God's given us another great week, but I'm really missing all of you back home. I'm not sure if Jordan did it on purpose and/or just for me, but he left the camera running after the sermon last week and recorded the closing song and several minutes of you all visiting with each other. It was great to see your smiling faces. Even if Jordan wasn't thinking about me, I believe in a God of providence who was. He's so kind. And of course hearing Dr. Warren preach was a blessing also. Thankful for his ministry among you.

We started off our week in fellowship with another faithful church. So grateful to be reminded that we are not in the fight alone. God's reminding me like he did Elijah that he has a remnant who have not bowed the knee to Baal.

This time around I adjusted the subject line a bit. I may be longer than I have been so far. I find myself chasing down a few different thoughts this week. So here are my mental meanderings.

First, I've been thinking about God's love for me, and about his grace in letting me know and feel his love for me. The aforementioned blessings of the week are just the start. Here are a few more ways God showed me his love this week. There's a running joke in our family that all my favorites end up going away: my favorite dish at a given restaurant, removed from the menu; or even my favorite restaurant, closed down because of Covid; my favorite flavor of a given product, discontinued. So imagine my surprise this week when I saw a Snapple flavor discontinued about 15 years ago back on the shelf where we're grocery shopping. It's Snapple Elements--Rain if you're curious. I know that's a really small thing...insignificant...unimportant. But God cares even about small ways to bless his people. Also, God gave my mom grace in her recovery from her health scare. And then, he's given me the Gospel as the absolute pinnacle of his love in his Son. And the Son has sent the Spirit to me to pour God's love into my heart and enable me to cry "Abba." I know I'm going back to basics here, but here's why I'm thinking about these things. I entered this sabbatical with at least a little apprehension. I'm still not sure how I'm going to handle four months without any external pressures or constraints or expectations. Will I be lazy (which is far different from resting)? Will I become listless and bored, without a sense of purpose? I reframed the latter question this week as I was thinking: do I have to be/feel useful to God in order to be/feel loved by God? And by God's grace, I can answer with a resounding "NO!" God's love for me is in no way linked to my usefulness to him. That is biblical and undeniably true; but in my often pragmatic, utilitarian way of thinking, it may not always feel true. So imagine my delight in discovering that being God's child is enough, that the Gospel is enough, for my confidence in God's love for me, for my feeling God's love for me. To say it another way, my not being particularly useful to God for four months cannot separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. And so dear friends, if you're unconsciously linking God's love for you to something you are or do, please learn this lesson along with me.

Secondly, I've been thinking about expressive individualism. Yeah, I know. I'm weird, but this is not just out of nowhere. I finished the 9 Marks quarterly journal (March 2022), which addresses the subject. I've found it really helpful and shared specific articles with folks because of their helpfulness. Some articles I found particularly provocative addressed preaching, shepherding, raising children, and youth ministry in an age of expressive individualism. If the term "expressive individualism" is new to you, I'm sure I won't do justice to a definition or description, but here's my best attempt. It's the idea that each individual determines his/her own truth/reality (often sexual at its core) and has the right to express that truth without criticism or consequence or negative reactions of any kind. While there may be some manifestations of expressive individualism that we consider obvious or extreme, we should not assume we are immune from the influence of this mindset. I think this is an important subject for all of us to think about, especially parents, because we, and our children, are being influenced by it. We need to recognize the ways the world affects us so that we can deliberately resist, so that we can be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2). You can access the journal in its entirety or specific articles at 9marks.org.

And finally, I've been thinking about sin. My self-assigned reading this week was to finish Mark Jones' book Knowing Sin. For most of us it probably wouldn't be an easy read in any sense of the words. It's certainly not a quick read. He is distilling the teaching of the Puritans for a new generation, and therefore fills the books with substantial quotes from their writings. Both the style and the content of Puritan writing requires most of us to slow down to think. For many, "puritanical" is as derisive an adjective as can be used today (like "legalistic"). Their commitment to holiness is not popular. They have a high view of God and a low view of sin. And this is precisely why their teaching is so important for us, maybe even urgent. In light of a great emphasis today on the Gospel, I started wondering as I read if we have not inadvertently too quickly passed over the bad news to get to the good. And in so doing, I wonder if we haven't inadvertently lost something of how good the good news is. Sin is really, really, really bad, which makes the grace that is greater than all our sin really, really, really, really great!. I'll give you just one example of how Jones helped me to think on the horror of sin: after referencing teaching from the Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs, Jones says, "Should we commit a small sin to save the whole world or, closer to home, a loved one? The answer to the protest of what seems right in our own eyes, must be an emphatic 'No!' Otherwise, sin would then have the glory. Jesus was tempted by the devil in this way (Luke 4:6-7)." Rather than trying to summarize the book, I'll simply commend it to you. It's content is difficult, but it is urgent and necessary for us today. So with Rosaria Butterfield, "I commend this book to you highly. May God use it to wake us up to the danger that lies both within and without, both behind and ahead. May God ready us for revival as we face the facts: our ignorance of what sin is could cost us our soul" (from the Foreword, where she also asserts that this book "will be the most critical book that faithful Christians will be reading for many years to come.").

I'm all done meandering now. I hope you've found something helpful.

By His Grace & For His Glory,