Tag: Stand to Reason

Links for the Weekend (2024-09-20)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

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

Why a Good God Commanded the Israelites to Destroy the Canaanites

It’s an important question we should consider when talking to unbelievers: How could God command his people to destroy the Canaanites?

To drive a wedge between God and goodness, I’d point to God’s command to the Israelites to “utterly destroy” every person living in the Canaanite cities God was giving them. They were instructed to “not leave alive anything that breathes”—to kill every man, woman, child, and animal (Deut. 20:16–17). Why would a good God have the Israelites exterminate entire groups of people, including women, children, and animals? Here are four principles to remember the next time you encounter this issue.

“Why Have You Forsaken Me?” Understanding Jesus’s Cry on the Cross

This is a helpful, theologically deep article about Jesus’s famous cry on the cross. The authors approach the question from a number of angles.

The crucifixion is a good case study in showing how a careful Trinitarian framework can help work through thorny issues related to the Trinity and salvation. Not only does it bring to the surface the difficult question of what the Father was “doing” (or not doing) while Jesus hung on the cross, but it also raises the question of the Spirit’s seeming absence during the event.

Podcast: Why Christianity Is Not Just about Being a Follower of Jesus (Sam Allberry)

Here’s a helpful interview with author Sam Allberry about the doctrine of union with Christ, which is the subject of his newest book.

On the WPCA Blog This Week

This week on the blog we published an article I wrote called No Images. 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 (2023-01-27)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

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

Leave the Throne of Guilt

Scotty Smith shares his experience of learning how to pray not because he felt guilty, but because he delighted in the triune God. Union with Christ was the key to unlock his prayer life.

As a young believer in the late sixties, the joy of my new life in Christ was palpable and plenteous. But pretty soon, I started to feel the pressure of a new burden to “get it right.” I had consistent quiet times, underlined verses in my Bible (in three different colors), and engaged in Scripture memory. I fellowshipped, witnessed, and prayed. Unfortunately, these crucial spiritual disciplines functioned more as a means of guilt (or pride) than as a means of grace. Many of God’s good gifts are misused and disused until they become rightly used. This is certainly true of prayer.

Expose Your Kids to Hard Truths

Here’s an essay urging us not to shy away from some of the “grittier” parts of Scripture with our children.

Continually discussing the beauty and hard realities of Scripture will help children love truth and the God who embodies it. And it’ll give them a discerning ear when engaging culture apart from the watchful eye of their parents. We have the opportunity to demonstrate that the Christian faith is rational, understandable, and more beautiful than the culture that will fight hard to persuade our children otherwise.

How to Think about God Promoting His Own Glory

If we evaluate God’s purposes and actions through the grid of what would be righteous for a human, we’re bound to go wrong. This article calls us to remember how different from us God is when we think about his focus on his glory.

So now we come to the issue of God promoting his own glory. The same principle applies to God doing things “for the sake of his name” and “for his glory” and requiring people to worship him. If you are troubled by the thought of this, consider the possibility that you are imagining how you would respond to a human being who did this—a fallen, sinful human being who did not deserve your worship. That is not who God is. And so, in order to understand God rightly, we need to adjust our interpretation of his actions in light of his moral perfection, not judge him as if he were also a fallen human being with a dangerously inflated ego.

On the WPCA Blog This Week

This week on the blog we published an article I wrote called A Primer on Encouragement. 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 (2022-09-02)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

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

Sometimes I Struggle With the Bible

As Christians we know that we should read the Bible, but sometimes that feels like a tall task. Scott Sauls confesses the difficulty he has reading the Bible at times, but explains why he keeps at it.

Indeed, honest Bible readers—even skilled teachers of the Bible like C.S. Lewis—have found parts of it difficult, puzzling, mystifying, and even offensive. As much as we can rejoice in, get inspired by, and find comfort in certain parts of the Bible, other parts will disturb us—namely, the parts that contradict our feelings, instincts, hopes, dreams, traditions, and cultural values. I recently saw a quote that said, “Men do not reject the Bible because it contradicts itself. They reject it because it contradicts them.”

Why Does Justice Matter?

We may mean different things when we refer to “justice,” but that doesn’t mean we can ignore it. Jonathan Noyes tells us why justice should matter to Christians.

Justice is a universal moral principle, and it’s an objective moral good. It’s the single best word to capture God’s purpose for human conduct, individually and corporately (i.e. governments). The standard of what’s just and unjust is not a matter of personal opinion or preference. In this way, justice is a category of truth, with an important difference. Standard truth claims correspond to what is. Justice corresponds to what ought to be. Justice tells us what should be. 

The Problem with the Self-Help Movement

What’s the difference between self-help and sanctification? Jen Wilkin has a good, short video explanation.

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 (2022-07-22)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

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

Why You Should Study Theology

Theology often gets a bad reputation as dry and confusing. (That’s just poorly communicated theology!) Scott Slayton gives us three reasons why we should commit ourselves to studying theology.

When we read and study theology, we come to a better grasp of God’s personal attributes and how he interacts with the world. We see how God revealed himself in the past through encounters with men and women in Scripture. For example, when he passed by Moses in Exodus 34, he proclaimed about himself, “The Lord, gracious and merciful, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” You cannot learn that about God by looking at a sunset. Also, think about his interactions with Job in the closing chapters of the book that bears his name. There, we learn that God is all powerful, has no competitors, yet is gracious and restores those who have been broken.

