My Blog Collection: On Reading Books

Advice on reading from two avid readers:

Albert Mohler, Some Thoughts on the Reading of Books.

Tim Challies, 10 Tips to Read More and Read Better.

Friday Fun

Ed Defreitas has been posting photos at his blog recently. He has a funny one about Parking for Blind.

Book Reviews

There used to be a time when I really liked to buy books. I'm not as enthused anymore. I hate the exorbitant cost of books. I hate having books in my library that I've read only once and never referenced again. I hate going to a Christian bookstore and coming out with nothing worth buying. Having said that, I still believe in the importance of reading. So how is one to wade through the avalanche of books published each year? I look to book reviews to help me. One resource for reviews is Discerning Reader.

120,000 new books are published each year. Ten thousand every month. 1.5 billion books per year are consumed within America alone and yet even this totals only 35% of the books that are sold worldwide. How can anyone hope to navigate the seemingly infinite number of books available?

This is where we come in. Discerning Reader is dedicated to helping you find, read and enjoy good books.

Follow up: I've been reading K. P. Yohannan's The Road to Reality. Something he says about simplifying our lives: "Reduce the size of your library and don't buy books you will use only once."

Other Favorite Books

In my LibraryThing catalog, I have about 50 books from my library tagged as "favorites." I've spotlighted a few these past few months. Here are the other books in my library that are on my favorites list:

Jay Adams, The Christian Counselor's Manual.
Robert Banks, Going to Church in the First Century.
David Boehi et al., Preparing for Marriage.
F. F. Bruce, The Spreading Flame.
D. A. Carson, From Sabbath to Lord's Day.
Walter Martin, The Kingdom of the Cults.
David Peterson, Engaging with God.
Neal Pirolo, Serving as Senders.
Haddon Robinson, Biblical Preaching.
Francis Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster.
Joseph Stowell, Shepherding the Church.
Howard Taylor, Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret.
Warren Wiersbe, Comforting the Bereaved.
Ralph Winter, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement.
Eric Wright, Church - No Spectator Sport.
Ravi Zacharias, Deliver Us from Evil.

Author Spotlight: Jim Petersen

I think Jim Petersen was talking about missional before "missional" became a buzzword of the church. In Living Proof he talks about being an "insider":

We all, Christian and nonChristian alike, live in the same environment. It is to this common world that we who believe are called to serve as insiders. This constitues both a problem and an opportunity. It is a problem to the extent that living itself can consume us. Our hands can be more than full just coping with our own private chaos. But this same chaos becomes an opportunity as we learn to survive. By learning to apply biblical wisdom and to rely on spiritual resources, we can live balanced, meaningful lives in the midst of it all. When this happens, the gospel starts to look increasingly attractive to those who are watching (pp. 38-39).

In Lifestyle Discipleship, Petersen shows how a relational approach to ministry applies not only to evangelism but also discipleship. I like his opening line:

Thirty years of discipleship programs, and we are not discipled.

Book Spotlight: Shepherding a Child's Heart

I highly recommend Tedd Tripp's Shepherding a Child's Heart for its emphasis on speaking the the heart of the child, not just controlling their behavior.

Bad behavior represents a failure to obey and is, therefore, the occasion for correction—but the focal point of correction is not behavior. The focal point is the heart of the child that is called to submission to God’s authority. The goal of correction is not simply to modify behavior, but to bring the child to sweet, harmonious, and humble heart submission to God’s will that he obey Mom and Dad. The heart is the battleground.

Book Spotlight: Different by Design

A marriage book that I sometimes give to engaged couples to read is H. Dale Burke's Different by Design. It is biblical, practical and readable. An example of the counsel in the book:

I counsel both men and women to never use a member of the opposite sex, other than your mate, as a means of meeting your emotional needs. [Men,] never pour out your problems to a [woman] at the office. [Women,] do not make that [male] friend the confidant who empathizes with your marital woes. Do that and before long you won’t have the emotional energy to reclaim the type of intimacy God wants you to have with your spouse. Then you’ll look back and wonder why your love died, and you won’t even realize that you fed the weed instead of fertilizing the plant God gave you. The love you thought died had actually been starved to death (p. 163).

Some resources to learn more about the book:

Grace Relationships is an excerpt from the book.
Marriage 101 has an abbreviated version of some material from the book.
FamilyLife has a series of interviews with H. Dale Burke.

Book Spotlight: The Peacemaker

The Peacemaker by Ken Sande is a great resource for teaching about conflict resolution and for helping churches deal with conflict.

