What I Read Online - 05/09/2012 (a.m.)

• This Momentary Marriage: Ian & Larissa’s Story – Justin Taylor

  • John Piper writes:

     
    

    I tremble with the glad responsibility of introducing you to Ian & Larissa Murphy in this video. Tremble, because it is their story and so personal. So delicate. So easily abused. So unfinished. Glad, because Christ is exalted over all things.

     

    I am so thankful for Desiring God (a free-but-not-free blog and ministry), for books like This Momentary Marriage, and for the faithful testimony of people like Ian and Larissa. May stories like this abound ten-thousand-fold.

• Phil Johnson “A Bridge Too Far” « Reformed Baptist Fellowship

  • Phil Johnson “A Bridge Too Far”

• Is God Calling You to Be a Pastor? – Justin Taylor

  • Is God Calling You to Be a Pastor?

    

     

     

    A conversation with Dave Harvey, author of the new book Am I Called? The Summons to Pastoral Ministry (Crossway, 2012).

• Freer Than Thou: How Wisdom Avoids Legalism and License – White Horse Inn Blog

  • One way of asserting this superiority, waving the “I’m-one-of-those-who-get-it” flag, is to turn the taboos of our past on their head.
  • What’s interesting in the Lord’s parable is that the prodigal son never once expressed superiority toward his older brother. The Father had enough love and forgiveness to go around: for both brothers. Enough to unite them in fraternal bonds
  • Even middle-aged people sometimes try to mimick the youth culture. We see this not only in the sloppy dress that has now become de rigeur, but in church services that borrow from the trivial banalities of pop culture as if it could authentically convey the riches of Christ from generation to generation.
  • Most non-Christians I know get that. They’re not impressed by preachers sharing their sex life in vivid detail; it sounds like someone who just discovered that sex isn’t a sin.
  • It’s all about growing up
  • In Reformed circles it’s often called the “cage phase”: that familiar introductory period when neophyte Calvinists ought to be held in a medium-security facility to ensure the safety of others and themselves.
  • Growing in wisdom is a lot more difficult.
  • If wisdom is the general capacity for evaluating and following the Good, the True, and the Beautiful (which, Proverbs tells us, begins with theology—i.e., the fear of God), then prudence is that particular exercise of wisdom that involves discrimination.
  • I think that Aristotle would tell a mother who is worried about her children seeing any movies, reading any fiction, or hanging out with the wrong crowd, “Give them an alternative prize.” In other words, it is at least in part up to us as parents to provide an environment where truth, goodness, and beauty are known and experienced in depth. If they are gripped by the truth, they will less likely to believe the latest lie. If they become intimate with that which is good, noble, and worthy of respect, they will be less inclined toward the shallow narcissism that feeds immorality in the first place.

• Moore to the Point – What Maurice Sendak Can Teach the Church

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