lust

'If you believe the power to overcome sin comes from discipline, you’re preaching a different gospel than the one that involves Christ on the Cross. Preach Christ crucified to your friends. Preach faith. Preach the power of God.' This article by Fabs Harford about struggling with lust is good stuff, practical, with a powerful tool from John Piper at the end that got a fist pump from me (and hopefully more than that, as it's also uber-practical in fighting lust with joy in Jesus).

Abba Changes Everything

This article by Russell Moore is really great. We're studying Romans at Biblestudy, learning about the gospel that enables us to call the Creator God our Abba. And I think adoption is pretty awesome, both theologically and practically (is that what one calls it?).

read

this awesome post from a mother of five about motherhood as a calling.
'Our culture is simply afraid of death. Laying down your own life, in any way, is terrifying. Strangely, it is that fear that drives the abortion industry: fear that your dreams will die, that your future will die, that your freedom will die—and trying to escape that death by running into the arms of death.'

'But a Christian should have a different paradigm. We should run to to the cross. To death. So lay down your hopes. Lay down your future. Lay down your petty annoyances. Lay down your desire to be recognized. Lay down your fussiness at your children. Lay down your perfectly clean house. Lay down your grievances about the life you are living. Lay down the imaginary life you could have had by yourself. Let it go.

Death to yourself is not the end of the story. We, of all people, ought to know what follows death. The Christian life is resurrection life, life that cannot be contained by death, the kind of life that is only possible when you have been to the cross and back.'

james and galatians

I've been thinking about this truth, that Christianity is outward and upward rather than inward focused, since listening to a sermon from Galatians. Then I read this article based out of James that confirms it. Read it here.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession.”