Tag: Crossway

Links for the Weekend (2023-08-25)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

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

On the Crushing Guilt of Failing at Quiet Time

Much of what we think about “daily devotions” is cultural (even if it can be good). Kevin DeYoung writes about what the Bible teaches about a devotional life.

I am not anti-quiet time or anti-daily devotions or anti-family worship. All of these disciplines serve God’s people well and have been around for a long time. What does not serve God’s people well is the unstated (and sometimes stated) assumption—put upon us by others or by ourselves—that Christianity is only for super-disciplined neatniks who get up before dawn, redeem every minute of the day, and have very organized sock drawers. Spiritual disciplines are great (and necessary) when the goal is to know God better. Spiritual disciplines are soul-crushing when the aim is to get our metaphysical workout in each day, knowing that we could always exercise more if we were better Christians.

Love Is the Greatest Apologetic

The love between Christians can point outsiders powerfully to Jesus.

I’ve long pondered why the epistles contain fewer exhortations to evangelize than I’d expect. They contain a great deal more about sound doctrine and how Christians are supposed to conduct themselves in the church, the family, and society. I’ve concluded this is because our lives and relationships with each other are integral to reaching the world. Word and deed accompany each other for full evangelistic effectiveness.

How to Build (or Break) a Habit

This article gives some insight into habit formation and helps us to consider how habits can affect us spiritually.

We’ve all been taught that if we want to achieve something, we need to set goals. In principle, that’s true. Yet how many goals have you set that have gone unachieved? Why didn’t they work for you? In part, because defective systems trump good aspirations. In other words, your habits undermined your goals. Goals get us nowhere without the good habits required to achieve them.

On the WPCA Blog This Week

This week on the blog we published an article I wrote called Impressive or Known. 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 (2023-07-07)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

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

Your Gender Is God’s Good Design

There is a lot of cultural confusion about gender and sexuality at the moment. Here is an article by Rachel Gilson about the goodness of God’s design in our bodies.

When the Son of God took on a human nature, he underlined forever the dignity and value of human embodiment, because he shared it—and still does. He did not leave his human nature behind; he is still fully human and fully God, seated at the right hand of the Father. Additionally, he affirms sexed human embodiment—that is, being female or male. Jesus did not appear in his resurrection as an androgynous being but as he had been in his earthly life: as a male.

What Happened to Historian Molly Worthen?

I don’t often run across testimonies of academics who come to faith in Jesus mid-career. The Gospel Coalition recently ran a podcast interview with historian Molly Worthen about her journey to faith. I found it fascinating and encouraging! (A transcript of the interview is available at that link for those who would prefer it!)

A Series of Articles/Letters on Motherhood

Risen Motherhood is running a series of letters this summer written by five “mentor moms” which address all seasons of motherhood. Here is the landing page for the series. The first entry is already posted: A Letter for the Little Years.

Have you ever wished for a “big sister” in motherhood that could guide you through the ins and outs of mom-life? The “Sincerely” summer series was created just for you.

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. 

Links for the Weekend (2023-06-16)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

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

God Is Eager to Forgive You

Cindy Matson draws some good news for us about forgiveness from Isaiah 30.

It may not be so hard to believe that God will welcome you back with open arms. You’ve likely heard that parable enough times not to be surprised by it any longer. But maybe you find it a little too good to be true that He would actually want to listen to your prayers right away. Perhaps you think that you’ll be put on “prayer probation” during which you shouldn’t really expect God to answer any prayers.

5 Misconceptions about Heaven and Hell (and 5 Truths)

There are a lot of false ideas and bad teaching about the afterlife. This article from Crossway points us back to Biblical truth about heaven and hell.

As always, we want to counter false ideas about these doctrines with the truth of the Bible. The most common misconceptions about heaven and hell have to do with their nature and purpose. There are many false ideas about what they will be like and what will happen there, but the word of God gives us clear pictures in both cases.

What Is Pride?

This article gives a good explanation of pride and why we are called to repent of it.

 When God humbles the proud, it is an act of His grace. In that moment of emptiness, we have an opportunity to repent and yield to the work of the Spirit in our hearts. In doing so, we cast aside our crown, bow before the King, and submit to His lordship.

On the WPCA Blog This Week

This week on the blog we published an article written by Zack Wisniewski called Finding Hope in Slow Sanctification. 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 (2023-02-24)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

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

Tossing Out Beliefs When They Don’t Spark Joy

Samuel James observes that many modern Christians are tempted to see doctrine as unnecessary. He offers a persuasive defense of why we should try to understand what is true.

