Turning crowded dust into a string of pearls

How one site describes this picture from space! God is the ultimate designer!  Click on link and stand in awe–how great is our God!

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Why Christians don’t care when they sin

Alistair Begg (whom I looking forward to hearing in person in a few weeks) and R. C. Sproul answer this question here. Take five to watch!

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Which is better: creation or HD?

Today is an absolutely beautiful day outside!  Heavy dew on the grass, brilliant sunshine, blue skies and spring, yes even summer is in the air!  Love days like this but even on the less than beautiful days, creation is still amazing.  I appreciated the following reminder today from Trevin Wax:

A few weeks ago, we purchased our first television.

No, we were not TV-less up until then. It’s just that our televisions through the years have always been passed down to us. One was given to us at a yard sale. Another one had once belonged to my great grandmother in assisted living.

After enough friends and family teased us about the need to come out of the dark ages, we finally replaced our worn-out television with a 32-inch flat screen with high-definition quality. I’d seen HD TVs in other homes and hadn’t thought much about them. But once we plugged ours in and got it working, I was astounded at how much clearer the picture was.

I flipped through a few HD channels and was astonished by the screen’s revelation of detail. The lights of the big city sparkled with clarity. Watching a nature show, I could see how individual drops of dew glistened in the sun. The sharpness of the images took my breath away.

So I did something I never, ever do. I spent an entire afternoon admiring a screen. I closed the blinds in our living room, shut out the light, and just watched TV.

A couple hours later, I went outside. And I was immediately struck by something so blindingly obvious, it was easily forgotten: Creation is better than HD. . . . 

Keep reading.

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Grace for recovering perfectionists

Christine Hoover shares some some confessions of a recovering perfectionist:

As a recovering perfectionist, I sometimes confuse holiness and perfection. Rather than try to reflect on God’s grace or allow its natural compelling work in my life (holiness), I try really hard to do godly things, produce spiritual fruit, and live a neatly tied-up life (perfection).

Sometimes I do this because I believe God can’t love me without my efforts, but most of the time I do this because I am trying to fulfill some arbitrary Christian standard that I think others expect of me or that I expect of myself. I feel like a walk-in freezer forever attempting to keep myself at a constant, controlled temperature.

I grow weary of myself, of maintaining my frozen image.

Sometimes, to thaw out, I practice letting people see me in various states of disarray. When a friend is dropping off her children to play, I purposely do not change out of my bright-red, extra-large moose pajama pants and do not fix my hair or makeup.

I practice asking for help, even when I can likely do it on my own and even though I must ignore the feelings of guilt over being such a burden to everyone.

Keep reading this helpful article that will encourage recovering perfectionists to keep practicing by God’s grace!

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Anxiety is pointless and foolish

This is a gem to help those who battle anxiety and discouragement–(all of us do so occasionally and some of us do so quite frequently.  Thanks to Justin Taylor who would give credit to God who used men to give us these Scriptures. No new, groundbreaking truths here but well-organized indeed!   Bookmark this one!

1. God is near me to help me.

Philippians 4:5-6: “The Lord is at hand; [therefore] do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

2. God cares for me.

1 Peter 5:7: “. . . casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”

3. My Father in heaven knows all my needs and will supply all my needs.

Matthew 6:31-33: “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

4. God values me more than birds and grass, which he richly provides for and adorns; how much more will he provide for all my needs!

Matthew 6:26-30: “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?”

5. The worst someone can do to me is to kill me and take things from me!

Matthew 6:25: “Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” [I.e., you still have eternal life even if you have no food; you will still have a resurrection body even if you are physically deprived.]

Luke 12:4: “Do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do.”

Luke 21:16, 18: “Some of you they will put to death. . . . But not a hair of your head will perish.”

Romans 8:31-32, 35, 38-39: “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? . . . Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? . . . For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

6. Anxiety is pointless.

Matthew 6:27: “Which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” [Answer: no one.]

7. Anxiety is worldly.

Matthew 6:31-32: “Do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things. . . .”

James 4:4: “You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

8. Tomorrow has enough to worry about and doesn’t need my help.

Matthew 6:34: “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

Lamentations 3:23: “[God's mercies] are new every morning.”

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Active duty praying

Could it be that many of our problems with prayer and much of our weakness in prayer come from the fact that we are not all on active duty, and yet we still try to use the transmitter? We have a wartime walkie-talkie and trie to turn it into a civilian intercom to call the servant for another cushion in the den.

~John Piper~Desiring God (Wheaton, Illinois; Crossway Books; 2011) p. 177.

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