Recently in Books & Documents Category
(3)
(0)
David Platt's book, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream, is an excellent book. I highly recommend it - if only for his assessment of American Christianity; the American Dream couched in Christian verbiage.
His prescription of the problem? Not so much.
The American Dream is what I would call a "secular religion" of which Platt rightly calls us to abandon, but Platt exchanges this "secular religion" for a "religious religion" and not the Gospel.
Let me explain.
Throughout the book, there is a plea to surrender to Jesus, which is good, but the pleas are expressed either by making a person feel guilty or via a command to surrender.
There is no connection with the Gospel itself. How does my surrender flow from and out of the Gospel? How does my surrender to Jesus get motivated by Jesus' birth, life, death, and resurrection? This is the Gospel, and my surrender MUST, it MUST, flow out and from the Gospel.
The Gospel is mentioned but the "surrender to Jesus" is not connected WITH the Gospel.
Yes, we can "surrender to Jesus" but how do you know your surrender is sincere enough? How do you know your surrender to Jesus is surrender enough? Can you surrender EVERYTHING for Jesus?
Sure. We WANT to surrender everything, but the reality is, our sin touches every part of our being, sin corrupts our every molecule to such a degree that even our best surrender and abandonment to Jesus is as filthy or polluted rags before God. See Isaiah 64:6.
Ask yourself this: Can I absolutely, 100% abandon EVERYTHING in my life for Jesus? This means there is NO turning back; this means you cannot, even for a split second, think "wow, it'd be nice to have X for a moment" or "I miss X...."
I cannot do that. I want to. But I cannot DO it. It is a law I cannot fulfill.
But Jesus DID do it. For me. In my place. And it is HIS work of surrender and abandonment to God that I rest in.
Speaking of Jesus parable of the treasure in a field in Matthew 13:
This is very true, but this statement does not go far enough.
How does the Gospel motivate me to "abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus?"
Platt explains the Gospel very well, but there is a disconnect between the Gospel and its motivation of our doing.
Without this connection of our motivation with the Gospel, the command to surrender all is just a command, a heavy weight placed upon us we can never fulfill.
Show me the beauty of the Gospel, don't just tell me it's beautiful.
Let me quote large portions of Radical and let Platt speak for himself:
Do you have this desperation for the Spirit of God? How do I know my desperation for the Spirit of God is enough?
I can tell you, my desperation will NEVER be desperate enough. My abandonment will NEVER be abandoning enough. To command me to do these things even in the context of the Gospel is still placing a law upon me I can never fulfill. Connect me to the Gospel. Connect my doing to the Gospel and that fruit will grow in my life because only my conforming into Christ's image will be done.
All this to say, say these things; just say them in a different way--in a way in which the Gospel is my motivation not a command.
His prescription of the problem? Not so much.
The American Dream is what I would call a "secular religion" of which Platt rightly calls us to abandon, but Platt exchanges this "secular religion" for a "religious religion" and not the Gospel.
Let me explain.
"But if Jesus is who he said he is, and if his promises are as rewarding as the Bible claims they are, then we may discover that satisfaction in our lives and success in the church are not found in what our culture deems most important but in radical abandonment to Jesus." ~Platt p3
"'Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.' Now this is taking it to another level. Pick up an instrument of torture and follow me. This is getting plain weird...and kind of creepy. Imagine a leader coming on the scene today and inviting all who would come after him to pick up an electric chair and become his disciple. Any takers?
"As if this were not enough, Jesus finished his seeker-sensitive plea with a pull-at-your-heartstrings conclusion. 'Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.' Give up evertying you have, carry a cross, and hate your family. This sounds a lot different than 'Admit, believe, confess, and pray a prayer after me.'" ~Platt pp10-11
Throughout the book, there is a plea to surrender to Jesus, which is good, but the pleas are expressed either by making a person feel guilty or via a command to surrender.
There is no connection with the Gospel itself. How does my surrender flow from and out of the Gospel? How does my surrender to Jesus get motivated by Jesus' birth, life, death, and resurrection? This is the Gospel, and my surrender MUST, it MUST, flow out and from the Gospel.
The Gospel is mentioned but the "surrender to Jesus" is not connected WITH the Gospel.
Yes, we can "surrender to Jesus" but how do you know your surrender is sincere enough? How do you know your surrender to Jesus is surrender enough? Can you surrender EVERYTHING for Jesus?
Sure. We WANT to surrender everything, but the reality is, our sin touches every part of our being, sin corrupts our every molecule to such a degree that even our best surrender and abandonment to Jesus is as filthy or polluted rags before God. See Isaiah 64:6.
Ask yourself this: Can I absolutely, 100% abandon EVERYTHING in my life for Jesus? This means there is NO turning back; this means you cannot, even for a split second, think "wow, it'd be nice to have X for a moment" or "I miss X...."
I cannot do that. I want to. But I cannot DO it. It is a law I cannot fulfill.
But Jesus DID do it. For me. In my place. And it is HIS work of surrender and abandonment to God that I rest in.
Speaking of Jesus parable of the treasure in a field in Matthew 13:
"This is the picture of Jesus in the gospel. He is something--someone--worth losing everything for. And if we walk away from the Jesus of the gospel, we walk away from eternal riches. The cost of non-discipleship is profoundly greater for us than the cost of discipleship. For when we abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus, we discover the infinite treasure of knowing and experiencing him."
This is very true, but this statement does not go far enough.
How does the Gospel motivate me to "abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus?"
Platt explains the Gospel very well, but there is a disconnect between the Gospel and its motivation of our doing.
Without this connection of our motivation with the Gospel, the command to surrender all is just a command, a heavy weight placed upon us we can never fulfill.
Show me the beauty of the Gospel, don't just tell me it's beautiful.
Let me quote large portions of Radical and let Platt speak for himself:
"Biblical proclamation of the gospel beckons us to a much different response and leads us down a much different road. Here the gospel demands and enables us to turn from our sin, to take up our cross, to die to ourselves, and to follow Jesus. These are the terms and phrases we see in the Bible. And salvation now consists of a deep wrestling in our souls with the sinfulness of our hearts, the depth of our depravity, and the desperation of our need for his grace. Jesus is no longer one to be accepted or invited in but one who is infinitely worthy of our immediate and total surrender.
'You might think this sounds as though we have to earn our way to Jesus through radical obedience, but that is not the case at all. Indeed, 'it is by grace you [are] saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast.' We are saved from our sins by a free gift of grace, something that only God can do in us and that we cannot manufacture ourselves.
"But that gift of grace involves the gift of a new heart. New desires. New longings. For the first time, we want God. We see our need for him, and we love him. We seek after him, and we find him, and we discover that he is indeed the great reward of our salvation. We realize that we are saved not just to be forgiven of our sins or to be assured of our eternity in heaven, but we are saved to know God. So we yearn for him. We want him so much that we abandon everything else to experience him. This is the only proper response to the revelation of God in the gospel.
"This is why men and women around the world risk their lives to know more about him. This is why we must avoid cheap caricatures of Christianity that fail to exalt the revelation of God in his Word. This is why you and I cannot settle for anything less than a God-centered, Christ-exalting, self-denying gospel.
"I pray continually for this kind of hunger in the church God has given me to lead and in churches spread across our country's landscape. I pray that we will be a people who refuse to gorge our spiritual stomachs on the entertaining pleasures of this world, because we have chosen to find our satisfaction in the eternal treasure of his Word. I pray that God will awaken in your heart and mind a deep and abiding passion for the gospel as the grand revelation of God." ~Platt pp38-40
"The dangerous assumption we unknowingly accept in the American dream is that our greatest asset is our own ability. The American dream prizes what people can accomplish when they believe in themselves and trust in themselves, and we are drawn toward such thinking. But the gospel has different priorities. The gospel beckons us to die to ourselves and to believe in God and to trust in his power. In the gospel, God confronts us with our utter inability to accomplish anything of value apart from him. This is what Jesus meant when he said, 'I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.'" ~Platt p46
"It is the way of Christ. Instead of asserting ourselves, we crucify ourselves. Instead of imagining all the things we can accomplish, we ask God to do what only he can accomplish. Yes, we work, we plan, we organize, and we create, but we do it all while we fast, while we pray, and while we constantly confess our need for the provision of God. Instead of dependence on ourselves, we express radical desperation for the power of his Spirit, and we trust that Jesus stands ready to give us everything we ask for so that we might make much of our Father in the world.
Think about it. Would you say that your life is marked right now by desperation for the Spirit of God? Would you say that the church you are a part of is characterized by this sense of desperation?
Why would we ever want to settle for Christianity according to our ability or settle for church according to our resources? The power of the one who raised Jesus from the dead is living in us, and as a result we have no need to muster up our own might. Our great need is to fall before an almighty Father day and night and to plead for him to show his radical power in and through us, enabling us to accomplish for his glory what we could never imagine in our own strength. And when we do this, we will discover that we were created for a purpose much greater than ourselves, the kind of purpose that can only be accomplished in the power of his Spirit. ~Platt p60
Do you have this desperation for the Spirit of God? How do I know my desperation for the Spirit of God is enough?
I can tell you, my desperation will NEVER be desperate enough. My abandonment will NEVER be abandoning enough. To command me to do these things even in the context of the Gospel is still placing a law upon me I can never fulfill. Connect me to the Gospel. Connect my doing to the Gospel and that fruit will grow in my life because only my conforming into Christ's image will be done.
"'Abandon all, take up your cross and follow me.' If in responding to this command our stress is primarily upon our own responsibility, we will first look within, at the quality and sincerity of our own faith and repentance, rather than without, at the vicarious life and death of Christ. 'Gospel proclamation' that leads Christians to think mainly about what they must do, rather than mainly about what Jesus has done as our substitute inclines the hearers to stray from gospel-centered missional living.
"The good news of the gospel is that Jesus has done it all--for us and in our place. Only as we believe and live in the reality of what he has done are we progressively freed to live truly missional and radically obedient lives in a broken world.
