Over the last couple of months, I've read seven C. S. Lewis books and posted extracts or posts about them here. So I...
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After my post about memorizing scripture in January, I received an email from a busy wife and mother named Cherie who...
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A few weeks ago I posted some journalling tips. This time I want to share some tips for memorizing the Word of Go...
Read on...Another quote from Speaking the truth in Love by David Powlison:
The place of grace? Biblical counseling is the ministry of God’s grace to individuals, just as biblical preaching is the ministry of God’s grace to crowds. Grace is the only context in which to take any soul to task. (p48)
Closing words from chapter 3.
David Powlison on one of two types of people we counsel:
They are fundamentally closed to what the true God is all about. Perhaps they view God as “the errand boy to satisfy [their] wandering desires” as Bob Dylan sang. They might talk God-talk and be religiously active and have spiritual experiences…but they want something else out of it all. Or they might simply not care about God’s point of view. Most non-hearers crave thinking well of themselves. They get angry when God insists we glorify him instead of serving our lust for self-esteem. Such people don’t want to need Jesus. They want to be okay on their own. They want to be the hero of their own spiritual journey, not a small part in Jesus’ story.
From Speaking Truth In Love (p. 37). New Growth Press. Kindle Edition.
Over the last couple of months, I’ve read seven C. S. Lewis books and posted extracts or posts about them here. So I thought I’d write an index of those posts for quick reference.
From Surprised by Joy:
From The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe:
From Out of the Silent Planet:
From The Screwtape Letters
From Mere Christianity
From The Business of Heaven
From The Last Battle
Regardless of whether you read my articles or not, every Christian should read Mere Christianity, and every child should read the Chronicles of Narnia. I also enjoyed Out of the Silent Planet, and I’m not normally a Sci Fi person.
The Last Battle is the last book in the Chronicles of Naria and tells of the end of Narnia and the afterlife of Narnians. Some have said that it tells us something about the Eschatology of C.S. Lewis. With this in mind, I have written an analysis of the book in an attempt to examine how it aligns with Biblical references to eschatology and, if possible, assess Lewis’s own eschatological perspective.
One of the nice things about the Mac is the nature of the software market around it. There are a lot of small developers doing some great products. I know there are lots of small development shops on Windows too, but my experience with small apps on Windows is different. There are some developers who seem to pride themselves on fit and finish, and Mac users tend to demand fit and finish. For my part too, I was always reluctant to add lots of little apps to Windows in case it made performance suffer, which I was caught with several times.
Anyway, one of these small developers who have created a really nice app is the team behind Alfred. Alfred is a simple app launcher which you can ring up with a keyboard command. What I love about Alfred is it’s ease of use, and the power of it’s extensibility engine. On average I use Alfred around 32 times daily.
From the Business of Heaven:
It is a terrible thing that the worst of all the vices can smuggle itself into the very centre of our religious life. But you can see why. The other, and less bad, vices come from the devil working on us through our animal nature. But this does not come through our animal nature at all. It comes direct from Hell. It is purely spiritual: consequently, it is far more subtle and deadly. For the same reason, Pride can often be used to beat down the simpler vices. Teachers, in fact, often appeal to a boy’s Pride, or, as they call it, his self-respect, to make him behave decently: many a man has overcome cowardice, or lust, or ill-temper by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity—that is, by Pride. The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride—just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer. For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.
Self-righteousness is one of the biggest enemies of western Christians (including me). We must root it out and see it crucified.
Jay Adams on reconciling God and evil.
Simply this: God controls all things, even the existence and activity of evil.
We must remove the word “allows” when speaking of God and evil. He doesn’t merely allow evil to occur. If so, there would be another power, or force, in the universe as great as (or nearly so) as God. It is a force wanting to express itself in various evil ways, but must seek permission from God to do so. So when evil occurs, God has given way to this force and allows it to have its way .
But God is in control of all things. What does that really mean? Think about it—who is the force that determines if and when evil occurs-for His own purposes? There is no second god-like force; He is the sole force in the universe. All evil is according to His determinate purposes—always for some good purpose. God doesn’t allow evil; He has planned all good and evil. Actually, all the “evil” we talk about today is actually a good that we shall someday see to be such. God doesn’t allow it—He foreordains it.
How did Cherie, a busy mother memorize 32 chapters of the Bible? Is it possible for you to memorize scripture? Read through the methods Cherie used and see for yourself. It is possible. Don’t start with the goal of memorizing 32 chapters, but start with a goal of memorizing a chapter and work from there.
If you haven’t already read Cherie’s story, it is encouraging, and I encourage you to read it.
After my post about memorizing scripture in January, I received an email from a busy wife and mother named Cherie who told me she had been memorizing scripture and had now memorized 32 chapters in total, and was on her way to memorizing more.
Cherie was willing to share her story, so here it is. In this post she explains how she started and the benefits she has received from it. On Wednesday she shares her methods for memorizing scripture. If you are a busy mother, be encouraged that it is possible to learn the word of God well, in spite of your hectic schedule. Like anything worthwhile, it takes consistent effort, but it is possible.
Referring to Ephesians 5:25-33, Lewis observes the following:
The husband is the head of the wife just in so far as he is to her what Christ is to the Church. He is to love her as Christ loved the Church—read on -and gave his life for her (Ephesians 5:25). This headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is most unworthy of him, is—in her own mere nature—least lovable.
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