To some, conflict is a hazard that threatens to sweep them off their feet and leave them bruised and hurting. To others, it is an obstacle that they should conquer quickly and firmly, regardless of the consequences. But some people have learned that conflict is an opportunity to solve common problems in a way that honors God and offers benefits to those involved.

All of the foundational principles in the book can be found at the Peacemaker Ministries website.

Extent of the Atonement

Bruce Ware's sheet "Extent of the Atonement: Outline of The Issue, Positions, Key Texts, and Key Theological Arguments" is a concise and helpful summary of the limited/unlimited atonement debate.

Book Spotlight: Encouragement

Some people might classify Larry Crabb's book Encouragement: The Key to Caring as a counseling book. I consider it a relationship book. Crabb makes the point that total openness is not the solution to "surface community." Instead we have to be totally committed to ministering to others, from our hearts to their fear, in complete reliance on God's care for us.

If, during our moments of deepest loneliness, we abandon ourselves completely to God, depending on Him to minister to us, we will meet God.... We will then be enabled to continue with our commitment to minister, motivated by our time spent in His presence. Our words will be words of giving, overflowing with the love He has made known to us. Our words will have the power to encourage" (p. 60).

Author Spotlight: John Piper

I have several of John Piper's book. Two of my favorites are Desiring God and When I Don't Desire God. Both books can be read on-line at the Desiring God website. From When I Don't Desire God:

... The most common and desperate question I have received over the last three decades is: What can I do? How can I become the kind of person the Bible is calling me to be? The question comes from an aching in the heart that rises from the hope of great joy. People listen to the biblical arguments for Christian Hedonism, or they read Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist. Many are persuaded. They see that the truth and beauty and worth of God shine best from the lives of saints who are so satisfied in God they can suffer in the cause of love without murmuring. But then they say, “That’s not who I am. I don’t have that kind of liberating, love-producing, risk-taking satisfaction in God. I desire comfort and security more than God.” Many say it with tears and trembling.

Some are honest enough to say, “I don’t know if I have ever tasted this kind of desire. Christianity was never presented to me like this. I never knew that the desire for God and delight in God were crucial. I was always told that feelings didn’t matter. Now I am finding evidence all over the Bible that that the pursuit of joy in God, and the awakening of all kinds of spiritual affections, are part of the essence of the newborn Christian heart. This discovery excites me and frightens me. I want this. But I fear I don’t have it. In fact, as far as I can see, it is outside my power to obtain. How do you get a desire that you don’t have and you can’t create? Or how do you turn the spark into a flame so that you can be sure it is pure fire?” (p. 15).

Faith Is...

I heard Stephen Tong speak last night. He was preaching in Mandarin with an English translator, so hopefully the translator got it right. Tong gave this definition of faith: "Faith is the return of the prodigal reason to the Truth." I'm still chewing on it.

Book Spotlight: The Cross Centered Life

C. J. Mahaney's The Cross Centered Life is a short but important book on keeping the gospel the main thing in our lives.

The cross was the centerpiece of Paul's theology.It wasn't merely one of Paul's messages; it was the message. He taught about other things as well, but whatever he taught was always derived from, and related to, the foundational reality that Jesus Christ died so that sinners would be reconciled to God and forgiven by God.

Theologian D. A. Carson writes of Paul, "He cannot long talk about Christian joy, or Christian ethics, or Christian fellowship, or the Christian doctrine of God, or anything else without finally tying it to the cross. Paul is gospel-centered; he is cross-centered."

From his first epistle to his final letter to Timothy, Paul kept the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus at the center of his teaching. He "resolved to know nothing ... except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2).

Mahaney's Living the Cross-Centered Life is the bringing together of his The Cross Centered Life and Christ Our Mediator along with new material.

Book Spotlight: Ordering Your Private World

One of the first books to help me focus on the importance of living from the "inside out" was Gordon MacDonald's Ordering Your Private World. Some of his "Memos to the Disorganized" that begin his chapters:

If my private world is in order, it will be because I am convinced that the inner world of the spiritual must govern the outer world of activity.

If my private world is in order, it will be because I have courageously confronted the messiness of my ways of living and chosen to bring them under rigorous discipline.

If my private world is in order, it will be because, having faced up to what drives me, I listen quietly for the call of Christ.

If my private world is in order, it will be because I have made a daily determination to see time as God's gift and worthy of careful investment.

If my private world is in order, it will be because I have made a deliberate decision to begin the "ordering" process. Now!