To be sure, it’s pretty rare for someone in a church to actually come out and say that talking about or studying theology is bad (though this does happen!). What seems to be the case is not that many American Christians actively think of doctrine as bad or harmful but that many believe it is unnecessary. In other words, for many evangelicals, biblical doctrine—the teaching of all Scripture in its fullness, beyond the bare essentials for salvation—is not like poison but like clutter. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it, but it does not “spark joy.”

Can You Trust the Bible When It’s Full of Contradictions?

This article from TGC Africa offers some thoughtful responses to the charge that the Bible is full of contradictions.

Paul says that no one is saved by works but only by faith (Ephesians 2:8-9), and then James says without works no one can be saved (James 2:14-17). That’s not a contradiction but a tension. The Bible is clear that there is one God (Deuteronomy 6:4), but that he has revealed himself in three persons (Matthew 3:16-17). That’s not a contradiction but a tension. People are valuable as image-bearers (Genesis 1:26), but are also deeply sinful as rebels (Romans 3:23). Again, that’s not a contradiction but a tension.

How would you explain the doctrine of limited atonement?

Here’s another excellent video from the folks at Ligonier. This time Stephen Nichols addresses the doctrine of limited atonement.

On the WPCA Blog This Week

This week on the blog we published an article I wrote called Why Most Productivity Advice Doesn’t Help. 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 (2023-02-10)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

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

Who Killed the Prayer Meeting?

This article takes a look at the decline of prayer meetings in the church and offers some explanations.

The American church is functionally prayerless when it comes to corporate prayer. Of course, a remnant does the hidden work of prayer, but in most churches corporate prayer doesn’t function in any meaningful way. How big is that remnant? In our prayer seminars, we ask several confidential questions about a participant’s prayer life. In hundreds of seminars, we’ve found that about 15 percent of Christians in a typical church have a rich prayer life. So when someone says, “I’ll keep you in my prayers,” 85 percent of the time it is just words. This isn’t a pastor problem; it’s a follower-of-Jesus problem.

What was God doing before creation?

Michael Reeves takes just over two minutes to answer this question in a Ligonier video. It turns out that what God was doing before creation was really important!

The Case for Pew Bibles

Anyone who carries a phone can have access to a digital Bible in a moment. So, do we need Bibles in our sanctuaries anymore? These authors make the case that pew Bibles are still important.

So, we must ask: in this post-COVID, post-modern, post-literate, technological, consumer society, do pew Bibles matter? Does the connection between the Word and the form of accessing the Word matter? Is something lost when we depend on digital media for our Scripture consumption? Is projecting the Scripture passage onto the screen adequate for whole-person and whole-church discipleship and mission, or can a case be made that pew Bibles are an essential part of making God’s Word accessible for all?

On the WPCA Blog This Week

This week on the blog we published an article I wrote called Pride in the Parking Lot. 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 (2023-02-03)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

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

God Doesn’t Need Your Singing, but Your Neighbor Does

This article points to all the people who will benefit from your singing in worship.

Although God commands Christians to sing, he doesn’t need our singing in order to be God. He has an eternal choir of living creatures that never cease to sing his praise (Rev. 4:8). And yet he’s designed us to experience joy—and encouragement—when we lift our voices in praise. Though we often conceive of corporate worship vertically, there’s a rich horizontal dimension too. Your neighbors need your church’s singing.

The Other Lord’s Prayer

Here’s a helpful comparison between the Lord’s Prayer as recorded in Matthew and Luke.

Before we comment on a handful of unique features of the Lord’s Prayer in Luke, we will first examine one common, salient denominator between the two presentations of the Lord’s Prayer (a point I expand upon further in my Handbook on the Gospels). Both evangelists underscore the name “Father” at the beginning of the prayer (Matthew 6:9; Luke 11:2).

Ashamed Sinner, Unashamed Savior

How does God look at us when we sin? This article dives deep into that important question.

So what we end up having is a vantage point where we’re looking at the way that we think about our sin and the way that we feel about us and our guilt, and we project that upon God. And what’s so amazing about the gospel and the reality of being a Christian is that that’s not helpful, because God has gone through great pains to prove to us that’s actually not how he looks at his people.

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 (2022-12-23)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

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

Why Is the Virgin Birth So Important?

How central to Christianity is the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus? J. I. Packer shows that it is very important indeed!