Why Christian Teens Have an Identity Crisis

Sara Barratt looks at the constant questioning of identity in today’s young people and traces that back to a lack of the knowledge of God.

Lists of “who you are” statements are filled with deep truth but often little substance. You are loved . . . but those words hardly make a dent in love-hungry hearts if they don’t understand who loves them. You are chosen . . . but chosen by whom? Why were we chosen? You are redeemed . . . but those words mean nothing if we don’t deeply comprehend what we’re redeemed from and the greatness of our Redeemer’s heart. Far too often, we open with the “you are,” “we are,” “I am,” story instead of the “he is” story. 

What Is Promised to the Two or Three Who Are Gathered in Jesus’ Name?

We’ve all heard (and quoted) the promise about Jesus being present when two or three people are gathered in his name. Amy K. Hall takes a close look at the context of that promise, as well as the Old Testament background, and explains that we’ve likely been using this incorrectly!

Jesus goes on to explain that church discipline, if done in this manner, will have the weight of God behind it (i.e., whatever they bind or loose on earth shall have been bound or loosed in heaven). Then he says, “Again”—note that the “again” indicates he’s not changing the subject here but referring back to the two or three witnesses previously mentioned—“Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask [in context, regarding church discipline], it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven.”

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 (2022-06-10)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

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

Let Nature Do Its Job

This article seems appropriate at this time of year, when we’re able to spend more time outdoors. Daniel DeWitt reminds us that nature was designed to point us to God.

So, let nature do it’s job this summer. Get out there. Don’t stay locked up. Put on the sunscreen and bug spray on and brave this beautiful world. George Washington Carver put it this way, “I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.”

God Gives Our Waiting Purpose

Vaneetha Risner writes about what she has learned from the Psalms about waiting.

Waiting patiently for the Lord (Psalm 40:1) is a common theme in the psalms. In those years of waiting, I was often impatient, ready to move on and move past my pain. If impatience is being discontent with the present moment, then patience is embracing the present and letting God meet me in it. I can enter into a holy experience with God in the deepest pain as I breathe in and out his presence. When all I had to hold onto was his presence and his promises, I discovered that he was and is more than enough. 

God Matures Us through Suffering, Not Miracles

This one was interesting to ponder. It’s hard, but true: our spiritual maturity comes through suffering.

Suffering, not miraculous deliverance, is the primary way God matures his children. A supernatural event can encourage us, of course, but it doesn’t mature us. Maturity comes through trusting God when things are really hard, even seemingly unbearable.

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 (2022-04-08)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

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

When Debating Biblical Inspiration, Let God Do the Heavy Lifting

In this article, Greg Koukl puts his finger on something important. Listening to someone explain why the Bible is trustworthy is not the same as listening to the Bible. In helping people learn to trust the Bible, we should often begin by asking them to listen to the Bible itself first.

The objective reasons are important to show that our subjective confidence has not been misplaced, that what we’ve believed with our hearts can be confirmed with our minds. The ancients called this “faith seeking understanding.”

As Long as It’s Healthy

This is a thoughtful article by Andrea Sanborn about our tendency to live fearful, shallow lives in an effort to protect ourselves from sadness or suffering. She writes that we miss out on a lot of joy when we try desperately to avoid grief.

Some of us draw boundary lines between our hearts and God’s. We are aware that life brings not just great joys, but also great pain. So we attempt to protect ourselves against what he may ask of us. We wall off areas of our lives and post a guard at our hearts, hoping to make it through to the end unscathed. Like children in a classroom afraid to catch the teacher’s eye, we desperately hope that we won’t be called upon to demonstrate the faith that we claim to live by.

What Is Transgenderism?

Rosaria Butterfield wrote an article at Ligonier about the historical and theological background of transgenderism. This is one to read slowly.

On the WPCA Blog This Week

This week on the blog we published an article I wrote called Justice and Injustice at the Cross. 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 (9/13/2019)

Posted onAuthorRyan Higginbottom

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

A Letter to a Reader about the Battle against Sin

I would guess most Christians have wrestled with this question as they walk with the Lord. And Barry York provides an excellent, short answer. Here’s the key question.

How can someone know if they are a legitimate Christian struggling with sin versus an unbeliever in sin? And what should a Christian struggling with sin do when he feels defeated?

How to Kill Your Anger so You Can Represent Christ to the World

How do you respond to anger from others directed at you? How do you respond to your own anger? Amy K. Hall helps us with sound advice from the Bible. We are not to fight anger with more anger.

Lest anyone think all anger must be expressed in order for one to be “healthy,” it’s important to note that ignoring your anger is not the same thing as fighting and killing it, though both are attempts to avoid expressing that anger against others. The first will only cause the anger to build up until you can’t ignore it anymore. The second dispenses with it in a way that glorifies God and respects the people around you.

God’s Sovereign Plans Behind Your Most Unproductive Days

In this episode of the Ask Pastor John podcast, John Piper answers a question from a listener who struggles with efficiency in her life. Piper works through an imaginary scenario—and then two passages from the Bible—to show us how God’s purposes may frustrate our desire for efficiency. Have a listen or read the transcript here.

Then walk in the peace and freedom that, when it shatters on the rocks of reality (which it will most days), you’re not being measured by God by how much you get done. You’re being measured by whether you trust the goodness and the wisdom and the sovereignty of God to work this new mess of inefficiency for his glory and the good of everyone involved, even when you can’t see how.

On the WPCA Blog This Week

This week on the blog we published an article I wrote called God May Postpone Your Relief for His Glory. 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.