Welcome to the online home of Tim Challies, blogger, author, and book reviewer.
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Family worship. For some it evokes a sense of dread, memories of long, boring, tiring times sitting around a table while listening to dad drone on and on. For some it evokes a sense of guilt, false starts and failures and giving up. For a few it evokes joy, sweet times of family fellowship and memories of seeking the Lord together. Almost every book begins by describing a problem and then goes on to propose a solution. This is, after …
It is unlikely that I am the only father who is more than a little bit intimidated at the thought of raising daughters. Terrified and overwhelmed is more like it. If I didn’t have strong, Christian role models to emulate (my own parents among them), I might just despair. One of the early lessons I have learned (I’m still relatively new to this—my girls are just 9 and 5) is the value of daddy dates, which is to say, taking …
I have just one memory that involves Ted Kluck. A year ago, maybe a little bit less, he and I were together in Chicago at a small gathering of young(ish) Christian authors. Ten or fifteen of us were gathered there, sitting around a group of tables in a hotel conference room. We had the opportunity to spend an evening with D.A. Carson, the D.A. Carson, to ask him any question we wanted. It’s no small thing to have open access, …
A few days ago I received in the mail a copy of Amazing Dad by Stephanie Byrd. This is a self-published book and by far the exception among the self-published books I receive–it is really and truly good. Byrd has combed through the letters of the great statesman William Wilberforce, the letters to his children, and has found there the principles that dominated and set the course for his life. These letters are sweetly pastoral as a father encourages, exhorts …
I have spent the last thirteen years of my life trying to forget my teenage years. It’s not that these years were really so bad and it’s not like I went through a period of utter rebellion as do so many teens (for which I give thanks to God). It’s more that I had little joy in these years and felt that I was mostly just putting in time as I waited to grow up. What I do remember is …
I don’t often post reviews two days in a row, but today you’ll need to bear with me. I was somewhat surprised but rather pleased to find The Little Boy Down the Road in my mailbox one morning. It was the first I had heard of the book. I was drawn to it by its pastoral cover and its simple premise–“Short Stories and Essays on the Beauty of Family Life.” As the subtitle says, this is a collection of stories …
With Disney’s adaptation of Prince Caspian having just arrived on the big screen, we have seen a flood of Narnia-related books hitting the store shelves. Readers who searched for books to coincide with the release of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe will be familiar with many of the authors and their books. Devin Brown’s Inside Prince Caspain is written in the same style and format as Inside Narnia. Leland Ryken’s and Marjorie Mead’s A Reader’s Guide To Caspian …
I was raised as part of a Christian tradition that did not place a lot of emphasis on the religious component of the Christmas season. Christmas was a time for family and for friends and for being grateful for all the blessings given us by God, but did not include a lot of distinctly Christian traditions. It is with some interest, then, that I read of advent and the traditions of other people around the Christmas season. Ray Rhodes has …
It seems to me that John MacArthur writes books in two broad categories. The first is books that often address cultural issues or specific issues within the church. This includes books like Hard to Believe or Ashamed of the Gospel. The other category is books that are drawn from sermons series he preaches to his congregation at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California. The Fulfilled Family, the lastest in a long line of MacArthur’s books, falls squarely in the …