Links to Your World, Thursday May 29

 

Why you’re afraid of the world to your left

 

Virginia Stem Owens visits Houston’s National Museum of Funeral History, and reflects on death.

 

The Myth of the Climate Change '97%'. What is the origin of the false belief—constantly repeated—that almost all scientists agree about global warming?

 

Should the 7-day week be abolished?

 

Productivity improves for those who check email no more than twice a day. Probably good advice for social media, too?

 

“The vast majority of immigrants, international students and refugees [coming to America] are coming from areas unreached by the Gospel. Wow! What an opportunity we have to share the Good News with the nations right here at home. That doesn’t mean we don’t go overseas, but it does mean we shouldn’t miss the wonderful opportunities the Father is giving His church.” From imb.org, learn three things you can do to help new immigrants around you.

 

A Sudanese woman was sentenced to death after she refused to renounce her Christian faith. Because her father is Muslim, the Sudanese court considers her to be Muslim as well, and guilty of going against her religion. They also convicted her of adultery, because the court doesn’t see her marriage to a Christian man as valid. The court says the sentence won’t be carried out until two years after she gives birth. Yes, she was sentenced to death while 8 months pregnant, and she recently gave birth to her child in prison, launching the countdown to execution. (The Skimm)

 

“Baby, you’re born that way,” but in this case let’s talk about change anyway.

How to Get Good Advice

There's a portable toilet seat for outdoorsmen called "The Off-Road Commode" because it is designed to attach to a vehicle's trailer hitch. It includes a label that cautions, "Not for use on moving vehicles."

I'll let you pause a moment in your reading to imagine someone ignoring the advice.

That was the winning entry in an annual event called the Wacky Warning Label Contest. Here's a list of some of the best labels from previous contests:

A label on a baby stroller warns: "Remove child before folding."

A flushable toilet brush warns: "Do not use for personal hygiene."

A digital thermometer that can be used to take a person's temperature several different ways warns: "Once used rectally, the thermometer should not be used orally."

A household iron warns users: "Never iron clothes while they are being worn."

A label on a hair dryer reads: "Never use hair dryer while sleeping."

A warning on an electric drill made for carpenters cautions: "This product not intended for use as a dental drill."

The label on a bottle of drain cleaner warns: "If you do not understand, or cannot read all directions, cautions and warnings, do not use this product."

A cardboard car sunshield that keeps sun off the dashboard warns: "Do not drive with sunshield in place."

A cartridge for a laser printer warns: "Do not eat toner."

A heat gun and paint remover that produces temperatures of 1,000 degrees warns: "Do not use this tool as a hair dryer."

A warning on a pair of shin guards manufactured for bicyclists says: "Shin pads cannot protect any part of the body they do not cover."

A popular manufactured fireplace log warns: "Caution - Risk of Fire."

A label on the underside of a cereal bowl warns: "Always use this product with adult supervision."

It makes you laugh and shake your head at the same time. But while all of these fall in the category of good advice we don’t need, how can we get the good advice we do need?

That’s the subject of this Sunday’s lesson. We’re celebrating graduates in the service, so this topic should help those in our church family who are about to take the next big step in their lives. But we’re never too old or too experienced to seek out advice. So join me live on June 1, or listen to the recorded message later.

Free Access to My Sermon Illustration Database--and Other Resources

Whether you're a preacher, teacher, or writer, every communicator needs fresh ideas that reinforce or highlight his or her points.  For decades I've collected illustrations and cataloged them by topic.  I'm making the database available to everyone.

Check it out at www.hillcrestaustin.info/sermonillustrations.

To use it, simply enter your desired topic in the Topic field.  If you enter multiple topic words, separated by spaces, you'll find only those illustrations that address both topics.  We've found that it sometimes helps to use double quotes, with spaces, to get more exact results.  So, if you just enter the word sin, you'll get all the illustrations under the topics of sin, sing, and single.  If you enter the word as "sin " you are more likely to find what you're looking for.

The Text field is helpful if you want to search within the text of the illustrations themselves.  So, do a search for "Tim Keller" and you'll get all the illustrations that have "Tim Keller" in them.  (Again, use the quotes.  Just typing the words Tim and Keller will get you every illustration with both Tim and Keller somewhere in the text, but it might have nothing to do with Tim Keller -- e.g., it may be an article about Tim Knight and Roger Keller.)

The ID# field is useful if you have found a specific illustration to which you would like to return later.  Just note that illustration's ID# and then, when you want to return to that specific illustration, enter the ID# in the appropriate search field.

