Welcome to the online home of Tim Challies, blogger, author, and book reviewer.
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I love writing book reviews and I love reading them. Since I cannot possibly read and review all of the interesting books out there, I publish occasional round-ups of reviews written by other writers. Or even if I am able to review the book, it’s always good to get a second opinion. So here are a few notable links I’ve collected recently: The Call by Os Guinness. Here is an oldie but a goodie reviews reviewed by Drew Bratcher: “In a …
Some of the best writing, the writing that is most heartfelt and true, finds it source in life’s deepest valleys. This is exactly the case with Michael Kelley’s Wednesdays Were Pretty Normal. Wednesdays were normal days for the Kelley family until they received the shocking news that their son Joshua, just two years old, had been diagnosed with leukemia. The normal life of this normal family was suddenly turned all around and upside down as their little boy battled for his …
Is it bad form to review a book I was involved in publishing? Perhaps so. Either way, I intend to do just that this morning. Many months ago I read a draft of Grieving, Hope, and Solace by Albert Martin, a book that was subsequently published by Cruciform Press (of which I am a co-founder). It wasn’t until this weekend that I thought to read the final product that had emerged after the editing process. I was so blessed by this …
One of my favorite conference moments to date has been an interaction between John MacArthur and John Piper. The details are a bit hazy, but if memory serves me correct, they were participating in a panel discussion and the moderator asked them about depression. Piper described some of the darkest hours of his life and ministry, saying that for a long period of time–months or years–he wept every day. Then it was MacArthur’s turn to speak and he said, “I’ve …
Here is another roundup of 30 Minute Reviews. These are books that I did not have time or opportunity to read from beginning to end. Instead, I tried to spend at least 30 minutes with each–enough to get a bit of a sense of what the book is all about. The Mighty Weakness of John Knox by Douglas Bond – This book marks the third volume in The Long Line of Godly Men Prolifes–a series that accompanies Steven Lawson’s A Long Line …
We should not be surprised that we are tempted and tried. After all, if temptation existed in a perfect world, in a sinless world, how much more will it exist in a world that is full of sin. Even the best of us, or perhaps especially the best of us are far from immune. After all, Christ himself was tempted by the devil. These temptations form the structure within Russell Moore’s new book Tempted and Tried: Temptation and the Triumph …
Sunday, August 27, 2006, the sun beats down steadily but not oppressively on the streets of Pamplona. It’s a lazy Sunday afternoon in Spain, the kind of day siestas were made for. The traffic on the streets—if you can call the occasional car “traffic”—is also lazy, relaxed and unhurried, with one exception. A silver van speeds down the avenue, pausing only briefly before shooting through a red light. In the back of the van a young girl is spread out …
Blogs often have a living quality to them, where an author picks up older content, improves it, and posts it again. I’ve been known to do this and have seen plenty of other bloggers do the same. And why not, really. The medium lends itself well to that kind of change and growth and evolution. Occasionally those who write books have the opportunity to do the same thing, to take an older book, improve it, add to it, and print …
It seems a fair question, doesn’t it? If God is truly good, as Christians insist, then how can there be so much suffering in the world? Since ancient times this question has led skeptics to believe that God cannot, must not, exist. Even today’s so-called New Atheists show how little is really new when they use the existence of suffering and evil as a linchpin of their arguments against God’s existence. Quite simply, they say, if suffering and evil exist, …
In July of 1984, when Jennifer Thompson was a twenty-three year old college student, a man broke into her apartment while she slept and raped her at knifepoint. She was eventually able to escape from him and later identified her attacker as Ronald Cotton. Though Ronald insisted that he was innocent, he was taken to court and, primarily on the basis of Jennifer’s identification of her assailant, sentenced to a life behind prison bars. Eleven years later, Cotton was allowed …