Linked Together: Bible Study

Two blog posts and one video encouraging you to study the Bible.

Kim Shay: “[T]he best way to get people fired up about the Bible is to get them into the Bible and help them study it well. When we open that book and read and pray over its contents, the Spirit of God speaks to our hearts and nourishes us. The Spirit satisfies our souls and causes us to long for more.”

Lisa Spence: “We long for women to hunger for the Word of God, that hunger fueling a desire for knowledge, that knowledge prompting a greater love for the God of the Word, that love in turn creating a greater hunger, and not just a hunger for our personal knowledge of Him but for others to know Him too.”

Kathy Keller on Reading the Bible Every Day from Crossway on Vimeo.

Linked Together: God

Trinity
Martin Downes posted two clarifying quotes on the eternal generation of the Son to “straighten out any wonky thoughts.” (I think the reason some people back away from the doctrine of eternal generation is because it’s hard to think about it without “wonky thoughts.”)

Sovereignty
The purposes of God give our lives and this world meaning: “God’s good purpose shows us that the appearance of vanity and futility in this world is just that—mere appearance. To trust in God’s good purpose is the essence of godly faith. Thus, no Christian can be an ultimate pessimist.” —R. C. Sproul at Ligonier Ministries

God’s sovereignty and human responsibility in the Westminster Standards: “Many people in our own day try to cut through the mystery that earlier generations affirmed. They strip God of his sovereignty and claim that man decides his own fate; that he, apart from God, is the captain of his own fate. Others seek to preserve the sovereignty of God at the expense of human responsibility and freedom, biblical defined. The Westminster Standards give us a third alternative—one that respects the mystery of the relationship between divine sovereignty and responsibility and allows us to affirm both scriptural truths.” —J. V. Fesko at Crossway Blog

Linked Together: Fathers

Two Tributes
to very different fathers.

• Tom Ascol tells his father’s story: “In many ways the family in which I grew up would be considered by modern psychologists as ‘dysfunctional.’ Most of the difficulties that we had stemmed from my father and the demons that he fought his whole life. Like every other father who has ever lived, Dad was a mixture of blessing and curse. The latter was easier to see for the first three decades of my life. By God’s grace, the former has become increasingly apparent over the last half of my journey.” 
• Wendy Alsup writes about her father, a dad whose character pointed to the heavenly Father: “I hope that my words about my dad will be an encouragement to all of us, whether you had a dad like this or not, because the best characteristics of my dad are the ones that are true for all of us of our heavenly Father.”

Mothers, Too?
Does Ephesians 6:4,

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

include mothers, too? (Bill Mounce)

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Bonus link: Last week I linked to Kevin DeYoung’s T4G sermon on scripture, Never Spoke a Man Like This Before: Inerrancy, Evangelism and Christ’s Unbreakable Bible. Now I’ve found the longer version, an 11 sermon series on the doctrine of Scripture preached at University Reformed Church in 2012.