Here is a collection of good reads gathered from across the internet this past week. Enjoy!
On hope and the Christian life: What Christianity Offers by David McLemore
We understand this desire, though, don’t we? Don’t most people want to live a long time? But isn’t the kind of life you live more important that just living? Paul gives us insight into the kind of life we have available to us as Christians. We don’t have immortality as we typically understand it – with this present life in continuation forever. We have something far better. We have the power of the resurrection. The life Jesus lived – obedience to God, suffering, death on the cross, then resurrection – is reversed for us. We have the power of the resurrection – the great hope that all is not lost, that this life and the next really does matter. And in that power, we can obey, suffer, and die with a peace that comes only from God. (click here to read more)
On manhood: Stop Trying to Be a Man and Start Trying to Be a Good Man by Brad Williams
Our goal ought to be becoming Christ-like men. Being a Christ-like man means rejecting the notions that our culture, and sometimes even other Christian men, herald as the masculine ideal. Instead, we should focus our attention on loving peace, seeking justice, and sacrificing ourselves for others. In this way, Jesus Christ becomes our role model for what it means to be a good man. (click here to read more)
On marriage: Did I Marry the Right Person? by John Piper
Paul quotes it and says, “This is a great mystery. I’m speaking of Christ and the church.” In other words, what happens in marriage is that God acts. Believer or unbeliever — God acts and creates a bond that is not to be broken by man, because it is a portrait, a drama, of the covenant commitment between Christ and the church.
Who is the right person to be married to? Answer: the one to whom you said, “For better, for worse. For richer, for poorer. ‘Til death do us part,” because that is the only person with whom you can demonstrate the covenant faithfulness of Christ to his church. (click here to read more)
First Baptist Church 