What I Read Online - 12/02/2011 (a.m.)

• Renewing Our Minds: Faithful Presence in the Local Church – The Gospel Coalition Blog

  • Practically, pastors can cultivate these values by pursuing longevity and stability within a particular local church.
  • In the forum’s final session, Thompson challenged the pastors to look beyond any temporary conflicts or discontentment in our ministry locations and stay put. It is possible to attend a conference or read a book and begin to dream of doing ministry somewhere other than where God has planted us. Yet many of those thoughts, if we are honest, are motivated by pride and not love.

• The Complementarian Publishing Conundrum – Justin Taylor

  • Sometimes I wonder if egalitarians hope to triumph in the debate on the role of women by publishing book after book on the subject. Each work propounds a new thesis which explains why the traditional interpretation is flawed. Complementarians could easily give in from sheer exhaustion, thinking that so many books written by such a diversity of different authors could scarcely be wrong. Further, it is difficult to keep writing books promoting the complementarian view. Our view of the biblical text has not changed dramatically in the last twenty five years. Should we continue to write books that essentially promote traditional interpretations? Is the goal of publishing to write what is true or what is new? One of the dangers of evangelical publishing is the desire to say something novel. Our evangelical publishing houses could end up like those in Athens so long ago: “Now all the Athenians and the strangers visiting there used to spend their time in nothing other than telling or hearing something new” (Acts 17:21, NASB).

• Heaven is Your Snow Day – Kevin DeYoung

  • If you aren’t from around here, you might not understand the title of this post. But trust me, heaven has to be like the best snow day ever. In midst of darkness, in the midst of cold and gloom, in the midst of danger and foreboding skies, you hope and hope. You wonder if tomorrow might be the day. You wonder if it might all be worth it. You wonder if you’ll wake up to hear happy news. You wonder if tomorrow is your snow day. And when it comes, you will play and sing and spend your hours among angels.

     

    To all who are crestfallen, brokenhearted, afraid, or alone, take heart: winter may last for the night, but a snow day comes in the morning.

• Feet and Inches: Understanding Christ’s Universal Reign Through the Lens of Smeaton and Kuyper- Credo Magazine

  • On the contrary, this testimony shows that every foot of ground in the world belongs to Christ, that His followers can be loyal to Him in every position, and that in every country and corner where they may placed they have to act their part for their Lord.  The world is judicially awarded to Christ as its owner and Lord (p. 300).
  • First, Christ Rules Over Satan and Scholars
  • Second, Christ Rules Over Space and Studies
  • Third, Christ Rules As Redeemer and Creator

• Discerning the Good and Bad in Technology – Justin Taylor

  • If we become what we behold, my concern with technology is not what we do with it, but what it does to us.

• The Origin of Calvinism by John Piper | Reformed Theology Articles at Ligonier.org

  • John Calvin was imperfect. His renown is not owing to infallibility but to his relentless allegiance to the Scriptures as the Word of God in a day when the Bible had been almost swallowed up by church tradition.
  • What Calvin saw in the Bible, above all things, was the majesty of God. He said that through the Scriptures “in a way that surpasses human judgment, we are made absolutely certain, just as if we beheld there the majesty of God Himself.”

• Does Hebrews Tell Us to Move On from the Gospel? | 9Marks

  • First, he warns his hearers not to fall away from the faith
  • Then he spends an entire chapter explaining Jesus’ high priesthood by comparing him to Melchizedek
  • Then the author spends three full chapters explaining how Christ, through his sacrificial death and resurrection, has inaugurated the new covenant promised by Jeremiah
  • In other words, the author of Hebrews doesn’t move on from the gospel; he moves deeper into the gospel. He doesn’t leave the gospel behind, but instead claws his way into more and more of its riches.

• The clamour for celebrated preachers « The Wanderer

  • Notice Shedd’s thoughtfulness. Celebrated preachers are not in themselves the problem; the issue is when we are not satisfied with anything else, when the messenger is elevated above the message. It creates a climate of mere performance in which the church suffers immeasurably.

• Wardrobe Malfunction – White Horse Inn Blog

  • I don’t think this is what Handel envisioned:

• Why you should learn the Shorter Catechism – Reformation21 Blog

  • The moral of the story is: If you’re single or have got daughters learn the Shorter Catechism.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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