Welcome to the online home of Tim Challies, blogger, author, and book reviewer.
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A core component of my regular reading diet is books on parenting. As long as I am a parent, and especially a parent of tweens and teens (parenting babies and toddlers is straightforward by comparison!), I want to stay sharp, to be challenged, to be equipped. A good book helps me better understand the purpose of parenting and helps me better fulfill my God-given duties. Chap Bettis’s The Disciple-Making Parent is a good book, exactly the kind that challenged me and, …
I have had to face and overcome a few great fears in life. There was the time I had to meet my [future] father-in-law to ask his permission to marry Aileen. There was the time I first stood in front of a church and attempted to preach a sermon. There was the time I first walked out onto a stage at a conference and attempted to say something intelligible. At times like these I feel the full weight of inadequacy …
Motherhood was something I planned for, something I wanted, so why was living it out so drastically different from my expectations?” This is a question many an honest and searching mother has asked herself. If motherhood is so good, so desirable, so obviously the will of God, then why does it have to be so difficult? Why does it feel so unfulfilling? This was Sarah Mae’s question as she faced another day of caring for her children after yet another …
Yesterday I began to look at Michael Pearl’s To Train Up a Child (click here to read it). My interest in this book is based in part on its popularity and in part on the way in which it very clearly highlights how faulty foundational beliefs will lead to faulty actions. In the first part of the review I showed that Pearl advocates a particular method of training children and that he distinguishes this training from discipline. Today I want …
Byron Yawn has the ignominious distinction of being the first person to ever invite me to be a keynote speaker at a conference. That was a long time ago, and it seems like an even longer time, but he and I have stayed in touch since then and I was excited to hear of his work on a book titled What Every Man Wishes His Father Had Told Him. I had anticipated that I would be reading a book on fatherhood, …
I love the book of Proverbs and often feel bewilderment when I think of how few Christians, and Christian parents in particular, rely on the wisdom it contains–knowledge that is at once deep and wide. Proverbs is, in so many ways, a manual for raising wise, discerning, godly children. Why then don’t we turn to it more often? Perhaps it is because mining the wisdom of Proverbs involves concerted effort. Not only do many of the jewels, by their very …
According to George Barna, there have been approximately 75,000 books on parenting published in the past decade. I sometimes feel like I have read all of them. It strikes me, though, that publishers must feel the same way and that, hopefully, they think hard before releasing yet another book into such a crowded marketplace. I at least wanted to give the benefit of the doubt to P&R with the release of William Farley’s Gospel-Powered Parenting. And I’m very glad that …
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 …
Safe in the Arms of God is described on the cover as “truth from heaven about the death of a child.” In this short, but intense book, John MacArthur answers the question of what happens to children – those unborn, stillborn, or youngsters – when they die. This is a question that has perplexed Christians since the days of the early church. While most Christians have held the view that their children are in heaven, the majority have believed that …