All that glitters is not gold. This is a lesson many thousands of men learned in the 19th century when they stormed California seeking their fortunes. While there was treasure to be found, as evidenced by the wealth many gained from their mining ventures, there was also what came to be known as fool’s gold. While this looked like gold, it was in reality valueless iron pyrite. For a miner to be successful he had to learn to discern the true gold from mere fool’s gold. A man’s livelihood depended on this. Because it was difficult to tell one from the other only by looking at it, miners develped some simple tests. One was the hardness test, where a miner could bite a rock in question. Fool’s gold was hard while real gold was much softer. A broken tooth would prove the rock to be fool’s gold. For a second test a miner would scrape the rock against a white stone. True gold would leave a yellowish streak while fool’s gold would leave one that was greenish-black. This is the historical backdrop against which John MacArthur and the staff of Grace Community Church compare today’s church.

Pursuing God - A Seeker’s Guide is a book for those who are drawn to God and yearn to understand more about Him. Intended as a tool for evangelism, it is written in a warn and conversational style. Over sixty pages, author Jim Elliff, president of Christian Communicators Worldwide, leads the reader through the all-important questions and answers in what is a clear and biblical presentation of the gospel.

Brian Flynn is the founder and director of One Truth Ministries and leads “Now Age” seminars before churches and groups around the United States. But long before he felt such love and concern for the church, he was a psychic medium who hated Christianity with every fiber of his being. Running Against The Wind is the story of his radical transformation.

Never have Christians tried to be so relevant, and yet never have they been so terribly irrelevant. How could this happen? It is this question that Os Guinness addresses in Prophetic Untimeliness, which claims to be “A Challenge to the Idol of Relevance.” Guinness says that the goal of the book is to explore how the stupidity of relevance has come about. “How on earth have we Christians become so irrelevant when we have tried so hard to be relevant?…Never have Christians pursued relevance more strenuously; never have Christians been more relevant” (page 11, 12).

Josh Harris is all grown up. The man who brought us I Kissed Dating Goodbye when he was just twenty-one, and who is best known for bringing courtship to a whole new generation, is now senior pastor of a large and growing church and no longer speaks at conferences. Stop Dating The Church is his first book targetted at an audience wider than merely teens and parents of teens.

Harris believes that many, and perhaps even the majority of Christians, have a fear of committment to the church. Rather than committing to a local body of believers, most Christians “date the church,” refusing to commit to a long-term relationship. He says, “This is my third book on relationships, but it’s unlike any of my previous books…this book is about how you should relate to the family of God” (page 12). In Failing to commit to the church, we cheat ourselves, we cheat our church community and we cheat the world.

Almost everyone who believes in the existence of heaven also believes he will be there. I cannot count the number of times I have heard the statistic that fully 99% of Americans believe they will be in heaven some day. However, the Bible certainly gives no reason to believe that 99% of people will be welcomed into heaven. Thus many people, and perhaps even the majority of people, live with false assurance of their eternal destination. How Can I Be Sure I’m A Christian by Don Whitney, is a book concerned with helping Christians understand how they be assured of their salvation and how to discern true from false assurance.

I almost always carry a journal or notebook with me so I can scribble down thoughts as they come to me during the day. Some of these turn into articles and others turn into devotional material. More often than not I look at them weeks or months later and have absolutely no idea what they mean or what I was thinking when I scribbled them down. Recently I saw a comment in a notebook that did make sense to me. I had written about the difference between my friend Jason and myself when we sit down with a guitar on our laps and a sheet of music in front of us. I can read the music and strum those strings and make nothing but awful, painful sounds that bear little resemblance to music. Jason, on the other hand, can sit down and make music at will, even with no sheet music in front of him. The difference between Jason and myself is not necessarily inate musical ability or the quality of our guitars. The difference is in disciplined practice. Jason has dedicated thousands of hours to honing his skills so that it seems to require little effort to play the music.

There exists a surprisingly popular series of books entitled Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader. These books are a compendium of quotes, short stories, trivia and jokes that are each just a few lines or paragraphs in length. The book was designed to appeal to the bathroom reader - one who likes to read whilst he is sitting upon the throne, so to speak. I affectionately call Now, That’s A Good Question, R.C.’s Big Bathroom Reader. The cover features R.C. sitting (thankfully) in an armchair and displays one of the worst jobs of removing the background from a photo I have ever seen. His hair is cut in almost straight lines and looks completely unnatural on the cream-colored background. Actually, the cover looks like it may have been someone’s high school project. But I digress.

I admire John Piper and have grown tremedously through his ministry. He is a gifted teacher and one I deeply respect. Yet for some strange reason I do not enjoy his books. I have tried reading several of his books several times and have never enjoyed doing so. I don’t know why this is, but I suspect it may be his style of writing. He employs many short sentences and writes in flowery prose I usually find only in the writing of Victorian authors. Maybe there is another reason that is hidden to me. What I do know is that, as tragic as this may be, it will probably be a long time before I read one of his books again. I feel guilty about this, especially when I read other reviews where people praise this as being one of their favorite books and one that has done so much for their spiritual formation. Perhaps I will pick one up and try again next year.

As believers, we often fall prey to the assumption that those who are busiest, are most spiritual. We look at the people in our churches who are involved in all the committees and are at every meeting and assume that they are the ones with the greatest measure of spiritual health. But do you think that is the measure God uses? Or does he have a different set of criteria by which He judges spiritual health? This short but powerful book examines the Bible’s teaching on this matter.

As one might expect by the title, Ten Questions To Diagnose Your Spiritual Health, this book presents the reader with ten criteria that can point towards spiritual health. The crux of the matter, the theme that flows throughout the book, is this: is your character becoming more like Christ’s? Here are the ten questions the reader faces: