Sometimes I read a book and can later point to a page or a chapter and a specific idea I drew from it. When I later write a review of these books I can usually point to that idea and say, “Here is what I learned; here is what the author taught me.” I love those books and in many ways can chart my spiritual growth through them. But these are not the only books that are valuable to me. There are also the books that that evoke wonder or worship even when I cannot later go back and point to that specific truth that resonated in my mind and heart. Such is the case with Jon Bloom’s Not By Sight.

Not By Sight is a book about walking by faith. It is a fresh look at familiar old stories drawn mostly from the New Testament but occasionally from the Old as well. Bloom says, “The purpose of this little book is to imaginatively reflect on the real experiences of real people in the Bible in order to help you grasp and live what it means to ‘trust in the LORD with all your heart, and … not lean on your own understanding’ (Prov. 3:5). Its goal is to help you believe in Jesus while living in a very confusing and painful world.”

In thirty-five short chapters he goes to stories like Jesus calming the storm-tossed seas, Joseph receiving the news of his fiancee’s pregnancy, the leper being healed, the disabled woman made to stand straight, and he tells them again. Sometimes he speculates a little bit, wondering how Pilate and his wife received the news that the innocent man who had been condemned was now alive again or what it was like for Andrew to live in the shadow of his brother Simon Peter. He tells of David’s regret over his affair with Bathsheba and Joseph’s prayer and praise during those long years locked away in an Egyptian prison. And always he looks for faith. When he spots that faith he calls on the reader to identify with it and to emulate it.

Chapters seventeen and eighteen were highlights for me. Though sequential they are unrelated except for the common thread of faith. One tells of the humility of the Apostle Paul. This was a humility he was forced to learn when he prayed not once, not twice, but three times to have the Lord remove that thorn from his flesh, only to learn that it was to be a continual reminder to him to trust in the Lord. This thorn in the flesh, this messenger of Satan, was actually a gift of God. Will I have faith to see the weaknesses God has assigned to me as blessings? Or will I resent them? The second tells of a leper who wanted what only God could give—deliverance from his disfiguring disease. He asked and he received. Do I have the faith, the confidence, to ask God for the things he wishes for me to ask him? How might he display his power to me or through me if only I would ask?

This is a book to savor, and I read far too quickly. I enjoyed it so much I just couldn’t help it! I couldn’t read it as slowly as it deserves, and for that reason will need to read again. It is a book I will ask my son to read this summer along with his devotions; he, at thirteen, will be able to read and understand it and will certainly benefit from it. It is a book you should consider reading as well; I have every confidence that you will enjoy it too.

Not By Sight is available at Amazon and Westminster Books.

A few weeks ago a reporter from Macleans magazine got in touch to ask if I would be willing to talk about a whole new genre of books--books that claim the author has journeyed to heaven. He had been assigned the story and was baffled by their popularity. I am baffled too. He saw as well that even as authors are insisting that heaven is real and that they have seen it, hell is on the downgrade. He understood readers want the assurance that heaven exists and they want to believe that hell does not.

These books crowd bookstore shelves (as evidenced by this snapshot I took at a local bookstore). Every couple of months there is another book telling the story of a near death experience followed by a journey to the afterlife. Every couple of months one of these books hits the list of bestsellers. 90 Minutes in Heaven, Heaven Is For Real, Proof of Heaven, To Heaven and Back...it just goes on and on. While bookstores are now full of these books, there have been very few responses to them.

Enter the second edition of John MacArthur's The Glory of Heaven. The first edition was written to combat New Age themes that were pervading the church in the early to mid-90's. The second edition is angled specifically at exposing this genre of heaven tourism. While much of the content is the same, there is also much that is new, refreshed and updated.

I am sure that almost every homemaker, every mother, every woman, has experienced the disconnect between what she knows and what she feels, between knowing that her calling is good and the reality that it can be exasperating and so often feels unfulfilling. In Glimpses of Grace Gloria Furman brings the gospel to bear on a woman’s distinct calling and calls her to treasure the gospel in her home. Speaking on behalf of Christian women she says,

We need to know: What does the gospel have to do with our everyday lives in the home? How does the gospel impact our dish washing, floor mopping, bill paying, friend making, guest hosting, and dinner cooking? How does the fact that Jesus himself bore our sins in his body on the tree so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness make a difference in my mundane life today?

The big question she explores is simply this: How does the gospel change the way a woman lives out her calling as a homemaker?