This database has evolved over the years to meet my own unique needs as a communicator, so you'll have to take it as it comes.  Some entries include links to Kindle books that won't take you to my Kindle content.  (You'll get the author's complete quote, though.)  Also, items clipped from a web page and copied into the database often preserve the formatting from the original source, which may make the entry look odd.  Despite the "raw" look to the entries, however, I hope you'll still find some use from my database.

While I'm making stuff available for free, here is more content that has always been available:

Newsletters. All my newsletters since 2003 are available here.  "Winning Ways" is my devotional column that is sent by email every Wednesday, and "LeaderLines" is an occasional newsletter addressing issues of church leadership.  You can subscribe to either or both of these here.  The archive page has a search field that enables you to find a particular word or phrase across the entire collection of newsletters.  Please credit me as the author if you use my newsletters in your not-for-sale work.  If you want to use my content in your for-sale work, get my permission first (tom@hillcrestaustin.org).

Sermons.  All sermons delivered at Hillcrest since 2000 are available here.  In many cases, listener outlines and small-group discussion guides are included.  Please credit me if you use the sermons in your not-for-sale work, and credit Hillcrest if you use the printed material in your not-for-sale work.  If you want to use any of the content in your for-sale work, get my permission first (tom@hillcrestaustin.org).

Evangelism Material.  If you're looking for ideas on creating a more evangelistic church, I have a 90-page guide available here.

For any questions on the use of the illustration database, please contact me at tom@hillcrestaustin.org.  My thanks to Paul Waldo for managing this database (along will all the other content on our church's auxiliary website (www.hillcrestaustin.info).  For our church's main website, go to www.hillcrestaustin.org.

Links to Your World, Thursday May 15

On Mother’s Day I mentioned Kevin Durant’s tribute to his mother in his MVP speech. Here it is:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Research shows a husband really can be nagged to death.

 

Gollum wasn’t evil; he just had a Vitamin D deficiency.

 

We’ll need this in Austin soon: The rain that filters through this house’s “bio-concrete” is clean enough to drink.

 

The Church Needs More Tattoos

 

“Pun Slams,” sort of like “poetry slams,” but with plenty of groans.

 

Psychologist Linda Crane, on her son’s diagnosis of schizophrenia: “It took me a long time to come to terms with it. Even I had a hard time understanding it, how this bright man, with a brilliant future, could suffer like this. One thing I learned was that as soon as you mentioned the word, people stopped seeing the person. They just saw the diagnosis and a collection of symptoms. Doug, my son, was forgotten.” Great quote from a great article about the Schizophrenia Oral History Project.

 

David Mathis: “At the end of his important essay “On Fairy Stories,” Tolkien [author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings] explains from where he intends his tales to draw their power — from the emotional reservoir of the Christian gospel. The “primary world” story of the Son of God himself, taking full humanity at Christmas, living flawlessly in our fallen world, sacrificing himself to rescue us on Good Friday from God's just wrath, and rising again victorious on Easter as the living Lord of the Universe — here is the Story for which God made the human heart and the Story from which all good stories derive their power….Finding Jesus in The Hobbit doesn’t mean shoe-horning Gandalf or Bilbo or any other character into some Christ mold, but following the story, truly tracking its twists, feeling its angst, and knowing that the “turn” — the Great Unexpected Rescue just in the nick of time, the place where our souls are most stirred, relieved, and satisfied — is tapping into something deep in us, some way in which God spring-loaded us for the Great Story and the extent to which he went to reclaim us.”

 

In his NYT opinion column, Ross Douthat reminds us that the New Testament documents are a much more reliable guide to Jesus than the later “gospels” that we’ve heard about: “What's true of the new text [claiming Jesus had a wife] has been true of nearly every alternative gospel, ‘lost’ or otherwise, that ended up excluded from the Christian canon….[N]one of the endless apocryphal documents can compete with the actual New Testament - and particularly the synoptic gospels and the Pauline epistles - when it comes to historical proximity to the events of Jesus's life. They're useful windows into the religious trends of subsequent centuries, but they tell us next to nothing about what Jesus and his earliest followers thought and did and said.” Douthat says the popularity of the “alternative” gospels “tells us much more about the religious preoccupations of our own era, and particularly the very American desire to refashion Jesus of Nazareth in our own image rather than letting go of him altogether, than it does about the Jesus who actually lived.”

 

It’s a popular argument among progressive Christians that, since Jesus said nothing about homosexuality it must not have mattered to him. Wesley Hill, who writes about staying biblically-faithful amidst same-sex attractions, explains the errors in this thinking.

