The Friday Five (6.26.26)
A Few Things for My Friends
Hey! It’s Palindrome Friday!
Every week, I share five things to encourage and equip in life with God.
This week:
Receive and Experience the Grace of Jesus
Love God: A Roundtable Discussion
Never Beyond Your Reach
Do You Know Who You Are?
A Parent’s Guide to a Calm(er) Bedtime
Enjoy!
MK
Also: there are a lot of new subscribers in the last few weeks! Welcome! I’m so glad you’re here, and I hope this serves you. As always, feel free to reach out. I read every email that comes through, and I love hearing from you!
⬇️ Check out my book on Spiritual Disciplines! ⬇️
Read the forward from Jen Wilkin | Grab a copy here | Here’s a Discussion Guide
1. Receive and Experience Grace
Last weekend, we closed out our series on Philippians - and I got to preach about grace, the free affection of God toward his children. What a fun message to share!
I hope this encourages you - my heart was stirred with gratitude as I prepared and preached this message. I pray you might receive and experience the grace of the master, Jesus Christ, deep, deep in your heart, and be transformed in the process.
2. Love God: A Roundtable Discussion
This summer, our church is doing renovations in our worship center. For the next three weeks, we will not meet in person as a congregation, but will be sent out into our neighborhoods to worship together and be with our neighbors.
In this time, we are studying our mission statement:
To love God, love people, and make disciples of Jesus Christ.
For the next three weeks, we have a roundtable discussion and a sermon on each phrase. The sermon will also focus on a practice to accompany the part of our mission statement. This week it is to Love God by practicing sabbath.
I got to sit with three of my good friends and talk through this topic, and I will preach the first week of the series out of Psalm 92.
The recording of that sermon will be published on our live site today for our congregation to access (and appear in next week’s Friday Five).
Enjoy the discussion below!
3. Never Beyond Your Reach
I was listening to Rich Mullins this week, driving back and forth between work with Philippians on my mind. This verse hit me - of the need for grace, the long road home, and how Christ has taken hold of us, even as we strive through grace to take hold of him every day.
Sometimes I think of Abraham
How one star he saw had been lit for me
He was a stranger in this land
And I am that, no less than he
And on this road to righteousness
Sometimes the climb can be so steep
I may falter in my steps
But never beyond Your reach
4. Do You Know Who You Are?
Long time readers will know that one of my favorite books in the last decade is Who God Says You Are: A Christian Understanding of Identity by Klyne Snodgrass. I’ve read it a lot, and used it in various classes to get discussion going around the topic of Christian identity. The passage below is one that makes some people’s gears grind as they first read it - but if you stick with him through the book, you see how what at first feels counter intuitive is actually the way things are.
If you wanted to challenge yourself and read something that will shape how you think about who you are becoming, you should read this book. This will feel more like a protein shake than popcorn, and you’ll be better for it.
Here’s Klyne:
Christians today need to be aware of how the identity described by Scripture interacts with their own identity, confronting, changing, and shaping to bring about new life in Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit. Such an approach presupposes a willingness to find one’s identity in Scripture.
God calls us to know him, but that cannot happen unless we know ourselves. The most important spiritual journey and act of discipleship is in shaping our own identity in response to the call of God to be who we are supposed to be, someone created in God’s image. It is a call not to settle for what we are or to be thrown off course by what happens to us, but to shape life in response to God.
People often focus on salvation as the central concern of Christianity. Salvation is obviously important, but I am convinced that, in focusing on salvation, we have often missed the more foundational focus on identity. Everything else flows from identity. In fact, rightly understood, salvation is about identity, for salvation belongs to those who through God’s Spirit have adopted a Christ identity. Atonement is much less about theories of satisfaction and much more about being one with Christ and taking our identity from him. If life and faith are to have meaning, it will be because we understand and live our identity. The gospel is about identity, not going to heaven, and is way more than believing certain ideas, as important as the ideas may be. Who is the gospel trying to make you? If you are not going to be who you really are and were intended to be, of what value are you? If salt has lost its saltiness, it is good for nothing (Matt. 5:13).
Who are you? What has happened to you and through you? Where are you? Where are you going? Who is going with you? What do you do because of who you are? Tell me and I will know your identity. The degree that Christ is involved in the answers corresponds to the degree that you are actually a Christian. Do not balk at the word “degree,” for being a Christian, like identity, is a process, not a mere event. If Christ is not involved in the answers to those questions, can you even confess to being a Christian? But should the focus be on finding ourselves or on finding God? Those are not unrelated questions. We will never find who we really are without in the process finding God. We know ourselves in knowing God, and we know God in knowing who we really are. A focus on identity is not about a self-centered self-realization; it is about knowing who we are in relation to God and other people. Self-knowledge is and must be an act of discipleship.1
Go on already and get yourself a copy. Read it, and it you’re local hit me up. We can visit about it.
5. A Parent’s Guide to a Calm(er) Bedtime
Thad Cardine’s writing is a gift that I stumbled into and don’t want to leave. It’s engaging, wise, and clear.
I enjoyed this article on how to parent with loving authority during the last hours of the day. His piece is entitled: Bedtime Without Yelling: A Parent Guide to Calm, Loving Authority.
Yes, please.
Here’s a snippet:
A peaceful bedtime is not created by yelling, bribing, begging, or giving in from exhaustion. It is created by a parent who can be both affectionate and firm.
Children need to know two things at the end of the day:
“You are loved.”
“And the adults are taking care of you.”
That combination creates security. It also helps the whole family end the day with more peace, order, respect, and calm.
Read the whole thing here.
Thanks for Reading
If someone forwarded this to you, I write two kinds of emails: one on select Tuesdays about life with God and the other every Friday, where I share things I’ve found during the week. If you want to subscribe but can’t afford it, email me, and I’ll take care of it—no questions asked.
I pastor, teach, and lead at The Village Church, serving as an Elder and the Executive Director of Discipleship. In my spare time (ha!), I’m working on a Ph.D. in Church History, studying Jonathan Edwards and character formation. Also, I’ve written A Short Guide to Spiritual Disciplines: How to Become a Healthy Christian.
Thank you for reading and supporting my work as I seek to shepherd with compassion and wisdom, equipping people to embody God’s truth for all of life.
Talk soon,
Mason
Klyne Snodgrass, Who God Says You Are: A Christian Understanding of Identity, ~ p.33/34.