read this paper from What’s Best Next.

13 Reasons We Need Church History

Matthew Hall:

I love teaching on a wide range of historical subjects. Get me lecturing to undergraduate American history students on the Cold War and the emergence of political conservatism, and I’m in my scholarly happy place. Step into my world history class and you’ll find me fired up to explain how colonization reshaped the entire world.

But teaching church history is different. While I bring some basic assumptions (and standards of historical research) to any historical study, studying and teaching church history is a profoundly theological enterprise.

Seven Ways to Improve Your Preaching

Kevin DeYoung:

Below are seven practical ways we can improve our preaching. And please note: I deliberately use the words “we” and “our,” because I’m thinking of my sermons as much as anyone’s. These suggestions are things I continue to work on as a preacher, sometimes with success and often with less progress than I would like.

The Modesto Manifesto

Darryl Dash on how Billy Graham and his team’s protections against four key areas of temptation—sex, money, exaggeration, and criticism—can still serve us today.

The Politics of Never Growing Up

Samuel James:

The basement is Never Land. The university is Never Land. Even dating is Never Land, thanks to Tinder and a hook up culture that eschews commitment with the safety of online anonymity. Pop culture, with its endless fixation on comic books, child fantasy adventures, and nostalgia, is Never Land. Our American landscape is a monument to the heedless pleasures of knowing it all, playing it all, and sexing it all.

Links I like

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Why Is God Punishing Me?

Mike Leake:

Ever heard those words? Ever said them? You go through a season of intense suffering and you assume that God must be disciplining you. You’ve really got no idea what He is punishing you for, but you know it must be something. As you search through your life and nothing comes to mind you start to get a bit angry with God for punishing you without reason.

Pope Francis and the Footnote That Could Split the Catholic Church

Trevin Wax:

So, when it comes to internal squabbles over Catholic teaching and practice, conservative evangelicals are in an awkward position. Because we disagree with the papacy and with Catholic doctrine in a number of places, our differences with Catholicism are usually more profound and foundational than the disagreements between conservative and progressive Catholics. On some contested issues, we disagree with the most conservative of Catholics, and yet strangely enough, don’t want the Church to change its teaching because we hold precious many of the other truths that Catholic teaching on marriage protects. We worry that change in one area might eventually jeopardize other, more foundational doctrines.

We Don’t Have a Right to Be Idle

Matt Perman shares a brief, but challenging, reminder from William Wilberforce.

Cancel Your Trips to Sodom and Sinai

Erik Raymond:

Fear is [a] powerful thing. Depending upon its severity it can preoccupy our minds and deeply affect our bodies. When fear grips you there is scarcely anything you can do except try to deal with it. Even when you think you have it out of your mind you are still dealing with it through patterns of manipulation and control.

The highest level of fear is fear of God. By this I do not mean a healthy, reverent fear of God but a cowering, uncertain, insecure, paranoid fear of judgment. How do you deal with this? How can anyone deal with the reality of an angry God and a place like hell designed to showcase God’s wrath by eternally tormenting rebels?

From my seat there are three common ways to deal with this kind of fear.

Four things the toddler knows about marriage

Lore Wilbert:

In a world of comparisons, ten months of marriage has nothing on 34 years of singleness, so consider me a toddler in the ways of I Dos. I know very little, but here are four things I do know and I thought I’d share them with you today.

Links I like

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Kindle deals for Christian readers

Five Reasons You Should Do Most of Your Sermon Preparation on Monday

Thom Rainer:

Lately, I’ve been hearing many pastors talk about the importance of doing most of their sermon preparation on Monday. To be sure, this approach does not apply to all pastors, but I thought it would be helpful to learn why many of them value Monday as their key day for sermon preparation.

Some thoughts on productivity and leadership from a creative

Daniel Darling:

What I am learning is that productivity is not so much a template or a system, but a way of life. Men like Perman and Hyatt and Patterson are helpful not because they offer a one-size-fits-all way of doing things, but because they recognize that each person is wired differently. There are common things that everyone should do, obviously,but what works for some may not work for others. And vice versa. the bottom line is to ask the question, “How best can I invest my time, my gifts, and my resources for the people I’m call to serve?”

Please Keep This Between Us

Lore Wilbert:

There’s a chair in the corner of my office at the church were I work. It’s a shade of gold I can’t quite name and its fabric is velour of sorts. Every week someone cries on that chair. Not a week has gone by that someone has not cried on that chair. Sometimes I’m the one crying on it. Often the person sitting there asks me to just keep this conversation between them and me, and every single time I have to say, “I’m sorry, I can’t promise that.”

God’s Official Spokesman

David Murray:

Imagine then how much harder it would be to represent God (not just a man), to a hostile world (not just a pack of journalists), and on the full range of the deepest and greatest issues facing all of humanity (not just relatively trivial matters like Obamacare).

Who could fill such shoes? Who could perform such a role? Who could last a day in the role of God’s chief communications officer?

The Beautiful Reversal

Mike Leake shares his amazement with Jeremiah 31:4.

“You Won’t Be So Passionate When You’re 40″

Erik Raymond:

I tried to get a meeting with the pastor. He was something of a rock-star at our church. He ignored my emails and requests. His secretary kept me at arm’s length like a good pastoral bouncer. At the same time I needed to let him know about my concerns. I loved this church.

Finally, through a connection with one of his associates, I got in there. I was told that I had 30 minutes. I was going to make it count. I went through my outline (yes, it was typed out). I pleaded with him in shameless tears about the centrality of the gospel, the Scriptures, and the church.

He sat stoic. He was unmoved. He just stared at me. After baldly suggesting that I go to another church he cut me off and said, “Wait ’til you’re 40, things will be different. You won’t be so passionate.”

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