Midweek Roundup - 10/22/14

Each Wednesday we share recent links we found insightful and helpful. These are often related to Crossway books, Bibles, or authors—but not always. We hope this list is an interesting and encouraging break for the middle of your week.

1. A Review of the ESV Single Column Heritage Bible

There comes a time when Bible lovers just want to read the Bible!

Instead of lingering over footnotes or reading articles about the Bible or getting distracted by lots of very, very helpful information, sometimes I just want to read the Bible, cover to cover, as I would any good book.

The ESV Single Column Heritage Bible encourages you to read.

Besides providing a highly accessible translation, my review copy had a quality cover of cloth over board outside and a reader-friendly layout inside with single columns such as you find in novels and nonfiction books of all types. And, speaking of types, a 9-point font eases your reading too.

2. ESV Women's Devotional Bible giveaway on Jen Thorn's blog

I am so excited to do my first giveaway. Crossway is graciously allowing me to giveaway 2 ESV Women's Devotional Bibles!

This Bible came out this past August and has some great articles and devotionals scattered throughout by some wonderful authors like Gloria Furman, Jen Wilkin, Sam Storms, Joni Eareckson Tada, Elyse Fitzpatrick, Ann Voskamp and more.

So if you want a chance to win this Bible leave a comment* in the comment section. You can also go to my Facebook page and leave a comment in the comments section under the blog post as well.

The winner will be chosen on Friday.

3. Dan DeWitt on the importance of Christian hip-hop to his ministry

Christian rap has profoudly affected my ministry. Once, when I was preparing for a middle school lesson, I had the Christian rapper named Ambassador (one of the pioneers of the Christian rap movement) playing in the background. I worked to prepare my illustrations and jokes and object lessons to impress a single Bible verse upon the minds of young teenagers. Then I noticed something as I focused on the music: there was more theology in one of his three-minute songs then I had planned to sprinkle sparsely into my 30-minute youth group devotional.

I was convicted.

If he could pack so much into just 16 bars, then what in the world was I thinking wasting so much of my time slot with fun and games? I had ten times the amount of time as just one of his songs. In that moment I knew I could do more. I knew I should do more. And I knew my students could handle it.

So I changed my approach. The Ambassador directly affected my preaching. I still think about that change on a regular basis when I sit down to prepare a sermon.

4. Lindsay Holcomb on the Church and Women at Risk

The Christian church has, at its best, been known for exemplary love and sacrificial service to the poor, oppressed, and marginalized. Such service has provided a powerful witness for the gospel. By upholding the dignity of all human life as the image of God, and by tangibly expressing the biblical ethic of personhood that flows from it, the church has the opportunity to be a light to the nations by welcoming the weak and powerless to find grace, mercy, and rest in Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately, many victims who reach out to churches in times of need receive blame, disbelief, suspicious questions, bad advice, platitudes, and shallow theology instead of care and compassion. Rather than pat answers, victims need practical victim advocacy full of biblical and theological depth.

Churches have a great opportunity to offer victims of violence love, safety, patience, and counseling. Caring for and responding to women at risk is an opportunity for Christians to take the gospel to those who are most in need, provide an alternative community centered on Jesus to the marginalized, and show the transformative power of the gospel to the watching world. Moreover, responding to the epidemic of violence against women is a way the church can follow the charge of James to practice “pure religion” (James 1:27) by caring for vulnerable women.

5. Credo Interviews Jared Wilson about The Wonder Working God

How should we define the word “miracle,” and in doing so do we need two separate definitions, one in relation to the time of Jesus’s earthly ministry, and one for our modern context?

[JW:] My definition of “miracle” is somewhat counterintuitive, because we tend to think of miracles as a “bending” of the ordinary or a disruption of what’s normal for something supernatural. And of course that is true from the perspective of finite minds in a fallen creation. A miracle is a supernatural act that suspends for the moment the ordinary course of the natural. But the miracles of Christ are, properly understood, actually acts of bending the fallen world back into its original normalcy! The miracles are reminders of the world as it used to be, before sin came and corrupted everything, and of the world as it one day will be, when Christ returns to vanquish sin and death finally and set all things back to rights.

I do think we see more miracles in Jesus’ day, if only because Jesus walking around on earth is quite a special thing. We should expect extraordinary ripples in the Incarnational ministry, and even in the work of the apostles in the explosive dawn of the early church. So while miracles have never been common, they proliferated more in the life of Christ and the early church. And yet I would say the definition for the Christian miraculous today would remain the same. If and when God works what we call miracles today, they are meant to point us away from the miracle and to the glory of Christ.