"As we grow in understanding the reality of who Jesus is for us, we are progressively freed from our personal and missional paralysis and empowered to turn outward for the gospel-good of others. The good news of who Jesus was and is for us as the God-man turns dread into joy and frees us from self-preoccupation to move outward in mission."
All this to say, say these things; just say them in a different way--in a way in which the Gospel is my motivation not a command.
Page Not Found
include() [function.include]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration
Blogroll
Adoption
-
Let me explain."But if Jesus is who he said he is, and if his promises are as rewarding as the Bible claims they are, then we may discover that satisfaction in our lives and success in the church are not found in what our culture deems most important but in radical abandonment to Jesus." ~Platt p3
"'Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.' Now this is taking it to another level. Pick up an instrument of torture and follow me. This is getting plain weird...and kind of creepy. Imagine a leader coming on the scene today and inviting all who would come after him to pick up an electric chair and become his disciple. Any takers?
"As if this were not enough, Jesus finished his seeker-sensitive plea with a pull-at-your-heartstrings conclusion. 'Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.' Give up evertying you have, carry a cross, and hate your family. This sounds a lot different than 'Admit, believe, confess, and pray a prayer after me.'" ~Platt pp10-11
Throughout the book, there is a plea to surrender to Jesus, which is good, but the pleas are expressed either by making a person feel guilty or via a command to surrender.
There is no connection with the Gospel itself. How does my surrender flow from and out of the Gospel? How does my surrender to Jesus get motivated by Jesus' birth, life, death, and resurrection? This is the Gospel, and my surrender MUST, it MUST, flow out and from the Gospel.
The Gospel is mentioned but the "surrender to Jesus" is not connected WITH the Gospel.
Yes, we can "surrender to Jesus" but how do you know your surrender is sincere enough? How do you know your surrender to Jesus is surrender enough? Can you surrender EVERYTHING for Jesus?
Sure. We WANT to surrender everything, but the reality is, our sin touches every part of our being, sin corrupts our every molecule to such a degree that even our best surrender and abandonment to Jesus is as filthy or polluted rags before God. See Isaiah 64:6.
Ask yourself this: Can I absolutely, 100% abandon EVERYTHING in my life for Jesus? This means there is NO turning back; this means you cannot, even for a split second, think "wow, it'd be nice to have X for a moment" or "I miss X...."
I cannot do that. I want to. But I cannot DO it. It is a law I cannot fulfill.
But Jesus DID do it. For me. In my place. And it is HIS work of surrender and abandonment to God that I rest in.
Speaking of Jesus parable of the treasure in a field in Matthew 13:"This is the picture of Jesus in the gospel. He is something--someone--worth losing everything for. And if we walk away from the Jesus of the gospel, we walk away from eternal riches. The cost of non-discipleship is profoundly greater for us than the cost of discipleship. For when we abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus, we discover the infinite treasure of knowing and experiencing him."
This is very true, but this statement does not go far enough.
How does the Gospel motivate me to "abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus?"
Platt explains the Gospel very well, but there is a disconnect between the Gospel and its motivation of our doing.
Without this connection of our motivation with the Gospel, the command to surrender all is just a command, a heavy weight placed upon us we can never fulfill.
Show me the beauty of the Gospel, don't just tell me it's beautiful.
Let me quote large portions of Radical and let Platt speak for himself:"Biblical proclamation of the gospel beckons us to a much different response and leads us down a much different road. Here the gospel demands and enables us to turn from our sin, to take up our cross, to die to ourselves, and to follow Jesus. These are the terms and phrases we see in the Bible. And salvation now consists of a deep wrestling in our souls with the sinfulness of our hearts, the depth of our depravity, and the desperation of our need for his grace. Jesus is no longer one to be accepted or invited in but one who is infinitely worthy of our immediate and total surrender.
'You might think this sounds as though we have to earn our way to Jesus through radical obedience, but that is not the case at all. Indeed, 'it is by grace you [are] saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast.' We are saved from our sins by a free gift of grace, something that only God can do in us and that we cannot manufacture ourselves.
"But that gift of grace involves the gift of a new heart. New desires. New longings. For the first time, we want God. We see our need for him, and we love him. We seek after him, and we find him, and we discover that he is indeed the great reward of our salvation. We realize that we are saved not just to be forgiven of our sins or to be assured of our eternity in heaven, but we are saved to know God. So we yearn for him. We want him so much that we abandon everything else to experience him. This is the only proper response to the revelation of God in the gospel."This is why men and women around the world risk their lives to know more about him. This is why we must avoid cheap caricatures of Christianity that fail to exalt the revelation of God in his Word. This is why you and I cannot settle for anything less than a God-centered, Christ-exalting, self-denying gospel.
"I pray continually for this kind of hunger in the church God has given me to lead and in churches spread across our country's landscape. I pray that we will be a people who refuse to gorge our spiritual stomachs on the entertaining pleasures of this world, because we have chosen to find our satisfaction in the eternal treasure of his Word. I pray that God will awaken in your heart and mind a deep and abiding passion for the gospel as the grand revelation of God." ~Platt pp38-40
"The dangerous assumption we unknowingly accept in the American dream is that our greatest asset is our own ability. The American dream prizes what people can accomplish when they believe in themselves and trust in themselves, and we are drawn toward such thinking. But the gospel has different priorities. The gospel beckons us to die to ourselves and to believe in God and to trust in his power. In the gospel, God confronts us with our utter inability to accomplish anything of value apart from him. This is what Jesus meant when he said, 'I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.'" ~Platt p46
"It is the way of Christ. Instead of asserting ourselves, we crucify ourselves. Instead of imagining all the things we can accomplish, we ask God to do what only he can accomplish. Yes, we work, we plan, we organize, and we create, but we do it all while we fast, while we pray, and while we constantly confess our need for the provision of God. Instead of dependence on ourselves, we express radical desperation for the power of his Spirit, and we trust that Jesus stands ready to give us everything we ask for so that we might make much of our Father in the world.
Think about it. Would you say that your life is marked right now by desperation for the Spirit of God? Would you say that the church you are a part of is characterized by this sense of desperation?
Why would we ever want to settle for Christianity according to our ability or settle for church according to our resources? The power of the one who raised Jesus from the dead is living in us, and as a result we have no need to muster up our own might. Our great need is to fall before an almighty Father day and night and to plead for him to show his radical power in and through us, enabling us to accomplish for his glory what we could never imagine in our own strength. And when we do this, we will discover that we were created for a purpose much greater than ourselves, the kind of purpose that can only be accomplished in the power of his Spirit. ~Platt p60
Do you have this desperation for the Spirit of God? How do I know my desperation for the Spirit of God is enough?
I can tell you, my desperation will NEVER be desperate enough. My abandonment will NEVER be abandoning enough. To command me to do these things even in the context of the Gospel is still placing a law upon me I can never fulfill. Connect me to the Gospel. Connect my doing to the Gospel and that fruit will grow in my life because only my conforming into Christ's image will be done."'Abandon all, take up your cross and follow me.' If in responding to this command our stress is primarily upon our own responsibility, we will first look within, at the quality and sincerity of our own faith and repentance, rather than without, at the vicarious life and death of Christ. 'Gospel proclamation' that leads Christians to think mainly about what they must do, rather than mainly about what Jesus has done as our substitute inclines the hearers to stray from gospel-centered missional living.
"The good news of the gospel is that Jesus has done it all--for us and in our place. Only as we believe and live in the reality of what he has done are we progressively freed to live truly missional and radically obedient lives in a broken world.
"As we grow in understanding the reality of who Jesus is for us, we are progressively freed from our personal and missional paralysis and empowered to turn outward for the gospel-good of others. The good news of who Jesus was and is for us as the God-man turns dread into joy and frees us from self-preoccupation to move outward in mission."
All this to say, say these things; just say them in a different way--in a way in which the Gospel is my motivation not a command.
" >[Review] Radical - Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
-
Internet Monk (iMonk) wrote a Gospel-Centered article called The Man in the Shadow of Adultery.
Joshua Harris also has a few articles relating to love and lust taken from his book Sex is not the Problem (Lust is). Fighting Internet Porn (aka Purity Download - Tip 1). Purity Download - Tip 2. Purity Download - Tip 3. Purity Download - Tip 4. Too bad Joshua (and SGM) won't provide this great book as a free download.David Powlison from Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation has provided a free resource for pornography addiction - Breaking Pornography Addiction.And last but not least, Mark Driscoll has recently released a PDF book called Porn Again Christian. You can download it here. Be warned, Mark takes no hostages as he addresses the topic. It is a frank discussion.UPDATED (3/10/2011): Tim Challies wrote a book called Sexual Detox. You can find out more here: http://www.cruciformpress.com/our-books/sexual-detox/UPDATED (4/21/2011): Closing the Window: Steps to Living Porn Free by Tim Chester" >The Issue of the Gospel and Purity
-
Lord Foulgrin's Letters by Randy Alcorn
This repack of Randy Alcorn's gripping bestseller delivers us from ignorance of the devil's schemes. Foulgrin, a high-ranking demon, instructs his subordinate on how to deceive and destroy Jordan Fletcher and his family. It's like placing a bugging device in hell's war room, where we overhear our enemies assessing our weaknesses and strategizing attack. Lord Foulgrin's Letters is a Screwtape Letters for our day, equally fascinating yet destinctly different -- a dramatic story with earthly characters, setting, and plot. A creative, insightful, and biblical depiction of spiritual warfare, this book will guide readers to Christ-honoring counterstrategies for putting on the full armor of God and resisting the devil. Alcorn says to win the battle we must know our God, know ourselves, and know our enemy. Lord Foulgrin's Letters, in unparalleled and compelling fashion, helps us better know each.