 

How to Write for Busy Readers. I try to follow these points in my weekly devotional, Winning Ways. You should, too.

Links to Your World, Thursday May 8

About that “#blessed” hashtag in social media: “There’s nothing quite like invoking holiness as a way to brag about your life. But calling something ‘blessed’ has become the go-to term for those who want to boast about an accomplishment while pretending to be humble, fish for a compliment, acknowledge a success (without sounding too conceited), or purposely elicit envy.” Jessica Bennett

 

10 Things You Should Never Do When You’re Angry

 

A U.S. map based on a Gallup poll from last year shows the relative interest residents of each state have in moving out of that state.  (HT: 22 Words)

 

A new study from Stanford researchers found that a person’s creative output can increase by as much as 60% when walking. HT: Time

 

Serious reading takes a hit from online scanning and skimming, researchers say. I think this is true. I read a lot of blogs and short articles, but I still need the longer arguments laid out in books.

Are You a Wounded Parent?

In a gathering of empty-nesters I asked how many of them grieved for grown children who exhibited no real relationship with Christ. Three out of four people in the room raised their hands.

Maybe you would have raised your hand, too? Maybe your teenaged kids or grown kids have moved off the path you set them on.

There’s a story from the life of Elijah that can give you hope (1 Kings 17). I see five parallels between the widow in this story and wounded parents.

First, we grieve. The widow who had been taking care of God’s prophet lost her son to death, and it broke her heart (verse 17). It’s a similar feeling for parents who can’t see any spiritual life in their grown kids.

Second, we’re confused. The widow lost her son even after she had been so faithful to God (verses 7-16). Likewise, after all our years of serving God we wonder how it could be possible to see our kids spiritually unengaged.

Third, we unfairly blame ourselves. Elijah’s caregiver assumed that her child died because of some moral failure in her past (verse 18). But maybe you know those feelings, too. It is almost impossible not to feel that your Christian example or your parenting skills have failed.

Fourth, we entrust our grown kids to God’s care. In our story, Elijah brought the boy to the upper room and prayed (verses 19-21). Have you noticed how some of the most significant events in Scripture took place in an upper room? The Lord's Supper was insti­tuted in an upper room. The Holy Spirit was given to the apos­tles as they prayed in an upper room. Simon Peter raised a widow from death in an upper room. And Peter led the church to reach beyond Jews to Gentiles after experiencing a divine vision on the upper deck of a house. We need to bring our own burdens to the upper room, too!

Fifth, we stubbornly believe God can restore spiritual life. Miraculously, God heard Elijah's prayer and the boy's life returned to him (verse 22). It’s no less a miracle to see the spiritually dead awaken to life! It’s what we continue to hope for.

Take comfort. Take heart. And go deeper with us into this story this Sunday at 10 a.m.!

 

The embedded video is from Andrew Peterson’s project, Light for the Lost Boy.

 

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Links to Your World, Thursday May 1

 

Life>Updates. At 8:33 A.M. last Friday, a 32-year-old woman driving to work in High Point, North Carolina, took out her phone and posted to Facebook: “The Happy Song makes me so HAPPY.” In the moment she posted the message, the woman crossed over the median of Interstate 85 and collided head-on with an oncoming recycling truck. She is dead.

 

For the WSJ, Mollie Hemingway says Heaven is For Real “is very much a part of the ancient Christian tradition of pious speculation about heaven deriving from visions, dreams and experiences.”

 

China on course to become 'world's most Christian nation' within 15 years. (Update)

 

“Muslim background believers are leading Muslims to Christ in staggering numbers, but not in the West. They are doing this primarily in Muslim-majority nations almost completely under the radar—of everyone.” CT report

 

“I'm finally on the verge of becoming famous and I'm not going to ruin it now. An abortion will further my career. This time next year I won't have a baby. Instead, I'll be famous, driving a bright pink Range Rover and buying a big house. Nothing will get in my way.” Trevin Wax says that how Britons reacted to this woman’was “both surprising and sickening.”

 

Taking notes longhand will help you remember information better than typing them out, according to new research

 

Texas had four of the top 10 unfunniest cities in the U.S.

 

Gratitude, Not ‘Gimme,’ Makes for More Satisfaction, Baylor University Study Finds

 

“Buddhism has always been missionary. Buddhists have always thought that their doctrine and practices can help to alleviate suffering and so have urged others to accept them.” Jay L. Garfield, Buddhist and philosopher, in Gutting’s series of NYT interviews. Of course Buddhists are proselytizers: It’s not just evangelicals. Anyone with the conviction that their way of thinking can help the world is going to commend it to others.