Does Grace Grow Best in Winter? (06/30/09 - 3 Comments)
To live is to suffer. It is sadly inevitable that in this sinful world, we will all suffer. Some suffer more than others and some suffer for different reasons than others. But the fact remains that all of us will face hardship and pain. Knowing this, we are wise to arm ourselves for those times, to prepare ourselves for the inevitable affliction. Does Grace Grow in Winter?, authored by Ligon Duncan and J. Nicholas Reid...
Death Is No Escape (06/29/09 - 17 Comments)
Earlier this morning I finished up Richard J. Evans' The Third Reich at War, a very long, very thorough, very interesting tracing of the rise and fall of German military might from 1939 to 1945. More than just another account of the Second World War, this book looks to battles, but also to atrocities and to the German home front. It provides an overall perspective on the German experience of war, from the men on...
The Truth of the Cross (06/28/09 - 3 Comments)
In his book The Truth of the Cross, R.C. Sproul spends some time discussing the human condition and as he does so he uses three biblical concepts: debtors, enemies, and criminals. The Bible describes all of us in these terms. What Sproul does here, and this really helped it hit home for me, is show how it is always the Father who has been offended and the Son who intercedes. We have committed crimes against...
Discount Personal Feelings (06/27/09 - 3 Comments)
I thought you would enjoy this quote from Jim Andrew's Polishing God's Monuments (one of my favorite books from a couple of years ago). This book, which offers "pillars of hope for punishing times" tells Andrews' story of faith and perseverance through almost unbelievable suffering. This man writes from hard experience and here he offers sound, biblical wisdom. ***** When the Lord's ways do not neatly conform to our pat little paradigms of what seems...
Free Stuff Fridays (06/26/09 - 6 Comments)
It's Friday and, as you know, that brings us to another edition of Free Stuff Fridays--an opportunity for you to win some free product from a great sponsor. This week's sponsor is Timberdoodle, a supplier of homeschooling curriculum and related material. They are offering five great prizes. Each of five winners will be able to select a set of Jungle Doctor books (there are two sets of six books--winners will be able to select...
A Tortured Existence (06/26/09 - 24 Comments)
So the king is dead. What a sad end to a sad life; a pathetic end to a pathetic life (by which I mean to use pathetic in its true sense as "arousing pity and sympathy). I don't know that I have ever seen, in one man, such a combination of self-love and self-loathing, shocking narcissism combined with equally shocking self-hatred. Truly Michael Jackson was unparalleled. Andrew Sullivan offered a few interesting thoughts. There are...
Reading Classics Together - The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment (II) (06/25/09 - 27 Comments)
Today we come to our second reading in Jeremiah Burroughs' The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. If you have not yet started the book but would like to read along with us, you're not too late. We are only two chapters in and you can still easily catch up. Last week I had said that we would read chapters 2 and 3, but several participants in this program suggested that was hurrying things too much....
Sharing the Gospel in the Gay Village (06/24/09 - 83 Comments)
June 19 marked the beginning of Toronto's annual Pride Week. Now in its 28th year, this is a week-long celebration of diverse sexual and gender identities. Here is how the organizers describe it: "Pride Week celebrates our diverse sexual and gender identities, histories, cultures, creativities, families, friends and lives. It includes a three-day street festival with over eight stages of live entertainment, an extensive street fair (including community booths, vendors, food stalls), a special Family...
Book Review - The Betrayal (06/23/09 - 9 Comments)
I wonder what Calvin would have said, what he would have thought, if he could have peered five centuries into the future and seen how he would be honored on the five hundredth anniversary of his birth. Several new biographies; a long list of conferences; books discussing every aspect, every facet of his theology; a bobblehead; and now The Betrayal, a novel that recounts his life as historical fiction. The Betrayal, published by P&R Publishing,...
Don't Take Your iPod to Church! (Part 2) (06/22/09 - 41 Comments)
I've been enjoying writing these little articles titled "Don't Take Your iPod to Church." I'll be the first to admit that I am overstating my case a little bit and even being deliberately vague at times. But through it all I'm seeing some great discussion and am being asked lots of interesting questions. It may be frustrating to everyone else, but I'm enjoying it, at the very least! Let's press on. In a previous article...
Meeting God (06/21/09 - 3 Comments)
Here is another great Puritan prayer, this one beseeching God to allow the Christian to live a life filled with prayer, filled with grace, filled with the Spirit. What a perfect prayer to make your own on this Lord's Day! ***** Great God, in public and private, in sanctuary and home, may my life be steeped in prayer, filled with the spirit of grace and supplication, each prayer perfumed with the incense of atoning blood....