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Dorothea Brooke, a young woman of impeccable character, marries the embittered Mr. Casaubon, who almost immediately dies. Eliot takes the reader through a labyrinth of nineteenth-century morals and conventions as Dorothea searches for fulfillment and happiness. Walter's delicious, upper-crust English accent and understated English inflections immerse the listener in a little-known world of hedgerows and manners. This reading would have been a complete success had the narrator only taken more care with the timing surrounding omitted sections of the abridged text. She races ahead without pause, often confounding the listener, who finds the action has suddenly moved to the next county--or country--without warning. A worthy, though flawed, presentation. R.B.F. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine"
title="I must actively stop looking for more books to add to my 2007 reading list. Here are the last few I have decided to place on the list. Again, I am not promising I'll be able to get to all...">From Bookstore to Hand (Even More on my 2007 Reading List)
The Existence and Attributes of God by Stephen Charnock
Stephen Charnock has written a book that deserves to be read prayerfully, slowly, and with your Bible open. A very comprehensive analysis of who God is, what His role is in our lives, why we should worship him, and what the Bible says about Him. He discusses atheism, both theoretical and practical, and systematically explores God's omniscience, omnipotence, wisdom, power, and so forth.
The Life of God in the Soul of Man by Henry Scougal
All I can say is WOW! I fell flat on my face after reading this young man's terrifying insight. I cannot express in greater terms the absolute need to read this book. Look at the title of it. That's it isn't it? Galations 2:20: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and delivered Himself up for me".
Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis, is one of the very few sets of books that should be read three times: in childhood, early adulthood, and late in life. In brief, four children travel repeatedly to a world in which they are far more than mere children and everything is far more than it seems. Richly told, populated with fascinating characters, perfectly realized in detail of world and pacing of plot, and profoundly allegorical, the story is infused throughout with the timeless issues of good and evil, faith and hope. This boxed set edition includes all seven volumes.
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkein
Hobbits and wizards and Sauron--oh, my! Mild-mannered Oxford scholar John Ronald Reuel Tolkien had little inkling when he published The Hobbit; Or, There and Back Again in 1937 that, once hobbits were unleashed upon the world, there would be no turning back. Hobbits are, of course, small, furry creatures who love nothing better than a leisurely life quite free from adventure. But in that first novel and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the hobbits Bilbo and Frodo and their elfish friends get swept up into a mighty conflict with the dragon Smaug, the dark lord Sauron (who owes much to proud Satan in Paradise Lost), the monstrous Gollum, the Cracks of Doom, and the awful power of the magical Ring. The four books' characters--good and evil--are recognizably human, and the realism is deepened by the magnificent detail of the vast parallel world Tolkien devised, inspired partly by his influential Anglo-Saxon scholarship and his Christian beliefs. (He disapproved of the relative sparseness of detail in the comparable allegorical fantasy his friend C.S. Lewis dreamed up in The Chronicles of Narnia, though he knew Lewis had spun a page-turning yarn.) It has been estimated that one-tenth of all paperbacks sold can trace their ancestry to J.R.R. Tolkien. But even if we had never gotten Robert Jordan's The Path of Daggers and the whole fantasy genre Tolkien inadvertently created by bringing the hobbits so richly to life, Tolkien's epic about the Ring would have left our world enhanced by enchantment. --Tim Appelo
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
"All of Camus's literary work rests on his philosophical essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, which, taking its title from the legend of Sisyphus, and his eternal rock-pushing, analyzes a contemporary intillectual malady, the recognition of the absurdity of human life."
King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green
Retold out of the old romances, this collection of Arthurian tales endeavors to make each adventure--"The Quest for the Round Table, " "The First Quest of Sir Lancelot, " "How the Holy Grail Came to Camelot, " and so forth--part of a fixed pattern that effectively presents the whole story, as it does in Le Morte D'Arthur, but in a way less intimidating to young readers.
And now to prioritize my reading.....
-
From Bookstore to Hand - My Ever-Growing Reading List for 2007 (Nostalgia Edition)
Magic Bicycle: The Story of a Bicycle That Found a Boy by John Bibee
"Once there was a magic bicycle that found a boy," begins this tale of adventure and suspense. When John Kramer comes across an old, rusty Spirit Flyer bicycle, he finds it far from ordinary. First, the bike helps him save a neighbor's barn from burning. Then it brings him into conflict with the boys in the Cobra Club, a representative of Goliath Toys and other forces that not only want John's bike, but want it destroyed.While John learns abou the Magic in the bicycle, every reader will be delighted as they join him for this fantastic ride.
The Toy Campaign: The Plot to Trick a Town With Toys by John Bibee
What would happen if someone decided to trick a whole town--by giving them toys? But not just any toys, you understand. Toys that had a powerful and sinister effect on their owners. And what if only two children knew the evil plot was in the works?The magic continues as John and Susan Kramar speed through this book of mystery and adventure. As the Fourth of July approaches, they know some scheme is brewing. Armed only with bicycles that possess wonderful powers, their job is to find out what the plan is and stop it.
The Only Game in Town by John Bibee
Winner of a 1988 Christian Home and School C.S. Lewis Gold Medal award! Everyone wants to be Number One--the fastest, the smartest, the best looking. That's the way it was in Centerville. And the local toy store, run by Mrs. Happy, was all too willing to help by keeping track of all your points so everyone would know who was really on top. It was, after all, the only game in town.But Dan found himself at the bottom of this game. He was new in town and he had a limp. With two strikes like that against him, there was no way he could win. No way, that is, until Mrs. Happy offered to make him the envy of every kind in town. Would he accept, or would he follow the Spirit Flyers bicycles of John and Susan Kramar? Would he win the game and lose the biggest prize of all?Find out in another exciting adventure of magic and mystery from John Bibee.
Bicycle Hills: How One Halloween Almost Got Out of Hand by John Bibee
Uncle Bunkie, the clown, had every kid in Centerville buzzing. A new amusement park had opened just outside of town--Bicycle Hills. There were all kinds of games for anyone who wanted to have fun on a bike.There were other games too, like Caves and Cobras--games the chuldren weren't supposed to tell their parents about. But as Halloween approached, children and adults begin to wonder if the fun of pretending was getting out of handOnce again John Bibee spins a fascinating take as the magic of Spirit Flyer bicycles contronts mysterious forces trying to take over Centerville.
The Last Christmas: The Holiday Scheme to Stop Spirit Flyers by John Bibee
For Barry Smedlowe, Centerville would never be the same. Sloan Favor stole his clubhouse, then stole his party and finally stole his club members themselves. Everythign was falling to pieces. After the Halloween War, even the whole country seemed in turmoil. And the attempts of the ORDER Party to get the nation under control looked suspicious. Were they trying to fix the elections? Why did they put all the people with Spirit Flyers bicycles in jail?With the holidays drawing near and problems getting bigger and more complicated, Barry felt all alone. He could hardly imagine that what seemed like the last Christmas would actually become his first.
The Runaway Parents: The Parable of Problem Parents by John Bibee
What's a family to do when the parents get in trouble and run away from home? That's the problem the Kramers faced. The whole family had decided to follow the way of Spirit Flyers. But Mom and Dad turned against them and joined the powerful and sinister Goliath Industries--who were taking over not only Centerville, but the country and the world as well.Would they come back? Would the children be able to forgive them? Would Grandfather Kramer? Would the runaway parents be able to forgive themselves? Here is a fast-paced adventure with an enduring message.
The Perfect Star: Becoming Children of the True King by John Bibee
Tiffany Favor, the most popular girl in Centerville, always dreamed of being a movie star. Her mother and father certainly did all they could to help her be the best. Now Goliath Industries was giving her her big chance. But it could mean putting her family and the whole town in danger.Goliath's plans for Tiffany bring to a climax their efforts to take over Centerville and the whole country. Here is the dramatic conclusion of the battle between the forces of the Spirit Flyers and Goliath Industries.
The Journey of Wishes: A Trip That Changed John Adam for Good by John Bibee
Sent to live with cousins on a farm during World War II, young John Adam finds himself on a strange journey, astride a rusty tractor bearing the "Spirit Harvester" logo.
-
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
"Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray makes a Faustian bargain to sell his soul in exchange for eternal youth and beauty. Under the influence of Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, where he is able to indulge his desires while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only Dorian's picture bears the traces of his decadence." "A knowing account of a secret life and an analysis of the darker side of Victorian society, The Picture of Dorian Gray offers a disturbing portrait of an individual coming face to face with the reality of his soul."--BOOK JACKET.
The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story by Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen
"This is a marvelous book that everyone in the church would benefit from reading! Written by two professors at Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada, it tells the whole biblical story from Genesis to Revelation as a drama in six acts with an interlude in the middle. In the first three "acts" God establishes his kingdom (creation), there is rebellion in that kingdom (the Fall), and God through Israel initiates redemption. In the interlude (the "intertestamental period") God's kingdom story waits for an ending. Then the story is completed with the coming of the King (redemption accomplished), the spread of the news (the church's mission), and the return of the King (redemption completed). What is marvelous about this book is that it is written so creatively without cliches so the reader sees the biblical story as if for the first time. The authors are convinced that most people read the Bible as a mere jumble of history, poetry, lessons in morality and theology, comforting promises, guiding principles, and commands. They never realize that the Bible is fundamentally coherent and challenges the "idols" of modern culture. This book deserves a place in everyone's library" (Amazon reviewer "Professor of Theology").
So what books are on my 2007 reading list? I admit it's an ambitious list... and in no particular order... with no promises that I will actually achieve reading every book on the list.... but 14 books on the list so far is a good start, don't you think?"
title="I am currently reading two books. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde "Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray makes a Faustian bargain to sell his soul in exchange for eternal youth and beauty. Under the influence...">From the Bookstore to the Bookshelf to the Hand (My Reading List for 2007)
Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation by Graeme Goldsworthy
Graeme Goldsworthy examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief as it applies to the interpretation of the Bible. He then surveys the hemeneutical history of the Christian church in a attempt to see where alien approaches have deconstructed our way of reading Scripture. Finally, he reconstructs an evangelical hermeneutics rightly centered in the gospel and rightly influenced by the method of biblical theology.
This Beautiful Mess: Practicing the Presence of the Kingdom of God by Rick McKinley and David Kopp
"If all we value is the salvation gospel, we tend to miss the rest of Christ's message. Taken out of the context of the kingdom, the call to faith in Christ gets reduced to something less than the New Testament teaches. The reverse is also true: if we value a kingdom gospel at the expense of the liberating message of the Cross and the empty tomb and a call to repentance, we miss a central tenet of kingdom life. Without faith in Jesus, there is no transforming of our lives into the new world of the kingdom."
