Sampler Platter: Friday, May 15, 2015

Here's a sampling of some of the things I've been reading and reviewing this week.  The hope is that these bite-sized sections of books, articles, blog posts, etc will stand on their own and be beneficial (or at least thought-provoking!) in-and-of-themselves.  But I also hope that some of you will like these excerpts enough that they pull you into the larger work from which they've been taken.

Let's start sampling: 

---

Tremper Longman, "Getting Brutally Honest with God: The psalms of lament invite us to voice our frustrations - and provide a reason to hope" in  Christianity Today (April 2015), p 59:

"To be sure, we have no guarantee of rescue or escape from trials in this life.  But we needn't bow to despair when we have a God like the one who led his people out of Egypt.  And according to the New Testament, the Exodus anticipated an even greater deliverance." 

Click here to be taken to Christianity Today's website where you can search for the full article from which this excerpt was taken, or find other articles broadly relevant to evangelical Christianity that may be of interest to you.

---

Matt Perman, What's Best Next?  How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done.  Zondervan, 2014, p. 217:

"Competence is doing what you need to do.  Excellence is knowing what you're supposed to do, getting it on autopilot, and going beyond.  It means having that extra touch that goes beyond simply what you could write down in an article or manual.  It's doing what not everyone can do, even if they know all the steps."

---

Edward T. Welch, Side by Side: Walking with Others in Wisdom and Love.  Crossway, 2015, p. 11:

"...God is please to use ordinary people, ordinary conversations, and extraordinary and wise love to do most of the heavy lifting in his kingdom.  /  The basic idea is that those who help best are the ones who both need help and give help.  A healthy community is dependent on all of us being both."