News From the Frontlines: July 11th, 2026
- Joshua Budimlic
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
I have to admit, I’m quite enjoying rounding up these recommendations each week, and I hope you are as well. In this week’s News From the Frontlines, you’ll find material on Heaven, aliens, anxiety, prayer, exercise, and a great video on the glory of God as seen through the lens of mathematics. May the Lord be praised—“To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen” (1 Timothy 1:17).
News From the Frontlines:
Recommended Reading, Listening, & Watching
In this brief reflection on the ending of The Chronicles of Narnia, Randy Alcorn considers the indescribable happy ending awaiting all those in Christ Jesus—a future so glorious and so weighty that it puts all fairy-tale stories to shame. And best of all, this story is true.
Furthermore, the very reason why we shall live happily ever after is because of the unending, perfect communion we shall share with our perfect, unending, infinite Creator: “Glorification cures us of our sin, but it does not cure us of our finitude. When we are ushered into the final state and see Him face to face, we will still only see Him as creatures beholding the Divine. We will see Him finitely, even as He remains infinite. In that glorious consummation, God will still be accommodating His uncreated majesty to our finite, creaturely capacities. Our eternal worship will not be a mystical dissolving of the self into the infinite ocean of His essence, but a perfect, everlasting communion—the finite creature safely dwelling in the presence of the infinite Father.”
Surprising, indeed. “I was surprised to learn that Charles Spurgeon made comments about the possibility of intelligent life existing beyond our planet. But not too surprised. The man was prolific, opinionated, and bold. When you have more words printed in English than anyone else in history, it means you said a lot of stuff.”
As many of you may know by now, my wife is a Biblical counselor and each week I ask her to give one recommendation for this segment, be it an article, essay, video, or podcast episode. From the title alone, you can no doubt guess that this is her suggestion for the week. Lord willing, you too are encouraged as this pastor walks through Matthew 6:25-34—Jesus’ famous sermon on anxiety. “I think we worry most in the places where we feel things slipping. The body that is not as strong as it was. The cultural moment that feels like it is caving in. The institution you have poured yourself into that feels more fragile than you want to admit. The influence that is harder to measure than it used to be. We do not usually panic in places of stability. We panic at the edges, where things are fading and we cannot stop them.”
This is a nice companion piece to the one above. In it, Michael Kelley draws attention to the reality that Biblical prayer is far more than merely “Letting go and letting God.” Prayer includes not only a childlike faith and dependence in the power, love, and character of God to do what He has promised in His word, but also a willing obedience to follow up our prayers with action before we receive even a single response from God—indeed, is not our faithful obedience to act in accordance with His word the beginnings of an answer in and of itself? “We pray for God to change someone’s heart, and so we share the gospel with that person. We pray for God to provide our daily bread, and so we actively search for a job. We pray God would turn our children towards Him and we actively treat them with Christlike love and compassion.”
If you haven’t heard of Jonny Ardavanis and Dial In Ministries, I would encourage you to check out his podcast of the same name. In this video (from YouTube, though you can find his podcast anywhere podcasts are found), Jonny and author David Mathis discuss physical exercising for the glory of God.
In this lengthy but really quite fascinating video, Gavin Ortlund considers whether mathematics proves the existence of God (hint: like just about everything else in God’s world, it most surely does).
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