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Laughter in Adversity
Laughter in the face of adversity is the first step to profound joy in triumph.
—Nathan Wilson, Christian Books, Truth, and Adultish Readers
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Knowledge That Matters
Knowledge That Matters ➔ Scott Adams on the limits and benefits of others assessing our abilities, from his own experience with the cartoon, Dilbert:
The two opinions about your abilities that you should never trust are your own opinions, and the majority’s opinions. But if a handful of people who have a good track record of identifying talent think you have something, you just might.
Justin Taylor’s rewording for Christians:
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Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing
Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing Words: Robert Robinson, Methodist pastor, at age 22 in the year 1757. Music: John Wyeth
Background: on Wikipedia
Come Thou Fount of every blessing
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of God’s unchanging love.
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Blowing Smoke
When unbelievers blow smoke, it is not our task to try to weave something out of that smoke. It is our task to set up a big industrial-sized fan to blow it all away.
—Doug Wilson, Thinks I Have Thunk
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Cold Before Long
You are very hot for mercy, but I will cool you; this frame shall not last always; many have been as hot as you for a spirit, but I have quenched their zeal….What care I, saith he, though I be seven years in chilling your heart if I can do it at last? Continual rocking will lull a crying child asleep. I will ply it close, but I will have my end accomplished.
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An Environment of Grace
A major part of pastoral ministry is preaching the doctrines of grace and managing an environment of grace. The latter is harder to accomplish than the former. It is more intuitive. It requires more humility and self-awareness.
—Ray Ortlund, Centered on one or the other
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Remember the Signs
I read chapter two of The Silver Chair to the kids last night before bed (my first time through, too). Jill meets Aslan, and he explains the reason he called her away from Experiment House and reveals her mission. Before blowing her to Narnia, Aslan urges and warns Jill.
[R]emember, remember, remember the Signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of the night.
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Tapering Off in Sin
At the prayer meeting, not many people ask for prayer so that they might taper off in their adulteries, or their thefts, or all the lies they are spreading around town. But [bitterness, envy, anger, and pride] are respectable—we have a delicate way of acknowledging them without really dealing with them. And one of the reasons we get away with touching on them lightly is that the main problem is clearly … the other guy’s.
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A Story Culture
A Story Culture ➔ Interesting article about attention to the hierarchy of information, data, knowledge, and wisdom at Rands in Repose titled, A Story Culture. The point: people like stories, and synthesis-ability (wisdom) produces the best stories.
The construction of a story has very little to do with writing. It has to do with the semi-magical process of you taking disparate pieces of information, combining them into something new, which includes your experience and understanding, and then giving them to someone else.
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Showing Up Early
If 80% of success is just showing up, 90% is showing up early.
—Jeffrey Zeldman, Free Advice: Show Up Early
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Stop the World
Stop the World ➔ Last week, George Packer wrote an article titled, Stop the World, for The New Yorker. Though I use Twitter, I still enjoyed his old-media world cynicism, as well as his unwritten call to consider how much we imbibe.
The notion of sending and getting brief updates to and from dozens or thousands of people every few minutes is an image from information hell. I’m told that Twitter is a river into which I can dip my cup whenever I want.
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Omnivorous Attentiveness
[C. S. Lewis had] omnivorous attentiveness.
—Alan Jacobs on C. S. Lewis in The Narnian, quoted by Piper in Lessons from an Inconsolable Soul
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treacle
trea•cle noun – [tree-k*uh*l]
definition: lit-British word for “molasses”; the syrup remaining after sugar is crystallized out of cane or beet juice . fig-contrived or unrestrained sentimentality, cloying speech or flattery.
example usage:
Multitudes of children raised on a treacly diet of seeker-sensitive religion have grown up to associate the label evangelical with superficiality.
Phil Johnson, The Neo-Liberal Stealth Offensive
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Behind His Back
Gossip involves saying behind a person’s back what you would never say to his or her face. Flattery means saying to a person’s face what you would never say behind his or her back.
—R. Kent Hughes, Disciplines of a Godly Man, 139
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Ends up as a Racket
Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.
—Eric Hoffer, The Temper of Our Time, quoted by Carl Trueman, The Real Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
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First, Care
Own your distractions, resist fiddly half-measures, and never for a minute allow yourself to believe that productivity systems, space pens, or a writing app that plays new age music while you stare at a blank page in full-screen mode can ever teach you anything about how to care.
—Merlin Mann, First, Care
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Fantastic but Subordinate
A Really Fantastic End, but Still Subordinate Doug Wilson responded to Derek Thomas’ recent article in Tabletalk regarding where evangelism rates on the ladder of importance.
One of the glories of the Reformation was that it restored the glory of God as the foundation of all things. It is infinitely more important that God be glorified than that I be saved. Fortunately for us, He is glorified in the salvation of sinners, but for us to put evangelism front and center is one of the best and surest ways to dilute the gospel itself.
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A Less Busy Heart
Learning to pray doesn’t offer you a less busy life; it offers you a less busy heart.
—Paul Miller, A Praying Life, 23
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Bad Christian Writing
Bad Christian writing is usually bad because it is derivative and workmanlike. No new insights. No panache.
—Kevin DeYoung, On Writing, Pt 3
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Running to Heaven
What would they judge of thee if they knew thy heart began to fail thee in thy journey, or thy sins began to allure thee, and to persuade thee to stop thy race? would they not call thee a thousand fools? and say, O, that he did but see what we see, feel what we feel, and taste of the dainties that we taste of! O, if he were here one quarter of an hour, to behold, to see, to feel, to taste and enjoy but the thousandth part of what we enjoy, what would he do?
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Dangerous Calling
Dangerous Calling Two messages by Paul Tripp at the 2010 Desiring God Pastor’s pre-conference seminar.
The Pastor: Who Do We Think He Is Anyway?
Ministry is war. That war is not fought in programs or finances. It is fought on the turf of your heart.
The greatest danger to the church of Christ…rests in the heart of the person that stands in the pulpit.
The Pastor: Not Yet Perfect, Still Under Attack.