In the first section of the book she looks at the gospel, saying "Theology is for homemakers who need to know who God is, who they are, and what this mundane life is all about." My favorite chapter here is "Don't Smurf the Gospel." Furman is both amusing and convicting as she writes about the importance of properly defining the gospel and properly distinguishing between the gospel itself and its many implications and applications. If "smurf" is a word the Smurfs used when they didn't know what else to say, "gospel" is a word many Christians use whether they really meant it or not. It’s a word that may mean very different things to different people, so Furman calls for clarity and precision in its use.

The second section, the bulk of the book, looks at a homemaker's many callings and shows how the gospel speaks to each of them. The chapter titles give a sense of the subjects and the tone: "Divine Power and Precious Promises for the 2 a.m. Feeding," "All Grace and All Sufficiency for Every Dinner Guest," "Treasures In Jars of Clay, Not in Fine Bone China." One of the stronger chapters in this section is "The Idol of a Picture-Perfect Home." I appreciated this chapter because there is such a clear gospel remedy and gospel application to the kind of heart idolatry that desires and demands the illusion of a picture-perfect home.

I wish this book had not been written, or more properly, I wish there was no need for this book to be written. I wish there was no such monstrosity in the world as sexual assault. Yet the ugly truth is that sexual assault not only exists, but is all too common. The statistics are shocking, alarming. And therefore, because sexual assault exists and because of its prevalence, I am grateful that Justin and Lindsey Holcomb wrote Rid of My Disgrace. He is a pastor at Mars Hill Church and adjunct professor of theology at Reformed Theological Seminary while she is a deacon who counsels victims of sexual assault; together they are compassionate and theologically-sound, able to provide hope and healing for those who have been victimized.

I do not understand the consequences of sexual assault upon its victims. There were times as a child I came perilously close to being victimized—that school janitor, that older boy. But each time someone or something intervened. I am grateful for my ignorance here. I do not understand how and why this kind of assault impacts its victims at such a deep level and how those consequences can extend through an entire lifetime. But I want to understand as much as I am able. I know so many people who have fallen prey to predators, so many who bear the marks on their bodies and souls. And I want to be able to love them well, to walk with them through their healing. And this is why I read Rid of My Disgrace. This is a book meant to equip all Christians, those who have been hurt and those who know people who have been hurt.

I found the book extremely enlightening. The Holcombs write with care, precision and wisdom. Best of all, they write with Bible in hand. They write about this subject in three parts: Disgrace, Grace Applied and Grace Accomplished.

They begin by defining sexual assault and describing its effects. Both of these steps are necessary because some people do not understand that they have been sexually assaulted while others believe their experience is unusual or the effects they've suffered irrational. The authors' definition is as follows: Sexual assault is "any type of sexual behavior or contact where consent is not freely given or obtained and is accomplished through force, intimidation, violence, coercion, manipulation, threat, deception, or abuse of authority. Such a definition goes beyond a too-narrow view common in our society while also expanding the spectrum of actions that can be considered assault.

I didn't know what The Circle Maker was about until I began to read it. Neither did I know anything about Mark Batterson, its author. I knew the book only as a Christian bestseller and its author only as a name that often appears in my inbox as people ask if I know anything about him or have read his books. "My pastor gave everyone in the church a copy of this book. Have you reviewed it?" Finally I read it.

Mark Batterson is lead pastor of National Community Church in Washington, D.C., a church regarded as one of the most innovative and influential in the country. He made his debut in Christian publishing with In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day and followed that up with several other titles, including The Circle Maker.

The Circle Maker finds its title and inspiration in Honi Ha-Ma’agel, a Jewish scholar who lived in the first century B.C. and who is described in the Talmud. He is remembered as a miracle-worker in the tradition of Elijah and Elisha. Wikipedia provides a condensed version of his most famous miracle:

On one occasion when God did not send rain well into the winter (in the geographic regions of Israel, it rains mainly in the winter), he drew a circle in the dust, stood inside it, and informed God that he would not move until it rained. When it began to drizzle, Honi told God that he was not satisfied and expected more rain; it then began to pour. He explained that he wanted a calm rain, at which point the rain calmed to a normal rain.

Batterson says, "The prayer that saved a generation was deemed one of the most significant prayers in the history of Israel. The circle he drew in the sand became a sacred symbol. And the legend of Honi the circle maker stands forever as a testament to the power of a single prayer to change the course of history." From Honi he has learned the value of big, bold, audacious prayers. On a very practical level, he has learned the value of drawing figurative (and sometimes literal) circles. The promise of his book is that it "will show you how to claim God-given promises, pursue God-sized dreams, and seize God-ordained opportunities. You'll learn how to draw prayer circles around your family, your job, your problems, and your goals."

