Darryl Dash's Blog, page 41

Saturday Links

Curated links for your weekend reading:

Looking Back: 3 Lessons from My Deepest Valley

Looking back from the vantage point of a decade, I find three lessons coming to the fore – lessons which may just help others, whether they be fellow sufferers or those seeking to minister to them.

Screen Sabbaths: A Modest Proposal for a Digital World

Taking disciplined time away from screens may not be the only way to live in the digital world without being conformed to it, but it is one good way.

Pastor, Don’t F...

Sing Loud, Die Happy

Singing is a big deal for Christians.

It’s “one of the most repeated commands in Holy Scripture,” according to Jim Thompson, author of Sing Loud, Die Happy: An Exploration of How God's Gift of Song Is Meant to Change Us. “It’s right up there with ‘believe’ and ‘do not fear.’” It’s so important that Martin Luther said, “Next to theology, I give to music the highest place and the greatest honor.”

And yet I’m not sure that many of us have given much thought to why singing matters to us as Christians....

Remember Who You Are (Colossians 3:1-17)

Big Idea: Remember who you are; act in light of who you are.

In my mind, one of the most fascinating characters of the 20th century was Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David, better known as King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Empire and Emperor of India from 20 January 1936 until he abdicated in December of the same year and became simply the Duke of Windsor.

What’s so interesting about him? Any king who abdicates is fascinating. Even before he be...

Saturday Links

Curated links for your weekend reading:

As Slow As It Takes

We must be willing to go as slow as necessary in order to see faithful local leaders raised up. We can only do this by trusting God with the timing, the adjusted expectations, and the weight of the lostness around us.

You Are the Horse: Low-Bar Evangelism Strategy

After a while you can provide some more training and equip them for some bigger jumps where they might start articulating the gospel to other people and answering their questions....

As Long As You Know You're Nobody Very Special

I need the story of a talking horse named Bree to remind me that I’m nobody special.

The story comes from The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis.

Bree has pretended to be a normal horse for a long time. Captured as a foal, Bree has had to hide his identity for a long time in order to survive. It’s hard to be great but then be forced to hide one’s greatness.

Bree finally gets his chance to return to Narnia but reveals a lack of courage on the way back. Perhaps Bree isn’t such a special horse after all....

Saturday Links

Curated links for your weekend reading:

An Outpouring of God’s Grace in Saskatoon

There’s only a small number of Christians in this country, and there are whole areas where there's no gospel-centered church at all.

Why There Are No Insignificant Christians

The person sitting in the other pew at church is more glorious than you realize.

Will We Have Regrets at the Judgment Seat of Christ?

Just as there are eternal consequences to our faith, so there are eternal consequences to our works.

Things for Chri...

Redeeming Productivity

I’m a sucker for a certain kind of book: one that’s practical, but deeply rooted in God’s truth.

Some books are practical but lack depth. They tell you what to do without grounding their advice in anything deeper. Other books are deeply theological but don’t tell you how to live. My favorite books begin with God’s truth, and then tease out what that truth means for our lives.

One such book is Redeeming Productivity: Getting More Done for the Glory of God by Reagan Rose.

Theological Truths

Rose bases...

The Constant Danger of False Teaching (Colossians 2:16-23)

Big Idea: Cling to Jesus and reject false teaching.

Have you ever been part of a conversation that left you feeling like you were missing something?

I have, one a long time ago, and one more recently.

The first was asking someone an important question a long time ago. The response was a story, a fable. I understood every word, but at the end of it didn’t have a clue what the answer was. I felt like the longer we talked, the less I knew what we were talking about. I was missing the subtext of the co...

Saturday Links

Curated links for your weekend reading:

Extraordinarily Ordinary

The exceptional things we should exemplify to our people are – well, they are very ordinary. Ordinary but not common. Exceptional but not spectacular. Earth shattering but not newsworthy. But extraordinary all the same. Extraordinarily ordinary.

Make It Your Ambition Not to Be Ambitious

I learned, in the university of the cross, the joy of an unaccomplished life. The happiness of being normal. The immeasurable contentment that comes fr...

The Thrill of Orthodoxy

I hear the comments all the time: “Doctrine divides.” “What really matters is not what the church believes, but how it lives.” “Scripture isn’t clear on many issues, so it’s best to make room to disagree.”

To many, orthodoxy — holding the central truths believed by Christians throughout the centuries — seems like an extravagant luxury we can no longer afford, and one that no longer looks desirable anyway.

As Trevin Wax writes in his new book The Thrill of Orthodoxy, we’ve lost “confidence in the t...