Tag: Tim Challies

Links for the Weekend (2023-04-07)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.

Did Jesus Rise From the Dead? Three Historical Facts (+ Four Explanations That Don’t Work)

Justin Taylor has compiled some summaries and videos that provide a good account of why the resurrection of Jesus is a historical reality.

Tim & Kathy Keller: The Resurrection is Historically Verifiable or Our Faith is Nothing

Here’s another link about the resurrection of Jesus. (‘Tis the season!) Tim and Kathy Keller discuss the necessity of a historically reliable resurrection in this video.

Follow Without Seeing, Die Without Receiving

What does it mean to follow God by faith? What does a life lived by faith look like? Tim Challies has some moving thoughts.

But as Christians, we live for a reward we cannot yet have and do not yet hold. We deny ourselves what would seem desirable and pleasurable in this life in favor of promised rewards that are much greater and much better—but that are withheld until the life to come. We set out by faith, not knowing where God will lead us and uncertain of all that he will require of us along the way. And when it comes time for us to die, we die trusting in God’s promises and seeing the promised reward with the eyes of faith. And then, we are certain, we receive from God blessings far greater than any we could know here.

On the WPCA Blog This Week

This week on the blog we published an article I wrote called Children: A Blessed Interruption. If you haven’t already seen it, check it out!

Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here. 

Links for the Weekend (2023-03-24)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.

If God Would Outsource His Sovereignty

Tim Challies imagines a scene in which we get to pick our life circumstances. Though we might shy away from difficult providences of God, this article reminds us how God uses them all.

And as we receive these from his hand we can rest assured that in the life of the Christian there are not two classes of providence, one good and one bad. No, though some may be easy and some hard, all are good because all in some way flow from his good, Fatherly hand and all in some way can be consecrated to his service. For we are not our own, but belong to him in body and in soul, in life and in death, in joy and in sorrow, in the circumstances we would have chosen anyway and the ones we would have avoided at all costs.

Helping Children with Anxiety

This article discusses how parents can help their children deal with anxiety. It also includes some resource recommendations at the end.

While children deal with their own fears and worries, they’re also watching you, taking cues on how they should respond. As parents, we tend to think it’s best to shield our children from our anxiety, and there are times when that’s appropriate. But shielding them and denying the presence of anxiety teaches them to do the same. That’s unhealthy, and it’s unbiblical. The psalmists didn’t bottle things up; they poured everything out. That doesn’t mean you should pour out your soul before your kids each day. But it does mean they should see it’s okay that you deal with fear and anxiety, too, and you do something about it: you turn to your heavenly Father in prayer. You read his word. You walk by faith. You believe. Showing them what to do with anxiety is much healthier than modeling denial.

One Man’s Walk in the Snow Creates a Giant Masterpiece

This last link is not specifically Christian, but this video displays God’s glory and man’s creativity in nature. This short film is only 6 minutes long.

    On the WPCA Blog This Week

    This week on the blog we published an article I wrote called Lord, Teach Me to Hunger. If you haven’t already seen it, check it out!

    Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here. 

    Links for the Weekend (2023-03-17)

    Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

    Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.

    Most To Jesus I Surrender (or Maybe Just Some)

    Tim Challies ponders what it means to come to Jesus with everything.

    As I worked my way through chapter after chapter, I noticed one recurring theme: the people are meant to bring to the Lord what is first and what is best. Where they may be tempted to wait until their barns are full and their larders stuffed before offering their sacrifice, God demands the firstfruits. Where they may be tempted to sacrifice the animals that are lame or unsightly and that can otherwise serve no good purpose, God demands what is perfect and unblemished. He makes clear that if his people are to worship him, they must worship him in ways that prove he is their first priority.

    How Can I Learn to Receive Criticism?

    This episode of the Ask Pastor John podcast (transcript also available) helps us distinguish between warranted and unwarranted criticism. I appreciated the reminder of how Paul and Jesus counseled Christians to combat the negative effects of hurt feelings.

    The deeper question in all of this — and I think this may be what she’s really getting at — is how to keep our hurt feelings (which all of us have from time to time) from dominating us, controlling us, causing us to either become melancholy or depressed. Or how to keep them from making us bitter or angry so that we are miserable to be around. Neither of those responses to criticism shows the sufficiency of Jesus.