The Lamb of God by Robert Reymond
"The central theme of Holy Scripture is the unfolding revelation of its doctrinal teaching on Jesus as the 'slain Lamb of God'. The doctrine of Jesus as God's slain lamb runs like a thick cable from Genesis to Revelation binding the entirety of Scripture together. Indeed Revelation 13:8 speaks of Jesus as the lamb who was slain from the creation of the world, while 1 Peter 1:19-20 speaks of the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect who was chosen before the creation of the world. Reymond examines the biblical depictions concerning the Lamb of God – illuminating to us the central place that the suffering of the Messiah as God’s lamb occupies in God's eternal purpose and earths history. Christ's Lamb work is to be found throughout the Old and New Testaments and its pivotal importance for each of our lives is explored in depth."
Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture by Graeme Goldsworthy
"While strong, gospel-centered preaching abounds, many Christian pastors and lay preachers find it difficult to preach meaningfully from the Old Testament. This practical handbook offers help. Graeme Goldsworthy teaches the basics of preaching the whole Bible in a consistently Christ-centered way.
Goldsworthy first examines the Bible, biblical theology, and preaching and shows how they relate in the preparation of Christ-centered sermons. He then applies the biblical-theological method to the various types of literature found in the Bible, drawing out their contributions to expository preaching focused on the person and work of Christ.
Clear, complete, and immediately applicable, this volume will become a fundamental text for teachers, pastors, and students preparing for ministry."
The Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel The Main Thing by C.J. Mahaney
"Remember Jesus Christ? Although it seems almost too obvious, the center of our faith is surprisingly easy to forget. Dynamic pastor C.J. Mahaney shows how to overcome our tendency to move on from the gospel of grace. Finding joy in the gospel -- whose promises allow us to escape condemnation whenever it attacks -- helps us avoid the prevalent trap of legalism. With practical suggestions, Mahaney demonstrates the difference between knowing the gospel... and making it the main thing in daily decisions and daily living."
The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges
"We know we need grace. Without it we'd never come to Christ in the first place. But being a Christian is more than just coming to Christ. It's about growing and becoming more like Jesus. It's about pursing holiness. The pursuit of holiness is hard work, and that's were we turn from grace to discipline. Grace is every bit as important for growing as a Christian as it is for becoming a Christian in the first place. Grace is at the heart of the gospel, and without a clear understanding of the gospel and grace we can easily slip into a performance based lifestyle that bears little resemblance to what the gospel has to offer us. The Discipline Of Grace offers a clear and thorough explanation of the gospel and what it means to the believer, and how the same grace that brings us to faith in Christ also disciplines us in Christ, and how we learn to discipline ourselves in the areas of commitment, convictions, choices, watchfulness, and adversity. The Discipline Of Grace is highly recommended reading for anyone struggling to overcome the world in Christ."
Humility: True Greatness by C.J. Mahaney
"e Transformed by Christ's Example "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." - 1 Peter 5:5 A battle rages within every one of us every day. It's the clash between our sense of stubborn self-sufficiency and God's call to recognize that we're really nothing without Him. It's pride versus humility. And it's a fight we can't win without looking repeatedly to Christ and the cross. C. J. Mahaney raises a battle cry to daily, diligently, and deliberately weaken our greatest enemy (pride) and cultivate our greatest friend (humility). His thorough examination clarifies misconceptions, revealing the truth about why God detests pride and turns His active attention to the humble. Because pride is never passive, defeating it demands an intentional attack. The blessing that follows is God's abundant favor."
Frankenstein
Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper
"John Piper writes, “I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider this story from the February 1998 Reader’s Digest: A couple ‘took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball and collect shells. . . .’ Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: ‘Look, Lord. See my shells.’ That is a tragedy.
“God created us to live with a single passion: to joyfully display his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life. The wasted life is the life without this passion. God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work not to be made much of, but to make much of him in every part of our lives.”
Most people slip by in life without a passion for God, spending their lives on trivial diversions, living for comfort and pleasure, and perhaps trying to avoid sin. This book will warn you not to get caught up in a life that counts for nothing. It will challenge you to live and die boasting in the cross of Christ and making the glory of God your singular passion. If you believe that to live is Christ and to die is gain, read this book, learn to live for Christ, and don’t waste your life!"
Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
"This companion volume to the Tales of Mystery and Imagination contains Edgar Allan Poe's best-known poetry, a selection of his very best stories (many of which originate in 1840s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque) along with his finest tales from the last decade of his tragically short life. Many of these stories and poems tell of familiar Poe themes of murder, obsession and love but this volume also contains many overlooked tales of the fantastic, black comedies, parodies and hoaxes such as "The Unparalleled Adventure of Hans Pfaall," "Mesmeric Revelation," "Hop-Frog" and "The Imp of the Perverse."
Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
"On December 27, 1831, the young naturalist Charles Darwin left Plymouth Harbor aboard the HMS Beagle. For the next five years, he conducted research on plants and animals from around the globe, amassing a body of evidence that would culminate in one of the greatest discoveries in the history of mankind - the theory of evolution" (from the publisher).
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
"You don't know about me, without you've read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain't no matter. The book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things he stretched, but mainly he told the truth."
Huckleberry Finn is being 'sivilized'. He has, rather inconveniently, come into the sum of six thousand dollars. The Widow Douglas has put him in a new suit of clothes, and is making him wash and go to school. He is not allowed to gape, stretch or smoke, and he is desperate to run away...
What began life as a sequel to Tom Sawyer quickly became one of the most important of all American novels. Mark Twain's story of a young hobo and a escaped slave who set off to find freedom on the Mississippi is an exuberant and nostalgic children's book, with subtle undertones of adult melancholy and yearning."
More to come....
-
Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation
Graeme Goldsworthy examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief as it applies to the interpretation of the Bible. He then surveys the hemeneutical history of the Christian church in a attempt to see where alien approaches have deconstructed our way of reading Scripture. Finally, he reconstructs an evangelical hermeneutics rightly centered in the gospel and rightly influenced by the method of biblical theology.
" title="Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation Graeme Goldsworthy examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief as it applies to the interpretation of the Bible. He then surveys the hemeneutical history of the Christian church in a...">From Bookstore to Bookshelf: (More) Books On My Reading List
This Beautiful Mess: Practicing the Presence of the Kingdom of God
"If all we value is the salvation gospel, we tend to miss the rest of Christ's message. Taken out of the context of the kingdom, the call to faith in Christ gets reduced to something less than the New Testament teaches. The reverse is also true: if we value a kingdom gospel at the expense of the liberating message of the Cross and the empty tomb and a call to repentance, we miss a central tenet of kingdom life. Without faith in Jesus, there is no transforming of our lives into the new world of the kingdom."
The Lamb of God by Robert Reymond
"The central theme of Holy Scripture is the unfolding revelation of its doctrinal teaching on Jesus as the 'slain Lamb of God'. The doctrine of Jesus as God's slain lamb runs like a thick cable from Genesis to Revelation binding the entirety of Scripture together. Indeed Revelation 13:8 speaks of Jesus as the lamb who was slain from the creation of the world, while 1 Peter 1:19-20 speaks of the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect who was chosen before the creation of the world. Reymond examines the biblical depictions concerning the Lamb of God – illuminating to us the central place that the suffering of the Messiah as God’s lamb occupies in God's eternal purpose and earths history. Christ's Lamb work is to be found throughout the Old and New Testaments and its pivotal importance for each of our lives is explored in depth."
Apologetics
-
Let me explain."But if Jesus is who he said he is, and if his promises are as rewarding as the Bible claims they are, then we may discover that satisfaction in our lives and success in the church are not found in what our culture deems most important but in radical abandonment to Jesus." ~Platt p3
"'Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.' Now this is taking it to another level. Pick up an instrument of torture and follow me. This is getting plain weird...and kind of creepy. Imagine a leader coming on the scene today and inviting all who would come after him to pick up an electric chair and become his disciple. Any takers?
"As if this were not enough, Jesus finished his seeker-sensitive plea with a pull-at-your-heartstrings conclusion. 'Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.' Give up evertying you have, carry a cross, and hate your family. This sounds a lot different than 'Admit, believe, confess, and pray a prayer after me.'" ~Platt pp10-11
Throughout the book, there is a plea to surrender to Jesus, which is good, but the pleas are expressed either by making a person feel guilty or via a command to surrender.
There is no connection with the Gospel itself. How does my surrender flow from and out of the Gospel? How does my surrender to Jesus get motivated by Jesus' birth, life, death, and resurrection? This is the Gospel, and my surrender MUST, it MUST, flow out and from the Gospel.
The Gospel is mentioned but the "surrender to Jesus" is not connected WITH the Gospel.
Yes, we can "surrender to Jesus" but how do you know your surrender is sincere enough? How do you know your surrender to Jesus is surrender enough? Can you surrender EVERYTHING for Jesus?
Sure. We WANT to surrender everything, but the reality is, our sin touches every part of our being, sin corrupts our every molecule to such a degree that even our best surrender and abandonment to Jesus is as filthy or polluted rags before God. See Isaiah 64:6.
Ask yourself this: Can I absolutely, 100% abandon EVERYTHING in my life for Jesus? This means there is NO turning back; this means you cannot, even for a split second, think "wow, it'd be nice to have X for a moment" or "I miss X...."
I cannot do that. I want to. But I cannot DO it. It is a law I cannot fulfill.
But Jesus DID do it. For me. In my place. And it is HIS work of surrender and abandonment to God that I rest in.
Speaking of Jesus parable of the treasure in a field in Matthew 13:"This is the picture of Jesus in the gospel. He is something--someone--worth losing everything for. And if we walk away from the Jesus of the gospel, we walk away from eternal riches. The cost of non-discipleship is profoundly greater for us than the cost of discipleship. For when we abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus, we discover the infinite treasure of knowing and experiencing him."
This is very true, but this statement does not go far enough.
How does the Gospel motivate me to "abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus?"
Platt explains the Gospel very well, but there is a disconnect between the Gospel and its motivation of our doing.
