#Book Review

Lessons for a Life of Joyful Eagerness

I love a good biography. I love a good biography when it’s a “standard” or “pure” biography that simply describes a person’s life from beginning to end. But I also love a good biography when it is written purposefully or thematically—when instead of chronologically detailing all the events of a person’s life it provides selective details and draws lessons for its readers. This is exactly the kind of biography Mary Mohler has written about Susannah Spurgeon in Susannah Spurgeon: Lessons …

The Gospel of Jesus

We have access to some amazing resources meant to help us better understand the Bible. From commentaries to lexicons to systematic theologies, we of all people are most blessed. One especially helpful resource that will help devotional Bible readers as much as pastors or theologians is a harmonized narrative of the life of Jesus. God could have given us just one account of the life of his Son, but in his wisdom he saw fit to give us four. And …

Become a Patron

Friendship With God

There are three ways to read a good and growing number of the classics of the Christian faith. The first is to read the original work. This is usually the most rewarding option, but it can pose difficulties when the author’s language is either foreign or antiquated. The second is to read a modernized version in which a contemporary author has generally maintained the content and flow of the book, but rewritten it in modern English. The third is to …

Poetry of Redemption

There have been times in the history of the Christian faith in which poetry played a key role in believers’ devotion to the Lord. There were eras in which the work of Christian poets was respected and even lauded. But that was then and this is now. While we still value poetry in the form of songs, most of us pay scant attention to reading or writing poetry. There could be any number of explanations for this, though I am …

Jinger Vuolo’s Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear

I suppose I should probably preface what follows by saying that I have never watched as much as a moment of any show by or about the Duggar family. I once had a very cordial chat with Jinger Vuolo (formerly Duggar) at a conference without knowing she was a reality TV personality and probably the best-known person at the whole event. Such is my knowledge of television! And so when I chose to buy and read her new memoir Becoming …

A Divine Tapestry

Sometimes it’s simple enough to know what a book is, but a little more difficult to know what it’s meant for. Understanding a book’s contents is sometimes a bit simpler than knowing how to use it. And I’d say that’s exactly the case for A Divine Tapestry by Ryan McGraw. A Divine Tapestry is simply summaries and memory verses from every chapter of the Bible. In other words, it is divided into 66 chapters, one for each book of the …

Getting Masculinity Right

Earlier this year I was in Sydney, Australia over a weekend. I wanted to go to church of course, so visited TGC’s site to scour its handy church directory. I found that within walking distance was a little Anglican church that worshipped in a nearby college of the arts. I arrived to find that the church was welcoming a guest speaker that day—one who was formerly a priest and bishop in the Anglican Church but was now director of a …

A Concise Guide to the Greatest Letter Ever Written

It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that if you understand Paul’s letter to the Romans you understand the Bible. Said otherwise, the person with no knowledge of the rich truths of Romans will necessarily have a weak understanding of the Christian faith. Conversely, the person with extensive knowledge of it will have a much enhanced understanding of the Christian faith. It truly has that central a place in the Scriptures. Thankfully, we are well resourced when it comes to …

He Is Not Ashamed

We are at an interesting point in history in which, when people look to the past, they seem more likely to cringe than to celebrate. It has become customary for people to look to their forbears and then disavow them or apologize for them in what has become almost a ritualistic purgation. There are many who are ashamed of their roots, ashamed of their family, embarrassed to admit who and where they have come from. But isn’t it interesting that …

From Everlasting to Everlasting

I have fond memories of the early days of the Reformed resurgence. These were the days in the early 2000s when so many people were discovering, or rediscovering, the deep and historic truths of the Reformed tradition. Everyone was writing about the five solas and the five points, marveling at how they display God’s glory. Soli deo gloria, indeed. But it seems to me that somewhere along the way people stopped writing about those truths. They began to assume them …