Quick update: Tom Ascol, on vacation, appears to be doing much better, praise God!

(Original post.)

Andy Naselli, guestblogging for Justin Taylor, tells of a “particularly striking” (his words, but accurate) conversation overheard while on vacation:

Between Two Worlds: Hypocrites at Panera: An Illustration of Fallen Human Nature.

The first part of the story is saddening. The second part, downright heartbreaking.

I’ve made some changes to the site recently, and tonight I did a bunch. So here we are, in no particular order…

• No more Google Reader links or Del.icio.us links – I got bored with having these in the sidebar.
• I fixed the search results page on the new theme, so when you search, you no longer just see title, you actually see the text that your search hit on. Here’s an example.
• I updated some of the software that runs the site (Wordpress plugins for you techie types) so that it runs faster. (Again, for techie types – changed some of the plugins that built dynamic scripts, CSS, etc. based on configured options, to static pages. I don’t change the configuration enough to pay the performance hit.)
• I now have a “Now Reading” section in the sidebar, if you’re curious what I’m reading. Most of the time it is guaranteed to be out of date…

Have a great weekend…

More from The Christian in Complete Armour… Here, William Gurnall describes how Satan argues with us on behalf of our secret sins, hoping that we will cling to them…

Thou mayest keep me and thy credit also; I will not be seen abroad in thy company to shame thee among thy neighbours; shut me up in the most retired room thou hast in thy heart, from the hearing of others, if thou wilt only let me now and then have the wanton embraces of thy thoughts and affections in secret…

Here the valiant swordsmen of the world have showed themselves mere cowards, who have come out of the field with victorious banners, and then lived, yea, died slaves to a base lust at home.

In The Christian in Complete Armour, William Gurnall talks about trusting God not only when you think he is absent (withdrawing), but even when he seems to be against you, as in the case of Job or the Canaanite woman:

The Christian must trust in a withdrawing God, Isa. 50:10. Let him that walks in darkness, and sees no light, trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God. This requires a holy boldness of faith indeed, to venture into God’s presence, as Esther into Ahasuerus’, when no smile is to be seen on his face, no golden sceptre of the promise perceived by the soul, as held forth to embolden it to come near, then to press in with this noble resolution, “If I perish, I perish,” Est. 4:16. Nay, more, to trust not only in a withdrawing but a “killing God,” Job 13:15; not when his love is hid, but when his wrath breaks forth. Now for a soul to make its approaches to God by a recumbency of faith, while God seems to fire upon it, and shoot his frowns like envenomed arrows into it, is hard work, and will try the Christian’s mettle to purpose. Yet such a masculine spirit we find in the poor woman of Canaan, who takes up the bullets of Christ shot at her, and with a humble boldness of faith sends them back again in her prayer.

Russell Moore, filling in for Albert Mohler on the Albert Mohler Radio Program, starts off a discussion titled Listening to the Culture at the Cineplex with this question:

What do you think that we as Christians, what can we see in some of the themes that are out there right now in film that ought to inform some of the issues that we address and raise when we we’re talking evangelistically? Is there anything that we could see in some of these films that will say that… these are the kinds of questions that our culture is asking right now?

And I’m also curious, what do you think are some things that we ought to beware, some subtle messages that may come through popular culture, through film, that maybe we’re not looking for? Most committed Christians are going to say, “We’re going to be wary, we’re not going to go to a movie that has nudity, that has obscenity, that has profanity throughout it.” But a lot of times there are other very subtle messages that come through film that have a lot of impact precisely because we don’t see them, precisely because we don’t pay attention to them. They just simply seem to be part of the furniture in the room and we’re not even aware of what’s being said to us, so we don’t look at those things discerningly.

What kind of messages do you think are out there that Christian teenagers, and young adults, and middle-aged adults, and senior adults, are hearing coming through film right now? What should we be looking for, for good and for ill?

Listen to the whole thing here.

James A. Beverly at Christianity today asks,

Popular spiritual author and Oprah favorite Eckhart Tolle quotes Jesus a lot. Is he a Christian?

Read more.

John Piper continues his sermon series on baptism and church membership with a look at Bethlehem Baptist’s Elder Affirmation of Faith on baptism:

We believe that baptism is an ordinance of the Lord by which those who have repented and come to faith express their union with Christ in His death and resurrection, by being immersed in water in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is a sign of belonging to the new people of God, the true Israel, and an emblem of burial and cleansing, signifying death to the old life of unbelief, and purification from the pollution of sin.

Read more, listen, or watch at Desiring God

Tony Reinke is renaming his blog, and in the process shares an interesting tidbit about Jonathan Edwards’ study habits:

If you’ve ever seen Jonathan Edwards’s octagonal desk, you know he used a number of notebooks and resources in his personal study. But each of his notebooks were strategic. He used his blank bible, his collection of miscellanies, and his other notebooks as places to collect his thoughts. Later, he developed these thoughts into sermons and books.

Read more, and see a diagram of Edwards’ workspace at the newly named Miscellanies.