Weekly Once-Over (12.19.13)
Weekly Once-Over:
5 Ways To Love Your Neighbors This Christmas: The whole Christmas season celebrates God with us. Because God is with us and for us, we are not alone. And neither should our neighbors be, as we have great opportunities during this season to connect with them.
Santa Claus: Harmless Fun or Christmas Disruption?: Within our families, how are we as Christians suppose to handle Santa Claus during the Christmas Season? John Piper gives us a very healthy tip on what we are suppose to do.
6 Ways To Handle Stress this Christmas: With Christmas fast approaching, I’m sure a lot of people (me included) can feel that pull of stress and exhaustion. It is like sitting at the top of a stress slide, scooting forward inch by inch. We know what is coming, and we might already be worried about how we will land in the bark chips at the bottom. While Christmas may always be busy, here are a few simple things to think about that have helped me control some of the stress.
12 Tips For Cultivating Your Own Love For Christ: If you’re a follower of Jesus then He has entrusted you with influence over the people around you. Some of these people are other Christians. We are called to encourage, edify, and build up our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ (Eph.4:29; 1 Thes. 5:11; Heb.10:25). We are also entrusted with influence over people in our lives who don’t yet know Christ. We have a responsibility to declare the gospel verbally and demonstrate the effects of the gospel through our service toward them (Matt.5:13-16; 28:19-20)...
Christmas Generosity: How can we reflect God’s generosity toward our family, our church, and our world at Christmas?
The Rise Of The Semi-Churched: I want to talk about church members who attend their home church with great irregularity. These aren’t unchurched folks, or de-churched, or under-churched. They are semi-churched. They show up some of the time, but not every week. They are on again/off again, in and out, here on Sunday and gone for two. That’s the scandal of the semi-churched.
"Duck Dynasty": Let's Deal In Real Reality: Phil Robertson, patriarch of A&E’s “Duck Dynasty,” got fired or sanctioned or hiatused or somethin’. Before we start organizing the boycotts or social media petitions or whatever, I think the show’s Christian fans — of which I am one — could use a reality check on a few notes:
Whatever Happened To Male Friendship?: And most men desire this friendship—this tender, warm, (dare we say it?) loving friendship—but that desire receives no affirmation in our culture. Men’s desires are circumscribed within a perverse Venn diagram, with one circle labeled “sex,” the other “mammon.” Such friendship seems as foreign as the virgin Irish countryside, unattainable in the normal course of life in the 21st century.