    You Don’t Need a Degree to Read the Bible

    In this video, Matt Harmon explains how asking a few good questions can bear much fruit when reading the Bible.

    Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here. 

    Links for the Weekend (2023-01-13)

    Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

    Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.

    3 Questions to Ask When Anxiety Strikes

    Karrie Hahn offers some suggestions on connecting to truth in times of anxious thoughts.

    How, then, can we reorient ourselves when anxiety threatens to overwhelm us? While life is more complex and nuanced than offering easy steps to get from here to there, asking myself three questions has proven helpful.

    I Want Him Back (But Not The Old Me Back)

    I’ve linked to Tim Challies several times as he’s written about grief and his son’s sudden death. Here’s another article on that topic I found helpful. He writes about missing his son desperately but being grateful for the growth he’s seen in himself because of the loss.

    And, indeed, as we look back at our own lives, we often see evidence of the ways God has worked in us through our hardest times. We see how it was when a loved one was taken from our side that we truly grew closer to the Lord, how it was when our wealth disappeared that we came to treasure God more fully, how it was when our bodies weakened that our reliance upon God grew. We see that God really does purify us through the fire, that he really does strengthen us in our weaknesses, that he really does sanctify us through our sorrows. Though we do not emerge from our trials unscathed, we still emerge from them better and holier and closer to him. Though we wish we did not experience such sorrows, we are thankful to have learned what we have learned and to have grown in the ways we have grown.

    Grieving a Childhood Friend

    Here’s another article on the topic of grief, but from a different angle. This author writes about losing a friend from childhood, someone who had moved away but gotten back in touch. This is a lovely bit of writing.

    Then there is the grief that comes on like a freight train, approaching from far off with increasing dread to wallop you with unexpected fury: the diagnosis and decline that is met with no familiar scripts or cliches, but uncomprehending emptiness. In three months last year I got to taste each of these types of grief, but the one that most unnerved me – that seemed most unnatural and the hardest to explain – was the death of one of those kids who had sat next to me in the bleachers.

    On the WPCA Blog This Week

    This week on the blog we published an article I wrote called Do You Need More Self-Control? If you haven’t already seen it, check it out!

    Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here. 

    Links for the Weekend (2022-12-30)

    Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

    Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.

    Help! I Failed My Year-Long Bible Reading Plan

    Most of us who have tried to read the Bible in a year have failed to read the Bible in a year. Here’s some advice for your next attempt to read the whole Bible.

    But thankfully, the past decade has been a process of reengaging with Scripture and the God of Scripture—and meeting a lot of dear friends who are on the same journey. Here are four redefining elements of my Bible study over the past decade that have restored both my joy in and practice of yearly Bible reading.

    Can Cancer Be God’s Servant? What I Saw in My Wife’s Last Four Years

    Randy Alcorn writes about what he and his wife learned about God and his sovereignty in her final four years with cancer.

    That reader is not alone in trying to distance God from suffering. But by saying sickness comes only from Satan and the fall, not from God, we disconnect Him from our suffering and His deeper purposes. God is sovereign. He never permits or uses evil arbitrarily; everything He does flows from His wisdom and ultimately serves both His holiness and love.

    Hyper-Headship in Marriage

    Here’s an article by a Christian counselor addressing a distortion of Biblical teaching he sees in some marriages.

    What we are speaking about is oppression in marriage. What it looks like from one marriage to the next will be cloaked in many different garbs—constant conflict, a depressed and docile wife, isolation, perpetual walking on eggshells in the home, and the list goes on. But what is central to all of them is the notion that the wife must serve the wants, desires, needs, and whims of her husband. In other words, men who control their wives.

    Things for Christian Men to Think About

    Tim Challies offers some direct but helpful words for men. Applicable for men, obviously, but also for anyone raising a boy or anyone part of a church containing boys.

    On the WPCA Blog This Week

    This week on the blog we published an article written by Sarah Wisniewski called Movie Recommendation: The Star (2017). If you haven’t already seen it, check it out!

    Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here. 

    Links for the Weekend (2022-10-14)

    Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

    Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.

    A Manifesto for Times of Suffering

    You may remember that Tim Challies lost his college-aged son tragically within the last couple years. As he was coming to grips with his loss, he wrote a manifesto for his suffering to which he could return for strength and a reminder of his calling and commitment.

