Choosing What To Meditate On

From Paul David Tripp's excellent book, Dangerous Calling (or Kindle)...

For many people in ministry, waiting becomes a chronicle of ever-weakening faith because meditating on the circumstances will leave you in awe of the circumstances. They will appear to grow larger, you will feel smaller, and your vision of God will be clouded. But if you meditate on the Lord, you will be in greater awe of his presence, power, faithfulness, and grace. The situation will seem smaller, and you will live with greater confidence even though nothing has changed.

Pick up a copy of Dangerous Calling for 48% off at WTS.

Keller's Five Questions

I'm not sure I've posted this before, but even if I did it's worth putting up again. David Cooke has posted Keller's Five Questions over at Cookies Days (a blog you should check out). He first posted it in 2009, I believe.

Keller said these are five questions he asks of a biblical text as he reads it for himself. Helpful.

1. How can I praise him?
2. How can I confess my sins on the basis of this text?
3. If this is really true, what wrong behavior, what harmful emotions or false attitudes result in me when I forget this? Every problem is because you have forgotten something. What problems are you facing?
4. What should I be aspiring to do on the basis of this text?
5. Why are you telling me this today.

Lots-o-Links 1.18.12

The Death of the Fringe Suburb

For too long, we over-invested in the wrong places. Those retail centers and subdivisions will never be worth what they cost to build. We have to stop throwing good money after bad. It is time to instead build what the market wants: mixed-income, walkable cities and suburbs that will support the knowledge economy, promote environmental sustainability and create jobs.

Seven Tips for Talking with Your Neighbors About Jesus

For whatever reason, it’s easy for Christians to clam up and get weird when talking about their faith in the day-to-day. Here are a few tips to make bridge those inhibitions and get the conversation going...

An Appreciation of Bird By Bird by Anne LaMott (get it at Amazon or on Kindle)

I thought I was teetering on the edge of crazy with no way to explain to anyone for fear they would quickly need to catch a bus. I was not crazy, or at least not in an inordinate way. With each turn of the page a brilliant sky of possibility opened up to gaze in. Now I might look crazy to some when looking up into that firmament. But, I knew I wasn't the only one. 

Richard Baxter on Meditation

The duty which I press upon thee so earnestly, and in the practice of which I am now to direct thee, is, “The set and solemn acting of all the powers of thy soul in meditation upon thy everlasting rest.” More fully to explain the nature of this duty, I will here illustrate a little the description itself-then point out the fittest time, place, and temper of mind, for it.

Groundhog Day is coming, and it's Groundhog Days in Woodstock, IL -- the movie Groundhog Day was filmed in Woodstock, IL 1992 and released in 1993. Watch it again this Groundhog Day. And if you are in the Chicagoland area, stop by Woodstock for the festivities.