Darryl Dash's Blog, page 5

What Marriage is Like (Song of Songs 6:4-8:4)

Big Idea: A healthy marriage deepens through conflict and pursues joyful, holy intimacy that’s a reflection of Christ’s steadfast love.

I am a product of a single-parent home. For most of my childhood, I lived with my mother and my siblings but not my dad.

For that reason, I never had the privilege of seeing what a healthy marriage looked like. I’ve only seen hints of what a healthy marriage looks like from other couples, but that’s not the same as experiencing it consistently.

So I made a delibera...

Saturday Links

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A Word to My Students

Sooner or later the time will come — perhaps in a job interview, or an interview for a place in a graduate program, or your second week in a new job that doesn’t have you in front of a computer all day — when your lack of the skills you claim to have will become evident, to your great embarrassment and frustration.

The High Price of Watching Nudity

Here are my reasons for why I’m committed to this kind of radical abstention from anything ...

My Favorite Blog Posts of All Time

I follow around 150 blogs and skim through a couple hundred posts each week. Over the past decade, that adds up to more than ten thousand blog posts. Yet, only seven have profoundly impacted my life.

Reading them again, I realize how many of them are simple, and yet they've shaped how I think, live, and serve.

Here they are, along with a summary of each and why they stood out to me.

Gospel + Safety + Time = A Church Where Anyone Can Grow

This is what our churches must be: gentle environments of gosp...

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How Social Media Shortens Your Life

Social media platforms have been stealing our time using a sneaky trick: they’ve been speeding up our sense of time — effectively shortening our lives — so we think we had less than we did, and don’t notice some of it was pilfered.

Questions Every Pastor on Social Media Should Ask Themselves

Your people don’t really need your social media presence, but they do need your actual presence.

What Does It Take for Pastors to Stay i...

What Is a Marriage?

Many people think they know the answer, but I’ve found we’re often not as clear as we should be. What is a wedding, and what is a marriage?

It's important to base our understanding on what the Bible teaches to ensure it aligns with God's design. Lack of clarity about weddings and marriage leads to confusion in our personal lives, society, and the church.

In his book Christian Ethics, Wayne Grudem provides this helpful definition:

Marriage is… a lifelong relationship between a man and a woman that i...

What a Wedding’s Like (Song of Songs 3:6-5:1)

Big Idea: A wedding is a regal, passionate giving of one to another that is blessed by the community.

There’s nothing quite like a wedding. Even the most cynical among us can’t help but be moved when a groom stands at the front, waiting, and the bride begins her walk down the aisle. Their expressions and exchanged vows reveal that we’re witnessing something more meaningful than just the moment. And we are! Weddings give us a glimpse of something transcendent, something at the very heart of the un...

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The Financial and Spiritual Principle of Compound Interest

Lessons learned when they are tiny do not easily fade but instead accumulate and bear fruit over a lifetime.

The Case Stott Made for Christian Social Involvement

If we are to be Christlike, we too should feel anger at injustice and compassion for its victims.

Selective Admiration: Why You Don’t Need Perfect Heroes

When we abandon the myth of the perfect hero, something liberating happens: we stop waiting...

My 2025 Tech Stack

Occasionally, I like to share about the tech tools I use. I enjoy reading about the tools that others use; maybe some of my suggestions will be helpful for you.

One caveat: the tools you already use may already be good enough. We often waste time searching for better tools instead of using the ones we already have.

Here are the tools I currently use the most.

Task Management: Things

I love Things. I use it every day. I love how easy this task management app is to use. It meets my needs perfectly, an...

What Dating’s Like (Song of Songs 2:8-3:5)

Big Idea: Dating involves both the excitement of romantic pursuit and the challenges of managing powerful desires and resolving relationship issues before marriage.

The tricky part of a romantic relationship is the awkward in-between phase after romance starts but before marriage.

It’s exciting. In the first section of the Song of Songs, we learn that romantic love is a gift that brings intense desires that should be controlled. It's like a opening a dam. Once the fire of romance is kindled, it’s ...

Saturday Links

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Urgent

Your greatest danger is letting the urgent things crowd out the important.

What Is Success?

Success in ministry is abiding. Success in ministry is faithfulness to Jesus Christ. Success in ministry is persevering to the very end.

Practical Christian Guardrails for Humor and Joking

Here are two areas to be wary of to keep our humour from being destructive to the soul.

Read books, Not AI Summaries

If the next generation outsources reading to AI and, in the pro...