A Few Good Reads

“Six Reasons Why Adultery is Very Serious”
Hardly a day passes without us hearing the story of another home torn apart by the foolishness of adultery. This sin breaks the marriage covenant, scars our conscience, and sends confusing messages about who Jesus is. Tim Challies helps us understand how serious this sin and its consequences can be. “Adultery is inherently secretive, inherently dishonest. It has to be because no one wants to trumpet that they are breaking a promise. Adultery loves the darkness and flees the light and for as long as it can it tries to remain a secret.”

“Reading for the Rest of Us”
“How do you find so much time to read?” This question has always bothered me. There’s not some time fairy who hangs around my office helping me find magic slots of time to accomplish things. We don’t magically find time to read; we make it. Sam Bierig offers some practical thoughts so we can do so more effectively. “Don’t be afraid to have multiple books going at the same time. I find that when I am reading multiple books at the same time, I finish more books—more than I do when plowing through only one book at a time. Crushing two or three small books while plodding through a larger work motivates me to read.”

“How to Parent Like a Coward”
We all make many mistakes in parenting, but a particular set of problems begin to creep in when we become afraid of calling our children out on their poor behavior. Michael Kelley walks through a few ways this temptation manifests itself. “As our kids have gotten older, I’ve found remnants of that old fear coming back again and again as we try the best we can to make decisions for our family. In the midst of all of them, I am finding that active, gracious, intentional, consistent parenting is not for the faint of heart. It takes strength, resolve, and most of all, faith.”

“My 3 Biggest Fears as a Teenager”
We will be navigating the teenage years in our house in the near future and I want to do my best to understand how to best guide my children through these often difficult years. Because of this, I was grateful for Jaquelle Crow’s post on the fears teenagers face. “As a teen just now crossing into the threshold of adulthood, I’m all too familiar with the fears of adolescence. All that instability, confusion, and decision-making can be stressful and even painful. I’ve laid awake at night because of a melting pot of fears bubbling in my mind, poisoning my peace.”

Hidden Christmas
This new book by Tim Keller will be a great help to us as we approach the Christmas season. We always need to be reminded of the great truths surrounding the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. “By understanding the message of hope and salvation within the Bible’s account of Jesus’s birth, readers will experience the redeeming power of God’s grace in a meaningful and deeper way.”