My Favorite Blog Posts of All Time
I follow around 150 blogs and skim through a couple hundred posts each week. Over the past decade, that adds up to more than ten thousand blog posts. Yet, only seven have profoundly impacted my life.
Reading them again, I realize how many of them are simple, and yet they've shaped how I think, live, and serve.
Here they are, along with a summary of each and why they stood out to me.
Gospel + Safety + Time = A Church Where Anyone Can Grow
This is what our churches must be: gentle environments of gospel + safety + time. It’s where we’re finally free to grow.
Ortlund excels at explaining how gospel doctrine creates a gospel culture within a church. (Check out his book on this topic.)
The short post makes it so simple and describes some of the ways that any local church can work at creating a gospel culture.
Something Profound in Our Generation
When there are the two contents and the two realities, we will begin to see something profound happen in our generation.
Take this post, and the one mentioned above, and you'd have a pretty decent philosophy of ministry. These two posts describe some healthy dynamics that should be embodied in any local church.
How Ray Ortlund Became Foster Father to a Generation of Church Planters
“That’s what I want to be like. I don’t want to be the angry pastor. I want to be the pastor who’s really been affected by the love of Christ.”
You're probably noticing a pattern. My top three posts are either by or about Ray Ortlund.
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve shared this profile of Ortlund’s life, and for good reason. It resonates deeply with me for two key reasons: first, because God has used painful experiences to shape Ortlund into a more godly man and a wiser pastor, and second, because he exemplifies what it means to be on the path to finishing well. I’m profoundly grateful for both of these truths and how his life embodies them.
Bonus: These podcast profiles of Sinclair Ferguson and David Wells, also by Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra, offer equally rich encouragement.
God Will Hold You Through Your Habits
Your perseverance, under God, is in your habits. Heaven and hell hangs on habits. Show me a man’s habits, and you’ll give me a glimpse into his very soul. The habits you develop and sustain today will affect whether you persevere till the end or make shipwreck of the faith.
I've authored a couple of books about habits, and I've spent a lot of time thinking about them. If I were to recommend one blog post on the importance of habits, it would be this one. I quote it frequently. It's a good one.
God Is on His Throne, Everything Is Going His Way, and He Loves Me
These are simple yet profound truths. They define not only how we are in ultimately, but how we can be in the present.
Talk about a blog post that conveys deep truths in a straightforward manner. Each segment of this statement is easy to grasp, yet transformative when applied. It's simple, yet profoundly moving all at once.
I've been teaching our leaders and our whole church to "run to the tension" as they lead and navigate relationships in our church and in our city.
When conflict, tension, and difficulty shows up, run to it. Face it. Deal with it. Lead through it now, not later.
Most of us like to avoid conflict, but this actually creates more problems. This blog post helped recalibrate my approach to conflict. It's short. The formatting has been corrupted since it was originally published, but it's still a good one and worth reading, especially for anyone in ministry leadership.
The Gospel Frees You to Chill the Heck Out
Don’t be lazy, but realize that Jesus Christ did not die and rise for you so that you would stress out about whether you’re being spiritual enough. So take a nap. Watch some television. The gospel frees you to chill the heck out.
Jared took some heat for this title, but I like it. Some of us have a tendency to over-spiritualize everything. Jared challenges this tendency and tells us how the gospel gives us the freedom to take the pressure off. It's such a helpful reminder.