Book Spotlight:The Weight of Glory

C. S. Lewis' The Weight of Glory is a collection of nine of his sermons or addresses:

"The Weight of Glory"
"Learning in War-Time"
"Why I am Not a Pacifist"
"Transposition"
"Is Theology Poetry?"
"The Inner Ring"
"Membership"
"On Forgiveness"
"A Slip of the Tongue"

In speaking of the promises of reward in the Bible, Lewis says:

We must not be troubled by unbelievers when they say that this promise of reward makes the Christian life a mercenary affair. There are different kinds of reward. There is the reward which has no natural connexion with the things you do to earn it, and is quite foreign to the desires that ought to accompany those things. Money is not the natural reward of love; that is why we call a man mercenary if he marries a woman for the sake of her money. But marriage is the proper reward for a real lover, and he is not mercenary for desiring it. A general who fights well in order to get a peerage is mercenary; a general who fights for victory is not, victory being the proper reward of battle as marriage is the proper reward of love. The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in consummation.

You can read the rest of the "Weight of Glory" sermon (chapter 1 of the book) here.

Book Spotlight: The Call

From Os Guinness' book The Call:

This book is for all who long to find and fulfill the purpose of their lives. It argues that this purpose can be found only when we discover the specific purpose for which we were created and to which we are called. Answering the call of our Creator is the "ultimate why" for living, the highest source of purpose in human existence. Apart from such a calling, all hope of discovering purpose (as in the current talk of shifting from "success to significance") will end in disappointment. To be sure, calling is not what is commonly thought to be.It has to be dug out from under the rubble of ignorance and confusion. And, uncomfortably, it often flies directly in the face of our human inclinations. But nothing short of God's call can ground and fulfill the truest human desire for purpose (p. 4).

Navigators provides synopses of selected chapters.

Book Spotlight: Decision Making and the Will of God

Garry Friesen's book Decision Making and the Will of God has greatly influenced the way I make decisions. I read somewhere (sorry, lost the reference) that Friesen suffered a great deal of opposition when the book first came out.

One of the propositions in the book is that "God does not have an ideal, detailed life-plan uniquely designed for each believer that must be discovered in order to make correct decisions" (p. 110). Friesen doesn't mean God doesn't have a sovereign plan for your life. He means that we don't have to discover that "individual will" before we can make wise and right decisions.

William Dicks is blogging through the book, starting here (Introduction, Parts 1-4) and picking up here (Parts 5 and forward).

Book Spotlight: The Pursuit of Holiness

Why do so many Christians feel constantly defeated in their struggle with sin? In his book The Pursuit of Holiness, Jerry Bridges presents three problem areas:

Our first problem is that our attitude towards sin is more self-centred than God-centred. We are more concerned about our own "victory" over sin than we are about the fact that our sins grieve the heart of God. We cannot tolerate failure in our struggle with sin chiefly because we are success oriented, not because we know it is offensive to God....

Our second problem is that we have misunderstood "living by faith" (Galatians 2:20) to mean that no effort at holiness is required on our part. In fact, sometimes we have even suggested that any effort on our part is "of the flesh"....

Our third problem is that we do not take some sin seriously. We have mentally categorized sins into that which is unacceptable and that which may be tolerated a bit....

Some other quotes:

Though mortification must be done by the strength and under the direction of the Holy Spirit, it is nevertheless a work which we must do. Without the Holy Spirit's strength there will be no mortification, but without our working in His strength there will also be no mortification.

And:

If we are to make any progress in the pursuit of holiness, we must assume our responsibility to discipline or train ourselves. But we are to do all this in total dependence on the Holy Spirit to work in us and strengthen us with the strength that is in Christ.

Book Spotlight: A Call to Spiritual Reformation

A couple of excerpts from Don Carson's A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers:

The Christian’s whole desire, at its best and highest, is that Jesus Christ be praised. It is always a wretched bastardization of our goals when we want to win glory for ourselves instead of for him. When we arrange flowers in the church, or serve as an usher, or preach a sermon; when we visit the sick, or run a youth group, or attend a prayer meeting - when we do any of these things, and more, with the secret desire that we might be praised for our godliness and service, we have corrupted the salvation we enjoy. Its purpose is to reconcile us to God, for God must be the center of our lives, the ground and goal of our existence.... Lying at the heart of all sin is the desire to be the center, to be like God. So if we take on Christian service, and think of such service as the vehicle that will make us central, we have paganized Christian service; we have domesticated Christian living and set it to servitude in a pagan cause (pp. 57-58).

And with regard to Paul's prayer in Colossians 1:

Paul prays that they may be filled with the knowledge of the will of God, a knowledge that consists of wisdom and understanding of all kinds, at the spiritual level. How else will they withstand the pressures of their surrounding pagan culture, pressures that are as subtle as they are endemic? How else will they think Christianly, and genuinely bring their minds and hearts and conduct into conformity with God’s will?