You may be one of those Christians who serves. And serves. And serves some more. When you head to church on Sunday you are preparing yourself to serve and when you return home you are exhausted. And if you are one of those servant-hearted Christians it may just be that the more you serve, the more you see how so many other Christians serve sparingly and half-heartedly. You may find that it is a challenge to serve Christ and to keep your joy.

Enter Serving Without Sinking by John Hindley. This is a book about happens inside our minds and hearts as we do our acts of Christian service. It is a call away from weariness, discouragement, bitterness and joylessness as we serve. And it does that by pointing us to the greatest Servant of all--the one who came to us not to be served but to serve. "This book isn't primarily about our service. It's mainly about Jesus Christ, and about His service. ... Jesus does not want you to measure your life by your service of Him. He does not want your service to get in the way of your love for Him. He did not come to be served by you--He came to serve you." This one truth is remarkably freeing. It frees us from service done to earn or impress or compare and instead allows us to enjoy the ways in which he serves us. But, of course, when we are so loved and so served, we will long to joyfully serve in return.

"When it comes to Christian service, the first place to look is at what is going on in our hearts, not what we are doing with our hands." For this reason Hindley invests some time in exploring heart motivations that guide our service. He encourages the reader to see that God cares far more about the love behind our deeds than the deeds themselves. And yet we can so often serve out of a wrong view of God or a wrong view of people. We can serve to win God's favor or we can serve to be seen and praised by men.

Perhaps the book's most unusual but most helpful application is for the servant-hearted Christian to consider serving less. Some of us serve as if our service is a pillar that holds up the church and as if God's kingdom is dependent upon our shift in the nursery or our crock pot full of meatballs.

Last night my wife and I sat and did a rough tally of the number of couples we have known as they have gone through dating and engagement. It's a pretty good number of friends, family, and fellow church members. Then we thought about how many of them maintained healthy and God-glorifying physical boundaries and how many had confessed that they had not. The numbers were suddenly not looking nearly so good. This is one of those areas where contemporary Christians so often do very poorly and this is exactly why there have been so many recent books on dating, courtship, purity and all the rest. Christians are failing and desperately looking for a better way.

It has been some time since I have read a book on dating and relationships, probably because it has been some time since the subject has seemed urgent to me. But recently a local pastor told me that as he pastors young adults toward marriage, he has been helped by Sex, Dating, and Relationships by Gerald Hiestand and Jay Thomas. I decided to check it out and I am glad I did so.

Hiestand and Thomas call their approach to relationships "a fresh approach" and this is an accurate way of describing it. They don't kiss dating goodbye and they don't advocate a return to the courtship of years gone by. Instead they encourage Christians to form "dating friendships." In this little phrase "dating" is the activity and "friendship" is the relational category. You are not boyfriend and girlfriend, but friends, and you spend time together (i.e. date) as friends for the purpose of seeing if there is mutual interest and compatibility. Romance and sexual activity and commitment can wait; for now, it is simply "two friends getting to know each other with a view toward marriage."

Think of a dating friendship as a precursor to a marriage proposal but without all the romantic, sexual overtones that so often accompany a dating relationship. A couple in a dating friendship, regardless of their attraction to each other, doesn't pretend there is more to the relationship than is warranted. They consciously refrain from sexual and overtly romantic activity and don't become naively optimistic about the commitment level of their friendship. Thus, the main goal of a dating friendship is to explore the viability of marriage while preserving the guidelines of sexual and romantic purity required by the neighbor relationship.

Integral to the argument is an understanding of how the Bible guides and restricts sexual activity. God gives us clear sexual boundaries to guide marriage relationships (sex is required), neighbor relationships (sex is forbidden) and family relationships (sex is forbidden). The authors want dating couples to understand that until they are married, their relationship to the person they are pursuing is a neighbor relationship in which any sexual activity or even the awakening of sexual desire is inappropriate. What is conspicuously absent from the Bible is a category that falls between neighbor and spouse. Yet this is where so much of our relationship confusion comes from--an invented category that is more than one but less than the other and lacking any clear biblical guidelines.

There are some books on preaching that are meant for preachers. These are books that teach the nuts and bolts of preaching, that are full of practical tips and illustration. There is a place for such works. There are other books on preaching that are meant for all Christians. These are books that describe the power and priority of preaching in the Christian church and in the Christian life. Steven Lawson's The Kind of Preaching God Blesses falls squarely in the second category. This is a book for all of us whether we preach weekly, preach occasionally or never preach at all.

