Each Friday, I’ll post links to 3–5 resources from around the web you may want to check out.
How Do I Leave My Sin at the Foot of the Cross?
Katie Laitkep offers some advice related to this common Christian expression: leaving your sin at the cross.
You must continue to rely on Jesus for everything—day by day, moment by moment. This is the part we often get wrong. We start out at the cross, knowing we’re in need of God’s mercy, but then we begin to drift––trying to manage, fix, or perfect ourselves apart from the grace that saved us. We proclaim the first part of Galatians 2:20 with our lips: “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” But if our lives told the story, they might read more like this: “The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God controlling everything myself.”
Taking a Closer Look at Psalm 22
Daniel Stevens offers a helpful overview of Psalm 22 and then looks at the way the author of Hebrews quotes this psalm. (There is a video accompanying this article.)
And even for apologetic purposes, Psalm 22 often gets used because here, in this psalm of David, we do seem to have a description of Jesus’s death at the crucifixion—that his joints are stretched out, his heart melts away like wax, and we even find within it people dividing his garments and casting lots (Ps. 22:18). So Psalm 22 does meet us with the crucifixion scene. It is a prophecy, even as it is a psalm, telling us of how Jesus was to die. And Jesus wanted us to see it that way.
Battling Negative Body Image
Many Christians—indeed many humans—struggle with negative body image. However, Christians have tools to combat such negative messages.
The trouble is that a negative body image rarely remains contained to occasional frustration—it quickly grows to impact how we function. Adverse thoughts about how our bodies look often spur negative feelings about ourselves—about our value, our ability to contribute to society, and even our perception of our worth to others. To make things worse, those feelings may even lead to bodily harm as a way to cope with difficult emotions or to force our bodies to measure up to the desired ideal.
On the WPCA Blog This Week
This week on the blog we published an article I wrote called Joy: An Engine of Christian Hope. 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.