Credo’s Cache

Each week we will be highlighting important resources. Check back each Friday to see what we have dug up for you. From this week’s cache:

1. Three Deaths Every Seminarian Must Face: By Joe Novenson – Novenson says: “During your seminary years, you must learn to embrace the deaths to which Jesus calls us in order to escape the deaths about which Jesus warns us. You may be able to succeed in other areas of study with mere intellect and effort.”

2. What Are Gospel Issues?: By D. A. Carson – Carson notes: “In sum, to affirm something is or is not a gospel issue is not a transparent expression. It is likely to be clearest among those who share a common confession as to what the gospel is. It is useful only when it means something more stringent than that X can be tied in some way to the gospel: one must show that without this X the gospel itself is seriously threatened.”

3. Blindness, Loneliness, and the Abundant Christian Life: By Cody Dolinsek – Dolinsek says: “Christians like everyone else partake of fallenness.  In the case of the blind, this means that if one is a blind Christian, they may in spite of being Christian still experience the profound loneliness that comes when it is realized that not everyone can understand or even care to understand their situation.”

4. We Are All Suicides Now: By Paul Zahl – Zahl says: ” Life is tragic. Suicide is a serious option. Lots of people have been doing it for a very long time. We just didn’t talk about it much. Now even more people are doing it, and we are, a little, talking about it.”

5. Suffering Nails Truth to the Heart: By Whitney Woollard – Woollard notes: “In the midst of pain there is a very real temptation to believe that God is punishing you. I’ve wrestled with debilitating migraines for seven years and my immediate response is to frantically search my life for some secret sin I’ve committed. I fall into the trap of believing that if I’m good I’ll be rewarded and if I’m bad I’ll be punished.”

Matt Manry is the Assistant Pastor at Life Bible Church in Canton, Georgia. He is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Religion at Reformed Theological Seminary and a Masters of Arts in Christian and Classical Studies from Knox Theological Seminary. He blogs regularly at gospelglory.net.