HT: Z for this fantastic  link: Real Men Repent  

This coming October, I have the great joy of serving at The Amazing Grace 360 Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Because I am teaching at both the pre-conference and conference sessions, I also get to have a table in the exhibition hall and an advertisement in the conference materials. I already have the WORLD’S BEST exhibition-hall-table-helper … Samara! (I’m SO grateful she is willing to help me!) And Fred and I are working on my “ad” for the conference materials. Keeping in mind that this is just a rough draft (so please be gentle with your criticisms! 🙂 ), I was wondering if you would share your feedback with me re:…

Dave and I are working hard to get RedeemingChurchConflicts ready to launch. (You can peek now—but it’s not where we want it to be yet!) And in addition to yet another minor medical procedure, I’ve been keeping five wonderful children alive for a few days: (Because I firmly believe that, sometimes, parents can just use a break from parenting! So we do what we can to serve our friends.) ‘Course, we’re enjoying our own too:   Blessed, blessed, blessed— (And, yes, still a little uncomfortable. C’est la guerre.) Blessings on your Thursday! Your friend, Tara B.  

Recently, I have been deeply impacted by my private devotional reading/study of the gospel of John. (It’s really made me long for a women’s Bible study session using Dr. Kathleen Buswell Nielson’s study guide. Maybe one day …) For today’s Sabbath, I share a mere snippet from this rich gospel: “So Jesus again said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief…

Really enjoyed this recommendation from Challies: Rest—A Four Letter Word? Here is my (most convicting) and favorite line from the article: “What has stayed with me is  a warning from Peterson that hyperactivity is a form of sloth. We can be lazy at the center, refusing to do the real work of caring for the soul.”  

Oh! How we love to our Yager family Ranch Days! Nothing scheduled. Nothing planned. Just enjoying God’s creation and dear friends: Forging the stream (or just playing in the stream) is always a particularly fun part of ranch day: City life just doesn’t allow for bug catching (and smiles!) and dirty feet like this: This visit was a particularly special one for us because one of the Yager sons was home—Andrew is an officer in the Marines on active duty overseas, so of course we pray for him regularly. And he is such a fine and admirable young man (and so patient with his mother’s friend who takes too many…

A friend just dropped me a fb note and reminded me that CCEF has a great booklet on the topic of bitterness: Freedom from Resentment: Stopping Hurts from Turning Bitter by Dr. Robert D. Jones.   Dr. Jones also has a fabulous book on anger that I highly recommend: Uprooting Anger: Biblical Help for a Common Problem. And I still think Nancy Leigh DeMoss’s book on bitterness/forgiveness is one of the best things she has ever written: Choosing Forgiveness: Your Journey to Freedom.  

Pastor Anyabwile gave us all a sweet gift when he posted this series of links on getting things done,  staff management, how to fail as a worship leader, etc: Around the Blog in 80 Seconds  

Funny but not so funny … at all: HT: Z  

Thanks, Z, for drawing our attention to Pastor Tullian Tchividjian’s excellent article re: accountability relationships and works and the gospel: Reminders are More Effective Than Rebukes I am currently working LONG days to streamline my 70,000+ words of research and prep into two new teachings for this fall’s AmazingGrace360 Conference. So what I needed this morning was a clear reminder to focus on Jesus (!) and “his person and subsitutionary work; his incarnation, life, death, resurrection, ascension, session, and promised return; the fact that we are justified–and sanctified––by grace alone through faith alone in the finished work of Christ alone. So that even now, the banner under which Christians live…