Aaron Armstrong's Blog, page 361
July 21, 2012
Links I Like (Weekend Edition)
Al Mohler:
The news hit the airwaves like a sudden onslaught, and the truth began to sink in. It has happened again. This time, 50 people shot while attending the midnight premier of the last in the Batman sequence, “The Dark Knight Rises.” According to press reports, a 24-year-old man burst into the crowded theater, wearing a gas mask and carrying an arsenal. After deploying what is believed to be tear gas, he opened fire with a shotgun, a rifle,...
July 20, 2012
Admit You’ve Never Read It. It’ll Be Okay.
“Oh, I’ve totally been meaning to read that—everyone keeps telling me I need to.” How many times have you heard something like that or said it yourself?
About a week back, I was talking with a young man and he mentioned how there were all these classic books he was just starting to read. Mere Christianity,Orthodoxy…these kinds of books. Then he told me something that struck me funny. “I feel bad having never read these, when they’re so easily accessed. Where I’m from, we don’t have the option...
Links I Like
Kevin DeYoung:
It’s been remarkable to see the relativists head for the hills in light of the Penn State sex abuse scandal. The moral outrage has been loud and immense (and justified). I’ve heard no one appeal to diversity, multiculturalism, situational histories, or different ways of being. Every person I’ve talked to, every sports talk commentator I’ve heard, every article I’ve read—they’ve all said the same thing: the abuse was wrong, the cover-up was wrong, the pr...
July 19, 2012
Do Not Stroke the Ear, Strike the Heart
The most pernicious and debasing evil of all is, a converting our sacred office into a medium for setting forth our own excellence — prostituting the glories of the cross for the indulgence of our own pride, drawing a veil over the glories of our adorable Master and committing a robbery against him, even in the professed business to exalt him. This is to lose sight of the great end of the Ministry — commending ourselves, instead of our Master, to the regard of our people. . . Our business is...
Links I Like
Jared Wilson:
To be gospel-centered is to be Christ-centered. But as it pertains to the pursuit of holiness and obedience to God’s commands we may opt more often for the terminology “gospel-centered,” because without more qualifications, “Christ-centered obedience” can be misconstrued to imply simply taking Jesus as a moral example.
Preventing Heresy in Your Small Group
Sam O’Neal:
…for as long as I’ve been associated with small groups, I’ve heard whispers abo...
July 18, 2012
2 Things I Love (and 1 Thing I Don’t) About Preaching
This weekend I’m filling the pulpit on behalf of my friend Andrew Hall at Community Bible Church in Ilderton, Ontario. As I’ve been praying and preparing for this week’s message, I’ve been considering what I love and what I don’t love so much about preaching:
I get to worship God by serving others
I certainly don’t pretend to be the most gifted preacher in the world, but one of the best things about preaching is helping people see something in Scripture that they either haven’t seen before or r...
Links I Like
Stephen Altrogge:
These days it’s cool to use the word “broken” when talking about human sinfulness. There is something down and dirty and real life-ish about the word. It sounds authentic, and as everyone knows, authenticity is what it’s all about these days. “We’re all just broken people,” is what I typically hear, and what I’ve said myself from time to time. And there is something true about the statement. In one sense, sin has broken everything. Our entire pers...
July 17, 2012
Book Review: Disciple by Bill Clem
How do we make disciples? This is the question that so many are asking these days. Do we do it by creating new programs and courses? Do we do it informally, getting together and “doing life” one-on-one?
While there are many different approaches, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, Pastor Bill Clem suggests the key to making disciples isn’t so much figuring out a program that works, but understanding a disciple’s identity in Jesus in the first place. In his recent book,Disciple: Getti...
Links I Like
R.C. Sproul:
I once spoke with one of the leading representatives of this school of thought, a man who teaches the “pretribulation” rapture. I said to him, “I do not know a single verse anywhere in the Bible that teaches a pretribulation rapture. Can you tell me where to find that?” I’ll never forget what he said to me: “No, I can’t. But that’s what I was taught from the time I was a little child.” I told him, “Let’s get our theology from the Bible rather than from Sunday s...
July 16, 2012
The TMI Factor
Conversations are a funny thing. Sometimes they’re terrific—you can talk about life, work, family, faith, whatever—and you come away feeling closer with your friends. But other times, you can be having a good talk and all of a sudden it gets… kind of weird.
That’s been my experience reading a number of the latest marriage books when they come to the subject of marital intimacy. There’s been a renewed interest in applying the Scriptures to this important subject—one of the many for which Christ...
