Continuing a new feature; a travelogue is “a movie, book, or illustrated lecture about the places visited and experiences encountered by a traveler.” While traveling the Interwebs, here’s what I’ve encountered the last couple of weeks and commend to you.
Make Habits > Resolutions
“For me, establishing habits is far more effective than setting goals,” Kari wrote this week, highlighting five habits that have impacted her the most:
- Four chapters a day.
- Early bedtime.
- Gobs of greens.
- Walk and water.
- Cut complaining completely.
» Read the whole article over at Sacred Mundane, with a new design too.
Speaking of resolutions, you may be familiar with Jonathan Edward’s seventy, written as a young man. Number 28 relates well to Kari’s first one above:
Resolved, to study the Scriptures so steadily, constantly and frequently, as that I may find, and plainly perceive myself to grow in the knowledge of the same.
—The Resolutions of Jonathan Edwards via DesiringGod.org
While we may aspire to make big goals let us also make good, godly, and healthy habits. This is how we mature and come of age.
How to Master the Bible
Fred Sanders quotes James Gray on the process on studying the Bible after mastering it. Intriguing concept which at first seems backwards, but I can attest this is true in personal experience:
“How to master the English Bible! High-sounding title that, but does it mean what it says? It is not how to study, but how to master it; for there is a sense in which the Bible must be mastered before it can be studied, and it is the failure to see this which accounts for other failures on the part of many earnest would-be Bible students. I suppose it is something like a farm; for although never a farmer myself, I have always imagined a farmer should know his farm before he attempted to work it. How much upland and how much lowland? How much wood and how much pasture? Where should the orchard be laid out? Where plant my corn, oats, and potatoes? What plot is to be seeded down to grass? When he has mastered his farm he begins to get ready for results from it.”
—James Gray, How to Master the English Bible (1904)
Gray’s method is mostly reading and re-reading, with intentional and focus. I’ll be doing that mainly in Genesis to begin 2020, reading the rest of Scripture once through the year as well.
-isms are apt to ruin us. Try Materialism for example…
Randy Alcorn begins, “God created us to love people and use things, but materialists love things and use people.” Thus is the premise of ten observations he makes on how materialism as a way of life ruins one’s faith during this life and distracts from preparing for the life to come. Note how the main warning isn’t so much that “stuff is bad,” nor to promote a sacred v. secular duality; rather, let’s make space for nuance and discover the pitfalls ahead, especially for us who are (relatively) rich: “Of course, the wealthy man is no more inherently sinful than the poor—he simply has more means and opportunity to subsidize and impose his sins upon others.”
—read the rest » “Ten Ways Materialism Brings Us to Ruin,” by Randy Alcorn
Next up, Benjamin Vrbicek has two posts on here, as he’s so prolific.
A Year Without Hindrances
“We’ll have plenty of hindrances next year, but none too great for God’s love and power to overcome.”
—Benjamin Vrbicek, “Neither Sin nor Death nor Elections Can Hinder God’s Work in 2020“
Concerning Christmas
Since it’s still Christmas (twelve days spanning December 25 to Epiphany), here’s more with a timely message on Romans 8 mixed with the birth of God’s Son —”What if Christmas Doesn’t Come From A Store?” — with a holy opportunity set before us:
Notice that the point of Jesus’s words in Matthew 5 and the words of Paul in Romans 8, do not command us to go on a “sin diet,” like we just sin less and then have some “cheat meals” here and there. God commands us to starve sin, not diet from sin. Christians don’t seek to limit our sin; we do whatever we have to do to eliminate our sin.
And the word “our” in “our sin” is key. Christian, be far more concerned about your greed than the greed of corporate America. Be far more concerned about the sex viewed on your smartphone than the sex filmed in Hollywood. Be far more concerned about the health of your marriage than the cheapening of marriage by our government. God’s view of sin is that of something dangerous, something that robs us of joy and God of his glory. We don’t have this view; sin is something we laugh at and coddle.
—Benjamin Vrbicek, “What if Christmas Doesn’t Come From A Store?”
Travelpixels: a bonus GoPro photo
