Darryl Dash's Blog, page 25
February 13, 2024
Would Your Life Make Sense If God Wasn't Real?
Some things just don’t make sense if God isn’t real.
Noah building an ark because God told him a flood was coming? Crazy — unless Noah actually did hear from God and took him seriously enough to obey him.
Abraham leaving his religious convictions and land for a place he’d never been? It’s simply not done, especially when it means living as a foreigner in tents. It makes no sense, unless God actually did promise to give the land to his descendants, and an even better city to Abraham after death.
Whe...
February 10, 2024
Saturday Links
Curated links for your weekend reading:
6 Ways to Find (and Protect) the Time You Need to Read Books
You don’t need to be a professional book reviewer to read a lot of books. And you don’t need to be brilliant either. But you do need to be purposeful and consistent.
Why We Always Need More Books on Every Subject
Another Apologetics book? Yet one more Systematic Theology book? Do we need another Christian book on marriage? The answer is yes. The answer will always be yes. We will always need more boo...
February 6, 2024
The Difference Between Saul and David
I’ve been studying 1 and 2 Samuel lately, and I’ve been surprised by how few differences exist between Saul and David.
Both started out fairly well. After Saul was anointed, God gave him another heart, and he even prophesied (1 Samuel 10:9-13). His early reign was characterized by a military victory (1 Samuel 11). But the cracks appeared pretty quickly: he offered an unlawful sacrifice (1 Samuel 13), made a rash vow (1 Samuel 14:24), didn’t follow God’s instructions in battle (1 Samuel 15), becam...
February 4, 2024
A Better Sacrifice (Hebrews 9:1-10:18)
Big Idea: Jesus’ sacrifice deals decisively with the enormous offense of our sins.
At the heart of the Jewish and Christian faiths is something that is troubling to the human mind.
At the heart of the Jewish faith is the temple with all of its sacrifices. If you read the book of Leviticus, you discover all kinds of sacrifices of all kinds of animals for all kinds of occasions. You have five different kinds of sacrifices, a parade of bellowing animals being butchered on the altar.
Imagine the sensor...
February 3, 2024
Saturday Links
Curated links for your weekend reading:
Is Your Worship Service Otherworldly Enough?
We won’t reach more people by eliminating the awe-inspiring elements that follow from an encounter with the living God. We’ll reach fewer, and the ones we do reach will experience less.
In Praise of Rote Learning: Why We Need Catechisms
Let’s reconsider the beauty of rote learning.
What might God do in your church if you committed to praying more together?
January 30, 2024
The Beauty of Small Churches
I pastored two small churches for a combined total of 17 years.
In the first small church, I didn’t realize how good I had it. The people were loving and patient. They gave me a chance to grow and learn the role of pastor. They let me make mistakes. They loved us in significant ways.
But I felt bad about the smallness of the church. The church grew a little and then shrank a little. No matter how much we tried, it never became a medium-sized church, and I felt bad about it.
Some years later, I had ...
January 28, 2024
Don’t Lose Your Wonder (Hebrews 8)
Big Idea: Wonder again at Jesus, because the more we wonder at Jesus and his salvation, the less we’ll be tempted to wander from him.
John Piper has said that books don’t change your life; paragraphs do. I agree, but I’ll go farther and say that even sentences can change your life. One such sentence is this one by Trevin Wax: “The church faces her biggest challenge not when new errors start to win but when old truths no longer wow.”
There is so much wisdom in that one sentence. Our greatest challe...
January 27, 2024
Saturday Links
Curated links for your weekend reading:
8 Encouraging Trends in Global Christianity for 2024
The 2024 Status of Global Christianity report provides at least eight positive trends that paint a picture of a healthy, growing global church.
Dear Pastor … Your Leadership Is Needed in the Pulpit
Here are just a few of the reasons we’re thankful to God for your leadership of his people through consistent and diligent Bible exposition.
Alistair Begg, Weddings, Wise Application and Adding Mandates to Scriptur...
January 23, 2024
But Her Too
One of the hardest books I read last year is But He Said He Is a Christian: Journal Entries of a Young Christian Woman in an Abusive Relationship, written by Rebecca K. Tan. It’s a heartbreaking look at what it’s like for a Christian young woman to experience abuse by a professing believer. Because many of us have not experienced sexual abuse, we benefit from learning from the experience and reflections of someone who has.
Tan is back with a second book, just released this week: But Her Too: Rede...
January 20, 2024
Saturday Links
Curated links for your weekend reading:
Reflections on the Evangelical Fracturing, Ten Years In
The story of Acts 29's trajectory will feel familiar to many of us outside of the network as well. Indeed it may serve as a small-scale model for much of the evangelical fracturing that began around 2015 and has continued through to the present. So it is worth considering why all this took place.
My concern, really, is not with pastoral wages at all, but with evangelical awarene...