Without this connection of our motivation with the Gospel, the command to surrender all is just a command, a heavy weight placed upon us we can never fulfill.
Show me the beauty of the Gospel, don't just tell me it's beautiful.
Let me quote large portions of Radical and let Platt speak for himself:"Biblical proclamation of the gospel beckons us to a much different response and leads us down a much different road. Here the gospel demands and enables us to turn from our sin, to take up our cross, to die to ourselves, and to follow Jesus. These are the terms and phrases we see in the Bible. And salvation now consists of a deep wrestling in our souls with the sinfulness of our hearts, the depth of our depravity, and the desperation of our need for his grace. Jesus is no longer one to be accepted or invited in but one who is infinitely worthy of our immediate and total surrender.
'You might think this sounds as though we have to earn our way to Jesus through radical obedience, but that is not the case at all. Indeed, 'it is by grace you [are] saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast.' We are saved from our sins by a free gift of grace, something that only God can do in us and that we cannot manufacture ourselves.
"But that gift of grace involves the gift of a new heart. New desires. New longings. For the first time, we want God. We see our need for him, and we love him. We seek after him, and we find him, and we discover that he is indeed the great reward of our salvation. We realize that we are saved not just to be forgiven of our sins or to be assured of our eternity in heaven, but we are saved to know God. So we yearn for him. We want him so much that we abandon everything else to experience him. This is the only proper response to the revelation of God in the gospel."This is why men and women around the world risk their lives to know more about him. This is why we must avoid cheap caricatures of Christianity that fail to exalt the revelation of God in his Word. This is why you and I cannot settle for anything less than a God-centered, Christ-exalting, self-denying gospel.
"I pray continually for this kind of hunger in the church God has given me to lead and in churches spread across our country's landscape. I pray that we will be a people who refuse to gorge our spiritual stomachs on the entertaining pleasures of this world, because we have chosen to find our satisfaction in the eternal treasure of his Word. I pray that God will awaken in your heart and mind a deep and abiding passion for the gospel as the grand revelation of God." ~Platt pp38-40
"The dangerous assumption we unknowingly accept in the American dream is that our greatest asset is our own ability. The American dream prizes what people can accomplish when they believe in themselves and trust in themselves, and we are drawn toward such thinking. But the gospel has different priorities. The gospel beckons us to die to ourselves and to believe in God and to trust in his power. In the gospel, God confronts us with our utter inability to accomplish anything of value apart from him. This is what Jesus meant when he said, 'I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.'" ~Platt p46
"It is the way of Christ. Instead of asserting ourselves, we crucify ourselves. Instead of imagining all the things we can accomplish, we ask God to do what only he can accomplish. Yes, we work, we plan, we organize, and we create, but we do it all while we fast, while we pray, and while we constantly confess our need for the provision of God. Instead of dependence on ourselves, we express radical desperation for the power of his Spirit, and we trust that Jesus stands ready to give us everything we ask for so that we might make much of our Father in the world.
Think about it. Would you say that your life is marked right now by desperation for the Spirit of God? Would you say that the church you are a part of is characterized by this sense of desperation?
Why would we ever want to settle for Christianity according to our ability or settle for church according to our resources? The power of the one who raised Jesus from the dead is living in us, and as a result we have no need to muster up our own might. Our great need is to fall before an almighty Father day and night and to plead for him to show his radical power in and through us, enabling us to accomplish for his glory what we could never imagine in our own strength. And when we do this, we will discover that we were created for a purpose much greater than ourselves, the kind of purpose that can only be accomplished in the power of his Spirit. ~Platt p60
Do you have this desperation for the Spirit of God? How do I know my desperation for the Spirit of God is enough?
I can tell you, my desperation will NEVER be desperate enough. My abandonment will NEVER be abandoning enough. To command me to do these things even in the context of the Gospel is still placing a law upon me I can never fulfill. Connect me to the Gospel. Connect my doing to the Gospel and that fruit will grow in my life because only my conforming into Christ's image will be done."'Abandon all, take up your cross and follow me.' If in responding to this command our stress is primarily upon our own responsibility, we will first look within, at the quality and sincerity of our own faith and repentance, rather than without, at the vicarious life and death of Christ. 'Gospel proclamation' that leads Christians to think mainly about what they must do, rather than mainly about what Jesus has done as our substitute inclines the hearers to stray from gospel-centered missional living.
"The good news of the gospel is that Jesus has done it all--for us and in our place. Only as we believe and live in the reality of what he has done are we progressively freed to live truly missional and radically obedient lives in a broken world.
"As we grow in understanding the reality of who Jesus is for us, we are progressively freed from our personal and missional paralysis and empowered to turn outward for the gospel-good of others. The good news of who Jesus was and is for us as the God-man turns dread into joy and frees us from self-preoccupation to move outward in mission."
All this to say, say these things; just say them in a different way--in a way in which the Gospel is my motivation not a command.
" >[Review] Radical - Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
-
Internet Monk (iMonk) wrote a Gospel-Centered article called The Man in the Shadow of Adultery.
Joshua Harris also has a few articles relating to love and lust taken from his book Sex is not the Problem (Lust is). Fighting Internet Porn (aka Purity Download - Tip 1). Purity Download - Tip 2. Purity Download - Tip 3. Purity Download - Tip 4. Too bad Joshua (and SGM) won't provide this great book as a free download.David Powlison from Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation has provided a free resource for pornography addiction - Breaking Pornography Addiction.And last but not least, Mark Driscoll has recently released a PDF book called Porn Again Christian. You can download it here. Be warned, Mark takes no hostages as he addresses the topic. It is a frank discussion.UPDATED (3/10/2011): Tim Challies wrote a book called Sexual Detox. You can find out more here: http://www.cruciformpress.com/our-books/sexual-detox/UPDATED (4/21/2011): Closing the Window: Steps to Living Porn Free by Tim Chester" >The Issue of the Gospel and Purity
-
Lord Foulgrin's Letters by Randy Alcorn
This repack of Randy Alcorn's gripping bestseller delivers us from ignorance of the devil's schemes. Foulgrin, a high-ranking demon, instructs his subordinate on how to deceive and destroy Jordan Fletcher and his family. It's like placing a bugging device in hell's war room, where we overhear our enemies assessing our weaknesses and strategizing attack. Lord Foulgrin's Letters is a Screwtape Letters for our day, equally fascinating yet destinctly different -- a dramatic story with earthly characters, setting, and plot. A creative, insightful, and biblical depiction of spiritual warfare, this book will guide readers to Christ-honoring counterstrategies for putting on the full armor of God and resisting the devil. Alcorn says to win the battle we must know our God, know ourselves, and know our enemy. Lord Foulgrin's Letters, in unparalleled and compelling fashion, helps us better know each.
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Dorothea Brooke, a young woman of impeccable character, marries the embittered Mr. Casaubon, who almost immediately dies. Eliot takes the reader through a labyrinth of nineteenth-century morals and conventions as Dorothea searches for fulfillment and happiness. Walter's delicious, upper-crust English accent and understated English inflections immerse the listener in a little-known world of hedgerows and manners. This reading would have been a complete success had the narrator only taken more care with the timing surrounding omitted sections of the abridged text. She races ahead without pause, often confounding the listener, who finds the action has suddenly moved to the next county--or country--without warning. A worthy, though flawed, presentation. R.B.F. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine"
title="I must actively stop looking for more books to add to my 2007 reading list. Here are the last few I have decided to place on the list. Again, I am not promising I'll be able to get to all...">From Bookstore to Hand (Even More on my 2007 Reading List)
The Existence and Attributes of God by Stephen Charnock
Stephen Charnock has written a book that deserves to be read prayerfully, slowly, and with your Bible open. A very comprehensive analysis of who God is, what His role is in our lives, why we should worship him, and what the Bible says about Him. He discusses atheism, both theoretical and practical, and systematically explores God's omniscience, omnipotence, wisdom, power, and so forth.
The Life of God in the Soul of Man by Henry Scougal
All I can say is WOW! I fell flat on my face after reading this young man's terrifying insight. I cannot express in greater terms the absolute need to read this book. Look at the title of it. That's it isn't it? Galations 2:20: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and delivered Himself up for me".
Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis, is one of the very few sets of books that should be read three times: in childhood, early adulthood, and late in life. In brief, four children travel repeatedly to a world in which they are far more than mere children and everything is far more than it seems. Richly told, populated with fascinating characters, perfectly realized in detail of world and pacing of plot, and profoundly allegorical, the story is infused throughout with the timeless issues of good and evil, faith and hope. This boxed set edition includes all seven volumes.
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkein
Hobbits and wizards and Sauron--oh, my! Mild-mannered Oxford scholar John Ronald Reuel Tolkien had little inkling when he published The Hobbit; Or, There and Back Again in 1937 that, once hobbits were unleashed upon the world, there would be no turning back. Hobbits are, of course, small, furry creatures who love nothing better than a leisurely life quite free from adventure. But in that first novel and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the hobbits Bilbo and Frodo and their elfish friends get swept up into a mighty conflict with the dragon Smaug, the dark lord Sauron (who owes much to proud Satan in Paradise Lost), the monstrous Gollum, the Cracks of Doom, and the awful power of the magical Ring. The four books' characters--good and evil--are recognizably human, and the realism is deepened by the magnificent detail of the vast parallel world Tolkien devised, inspired partly by his influential Anglo-Saxon scholarship and his Christian beliefs. (He disapproved of the relative sparseness of detail in the comparable allegorical fantasy his friend C.S. Lewis dreamed up in The Chronicles of Narnia, though he knew Lewis had spun a page-turning yarn.) It has been estimated that one-tenth of all paperbacks sold can trace their ancestry to J.R.R. Tolkien. But even if we had never gotten Robert Jordan's The Path of Daggers and the whole fantasy genre Tolkien inadvertently created by bringing the hobbits so richly to life, Tolkien's epic about the Ring would have left our world enhanced by enchantment. --Tim Appelo
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
"All of Camus's literary work rests on his philosophical essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, which, taking its title from the legend of Sisyphus, and his eternal rock-pushing, analyzes a contemporary intillectual malady, the recognition of the absurdity of human life."
