Tranwei Yu

"Jesus wept, but He never complained." - Charles Spurgeon Lord, guard us from grumbling about anything Your wise providence prescribes.

The gospel story in 100 seconds. What a rescue. What a hope. What a King. Thanks, @GlenScrivener.

I made a chart.

@bobby_jamieson @MBTS Congratulations! Wow, the faculty of @MBTS continues to get stronger and stronger!

I'm delighted to share that I've accepted a full-time position as visiting professor of biblical and theological studies at Midwestern Seminary (@MBTS). I'm excited and eager to help train the next generation of pastors alongside an excellent faculty! mbts.edu/profile/bobby-…

There are two distinct but inseparable blessings in Christ. The first is substitution; the second is participation. The first is Christ for us; the second is Christ in us. The first is the ground of assurance; the second confirms our assurance. The first is being adopted as sons; the second is being made son-like. The first is imputation; the second is transformation. The first gives us the right to life; the second gives us the experience of life. The first is outside of us; the second is inside of us. Healthy Christianity does not prefer one of these over the other, but loves and prefers both in the right order.

Justification gets you out of Egypt, but sanctification gets Egypt out of you.

Congratulations to Jonathan Ginn, who has written the most satisfying treatment of the literary structure of Book 5 of the Psalter that I have read: amzn.to/4u7v2YK. I was honored to write the forward to this book, which wholeheartedly I commend. wipfandstock.com/9798385270651/…

One of the greatest quotes about motherhood I’ve ever read.

Worth reading slowly.

Wow... Marriage is the foundation for families and societies. When marriage dies, stable societies die too.

Again, a lot of helpful and practical wisdom here

"Ten thousand thousand are their texts, but their sermons are all one," as some wise chap (allegedly Spurgeon) once quipped. This happens nowadays when the "gospel-centered" preacher's eagerness to preach Christ—which is right (John 5:39; Col. 1:28)—is combined with his rejection of moralism (which is also good) without attention to the particular details of the passage itself. The result is that every sermon becomes the same, saying very little besides "You're a sinner, and Christ is your Savior." That's true, and vitally important, but the Bible says a lot more than this. (Indeed, if that were all that God had wanted to say, he could have done so a lot more concisely. Yet, as James Jordan once said, "The Holy Spirit never wastes his breath." And that means the details matter.) On top of making every sermon virtually identical, two other unhappy effects are produced: 1. Biblical imperatives are rarely, if ever, preached. And if/when they are, the commands are used almost exclusively to cite our inability to obey the Lord and the necessity of Christ's death. Again, this is true, but it completely obscures the other (two) uses of moral laws in God's world. 2. Biblical figures are never used as examples. This is an effect of the "You're not David!" emphasis of the last generation. This sounds good to those who imagine that moralism is the only way to miss Christ, but it's a significant departure from the Bible's own teaching. Christians are repeatedly called to consider both positive (Luke 10:37; Rom. 15:4; Heb. 11; ) and negative examples (1 Cor. 10:6–11; Heb. 12:16; 1 John 3:12), imitating the one and rejecting the other. The way forward is to preach ten thousand thousand texts with one saving Lord (i.e., the whole Christ) as the central focus without diminishing the ten thousand thousand implications of his fullness.

Really helpful and wise. Lord, help me to be "last among equals" in posture!

this is a very important point from Trueman at @firstthingsmag and I think it challenges all kinds of folks

Trust me watch this 🤣

An extreme commitment to the truth makes relationships acutely dysfunctional but systems chronically functional (think Elon Musk). An extreme commitment to kindness makes relationships acutely functional but systems chronically dysfunctional (think Sweden, UK)

