For your attention

1. Responding to charges of inconsistency -- Tim Keller, author and senior pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, provides an excellent response to those who charge Bible-believing Christians with inconsistency in applying some Old Testament scriptures and not others. He concludes with this: "One way to respond to the charge of inconsistency may be to ask a counter-question: 'Are you asking me to deny the very heart of my Christian beliefs?' If you are asked, 'Why do you say that?' you could respond, 'If I believe Jesus is the resurrected Son of God, I can't follow all the "clean laws" of diet and practice, and I can't offer animal sacrifices. All that would be to deny the power of Christ's death on the cross. And so those who really believe in Christ must follow some Old Testament texts and not others.'"

2. Evangelicalism is flourishing, not dying, in France -- For years, we have heard about the dominance of secularism in France, then the inroads made by Islam. The Christian Science Monitor reports evangelical Christianity has been growing in that country for decades. (HT: James Rogers at First Thoughts)

3. Reversing the move from we to me -- Tony Reinke at the Desiring God blog quotes from a new book about the unhelpful move from community to individualism among Christians that dates not just to the 1960s but to the 1600s, Michael Svigel says. Svigel writes, "The balanced Christian life cannot stay in the extreme of corporate spirituality, nor retreat into a radically individual spirituality. Rather, a balanced, stable approach to spirituality must simultaneously embrace both corporate and individual means of sanctification."

4. Why are there 600 million disabled people? -- David Murray, a professor at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, writes with insight about God's purpose in disabilities. (HT: Tim Challies)

5. Your Leviathan is God's Leviathan -- Ray Ortlund, lead pastor of Immanuel Church in Nashville, Tenn., writes on his blog at The Gospel Coalition site about God's comments on Leviathan to Job -- and how it applies to us. He says, "Something will be your Leviathan. And God will not explain it to you — not in this life. What [H]e will do, at the right time, is disclose [H]imself to you in a deeper way than you’ve ever known before."