King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green
Retold out of the old romances, this collection of Arthurian tales endeavors to make each adventure--"The Quest for the Round Table, " "The First Quest of Sir Lancelot, " "How the Holy Grail Came to Camelot, " and so forth--part of a fixed pattern that effectively presents the whole story, as it does in Le Morte D'Arthur, but in a way less intimidating to young readers.
And now to prioritize my reading.....
-
From Bookstore to Hand - My Ever-Growing Reading List for 2007 (Nostalgia Edition)
Magic Bicycle: The Story of a Bicycle That Found a Boy by John Bibee
"Once there was a magic bicycle that found a boy," begins this tale of adventure and suspense. When John Kramer comes across an old, rusty Spirit Flyer bicycle, he finds it far from ordinary. First, the bike helps him save a neighbor's barn from burning. Then it brings him into conflict with the boys in the Cobra Club, a representative of Goliath Toys and other forces that not only want John's bike, but want it destroyed.While John learns abou the Magic in the bicycle, every reader will be delighted as they join him for this fantastic ride.
The Toy Campaign: The Plot to Trick a Town With Toys by John Bibee
What would happen if someone decided to trick a whole town--by giving them toys? But not just any toys, you understand. Toys that had a powerful and sinister effect on their owners. And what if only two children knew the evil plot was in the works?The magic continues as John and Susan Kramar speed through this book of mystery and adventure. As the Fourth of July approaches, they know some scheme is brewing. Armed only with bicycles that possess wonderful powers, their job is to find out what the plan is and stop it.
The Only Game in Town by John Bibee
Winner of a 1988 Christian Home and School C.S. Lewis Gold Medal award! Everyone wants to be Number One--the fastest, the smartest, the best looking. That's the way it was in Centerville. And the local toy store, run by Mrs. Happy, was all too willing to help by keeping track of all your points so everyone would know who was really on top. It was, after all, the only game in town.But Dan found himself at the bottom of this game. He was new in town and he had a limp. With two strikes like that against him, there was no way he could win. No way, that is, until Mrs. Happy offered to make him the envy of every kind in town. Would he accept, or would he follow the Spirit Flyers bicycles of John and Susan Kramar? Would he win the game and lose the biggest prize of all?Find out in another exciting adventure of magic and mystery from John Bibee.
Bicycle Hills: How One Halloween Almost Got Out of Hand by John Bibee
Uncle Bunkie, the clown, had every kid in Centerville buzzing. A new amusement park had opened just outside of town--Bicycle Hills. There were all kinds of games for anyone who wanted to have fun on a bike.There were other games too, like Caves and Cobras--games the chuldren weren't supposed to tell their parents about. But as Halloween approached, children and adults begin to wonder if the fun of pretending was getting out of handOnce again John Bibee spins a fascinating take as the magic of Spirit Flyer bicycles contronts mysterious forces trying to take over Centerville.
The Last Christmas: The Holiday Scheme to Stop Spirit Flyers by John Bibee
For Barry Smedlowe, Centerville would never be the same. Sloan Favor stole his clubhouse, then stole his party and finally stole his club members themselves. Everythign was falling to pieces. After the Halloween War, even the whole country seemed in turmoil. And the attempts of the ORDER Party to get the nation under control looked suspicious. Were they trying to fix the elections? Why did they put all the people with Spirit Flyers bicycles in jail?With the holidays drawing near and problems getting bigger and more complicated, Barry felt all alone. He could hardly imagine that what seemed like the last Christmas would actually become his first.
The Runaway Parents: The Parable of Problem Parents by John Bibee
What's a family to do when the parents get in trouble and run away from home? That's the problem the Kramers faced. The whole family had decided to follow the way of Spirit Flyers. But Mom and Dad turned against them and joined the powerful and sinister Goliath Industries--who were taking over not only Centerville, but the country and the world as well.Would they come back? Would the children be able to forgive them? Would Grandfather Kramer? Would the runaway parents be able to forgive themselves? Here is a fast-paced adventure with an enduring message.
The Perfect Star: Becoming Children of the True King by John Bibee
Tiffany Favor, the most popular girl in Centerville, always dreamed of being a movie star. Her mother and father certainly did all they could to help her be the best. Now Goliath Industries was giving her her big chance. But it could mean putting her family and the whole town in danger.Goliath's plans for Tiffany bring to a climax their efforts to take over Centerville and the whole country. Here is the dramatic conclusion of the battle between the forces of the Spirit Flyers and Goliath Industries.
The Journey of Wishes: A Trip That Changed John Adam for Good by John Bibee
Sent to live with cousins on a farm during World War II, young John Adam finds himself on a strange journey, astride a rusty tractor bearing the "Spirit Harvester" logo.
-
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
"Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray makes a Faustian bargain to sell his soul in exchange for eternal youth and beauty. Under the influence of Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, where he is able to indulge his desires while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only Dorian's picture bears the traces of his decadence." "A knowing account of a secret life and an analysis of the darker side of Victorian society, The Picture of Dorian Gray offers a disturbing portrait of an individual coming face to face with the reality of his soul."--BOOK JACKET.
The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story by Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen
"This is a marvelous book that everyone in the church would benefit from reading! Written by two professors at Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada, it tells the whole biblical story from Genesis to Revelation as a drama in six acts with an interlude in the middle. In the first three "acts" God establishes his kingdom (creation), there is rebellion in that kingdom (the Fall), and God through Israel initiates redemption. In the interlude (the "intertestamental period") God's kingdom story waits for an ending. Then the story is completed with the coming of the King (redemption accomplished), the spread of the news (the church's mission), and the return of the King (redemption completed). What is marvelous about this book is that it is written so creatively without cliches so the reader sees the biblical story as if for the first time. The authors are convinced that most people read the Bible as a mere jumble of history, poetry, lessons in morality and theology, comforting promises, guiding principles, and commands. They never realize that the Bible is fundamentally coherent and challenges the "idols" of modern culture. This book deserves a place in everyone's library" (Amazon reviewer "Professor of Theology").
So what books are on my 2007 reading list? I admit it's an ambitious list... and in no particular order... with no promises that I will actually achieve reading every book on the list.... but 14 books on the list so far is a good start, don't you think?"
title="I am currently reading two books. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde "Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray makes a Faustian bargain to sell his soul in exchange for eternal youth and beauty. Under the influence...">From the Bookstore to the Bookshelf to the Hand (My Reading List for 2007)
Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation by Graeme Goldsworthy
Graeme Goldsworthy examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief as it applies to the interpretation of the Bible. He then surveys the hemeneutical history of the Christian church in a attempt to see where alien approaches have deconstructed our way of reading Scripture. Finally, he reconstructs an evangelical hermeneutics rightly centered in the gospel and rightly influenced by the method of biblical theology.
This Beautiful Mess: Practicing the Presence of the Kingdom of God by Rick McKinley and David Kopp
"If all we value is the salvation gospel, we tend to miss the rest of Christ's message. Taken out of the context of the kingdom, the call to faith in Christ gets reduced to something less than the New Testament teaches. The reverse is also true: if we value a kingdom gospel at the expense of the liberating message of the Cross and the empty tomb and a call to repentance, we miss a central tenet of kingdom life. Without faith in Jesus, there is no transforming of our lives into the new world of the kingdom."
The Lamb of God by Robert Reymond
"The central theme of Holy Scripture is the unfolding revelation of its doctrinal teaching on Jesus as the 'slain Lamb of God'. The doctrine of Jesus as God's slain lamb runs like a thick cable from Genesis to Revelation binding the entirety of Scripture together. Indeed Revelation 13:8 speaks of Jesus as the lamb who was slain from the creation of the world, while 1 Peter 1:19-20 speaks of the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect who was chosen before the creation of the world. Reymond examines the biblical depictions concerning the Lamb of God – illuminating to us the central place that the suffering of the Messiah as God’s lamb occupies in God's eternal purpose and earths history. Christ's Lamb work is to be found throughout the Old and New Testaments and its pivotal importance for each of our lives is explored in depth."
Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture by Graeme Goldsworthy
"While strong, gospel-centered preaching abounds, many Christian pastors and lay preachers find it difficult to preach meaningfully from the Old Testament. This practical handbook offers help. Graeme Goldsworthy teaches the basics of preaching the whole Bible in a consistently Christ-centered way.
Goldsworthy first examines the Bible, biblical theology, and preaching and shows how they relate in the preparation of Christ-centered sermons. He then applies the biblical-theological method to the various types of literature found in the Bible, drawing out their contributions to expository preaching focused on the person and work of Christ.
Clear, complete, and immediately applicable, this volume will become a fundamental text for teachers, pastors, and students preparing for ministry."
The Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel The Main Thing by C.J. Mahaney
"Remember Jesus Christ? Although it seems almost too obvious, the center of our faith is surprisingly easy to forget. Dynamic pastor C.J. Mahaney shows how to overcome our tendency to move on from the gospel of grace. Finding joy in the gospel -- whose promises allow us to escape condemnation whenever it attacks -- helps us avoid the prevalent trap of legalism. With practical suggestions, Mahaney demonstrates the difference between knowing the gospel... and making it the main thing in daily decisions and daily living."
The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges
"We know we need grace. Without it we'd never come to Christ in the first place. But being a Christian is more than just coming to Christ. It's about growing and becoming more like Jesus. It's about pursing holiness. The pursuit of holiness is hard work, and that's were we turn from grace to discipline. Grace is every bit as important for growing as a Christian as it is for becoming a Christian in the first place. Grace is at the heart of the gospel, and without a clear understanding of the gospel and grace we can easily slip into a performance based lifestyle that bears little resemblance to what the gospel has to offer us. The Discipline Of Grace offers a clear and thorough explanation of the gospel and what it means to the believer, and how the same grace that brings us to faith in Christ also disciplines us in Christ, and how we learn to discipline ourselves in the areas of commitment, convictions, choices, watchfulness, and adversity. The Discipline Of Grace is highly recommended reading for anyone struggling to overcome the world in Christ."