So apparently I’m embroiled in some sort of controversy. Let me set a few things strait: 1. I don’t know Sam Allberry personally. We've met in-person a total of once — back in January while I was in Nashville when I did the Shawn Ryan Podcast, where I ran into and took a picture with Sam. When I saw the news initially about his removal from leadership I took that picture down. I had already started to see people commenting that by keeping it up I was implicating myself in his sin. I do not think they were correct. But ironically, said comments were then replaced with ones telling me that by taking it down… I was hiding something and implicating myself in his sin. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. 2. I believe the language in the current public statements to be potentially unhelpfully vague. From my (brief though not uninformed) understanding of the details of the situation, what Sam did that disqualified him from leadership was not due to sexual or even a romantic impropriety, but what could best be described as a sinful emotional attachment. This is not to justify it or say that it wasn't disqualifying (I think it probably was). But the lack of clarity has left room for those who desire to gossip, defame, and sinfully speculate online to run wild — which they have. 3. I am genuinely saddened with the internet’s desire to tear down and jump to harsh judgements regarding another Christian’s failing. When someone falls into sin, those who are spiritually mature should work toward their restoration, approaching them with a spirit of gentleness (Gal. 6:1-2). The motivation for restoration carries spiritual weight. Bringing someone back who has wandered from truth saves their soul from death and covers a multitude of sins (James 5:19–20). This isn’t merely about correcting behaviour, it’s about spiritual rescue. The desire to gossip and breed quarrels, which is so obviously warned against in scripture (Proverbs 17:19; 26:17; 2 Timothy 2:14, 23-24; Titus 3:9-11; James 4:1-2) is, to say the least, lamentable and disappointing to see. 4. Sam Allberry is being labelled as “Side B,” this is genuinely confusing to me. To quote Sam in his own words: “Same sex attraction is not a good thing. It is... a consequence of the fall. ...This kind of attraction is not something God designed for us, and it contradicts his design” (Is God Anti Gay, 63). Sam has expressed in multiple places throughout his written work and public talks that he holds to the biblical position of marriage, that homosexual relationships are sinful, and that identifying as a “gay Christian” is incompatible with scripture. To be clear, I don't agree with Sam on all the nuances of how he discusses the issue. But I can only conclude that this attempt to make him into an LBGT advocate comes from either shear ignorance of his public work or some sort of internet-level frothing of the mouth to jump on whoever “we don’t like this week.” But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. - Heb 3:13.

Winston Churchill fought his depression with bricks. He'd lay them for hours at his country home in Kent. He joined the bricklayers' union. And in 1921 he wrote about why it worked. It took psychology another 75 years to catch up. He called his depression the "Black Dog." It followed him for decades. His method for fighting it back was as basic as it sounds: laying brick after brick, hour after hour. Churchill spelled out his theory in a long essay for The Strand Magazine. People who think for a living, he wrote, can't fix a tired brain just by resting it. They have to use a different part of themselves. The part that moves the eyes and the hands. Woodworking, chemistry, bookbinding, bricklaying, painting. Anything that drags the body into a problem the mind can't solve by itself. Modern psychology now calls this behavioral activation. It's one of the most-studied depression treatments out there. Depression sets a behavior trap. You feel bad, so you stop doing things, and doing less means less to feel good about. Feeling worse makes you do even less. The loop tightens until you can't breathe inside it. Behavioral activation breaks the loop from the action side. You schedule the activity first, even when every part of you doesn't want to. Doing it produces small rewards: a wall gets straighter, a painting fills in, a messy room gets clean. Those small rewards slowly rewire the brain. Action comes first, and the feeling follows. Researchers at the University of Washington put this to the test in 2006. They studied 241 adults with major depression and compared three treatments: behavioral activation, regular talk therapy, and antidepressants. For the people who were most severely depressed, behavioral activation matched the drugs. It beat the talk therapy. A 2014 review of more than 1,500 patients across 26 trials backed up the result. Physical work like bricklaying does something extra on top of this. It crowds out rumination, the looping bad thoughts that grind people down during the worst stretches of depression. Bricklaying needs both hands and gives feedback brick by brick: each one is straight or crooked. After an hour you can see exactly how much wall you built. No room left for the mental chewing. The line George Mack used in his post, "depression hates a moving target," is good poetry. The science behind it is sharper. Depression hates a brain that has somewhere else to be.

@elonmusk Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work. 💯

The DOJ has ONE WEEK left to charge Anthony Fauci for the worst cover-up in modern medical history. He lied to Congress about funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan. Millions died. Trillions were spent. And Fauci walked away with book deals and fawning media coverage instead of handcuffs. I re-upped my criminal referral to the DOJ because the evidence is overwhelming, and justice has been delayed long enough. RT if you’re ready to see Fauci behind bars.