Christians have an interesting relationship with culture. Culture is a word we love to use, but one we rarely pause to define. We speak of culture’s dangerous encroachment on the church, of our need to avoid it, engage it, or redeem it. But what is this culture thing anyway? It happens to be the subject…
Some great books hit your life like a sledgehammer. They wreck your preconceptions and disrupt what you were sure you knew. We need these books from time to time. Other books come like a cool drink of water on a hot afternoon. They reaffirm what you thought you knew, and shore up your pre-existing convictions.…
You know the rule with Iain Murray’s books, right? If he writes it, you read it! You can simply never go wrong. The rule proves itself true once again with his newest work, Seven Leaders. The thirteenth chapter of Hebrews exhorts us, “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider…
You and your money are designed for something much bigger than wealth accumulation. We are wired to use our money for something far more significant than ourselves. God has designed us (and any resources we have) to make a difference in this world. Money is designed to bring joy, but not in the way we…
There are some stories that are too remarkable to not be told. This one begins in 1928 with sorrow, with tragedy: My dear madam, I have an unfortunate girl in my congregation that expects to give birth to a child about the end of this month. I have investigated her case and am convinced that…
There’s no doubt that life is difficult. We are finite creatures who encounter an infinite number of opportunities. This forces us to make constant decisions between better and best, between the millions of things we could do and the few we actually should do. We are also weak creatures who have limited strength, foolish creatures…
The great challenge in marriage is not to love our wives more but to love ourselves less, for it is self-love that generates so much of the strife we experience. To be successful husbands we must continually put to death within us whatever causes us to prioritize ourselves, our own interests, our own comfort, our…
Whenever I begin to read a new book, I immediately look to the opening pages for a clear statement of purpose. Why did the author write this work? What sets it apart from others? When it comes to Andy Naselli’s How to Understand and Apply the New Testament, he wastes no time. Here are his…
There are far more Calvinists in the world than there are people who have actually read the works of John Calvin, or even dabbled in them, for that. Of course the latter is not a prerequisite to the former, but those who never read any of Calvin’s works are denying themselves a blessing and perhaps…
It’s certainly an interesting time to be alive, isn’t it? And it’s a particularly interesting time to be a Christian. Right before our eyes we see everything changing, everything we once assumed being purposefully undermined. A new normal has been thrust upon us and I don’t think I’m the only one who is looking for…
The Shack has sold twenty million copies and along the way generated at least twenty million conversations. Many of these have been attempts to discern the fact behind the fiction, to interpret what Paul Young means to teach through his story. Some have read the novel as a fresh expression of Christian orthodoxy while others…
The grand jury report is as startling, as nauseating as any you’ll ever read. “This case is about a doctor who killed babies and endangered women. What we mean is that he regularly and illegally delivered live, viable babies in the third trimester of pregnancy—and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with…
Matt Chandler says he has been waiting for this book for fifteen years. Mike Bickle assures the potential reader it “combines sound theology with inspiring personal examples.” Jack Deere describes it as “an immensely practical” work while Gregg Allison believes it is just what his church needs to experience a deeper outpouring of God’s grace.…
Here we are, five hundred years past Luther. You have to wonder to what degree that first protester would recognize today’s Protestantism. But you don’t have to wonder what he would think about contemporary attempts to bridge the gap he helped create. He, of all people, knew the necessity of defending the true gospel by…
This book begins with a wedding. It kind of has to, doesn’t it? After writing so many books as a single woman, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth (formerly Nancy Leigh DeMoss) has now written her first major work as a married woman. Not that it’s a book about marriage, of course. Not yet. Rather, it’s about adornment,…
Many years ago, I was part of a church that developed a particularly troubling women’s ministry. It had been founded with noble intentions and was meant to address the unique concerns of women. Before long, though, the leaders became enamored with a problematic author, and their theology began to diverge from that of the pastors.…
Let me first tell you how None Like Him begins, then make two brief observations. “If you had told me five years ago that I would one day write a book for Christian women that led off with a quote from Proverbs 31, I probably would have punched you in the face.” The first observation:…
It was a case of serendipitous timing, at least from my perspective. I began to read Praying Together just as our church began its annual week of prayer, a week of nightly prayer meetings. And really, the timing couldn’t have worked out better. We gathered night by night to confess our sins, to express our…
I was wrong. I read the opening words of The Story of Reality and thought, “Here we go again.” Over the past few years we’ve been inundated with books that tell the story of the world, the story of history, through what we might call a biblical-theology lens. You are probably familiar with the standard…
The Trellis and the Vine by Colin Marshall and Tony Payne was a surprise bestseller. Coming from a small Australian publisher, it made its way into Mark Dever’s hands and he declared it “the best book I’ve read on the nature of church ministry.” The rest, as they say, is history. Pastors and church leaders…