Month: May 2025

Links for the Weekend (2025-05-16)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

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

Why Does God Make Us Wait for Good Things?

Mark Vroegop says this is a fair question with uncertain answers. He helps us refocus, from wondering about why to looking at who. Waiting is for our good. (There is a video at this link as well as a transcript, so you can watch/listen or read, according to your preference.)

Waiting is part of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. It’s part of what it means to trust that God knows what he’s doing. And so when you’re waiting for something good and it’s not coming, the hope and the comfort that the Bible offers to us, like from Psalm 27, is that our hearts can take courage as we wait on the Lord.

The One Virtue Every Young Man Needs

Trevin Wax writes about self-control, and he frames this virtue in terms of sanctification instead of stoicism.

The gospel takes the ancient virtue of self-control and transposes it into a new key. It’s not first and foremost about you. It’s about God. It’s self-control in service of love. Love depends on self-control, yes, but love also deepens self-control. Love turns self-control upward and outward, toward God and toward others. It’s not about independence of self but dependence on God. It’s not about self-mastery; it’s about Spirit-mastery. It’s not about controlling yourself for your own sake; it’s about being controlled by Christ for the sake of others. It’s yielding to the One who loves you with an everlasting love and who wants now to love others through you.

Two Poems

I’m sharing two poems this week, both courtesy of the Rabbit Room Poetry Substack.

  • Mary and Eve, by Michael Stalcup — This poem is inspired by the illustration from Sister Grace Remington which imagines a meeting between Eve and a pregnant Mary.
  • Tell No One, by Elizabeth Wickland — This poem describes some of the wonders of spring and insists that they must be experienced (not just heard about) to be truly enjoyed.

On the WPCA Blog This Week

This week on the blog we published an article written by Maggie Amaismeier called Books and Podcasts, May 2025. 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. 

Books and Podcasts, May 2025

Posted onAuthorMaggie Amaismeier

It’s been a while since I shared some podcasts and books I have been enjoying, so here we go.

Books

A Still and Quiet Mind: Twelve Strategies for Changing Unwanted Thoughts by Esther Smith. This is a practical read on using Scripture to take your thoughts captive. Not exactly a beach read but a helpful one if this is an area of struggle. 

Parenting with Hope: Raising Teens for Christ in a Secular Age by Melissa B. Kruger. This is my second time reading this book and honestly as someone who works and lives with teens it will probably be a yearly read for me for the next 10 years (at least). Please find me if you read it because I would love to chat more about what God taught you through this book. This time I enjoyed it as an audiobook on Hoopla (a FREE resource from the library, thanks to Ashley Bennett for that tip)! 

Peace Over Perfection: Enjoying a Good God When You Feel You’re Never Good Enough by Faith Chang. An easy read that I digested one chapter at a time. 

God Does His Best Work with Empty by Nancy Guthrie. I also listened to this as an audiobook (Hoopla for the win) and enjoyed her detailed use of Biblical stories to encourage us. I wasn’t able to take enough notes and will probably reread it as a physical book in the future!

Podcasts

Deep Dish Podcast with Melissa Kruger and Courtney Doctor. I LOVE this new podcast from The Gospel Coalition. It is like listening in on a conversation. The topics are fantastic and it has been one I have started looking forward to each Thursday. 

Journeywomen. This season was focused on discipleship and I loved the continuity of the messages with strong emphasis on Scripture. Warning: it was convicting to me and if you are not yet in a discipling relationship and/or discipling someone else, it just might change your thoughts on that! 

Encourage Women Podcast. Current seasons have been focused on a conversation format. It is a lighter podcast that often is perfect for my drive home from work when my brain isn’t functioning at full capacity but I still want to fill it with an encouraging Scripture-based conversation.

The Humble Skeptic. This podcast was introduced to me by a new friend at the church. I have listened to the faith series (way at the beginning). It makes me think critically and challenges me.  For me, this is a great podcast to listen to while I am doing something else (like dishes or folding laundry) because it requires me to engage intellectually in a different way from other podcasts.

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Links for the Weekend (2025-05-09)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

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

Listening Might Be the Best Evangelism Tool You’re Not Using

When we fail to listen to our unbelieving friends, we end up giving answers to questions they’re not asking.

However, if we don’t also listen, we tend to share the good news of Jesus in a way that applies primarily to our lives, the way it was good news to us, but fails to address the situations others are facing. We can become proclaimers of the good news while remaining ignorant of the ways in which others need to hear it. This doesn’t negate how good the news of Jesus is at all. However, if we read the rest of the story of Jesus’s encounter with the Samaritan woman, we find that while her testimony created intrigue, the people in the village had to meet Jesus for themselves. It wasn’t enough for her just to share her story. They had to get to Jesus as well.

3 Truths Your Daughter Needs to Hear About Beauty

Kristen Wetherell’s article offers good counsel to parents, helping them teach young women a biblical view of beauty.

What might change if we emphasized the eternal in our most basic conversations, especially within the family of Christ? What if, instead of commenting on another female’s appearance, we simply said, “It’s wonderful to see you! Tell me how you’re doing today”? Our littlest girls would feel warmly welcomed not because they’re wearing pink but because they’re a valuable part of God’s precious body.

Mirth

The latest issue of Clayjar Review is on the theme of mirth. Here are two poems from this issue I have read and enjoyed.

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 (2025-05-02)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

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

The Ever-Present Search for an Easy Christian Faith

Does anything about the Christian faith make you uncomfortable? Trevin Wax proposes that should probably be true in some area of your life.

We should test ourselves. Do we pledge our allegiance to God as he truly is, or do we settle for fashioning a god of our own imagination? Are we shaving off the rough edges of his revelation to suit our preferences? Or are we willing to submit to what he says about himself—even when we don’t understand (or don’t want to)?

The Problem With Habits (and Why We Still Need Them)

Darryl Dash has a good perspective on habits (and a good analogy for them too). He writes: “habits alone cannot transform us, yet we cannot grow without them.”

God has established means of grace. They’re ways through which he promises to work in our lives. When we seek him through Scripture, our hearts are changed. The transformative power lies not in our routine of Bible reading, but in the living word itself. God’s Spirit actively works through his word. God’s word has the power to change our lives (2 Timothy 3:16-17). The same applies to prayer. God promises that those who seek him will find him (Matthew 7:7-8). The power isn’t in habits; habits just get us to God’s means of grace.

In Waiting

Our poem of the week: In Waiting, by Joshua Fullman. This is a poem about visiting a loved one in the hospital.

On the WPCA Blog This Week

This week on the blog we published an article I wrote called 3 Essential Ingredients for Understanding the Bible. 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.