Brian Regan Speaks to Bloggers (06/20/09 - 10 Comments)
Brian Regan is a stand up comedian and is rare among comedians in that he is both hilarious and clean. It seems there was a time when he injected a bit of sketchy material into his routines but, as he said in a recent interview with CNN, he found that he did not need to do this. "I was always 90 to 95 percent clean with my jokes anyways, and I'm kind of anal so,...
Free Stuff Fridays (06/19/09 - 3 Comments)
Another Friday is upon us and with it another Free Stuff Fridays. You've undoubtedly heard of this week's sponsor, Banner of Truth. Founded in 1957, "the founders believed that much of the best literature of historic Christianity had been allowed to fall into oblivion and that its recovery under God could well lead not only to a strengthening of the Church today but to true revival. The origins of the work were closely connected...
Monitoring Mohler (06/19/09 - 12 Comments)
A couple of weeks ago Dr. Mohler supplied a suggested summer reading list. My tastes and Dr. Mohler's run pretty much the same when it comes to recreational reading so I thought I'd go ahead and just read this entire list of ten books. I'm now forty percent of the way through (math wizzes will do the math and figure out that this means I've read four of the ten) and thought I'd report in....
Reading Classics Together - The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment (I) (06/18/09 - 24 Comments)
Today we start reading another classic book--Jeremiah Burrough's The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. This follows some other great classics we've read together: Holiness by J.C. Ryle, Overcoming Sin and Temptation by John Owen, The Seven Sayings of the Savior on the Cross by A.W. Pink, The Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards, Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and Real Christianity by William Wilberforce. The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment was first published in 1648 and,...
Don't Take Your iPod to Church! (Part 1.5) (06/17/09 - 50 Comments)
Last Friday I encouraged you not to take your iPod to church. Not surprisingly, this generated a bit of discussion both at the blog and across some other social media (Twitter, Facebook, and so on). It's a good discussion to have, I think. I realize that I am probably overstating my case just a little bit, but this is deliberate. I want to get people thinking about this issue. I offer special thanks to people...
Book Review - Justification and Regeneration (06/16/09 - 11 Comments)
At the very heart of the gospel, at the very heart of the Christian faith, are two great miracles, two inseparable miracles, through which a dead man is brought to life. The first miracle is justification; here a condemned sinner is made right in the eyes of a perfect judge. The second miracle is regeneration; here a hater of God and a hater of good is transformed into a lover of God and a lover...
Pleasing People (06/15/09 - 7 Comments)
If you've never read Lou Priolo's Pleasing People, well, it's a good thing to add to your list of things to do. The book takes aim at the human desire to orient our lives around pleasing people instead of first and foremost pleasing God. In one of the chapters, Priolo looks at clothing ourselves in humility and here he offers some wisdom on the subject of forgiveness. As the father of three young children, and...
Believing Lies, Rejecting Truth (06/14/09 - 6 Comments)
The following quote is from the pen of Horatius Bonar (1808 - 1889), the great Scottish preacher, poet, author and hymn writer. It talks about the nature, the true nature, of unbelief. It's worth reading and pondering. ***** In all unbelief there are these two things--a good opinion of one's self and a bad opinion of God. Man's good opinion of himself makes him think it quite possible to win God's favor by his own...
The Gospel Without Adulteration (06/13/09 - 4 Comments)
Here is a brief quote taken from John Newton's A Review of Ecclesiastical History which was published in 1769. It strikes me that the words he wrote them are perfectly applicable today: Whenever and wherever the doctrines of free grace and justification by faith have prevailed in the Christian Church, and according to the degree of clearness with which they have been enforced, the practical duties of Christianity have flourished in the same proportion. Wherever...
Free Stuff Fridays (06/12/09 - 7 Comments)
We've come to another Friday and with it, another version of Free Stuff Fridays. This week's sponsor is Reformation Heritage Books, the mission of which is "to glorify God and strengthen His Church through the publication and distribution of Puritan and Reformed literature." They are offering a generous prize of 5 complete sets of their Profiles in Reformed Spirituality Set. So five winners will each claim all seven volumes. The newest addition to this...
Don't Take Your iPod to Church! (06/12/09 - 61 Comments)
Yesterday I described the book as The Perfect Technology. There was perhaps a little bit of hyperbole involved, but I think the point was well-taken. I was actually surprised to see how many people agreed with me. Maybe as Christians we are unusual in this regard; maybe Christians are, almost by definition, readers and, thus, people who will toss away their books only with great caution. This is good, I think, as Christians tend to...
