Tag: Desires

Links for the Weekend (2025-09-12)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

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

Wrinkles That Testify

I love the way Beth Ferguson writes about Psalm 71 and aging. She writes about the challenges and joys of discipleship for those past mid-life.

The culture whispers that aging is a problem to be solved, a disease to resist. My social media often features the next miracle supplement, an exercise plan promising strength and mobility. There are many lists—do this, and don’t do that—for longevity. But Psalm 71 pushes back with a better vision: aging is an opportunity, a holy vocation, another chapter in the lifelong call to be a disciple of Jesus and to make disciples of Jesus.

How to Rightly Train Your Affections

Casey McCall writes about our affections—what they are and how we can faithfully shape them. (I thought his food analogies here were very helpful.)

I never told my children to eat their tomatoes as a moral issue of right and wrong. Instead, I wanted to use the food on their plates as a training ground to teach them that their preferences, their likes and dislikes, are flexible. I wanted them to learn that they could teach themselves to prefer things they didn’t previously like. This training, I prayed, would be helpful in the future as they tried to line up their affections with the priorities of the kingdom of Christ—a matter of great moral consequence.

Epiphany

Our poem of the week: Epiphany, by John Claiborne Isbell. This short poem is about the distance from us to God and what happens when God reaches 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 (1/24/2020)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

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

Kill Whatever Kills Your Love for God

Our sin is deadly and dangerous, and yet we so often hesitate to put it to death. Why is that? Garrett Kell helps us think through the matter.

The apostle Peter pleads with us to “abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11). As long as we are in this world, sin will seek to sap our love for God and stoke our love for every other god. We must do whatever it takes to put it to death. Love for God and sin cannot coexist. Kill your love for sin, or sin will kill your love for God.

20 Benefits of Being in God’s Word According to Psalm 119

The Bible offers countless blessings, comforts, and encouragements. Here’s a list of many of these benefits, pulled from Psalm 119.

If only the world could grasp the benefits available to the soul who seeks God through His Word—willing to see it as truth, clinging to it at every turn. For the Word of God is life-changing and life-sustaining and life-giving. And it’s so much more, as the author of Psalm 119 testifies. The psalmist offers us numerous reasons to run to the comfort of Scripture and never turn away from it.

True Friends Confront Sin

In the church we are called to love one another, even when it is painful. Sometimes this means we need to point out and/or help our friends with the sin in their lives.

If you want to grow in grace, surround yourself with godly friends. These are the people who aren’t afraid to wound you every now and then so that you get your act together. Woe to you when your friends only have kisses for you, those aren’t your buddies. Blessed are you when like king David in 2 Samuel 12, you have a Nathan in your squad. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad! “Let the righteous man strike me – it is kindness; let him rebuke me – it is oil for my head; let my head not refuse it.” (Ps. 141:5) Choose the friends who are going to love you enough to be real with you when you’re falling. If you don’t – if you surround yourself with people who won’t call you out, or worse, who share the same idols you do – you’re digging your own grave.

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 (11/15/2019)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

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

Your Unfulfilled Desires are a Treasury, Not a Tragedy

We are often such slaves to our desires that we ” assume that to live with unmet expectations is an insufferable misery that must be resolved as quickly as possible.” Tyler Greene gives us a different perspective from the Bible.

This episode in Moses’s life beckons an important question for our own: what should we do with our unfulfilled desires—those sources of unresolved tension in our lives that have left us disappointed, devastated, or despondent? Sadly, too few of us are equipped to face such a question.

The 15 Best Films About Faith from the 2010s

The decade of the 2010s is almost over, so prepare yourself for lots of “looking back” and “best of” lists in the next month or so. Here’s an interesting one, posted at The Gospel Coalition, about movies that explore faith.

What were the best films about faith released in the 2010s decade? I’m not talking about “faith-based films” as the marketing term Hollywood uses for movies like Fireproof and God’s Not Dead. I’m not talking about films made for faith audiences so much as films made to explore faith: the struggle and beauty of faith, its many ups and downs, its fragile place in our secular age.

One of the Best Illustrations I’ve Heard in Years

How can Jesus be both omnipresent as God and incarnate as man at the same time? This is a difficult, long-asked question. Andrew Wilson shares an answer from Gavin Ortlund which draws on the analogy of an author and his writing.

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