The book has an interesting story behind it. In May of 2011, Lawson was to speak at the annual Pastors' Conference at Moody Bible Institute. He decided to do an exposition of 1 Corinthians 2:1-9 and titled it "The Kind of Preaching God Blesses." That message resounded with the men who attended the conference and Lawson himself experienced an unusually tangible sense of the Lord's assistance and pleasure in preaching it. He carried that message with him to Russia, to California and Orlando, and when he preached it, the Lord stirred his people. After all, every Christian knows, or ought to know, that "as the pulpit goes, so goes the church. Never has this been more true than it is in this present hour. The fact remains, no church can rise any higher than its pulpit. The spiritual life of any congregation and its growth in grace will never exceed the high-water mark set by its pulpit." That message is at the very heart of this book.

In classic Lawson fashion, he writes with a clear and alliterated structure. Drawing from 1 Corinthians 2:1-9 he looks to the poverty of modern teaching, the prohibition of worldly preaching, the preeminence of Christ in preaching, the power of the Spirit in preaching, the predestination of the Father in preaching, and the parade of faithful preachers. He writes not only to pastors, but to all Christians, to those who preach and to those who listen to preaching.

The week-to-week carrying out of the preaching ministry is the responsibility of the pastor. He is the one who must dedicate himself to studying and understanding and explaining the Word of God. Lawson is right that "as the pulpit goes, so goes the church." A pastor must understand what preaching is and why it matters and how to do it to the best of his ability. Lawson has penned a book that will challenge the pastor anew to dedicate himself to this most urgent of callings.

As is the case with so many Christians I speak to, my theology of prayer is much stronger than my practice of prayer. I know so much of what the Bible says about the privilege, priority and practice of prayer, yet struggle mightily to pray fervently and consistently. Putting that theology into practice remains a daily battle.

For this reason I make books on prayer a regular part of my reading diet. While I have read enough books on the subject that I do not always find new ground, I always benefit from an author's excitement and always learn from his experiences. Reading a book on prayer renews my confidence in prayer and sparks a renewed desire to do the hard work of praying.

I first encountered H.B. Charles Jr. through his blog and quickly became a regular reader. I have since benefited from many of his articles and especially those that deal with preaching. In a recent post he mentioned the publication of a new book, his first book, and I quickly grabbed a copy. It Happens After Prayer is (obviously) a book on prayer. Another book on prayer. It is one I enjoyed. In fact, I sat down on my day off to read a chapter or two and a few hours later had read to the end, pausing only to throw together a quick lunch.

The book's great strength is in drawing upon the passages in Scripture that show God's people praying. Charles throws down a major challenge right from the earliest pages:

Prayer is our Christian duty. It is an expression of submission to God and dependence upon Him. For that matter, prayer is arguably the most objective measurement of our dependence upon God. Think of it this way. The things you pray about are the things you trust God to handle. The things you neglect to pray about are the things you trust you can handle on your own.

If this is true, and I believe it is, he has just exposed a lot of self-dependence in me. Not only that, but where I continually slip into the mode of viewing prayer as a duty, a necessity, Charles allowed me to see it again as a privilege and an honor.

Christianity is a bloody faith. It is a bloody faith because it is the faith of sinful people and the Bible tells us that sin requires blood. For sin to be forgiven, for sinful people to be made right with God, there must be a payment of blood. That payment was made by Jesus Christ on a blood-soaked cross and through the centuries Christians have been praising God for providing the one thing they need most that they cannot do themselves. So Christians speak of the blood of Jesus Christ, they thank God for accepting the bloody sacrifice of Jesus Christ, they sing of that blood, they praise God for it. This is an unashamedly bloody faith.

We can see the significance of blood in the pages of the Old Testament, where from the earliest verses there are bloody footprints leading away from the perfection of the Garden of Eden. The blood of millions of animals brings temporary peace between sinful people and a sinned-against God. We see the significance of blood in how frequently the New Testament mentions it--nearly three times as often as “the cross” of Christ and five times as often as the “death” of Christ. Says Richard Phillips, “At the very heart of our Christian faith is a precious red substance; the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

In his new book Blood Work, Anthony Carter, pastor of East Point Church in East Point, Georgia, describes how the blood of Christ accomplishes the Christian’s salvation. Through 140 pages that are equally descriptive and meditative, he traces the New Testament’s blood motif and finds that blood is necessary for purchasing, propitiating, justifying, redeeming, cleansing, sanctifying, electing, freeing and so much else. Almost every benefit that is ours in Christ Jesus is explicitly connected to us through this trail of blood.