    I will receive this trial as a responsibility to steward, not a punishment to endure. I will look for God’s smile in it rather than his frown, listen for his words of blessing rather than his voice of rebuke. This sorrow will not make me angry or bitter, nor cause me to act out in rebellion or indignation. Rather, it will make me kinder and gentler, more patient and loving, more compassionate and sympathetic. It will loose my heart from the things of earth and fix it on the things of heaven. The loss of my son will make me more like God’s Son, my sorrow like the Man of Sorrows.

    Love Your Unorthodox Neighbor

    Why do we find it hard to love people with whom we disagree? What does this say about our definition of love?

    This approach to doctrine is attractive because we’ve fallen for the notion that love requires agreement or approval. It’s hard to imagine we might love—deeply love—people with whom our disagreements are fundamental. We assume we must shift the foundations if we’re to love someone, when instead a better understanding of foundational Christian truth shifts us into a posture of love across chasms of difference. 

    Bible Q&A: How Can We Trust the Bible When It Contains Inconsistencies?

    Here’s a helpful answer to a common question about inconsistencies in the Gospels.

    God is the only eyewitness that sees every detail. The rest of us are limited by our point of view. We believe the Bible was written by inspiration of the Holy Spirit: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17, ESV). If the words of the Bible were breathed out by God, then they are true.

    Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here. 

    Links for the Weekend (2022-09-23)

    Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

    Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.

    A New Song: In the Valley (Bless the Lord)

    Tim Challies recently released a book on sorrow, and the group CityAlight wrote a song inspired by the book. The words are simple but powerful. Here’s the second verse.

    When the road that I tread

    Fills my heart with despair

    And it seems like my grief has no end

    Still to Jesus I hold

    Who will walk with me there

    And the Lord he will give me His strength

    Age with Joy

    I enjoyed this meditation on aging. Our approach to aging can distinguish Christians from the world!

    Just as Death has lost its sting, so aging has lost its ability to cheat us. We may momentarily lose loved ones or abilities, our outward self will waste away; but it is only a momentary loss, and as the Holy Spirit renews us day by day, our inward lives are strengthened, more robust and alive. Even as our flesh decays and we are nothing but bones in the ground, this is but a temporary reality. Because the grave is indeed swallowed up in Christ’s victory. We are laid to rest, yet we will rise again with bodies imperishable.

    Can you summarize the doctrine of the believer’s union with Christ?

    In a video from Ligonier Ministries, Sinclair Ferguson gives a 2-minute answer to this question about union with Christ.

    On the WPCA Blog This Week

    This week on the blog we published an article I wrote called Let the Guilty Lament. If you haven’t already seen it, check it out!

    Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here. 

    Links for the Weekend (1/28/2022)

    Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

    Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.

    3 Things God Will Never Do with Your Sin

    This post from the Crossway blog highlights some differences between the ways God handles our sin and the ways we handle our sin (or the sin of others).

    The point of the psalmist is that this is precisely what God will never do. In responding to us this way, God is not ignoring our faults and failures. He is not winking at sin or pretending that it never happened. And it certainly isn’t because he is more loving than just. As we’ll see shortly, his guarantee that he will never “deal” with us according to our sins is rooted in something so profound and glorious that we often find it more than a little difficult to believe.

    What Does It Mean To Trust God in Our Trials?

    Sometimes faith comes easily, and sometimes it takes a significant force of our will. Tim Challies explains that trusting God might look different on different days and in different seasons of our lives.

    Trusting God, we learn, is not just a matter of recalling knowledge in a moment of need, but applying the whole heart, soul, strength, and mind to accept and believe it—even when the heart is broken and the soul weary, even when strength is sapped and the mind bewildered. Faith is complicated, not simple, and difficult, not easy. Like so much else in life, faith takes practice and rewards diligence. Faith brings us far beyond the end of ourselves and leaves us utterly dependent upon the goodness and mercy of a loving God.

    Should or Can in 2022?

    Wow, what a terrible headline for an otherwise great article. Ray Ortlund wrote this near the end of 2021, and while it is addressed to pastors, it has wide relevance to all who love the church and want the kingdom of Jesus to advance. The title of the post refers to the difference between exhortations (“you should…”) and assurances of what God offers to needy people (“we can…”). This is an insightful look at what the grace of the gospel can accomplish.