The church fathers appealed to the virgin birth as proof, not that Jesus was truly divine as distinct from being merely human, but that he was truly human as distinct from merely looking human as ghosts and angels might do, and it was probably as a witness against Docetism (as this view was called) that the virgin birth was included in the Creed. But it witnesses against humanitarianism (the view that Jesus was just a fine man) with equal force.

Was Christmas Like This?

Some of the typical Christmas narrative is not really from the Bible. Some of it probably didn’t happen! So, how would a more realistic telling of the Christmas story read?

In what follows, I will try to stick to what the Bible does say, but I will fill in some details from my reading of history and my experience of living in other cultures around the world. What results, is – I believe – a more believable story and hopefully, one which is closer to the reality than our traditional reading. 

Mary Consoles Eve

I ran across a lovely piece of art recently. It pictures a pregnant Mary standing next to Eve. Here’s an interview with the nun who drew the picture (and you can see the picture in the middle of this article).

I never intended to share the picture with anyone outside the monastery, but I liked it well enough, so I showed it to some of my sisters. Sr. Martha asked if she could use it for making the community Christmas card. I was surprised, but told her if she wanted to use it, she was welcome to it. A few people who received our card started posting images of it online. It has been both surprising and touching to see how the image moves people.

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 (2022-10-28)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

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

Debunking Grief’s Myths: 4 Lies You Need to Stop Using

Some of the phrases we say to others when they are in grief sound like nice sentiments, but they are just not true. I enjoyed this article by Clarissa Moll where she looks carefully at some of these lies about grief and points us to the truth.

On the contrary, throughout the Bible, we see God’s children use persistent questions, doubt, and even despair to direct their hearts toward him. Psalms channel anger and frustration into praise. Longing and lamentations trace their path through centuries of faithful living. Rather than being a symptom of weak faith, grief shows us that true faith is always willing to ask hard questions. True faith claims God’s promises by holding him accountable to them. Prolonged grief is the expression of sorrow at the brokenness of this world, a persistent testimony to our faith in God even when we walk with him in the dark.

What Would Be Lost If We Didn’t Have the Last 2 Chapters of the Bible?

Nancy Guthrie answers this question by showing how the last chapters of Revelation provide a fitting end to the themes and story of the whole Bible.

And then there’s the beautiful theme of a garden itself. The Bible story begins in a garden and the Bible story ends in a garden, except this garden is even better than the original garden. It is more abundant. It’s more secure. And so I love this ending to Revelation because not only does it set something out for us to set our hearts on to long for—living in that city and worshiping in that temple and being satisfied in that and enjoying that marriage—it’s a fitting, satisfying end to the whole of the story of the Bible. 

How is God’s sovereignty compatible with man’s responsibility in salvation?

In this video, some of the men from Ligonier Ministries answer this important question about God’s sovereignty and human responsibility in salvation.

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 (2022-09-30)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

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

Why Do Christians Make Such a Big Deal about Sex?

This article is a good primer on what the Bible has to say about sex and marriage.

Whenever people ask me why Christians are so weird about sex, I first point out that we’re weirder than they think. The fundamental reason why Christians believe that sex belongs only in the permanent bond of male-female marriage is because of the metaphor of Jesus’s love for his church. It’s a love in which two become one flesh. It is a love that connects across sameness and radical difference: the sameness of our shared humanity and the radical difference of Jesus from us. It’s a love in which husbands are called not to exploit, abuse, or abandon their wives, but to love and sacrifice for them, as Jesus did for us.

Remembering Rich Mullins

The 25th anniversary of the death of Christian singer/songwriter Rich Mullins happened recently, and Lisa LaGeorge reflected on why his music means so much to her.

Rich was a friend, or at least, his music was. Ministry in Alaska was lonely at times, cold and dark. Rich was a click away on the Discman, making observations, asking questions, confessing, and declaring the love of the Savior of a ragamuffin people. I needed the reminders–often. I still do. 

Introducing Ligonier Guides: Accessible Theology for Everyday Life

Ligonier Ministries has developed a new resource called Ligonier Guides. These look like helpful essays on a variety of theological (and other) topics.

For those looking for clear and succinct biblical and theological teaching, Ligonier Ministries has developed a new resource: Ligonier guides. These guides, covering topics such as theology, worldview and culture, biblical studies, Christian living, and church history, provide overviews and explanations from Ligonier’s topic index, along with quotes and links to additional topics and resources.

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