Once or twice a month, I gather up links to some of my favourite reading and resources from the past fortnight. I’d love to know what you’ve been reading in the comments too.
Articles
Beg to Be Rebuked: Six Habits for Better Accountability
An excellent article about how crucial accountability is in the fight for holiness. Marshall Segal’s six habits are highly practical, and help overcome some of the classic mistakes we make in accountability.
Think of Not Having Christ!
Tim Challies shares a wonderful passage from J.R. Miller’s 1911 book Self Control. “You think he has not been doing anything for you, when, in fact, he has been crowning you with loving kindness and tender mercies all your days.”
7 things to help you actually read the Bible
Practical guidance for Bible reading from Eternity News. I particularly like #3: Buy an alarm clock. I did this just the other week and I’ve found it so helpful in keeping me from checking my phone before I spend time with God.
The Poetry of the Puritans
I’ll basically share any articles about the Puritans, because they’ve been such a help to me. “In handling Scripture, the doctrine of God and salvation, we are trafficking in the highest ideas on which the human mind can meditate, we are straining our necks and squinting our eyes in an attempt to see and feel something of the glory of the God whom we worship.”
Discovering the Deeper Roots of our Habits
David Murray has been writing a series of posts about James Clear’s book Atomic Habits. It’s not a Christian book, but many of his concepts are helpful in thinking about our own sinful habits. I particularly enjoyed this article in the series.
Podcasts
Why Is God Withholding Marriage from Me? (Ask Pastor John, episode 1303)
“It’s not wrong to have sorrow. But it is wrong not to rejoice and to live for others, and to become absorbed in cynicism and bitterness and self-pity.” Balanced counsel for single Christians.
Be Devoted to Prayer (Desiring God)
John Piper gives us biblical and practical instruction on why and how we should pray.
What Your Grumbling Says About God (TGC Word of the Week)
Grumbling is one of those sins that we downplay, disguise, or even openly accept. I needed this rebuke from Brian Davis on how our complaints reveal what we really think about God.
Tweets
A 90 minute worship service, accounts for only 1.3% of waking hours in a given week, during which we and our people are constantly formed and catechized by the world and assaulted by the flesh, devil, and sufferings of life.
Let’s make the most of the time today.
— Duke Kwon (@dukekwondc) January 27, 2019
If you’re discontent now, different circumstances will not solve your discontent but just give you fresh reason to not be content.
It’s not your circumstances but your heart that needs to change.
Not where you are, but who you are.
Not your outside but your inside.
— Dane Ortlund (@daneortlund) January 29, 2019
Your heart needs your mind to think about heaven daily.
— Jackie Hill Perry (@JackieHillPerry) January 15, 2019
Our moment-by-moment decision: faith in God vs. panic about ourselves. Let’s ask this diagnostic question continually: Am I treating *God* as real right now, or am I treating *everything else* as more real than God right now?
— Ray Ortlund (@rayortlund) January 14, 2019
It is God alone that slays the native enmity of the heart– that takes away those evil dispositions that govern man– takes away the heart of stone and gives a soft heart– and makes him that was a hater of God, an enemy to God, to become friendly to His divine character.
— Lemuel Haynes (@theBlackPuritan) January 25, 2019