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April 2024 Recommended Reads
Dear Saints, This is my monthly letter with books that I think will be a blessing to your soul. Before I get to my recommendations of what to read, I want to share a few thoughts from Charles Spurgeon on how & why to read: With that as my argument for why you should read, here are some recommendations of what to read. Because I know we have people with various interests, I send many different categories of books. Don’t be overwhelmed by the list- I’m giving you a broad selection in hopes that you’ll pick a book or two to read this month. My Main Read for March: As I…
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Longing for the Future Sabbath
Over the last few weeks, we have been looking at the various rest-work rhythms that God has built into our world; night and day, rest and work, seed time and harvest. These rhythms are gracious provisions for weary pilgrims sojourning through this world. And yet, even those rhythms often leave us longing for more. We enjoy a vacation, but we know it will soon come to an end. We love the Lord’s Day, but we remember that Monday is lurking right around the corner. Many who have spent years looking forward to retirement often find themselves disappointed. We hope for rest in this world, but it’s never quite enough. C.S.…
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We Do Not Drift Into Holiness
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Gospel Grace and Sabbath Rest
This month in our pastoral letters, we’re thinking about the rhythms of rest and work that God has built into His created order. This week, I want to discuss one of our Lord’s sweetest gifts to His people: the rhythm of six days of work and one day of rest. The day of rest is known in Hebrew as the Shabbat, meaning “ceasing or stopping,” from which we get our word “Sabbath.” Because of the Judeo-Christian influence on our world, it can be easy for us to take this pattern of rest and work for granted. For a moment, rather than looking at this through the lens of 21st century…
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We Do Not Drift Into Holiness
Several years ago, I was out in the boat and dropped anchor to fish. We fished happily, not knowing that our anchor had not caught but instead was dragging along the mud beneath us. Next thing I knew, we had drifted into an oyster rake. Drifting is dangerous, and yet so often we can drift in our walk with the Lord without noticing it. Slowly, we spend less time in prayer or in the Word. What we once despised, we now indulge. Spiritual drift happens similarly to the way Ernest Hemingway described the way going bankrupt happens: it happens very slowly, and then all at once. DA Carson is helpful…
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Longing for the Future Sabbath
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What Does It Mean to Rest in Christ?
This month, we are studying the ways that God has designed us to glorify Him both in our rest and our work. As we saw in last week’s letter, God has designed the world with built-in rhythms for both: He has designed the day for activity and the night for sleep. He has designed seasons for harvesting and seasons for reaping. He has designed six days for working and one for rest. He even gives us a few months off from cutting grass each year! These rhythms all point to the wise design of an caring God. No Rest for the Weary If such rhythms are baked into creation, why…
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Rhythms of Rest and Work
Dear Saints, I hope that reading these pastoral letters have been as much of an encouragement to you as writing them has been for me. I don’t know if you have experienced this before, but I believe that the teacher often gets more from the lesson than the students. That was certainly the case with this series on the “one anothers” of Scripture, as the Spirit moved powerfully in my own heart, convicting and challenging me to not merely be a hearer of the word, but doer also (James 1:22). This month in our pastoral letters we will be considering rhythms of rest and work in the Christian life. This…
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They Will Know You By Your Love
We have been using these pastoral letters over the last two months to examine many of the different “one another” passages in the New Testament. I hope it has been an encouragement to you; it has certainly encouraged me as I have watched you live out these commands from God in the life of our church. As we conclude this topic with this pastoral letter, I want to return to a quote I shared in the first pastoral letter in this series: “Holiness is not a mystical condition experienced in relation to God but in isolation from human beings. You cannot be good in a vacuum, but only in the real…
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March 2024 Recommended Reads
Each month I send a list of books that I hope will be of encouragement to you. Because I know we have people with various interests, I send many different categories of books. Don’t be overwhelmed by the list- I’m giving you a broad selection in hopes that you’ll pick one or two books to read this month. My Main Read for March: While most of these books fit fairly neatly into categories, Michael Reeves’ Rejoicing in Christ is a book that spans so many categories: theology, devotional, church history, and Christian Living. Reeves is a model of the kind of pastor-theologian I would like to be, and I am…
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Five Blessings of Hospitality
This week in our pastoral letter, we’re going to think about a topic that is vital for life in the church: hospitality. We will look at several New Testament exhortations to hospitality in this letter, but I want to focus on 1 Peter 4:9: “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.” Life in the early church to whom Peter wrote these words was exceedingly difficult. Internally, there were the pressures of theological controversy, division, and relational strife. Outwardly, there was the reality of increasing persecution from the Roman government. There was nothing easy about being a Christian in the first or second century. If ever a group of people had…
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Build One Another Up
This is our sixth installment in this series on the “one another” statements in Scripture. Thus far, our focus has been on how we are to treat one another, particularly in times of conflict or controversy that could harm the church. This week, I’d like for us to look at how we are called to intentionally and proactively build one another up in Jesus Christ. I have been a believer for 24 years, and in that time I have had the privilege of being mentored by some of my pastoral heroes, including Douglas Kelly, Bill Barcley, and Terry Johnson. Each of those relationships has left an indelible imprint on my…