Humility: True Greatness by C.J. Mahaney
"e Transformed by Christ's Example "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." - 1 Peter 5:5 A battle rages within every one of us every day. It's the clash between our sense of stubborn self-sufficiency and God's call to recognize that we're really nothing without Him. It's pride versus humility. And it's a fight we can't win without looking repeatedly to Christ and the cross. C. J. Mahaney raises a battle cry to daily, diligently, and deliberately weaken our greatest enemy (pride) and cultivate our greatest friend (humility). His thorough examination clarifies misconceptions, revealing the truth about why God detests pride and turns His active attention to the humble. Because pride is never passive, defeating it demands an intentional attack. The blessing that follows is God's abundant favor."
FrankensteinDon't Waste Your Life by John Piper
"John Piper writes, “I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider this story from the February 1998 Reader’s Digest: A couple ‘took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball and collect shells. . . .’ Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: ‘Look, Lord. See my shells.’ That is a tragedy.
“God created us to live with a single passion: to joyfully display his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life. The wasted life is the life without this passion. God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work not to be made much of, but to make much of him in every part of our lives.”
Most people slip by in life without a passion for God, spending their lives on trivial diversions, living for comfort and pleasure, and perhaps trying to avoid sin. This book will warn you not to get caught up in a life that counts for nothing. It will challenge you to live and die boasting in the cross of Christ and making the glory of God your singular passion. If you believe that to live is Christ and to die is gain, read this book, learn to live for Christ, and don’t waste your life!"
Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
"This companion volume to the Tales of Mystery and Imagination contains Edgar Allan Poe's best-known poetry, a selection of his very best stories (many of which originate in 1840s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque) along with his finest tales from the last decade of his tragically short life. Many of these stories and poems tell of familiar Poe themes of murder, obsession and love but this volume also contains many overlooked tales of the fantastic, black comedies, parodies and hoaxes such as "The Unparalleled Adventure of Hans Pfaall," "Mesmeric Revelation," "Hop-Frog" and "The Imp of the Perverse."
Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
"On December 27, 1831, the young naturalist Charles Darwin left Plymouth Harbor aboard the HMS Beagle. For the next five years, he conducted research on plants and animals from around the globe, amassing a body of evidence that would culminate in one of the greatest discoveries in the history of mankind - the theory of evolution" (from the publisher).
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
"You don't know about me, without you've read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain't no matter. The book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things he stretched, but mainly he told the truth."
Huckleberry Finn is being 'sivilized'. He has, rather inconveniently, come into the sum of six thousand dollars. The Widow Douglas has put him in a new suit of clothes, and is making him wash and go to school. He is not allowed to gape, stretch or smoke, and he is desperate to run away...
What began life as a sequel to Tom Sawyer quickly became one of the most important of all American novels. Mark Twain's story of a young hobo and a escaped slave who set off to find freedom on the Mississippi is an exuberant and nostalgic children's book, with subtle undertones of adult melancholy and yearning."
More to come....
-
Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation
Graeme Goldsworthy examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief as it applies to the interpretation of the Bible. He then surveys the hemeneutical history of the Christian church in a attempt to see where alien approaches have deconstructed our way of reading Scripture. Finally, he reconstructs an evangelical hermeneutics rightly centered in the gospel and rightly influenced by the method of biblical theology.
" title="Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation Graeme Goldsworthy examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief as it applies to the interpretation of the Bible. He then surveys the hemeneutical history of the Christian church in a...">From Bookstore to Bookshelf: (More) Books On My Reading List
This Beautiful Mess: Practicing the Presence of the Kingdom of God
"If all we value is the salvation gospel, we tend to miss the rest of Christ's message. Taken out of the context of the kingdom, the call to faith in Christ gets reduced to something less than the New Testament teaches. The reverse is also true: if we value a kingdom gospel at the expense of the liberating message of the Cross and the empty tomb and a call to repentance, we miss a central tenet of kingdom life. Without faith in Jesus, there is no transforming of our lives into the new world of the kingdom."
The Lamb of God by Robert Reymond
"The central theme of Holy Scripture is the unfolding revelation of its doctrinal teaching on Jesus as the 'slain Lamb of God'. The doctrine of Jesus as God's slain lamb runs like a thick cable from Genesis to Revelation binding the entirety of Scripture together. Indeed Revelation 13:8 speaks of Jesus as the lamb who was slain from the creation of the world, while 1 Peter 1:19-20 speaks of the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect who was chosen before the creation of the world. Reymond examines the biblical depictions concerning the Lamb of God – illuminating to us the central place that the suffering of the Messiah as God’s lamb occupies in God's eternal purpose and earths history. Christ's Lamb work is to be found throughout the Old and New Testaments and its pivotal importance for each of our lives is explored in depth."
Biblical Resources
-
Let me explain."But if Jesus is who he said he is, and if his promises are as rewarding as the Bible claims they are, then we may discover that satisfaction in our lives and success in the church are not found in what our culture deems most important but in radical abandonment to Jesus." ~Platt p3
"'Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.' Now this is taking it to another level. Pick up an instrument of torture and follow me. This is getting plain weird...and kind of creepy. Imagine a leader coming on the scene today and inviting all who would come after him to pick up an electric chair and become his disciple. Any takers?
"As if this were not enough, Jesus finished his seeker-sensitive plea with a pull-at-your-heartstrings conclusion. 'Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.' Give up evertying you have, carry a cross, and hate your family. This sounds a lot different than 'Admit, believe, confess, and pray a prayer after me.'" ~Platt pp10-11
Throughout the book, there is a plea to surrender to Jesus, which is good, but the pleas are expressed either by making a person feel guilty or via a command to surrender.
There is no connection with the Gospel itself. How does my surrender flow from and out of the Gospel? How does my surrender to Jesus get motivated by Jesus' birth, life, death, and resurrection? This is the Gospel, and my surrender MUST, it MUST, flow out and from the Gospel.
The Gospel is mentioned but the "surrender to Jesus" is not connected WITH the Gospel.
Yes, we can "surrender to Jesus" but how do you know your surrender is sincere enough? How do you know your surrender to Jesus is surrender enough? Can you surrender EVERYTHING for Jesus?
Sure. We WANT to surrender everything, but the reality is, our sin touches every part of our being, sin corrupts our every molecule to such a degree that even our best surrender and abandonment to Jesus is as filthy or polluted rags before God. See Isaiah 64:6.
Ask yourself this: Can I absolutely, 100% abandon EVERYTHING in my life for Jesus? This means there is NO turning back; this means you cannot, even for a split second, think "wow, it'd be nice to have X for a moment" or "I miss X...."
I cannot do that. I want to. But I cannot DO it. It is a law I cannot fulfill.
But Jesus DID do it. For me. In my place. And it is HIS work of surrender and abandonment to God that I rest in.
Speaking of Jesus parable of the treasure in a field in Matthew 13:"This is the picture of Jesus in the gospel. He is something--someone--worth losing everything for. And if we walk away from the Jesus of the gospel, we walk away from eternal riches. The cost of non-discipleship is profoundly greater for us than the cost of discipleship. For when we abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus, we discover the infinite treasure of knowing and experiencing him."
This is very true, but this statement does not go far enough.
How does the Gospel motivate me to "abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus?"
Platt explains the Gospel very well, but there is a disconnect between the Gospel and its motivation of our doing.
Without this connection of our motivation with the Gospel, the command to surrender all is just a command, a heavy weight placed upon us we can never fulfill.
Show me the beauty of the Gospel, don't just tell me it's beautiful.
Let me quote large portions of Radical and let Platt speak for himself:"Biblical proclamation of the gospel beckons us to a much different response and leads us down a much different road. Here the gospel demands and enables us to turn from our sin, to take up our cross, to die to ourselves, and to follow Jesus. These are the terms and phrases we see in the Bible. And salvation now consists of a deep wrestling in our souls with the sinfulness of our hearts, the depth of our depravity, and the desperation of our need for his grace. Jesus is no longer one to be accepted or invited in but one who is infinitely worthy of our immediate and total surrender.
'You might think this sounds as though we have to earn our way to Jesus through radical obedience, but that is not the case at all. Indeed, 'it is by grace you [are] saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast.' We are saved from our sins by a free gift of grace, something that only God can do in us and that we cannot manufacture ourselves.
"But that gift of grace involves the gift of a new heart. New desires. New longings. For the first time, we want God. We see our need for him, and we love him. We seek after him, and we find him, and we discover that he is indeed the great reward of our salvation. We realize that we are saved not just to be forgiven of our sins or to be assured of our eternity in heaven, but we are saved to know God. So we yearn for him. We want him so much that we abandon everything else to experience him. This is the only proper response to the revelation of God in the gospel."This is why men and women around the world risk their lives to know more about him. This is why we must avoid cheap caricatures of Christianity that fail to exalt the revelation of God in his Word. This is why you and I cannot settle for anything less than a God-centered, Christ-exalting, self-denying gospel.
"I pray continually for this kind of hunger in the church God has given me to lead and in churches spread across our country's landscape. I pray that we will be a people who refuse to gorge our spiritual stomachs on the entertaining pleasures of this world, because we have chosen to find our satisfaction in the eternal treasure of his Word. I pray that God will awaken in your heart and mind a deep and abiding passion for the gospel as the grand revelation of God." ~Platt pp38-40
"The dangerous assumption we unknowingly accept in the American dream is that our greatest asset is our own ability. The American dream prizes what people can accomplish when they believe in themselves and trust in themselves, and we are drawn toward such thinking. But the gospel has different priorities. The gospel beckons us to die to ourselves and to believe in God and to trust in his power. In the gospel, God confronts us with our utter inability to accomplish anything of value apart from him. This is what Jesus meant when he said, 'I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.'" ~Platt p46
"It is the way of Christ. Instead of asserting ourselves, we crucify ourselves. Instead of imagining all the things we can accomplish, we ask God to do what only he can accomplish. Yes, we work, we plan, we organize, and we create, but we do it all while we fast, while we pray, and while we constantly confess our need for the provision of God. Instead of dependence on ourselves, we express radical desperation for the power of his Spirit, and we trust that Jesus stands ready to give us everything we ask for so that we might make much of our Father in the world.
