Darryl Dash's Blog, page 40

If We Do Not Give Up

I love how Galatians 6:9 ends: “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”

Without that qualifying phrase, we’d puzzle. When a farmer sows, the crop follows a predictable pattern. The “due season” isn’t a mystery: alfalfa sprouts sprout in just 3 to 5 days; corn takes 60 to 100 days to reach maturity. A farmer gets to know what to expect.

The Christian life’s not like that. How long must a wife bear witness to Christ before her unbelieving husba...

Making Sense of Suffering (Job)

Big Idea: You are going to suffer. You may not be able to understand it, and you should be careful about how to explain it. But you can trust God because God is good and powerful.

Today we’re looking at a book in the Bible that we often don’t know how to process, and yet it’s a book that we desperately need.

It’s the book of Job. It’s a book many Christians don’t know very well, but one whose story mirrors many of our own stories. Ray Ortlund once preached on this book and said:

I used to think tha...

Saturday Links

Curated links for your weekend reading:

The Spiritual Power of Staying Put

Lasting fruit usually comes from lasting presence.

Make Christianity Hard Again

My hunch is that most people with this vision of Christianity are not disengaged because it is really difficult. Rather, people disengage because this version of Christianity seems boring.

I Did Not Sign-Up for This: The Fourth P of Pastoral Ministry

Platform relates to the “trellis” work mentioned in Trellis and the Vine — the structure, programs e...

Eyes Wide Open Into the Beautiful Truths That We've Been Given

I love books. I suppose I’m sometimes prone to think that a particular book I’ve read recently is one of the most important books and that everyone needs to read it.

But I’m not exaggerating when I say that about The Thrill of Orthodoxy by Trevin Wax. It really is one of the most important books written in the past couple of years.

We live in an atheological age. Many think that theology is boring, irrelevant, and divisive. I’ve heard church leaders say we need to pay less attention to what we bel...

When God’s People Disappoint (Genesis 30-50)

Big Idea: God accomplishes his purposes through his people despite their sins.

If God is good, why are his people often so disappointing?

That’s the question all of us have to answer. We answer it personally when we’re hurt by other Christians or by the church. But we also have to answer it when we look at the many blemishes in church history, and many of the scandals that rock the church today.

In 2008, John Dickson, the Founding Director of the Centre for Public Christianity, was part of a debate...

Saturday Links

Curated links for your weekend reading:

The Prevailing Sin of Our Age

The prevailing sin of our age is we have misplaced the center of all authority.

What I Want From A Church

Our key task is not to survey people to find out what it will take to get them back in and it’s not to inquire what they might find spiritually meaningful. Our key task is to search the Scriptures to see what God tells us a church ought to be and ought to do.

Leaving a Church Well

There are ways in which one can leave the congre...

How to Change Your Spouse in One Simple Step

Char and I have been married for 32 years now. I’ve had to do a lot of repenting for how I treated her in the early years.

I married Char, in part, because she’s so different from me. I somehow knew that I needed those differences. I’m task-oriented; she’s relational. I’m in a hurry; she’s not. In a thousand ways, she provides a helpful and needed counterpart to my tendencies. I’m so much better for having her in my life.

The problem is that some of those differences started to grate at me. I see ...

Saturday Links

Curated links for your weekend reading:

Is Your Discipleship Model Missing Something?

I’ve been discipled along the way not merely through education and experience but also through the example of mature believers.

Four Things Focusing on Sunday Sermons in Midweek Groups Achieves

There are several advantages to this setup of the Word on Sunday being revisited in midweek groups. In no particular order, these are some of them.

C. S. Lewis and Mrs. Moore: Relationship of Sin or Sanctification?

Every biogr...

In Good Time with Jen Pollock Michel

I’ve lost track of how many books I’ve read on time and productivity. The problem with many of these books is that they backfire. As Oliver Burkeman writes in Four Thousand Weeks, our efforts to make the most of our limited time can actually make things worse:

The problem isn’t exactly that these techniques and products don’t work. It’s that they do work — in the sense that you’ll get more done, race to more meetings, ferry your kids to more after-school activities, generate more profit for your ...

God's Plan for All People (Genesis 1-11)

Big Idea: The world was good, but we broke it through sin. But God offers hope that sin and evil won’t have the final word.

Today we begin a big adventure. This year we’re planning on going through the entire Bible from the very first page right to the very end.

Every Sunday we’re going to be covering a fairly large portion of Scripture at a high level. During the week, I encourage you to read George Guthrie’s CSB Day-by-Day Chronological Bible. It should take you about 15 minutes a day.

Our goal ...