The Perfect Technology (06/11/09 - 39 Comments)
About a year ago I wrote a review of Amazon's Kindle reading device. At the time, I loved it. That was then. A couple of months ago I traded my Kindle to a friend for a stack of old-fashioned ink-on-paper commentaries. This is now. I think I made a good trade. He is enjoying the Kindle and I am enjoying the commentaries. Win-win. Something changed between then and now--I came to see that all of...
The God Who Answers Prayer (06/10/09 - 13 Comments)
I've always loved Acts 12. It is such a fascinating bit of writing--a little story in three acts, each of which fits so well with the others. I was reflecting on the chapter this morning and thought I'd share a little bit of that. The chapter begins by describing the beginning of Herodian persecution against the church. Herod, the king, presumably to please his Jewish subjects, has the disciple James arrested and killed and then...
You Are the Treasure That I Seek (06/09/09 - 8 Comments)
I spent a few minutes yesterday reading about the new iPhone--the iPhone 3G S. It sounds spectacular. With every generation of the phone the wizards at Apple get one step closer to what people wanted the iPhone to be from the outset--an amazing, innovative, gizmo that does so many things so well. Watching the videos, reading the descriptions, I can feel my heart begin to long for that phone. I know that if I don't...
The One Who Looks (06/08/09 - 18 Comments)
I was skimming headlines and noticed a story about some activists on a college campus who were planning to cover all of the school's mirrors for a day. I did not read long enough to see why they wanted to do this, but I assume it was somehow meant to draw attention to a problem the school or government was covering up. You know how these college-aged activists are, always thinking they are so clever...
Contentment (06/07/09 - 4 Comments)
I mentioned a week ago that last week had been a long and difficult struggle to find joy. W week later I feel that God has really brought me through a tough time, but a time that was not in any way useless or wasted. This morning, when I sat down with The Valley of Vision, I came to the prayer titled "Contentment." It ministered to me this morning. Isn't it funny how a prayer...
Reading Classics Together - A Reminder (06/06/09 - 16 Comments)
I wanted to offer one more reminder that we'll soon be starting to read our next classic Christian book together. We will be reading The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by Jeremiah Burroughs. I chose this book for a few reasons, among them its status as a true classic of the faith and one that is both pastoral and applicable, even today. We live, after all, in a world that is profoundly discontent and it...
Free Stuff Fridays (06/05/09 - 2 Comments)
It’s Friday and that means I’ve got another Free Stuff Friday for you. This week’s sponsor is Evangelical Press. "The mission of EP is to promote reformed literature throughout the world concentrating mainly (but not exclusively) in English, French, Russian and currently Chinese. In reality we do have publications available in at least fifty languages. The principle is simple - every area of our work in every country and language we work in is...
The Disappearance of God (06/05/09 - 6 Comments)
It is becoming difficult to keep up with the volume of books coming from the pen of Dr. Albert Mohler. In the past eighteen months we have seen five new books and there is still one remaining for later in 2009 (an original work based on a sermon series, slated for release later this year). Atheism Remix began as the W.H. Griffith Thomas Lectures Mohler delivered at Dallas Theological Seminary early in 2008; He Is...
Addicted to Entertainment (II) (06/04/09 - 13 Comments)
Yesterday I looked briefly at entertainment addiction and attempted to propose a definition of entertainment. I said that entertainment is an escape or distraction from normal life. Perhaps I should have added that it is an "enjoyable" escape or distraction. While this is an imperfect definition, I think it is useful, at the least. We seek entertainment to take our minds off the stresses and strains and reality of life. Today I want to offer...
Addicted to Entertainment (06/03/09 - 25 Comments)
A few days ago John Piper answered a question about addiction to entertainment. He expressed his concern with our need today to be entertained and to be entertained near-constantly. He then offered a few pointers on escape this addiction. This little article got me thinking and I wanted to offer just a couple of thoughts on the topic. First, I want to try to define entertainment. The best I can do, at least for now,...
Little Evils, Little Sins (06/02/09 - 20 Comments)
The Pacific Campaign of the Second World War has always fascinated me. In many ways, it seemed like a nonsensical series of battles between the United States and Japan. As the Americans sought to curtail Japanese aggression in the East, they fought their way across the Pacific Ocean, moving slowly and deliberately from island to island. Tiny, seemingly insignificant pieces of rock, jutting from the midst of a boundless ocean, hundreds of miles, thousands...
A Praying Life (06/01/09 - 11 Comments)
Any time I write a review of a book dealing with prayer I feel the need to point out that bookstore shelves are already groaning under the weight of such books. There are hundreds, thousands probably, of books on prayer. A new one is going to need to be good--very good--to supplant the excellent resources already available. Paul Miller, perhaps a bit reluctantly, takes on this challenge in his new book A Praying Life: Connecting...
