A Few Good Reads

Choose Hospitality over Entertaining

With Thanksgiving approaching many of us will host family and friends in our homes. Particularly if you have small children, this means hours of running around and frantically cleaning your home before guests arrive. By the time of their arrival you are so tired that you cannot enjoy their company and are ready for them to leave. Writing for The Village Church’s blog, Jen Wilkin offers a better way forward. “Entertaining is always thinking about the next course. Hospitality burns the rolls because it was listening to a story.”

5 Ways to Kill Anger
As a guy who struggles with anger, I appreciated this post from Jen Thorn. As the title suggests, she offers five practical thoughts for slaying the giant of anger. “The worst part about anger is that is does not bring about the righteousness of that we desire (James 1:19) Instead it hurts those who are at the receiving end of our anger, disfigures our character,  breeds hatred and distrusts,tears apart relationships, and worst of all dishonors God.”

Bruised Reed
As we get ready to work through the Servant Songs in Isaiah for Advent, I found myself drawn to this classic as I get ready to preach Isaiah 42. Martyn Lloyd Jones, speaking about how Richard Sibbes’ work helped him, said this. “ “balm to my soul at a period in my life when I was overworked and badly overtired, and therefore subject in an unusual manner to the onslaughts of the devil…The Bruised Reed…quietened, soothed, comforted, encouraged and healed me.”