    If, by the end of 2022, nothing at your church improves, you can always go back. But for just one year, rather than tell people to obey God’s holy law, why not help them obey God’s holy law and live for Christ and walk in the Spirit, as you trust in the power of God’s all-sufficient grace?

    On the WPCA Blog This Week

    This week on the blog we published an article I wrote called The Nearness of God is Not Always Good News. If you haven’t already seen it, check it out!

    Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here. 

    Links for the Weekend (12/17/2021)

    Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

    Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out. (Programming note: After the post you’re currently reading, there will likely be no more posts on the WPCA blog until the New Year.)

    Advent Collection: Week Three

    The Rabbit Room is a delightful website to which I’ve linked before. The folks behind that site have a compelling vision for excellent art produced by Christians (which is not the same as the “Christian art” with which you may be more familiar). The editors there are curating weekly “collections” during Advent—posts that recommend music, poetry, paintings, etc., which are appropriate for the Advent season. You can find their week three Advent collection here. (You can also check out week one and week two.)

    When the Soul Feels its Worth

    Andrea Sanborn wrote a brief article connecting the Incarnation of Jesus with our innate desire to matter and be seen.

    Life is a vapor. A wisp, a breath; warming, for a time, the souls around us. Holy breath mingles with ours, infusing life into our simple offerings, our stumbling words. God invites us to draw close, as we reach to touch the scepter of grace with trembling fingers.

    The Great Challenge of Every Marriage

    We move away from the Advent theme for this final recommendation. Tim Challies wrote an article about how God has surprised him in the way marriage has been used for his growth as a Christian. I think all husbands and wives (and, frankly, anyone who merely aspires to be a friend) would benefit from reading.

    Certainly there have been times when each of us has helpfully and even formally pointed out where the other has developed patterns of sin and selfishness. There have been times when we have each helped the other fight a particular sin or a general sinfulness. Yet as we look back on the past twenty-three years, we see that this has been relatively rare. It’s not that we don’t see plenty of sin in one another and not that we are firmly opposed to pointing it out. No, it’s more that there is another way that marriage has helped us grow in sanctification—a way in which our efforts are directed at addressing ourselves more than fixing each other.

    On the WPCA Blog This Week

    This week on the blog we published an article by Philip Rychcik called The Gift of Presence During Advent. If you haven’t already seen it, check it out!

    Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here. 

    Links for the Weekend (11/26/2021)

    Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

    Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.

    Helpful Things You Can Say to Grieving Parents

    Tim Challies has written a practical article from which I learned a lot. When you encounter Christians experiencing profound grief, here are some loving ways to speak to and care for your friends.

    It can be awkward to reach out to those who are deep in grief. It can be hard to know what to say and easy to believe that our words are more likely to offend than comfort, to make a situation worse rather than better. We sense that our words ought to be few, but also that the worst thing to say is nothing at all.

    Thanksgiving, Gratitude, and Leanness of Soul

    What does it look like to be thankful? What might keep us from being thankful? Doug Eaton offers some reflections using Psalm 106.

    Gratitude flows freely from a heart full of God, mindful of His wondrous works, and aware of His grace to such unworthy and sinful creatures. The sinner, who hungers and thirsts after righteousness and has been filled by the justifying work of Christ, can find themselves in any harsh situation this life has to offer and still rejoice with full hearts. On the contrary, the person who forgets God’s great works toward them and begins to think they deserve more can be in the most pleasant of all earthly positions and still live with lean souls.

    The Danger of Nostalgia

    Here’s a helpful word about nostalgia in the life of a Christian.

    When we view certain seasons of our lives as rosier than they actually were, it can make things now seem worse than they really are. Our relationships or career or church now seem more lackluster than they really are. Our gratitude with the past might be coupled with ingratitude for the present. 

    Why the Gospel of Self-Improvement Isn’t Good News

    Here’s a podcast from The Gospel Coalition where Colin Hansen interviews Ruth Chou Simons about her new book, When Strivings Cease. If you need a reminder about why God’s grace is enough for you, have a listen.

    Thanks to Maggie A for her help in rounding up links this week.

    Note: Washington Presbyterian Church and the editors of this blog do not necessarily endorse all content produced by the individuals or groups referenced here.