Is there anything that our own generation more urgently needs than this? Some of us have chased every fad, scrambled aboard every bandwagon, adopted every gimmick, pursued every encounter with the media. Others have rigidly cherished every tradition, determined to change as little as possible, worshiped what is aged simply because it is aged. But where are the men and women whose knowledge of God is as fresh as it is profound, whose delight in thinking God’s thoughts after him ensures that their study of Scripture is never merely intellectual and self-distancing, whose desire to please God easily outstrips residual and corrupting desires to shine in public?

People cannot live by bread and Jacuzzis alone. We desperately need meditative and reflective dependence on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God... (p. 103).

Book Spotlight: Old Testament Ethics

Walter Kaiser, in his Toward Old Testament Ethics, defines Old Testament ethics as

the manner of life that the older covenant prescribes and approves. Its ethical contents are not offered in isolation, but are viewed as demands, actions, and character that God expects from men and women. This close connection between ethics and theology constitutes one of the distinctive features of the Bible's own set of ethics. Accordingly, what God is in his character, and what he wills in his revelation, defines what is right; conversely it is right, good, acceptable, and satisfying to all because of his known character and will (p. 3).

I have especially benefited from Kaiser's sections on "Moral Difficulties in the Old Testament."

Book Spotlight: Defense of Christianity

John Frame calls Cornelius Van Til "the most important Christian thinker since Calvin.” It's been a long time since I've read Van Til, and I only have one small volume of his in my library: The Defense of Christianity and My Credo (see Amazon listing) But I have it on my favorites list because of its influence on my thinking about apologetics.

Van Til's philosophy:

My proposal, therefore, for a consistently Christian methodology of apologetics is this:

1. That we use the same principle in apologetics that we use in theology: the self-attesting, self-explanatory Christ of Scripture.

2. That we no longer make an appeal to "common notions" which Christian and non-Christian agree on, but to the "common ground" which they actually have because man and his world are what Scripture says they are.

3. That we appeal to man as man, God's image. We do so only if we set the non-Christian principle of the rational autonomy of man against the Christian principle of the dependence of man's knowledge on God's knowledge as revealed in the person and by the Spirit of Christ.

4. That we claim, therefore, that Christianity alone is reasonable for men to hold. It is wholly irrational to hold any other position than that of Christianity. Christianity alone does not slay reason on the altar of "chance."

5. That we argue, therefore, by "presupposition." The Christian, as did Tertullian, must contest the very principles of his opponent's position. The only "proof" of the Christian position is that unless its truth is presupposed there is no possibility of "proving" anything at all. The actual state of affairs as preached by Christianity is the necessary foundation of "proof" itself.

6. That we preach with the understanding that the acceptance of the Christ of Scripture by sinners who, being alienated from God, seek to flee his face, comes about when the Holy Spirit, in the presence of inescapably clear evidence, opens their eyes so that they see things as they truly are.

7. That we present the message and evidence for the Christian position as clearly as possible, knowing that because man is what the Christian says he is, the non-Christian will be able to understand in an intellectual sense the issues involved. In so doing, we shall, to a large extent, be telling him what he "already knows" but seeks to suppress. This "reminding" process provides a fertile ground for the Holy Spirit, who in sovereign grace may grant the non-Christian repentance so that he may know him who is life eternal.

You can read more:
- The Defense of Christianity.
- My Credo.

Book Spotlight: Faith Alone

Another of my favorite books in my library is R. C. Sproul's Faith Alone. The book provides precise teaching on justification by faith alone.

From chapter 1:

Since the gospel stands at the heart of Christian faith, Luther and other Reformers regarded the debate concerning justification as one involving an essential truth of Christianity, a doctrine no less essential than the Trinity or the dual natures of Christ. Without the gospel the church falls. Without the gospel the church is no longer the church.

The logic followed by the Reformers is this:

1. Justification by faith alone is essential to the gospel.
2. The gospel is essential to Christianity and to salvation.
3. The gospel is essential to a church being a true church.
4. To reject justification by faith alone is to reject the gospel and to fall as a church (p. 19).

Book Spotlight: The Mystery of the Holy Spirit

R. C. Sproul's The Mystery of the Holy Spirit is a sound, clear, balanced look at the nature and role of the Holy Spirit. Sproul's treatments of the Trinity and the baptism of the Spirit are especially helpful.

Amazon has an excerpt of part of the first chapter. You can also read this excerpt from the chapter on the Holy Spirit and regeneration (note: I'm not convinced that regeneration precedes faith).

This is a great line from the back cover:

Jesus was God in the flesh. The Holy Spirit is invisible. As someone said, "The Holy Spirit leaves no footprints in the sand."