Think about it. Would you say that your life is marked right now by desperation for the Spirit of God? Would you say that the church you are a part of is characterized by this sense of desperation?
Why would we ever want to settle for Christianity according to our ability or settle for church according to our resources? The power of the one who raised Jesus from the dead is living in us, and as a result we have no need to muster up our own might. Our great need is to fall before an almighty Father day and night and to plead for him to show his radical power in and through us, enabling us to accomplish for his glory what we could never imagine in our own strength. And when we do this, we will discover that we were created for a purpose much greater than ourselves, the kind of purpose that can only be accomplished in the power of his Spirit. ~Platt p60
Do you have this desperation for the Spirit of God? How do I know my desperation for the Spirit of God is enough?
I can tell you, my desperation will NEVER be desperate enough. My abandonment will NEVER be abandoning enough. To command me to do these things even in the context of the Gospel is still placing a law upon me I can never fulfill. Connect me to the Gospel. Connect my doing to the Gospel and that fruit will grow in my life because only my conforming into Christ's image will be done."'Abandon all, take up your cross and follow me.' If in responding to this command our stress is primarily upon our own responsibility, we will first look within, at the quality and sincerity of our own faith and repentance, rather than without, at the vicarious life and death of Christ. 'Gospel proclamation' that leads Christians to think mainly about what they must do, rather than mainly about what Jesus has done as our substitute inclines the hearers to stray from gospel-centered missional living.
"The good news of the gospel is that Jesus has done it all--for us and in our place. Only as we believe and live in the reality of what he has done are we progressively freed to live truly missional and radically obedient lives in a broken world.
"As we grow in understanding the reality of who Jesus is for us, we are progressively freed from our personal and missional paralysis and empowered to turn outward for the gospel-good of others. The good news of who Jesus was and is for us as the God-man turns dread into joy and frees us from self-preoccupation to move outward in mission."
All this to say, say these things; just say them in a different way--in a way in which the Gospel is my motivation not a command.
" >[Review] Radical - Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
-
Internet Monk (iMonk) wrote a Gospel-Centered article called The Man in the Shadow of Adultery.
Joshua Harris also has a few articles relating to love and lust taken from his book Sex is not the Problem (Lust is). Fighting Internet Porn (aka Purity Download - Tip 1). Purity Download - Tip 2. Purity Download - Tip 3. Purity Download - Tip 4. Too bad Joshua (and SGM) won't provide this great book as a free download.David Powlison from Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation has provided a free resource for pornography addiction - Breaking Pornography Addiction.And last but not least, Mark Driscoll has recently released a PDF book called Porn Again Christian. You can download it here. Be warned, Mark takes no hostages as he addresses the topic. It is a frank discussion.UPDATED (3/10/2011): Tim Challies wrote a book called Sexual Detox. You can find out more here: http://www.cruciformpress.com/our-books/sexual-detox/UPDATED (4/21/2011): Closing the Window: Steps to Living Porn Free by Tim Chester" >The Issue of the Gospel and Purity
-
Lord Foulgrin's Letters by Randy Alcorn
This repack of Randy Alcorn's gripping bestseller delivers us from ignorance of the devil's schemes. Foulgrin, a high-ranking demon, instructs his subordinate on how to deceive and destroy Jordan Fletcher and his family. It's like placing a bugging device in hell's war room, where we overhear our enemies assessing our weaknesses and strategizing attack. Lord Foulgrin's Letters is a Screwtape Letters for our day, equally fascinating yet destinctly different -- a dramatic story with earthly characters, setting, and plot. A creative, insightful, and biblical depiction of spiritual warfare, this book will guide readers to Christ-honoring counterstrategies for putting on the full armor of God and resisting the devil. Alcorn says to win the battle we must know our God, know ourselves, and know our enemy. Lord Foulgrin's Letters, in unparalleled and compelling fashion, helps us better know each.
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Dorothea Brooke, a young woman of impeccable character, marries the embittered Mr. Casaubon, who almost immediately dies. Eliot takes the reader through a labyrinth of nineteenth-century morals and conventions as Dorothea searches for fulfillment and happiness. Walter's delicious, upper-crust English accent and understated English inflections immerse the listener in a little-known world of hedgerows and manners. This reading would have been a complete success had the narrator only taken more care with the timing surrounding omitted sections of the abridged text. She races ahead without pause, often confounding the listener, who finds the action has suddenly moved to the next county--or country--without warning. A worthy, though flawed, presentation. R.B.F. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine"
title="I must actively stop looking for more books to add to my 2007 reading list. Here are the last few I have decided to place on the list. Again, I am not promising I'll be able to get to all...">From Bookstore to Hand (Even More on my 2007 Reading List)
The Existence and Attributes of God by Stephen Charnock
Stephen Charnock has written a book that deserves to be read prayerfully, slowly, and with your Bible open. A very comprehensive analysis of who God is, what His role is in our lives, why we should worship him, and what the Bible says about Him. He discusses atheism, both theoretical and practical, and systematically explores God's omniscience, omnipotence, wisdom, power, and so forth.
The Life of God in the Soul of Man by Henry Scougal
All I can say is WOW! I fell flat on my face after reading this young man's terrifying insight. I cannot express in greater terms the absolute need to read this book. Look at the title of it. That's it isn't it? Galations 2:20: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and delivered Himself up for me".
Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis, is one of the very few sets of books that should be read three times: in childhood, early adulthood, and late in life. In brief, four children travel repeatedly to a world in which they are far more than mere children and everything is far more than it seems. Richly told, populated with fascinating characters, perfectly realized in detail of world and pacing of plot, and profoundly allegorical, the story is infused throughout with the timeless issues of good and evil, faith and hope. This boxed set edition includes all seven volumes.
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkein
Hobbits and wizards and Sauron--oh, my! Mild-mannered Oxford scholar John Ronald Reuel Tolkien had little inkling when he published The Hobbit; Or, There and Back Again in 1937 that, once hobbits were unleashed upon the world, there would be no turning back. Hobbits are, of course, small, furry creatures who love nothing better than a leisurely life quite free from adventure. But in that first novel and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the hobbits Bilbo and Frodo and their elfish friends get swept up into a mighty conflict with the dragon Smaug, the dark lord Sauron (who owes much to proud Satan in Paradise Lost), the monstrous Gollum, the Cracks of Doom, and the awful power of the magical Ring. The four books' characters--good and evil--are recognizably human, and the realism is deepened by the magnificent detail of the vast parallel world Tolkien devised, inspired partly by his influential Anglo-Saxon scholarship and his Christian beliefs. (He disapproved of the relative sparseness of detail in the comparable allegorical fantasy his friend C.S. Lewis dreamed up in The Chronicles of Narnia, though he knew Lewis had spun a page-turning yarn.) It has been estimated that one-tenth of all paperbacks sold can trace their ancestry to J.R.R. Tolkien. But even if we had never gotten Robert Jordan's The Path of Daggers and the whole fantasy genre Tolkien inadvertently created by bringing the hobbits so richly to life, Tolkien's epic about the Ring would have left our world enhanced by enchantment. --Tim Appelo
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
"All of Camus's literary work rests on his philosophical essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, which, taking its title from the legend of Sisyphus, and his eternal rock-pushing, analyzes a contemporary intillectual malady, the recognition of the absurdity of human life."
King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green
Retold out of the old romances, this collection of Arthurian tales endeavors to make each adventure--"The Quest for the Round Table, " "The First Quest of Sir Lancelot, " "How the Holy Grail Came to Camelot, " and so forth--part of a fixed pattern that effectively presents the whole story, as it does in Le Morte D'Arthur, but in a way less intimidating to young readers.
And now to prioritize my reading.....
-
From Bookstore to Hand - My Ever-Growing Reading List for 2007 (Nostalgia Edition)
Magic Bicycle: The Story of a Bicycle That Found a Boy by John Bibee
"Once there was a magic bicycle that found a boy," begins this tale of adventure and suspense. When John Kramer comes across an old, rusty Spirit Flyer bicycle, he finds it far from ordinary. First, the bike helps him save a neighbor's barn from burning. Then it brings him into conflict with the boys in the Cobra Club, a representative of Goliath Toys and other forces that not only want John's bike, but want it destroyed.While John learns abou the Magic in the bicycle, every reader will be delighted as they join him for this fantastic ride.
The Toy Campaign: The Plot to Trick a Town With Toys by John Bibee
What would happen if someone decided to trick a whole town--by giving them toys? But not just any toys, you understand. Toys that had a powerful and sinister effect on their owners. And what if only two children knew the evil plot was in the works?The magic continues as John and Susan Kramar speed through this book of mystery and adventure. As the Fourth of July approaches, they know some scheme is brewing. Armed only with bicycles that possess wonderful powers, their job is to find out what the plan is and stop it.
The Only Game in Town by John Bibee
Winner of a 1988 Christian Home and School C.S. Lewis Gold Medal award! Everyone wants to be Number One--the fastest, the smartest, the best looking. That's the way it was in Centerville. And the local toy store, run by Mrs. Happy, was all too willing to help by keeping track of all your points so everyone would know who was really on top. It was, after all, the only game in town.But Dan found himself at the bottom of this game. He was new in town and he had a limp. With two strikes like that against him, there was no way he could win. No way, that is, until Mrs. Happy offered to make him the envy of every kind in town. Would he accept, or would he follow the Spirit Flyers bicycles of John and Susan Kramar? Would he win the game and lose the biggest prize of all?Find out in another exciting adventure of magic and mystery from John Bibee.
Bicycle Hills: How One Halloween Almost Got Out of Hand by John Bibee
Uncle Bunkie, the clown, had every kid in Centerville buzzing. A new amusement park had opened just outside of town--Bicycle Hills. There were all kinds of games for anyone who wanted to have fun on a bike.There were other games too, like Caves and Cobras--games the chuldren weren't supposed to tell their parents about. But as Halloween approached, children and adults begin to wonder if the fun of pretending was getting out of handOnce again John Bibee spins a fascinating take as the magic of Spirit Flyer bicycles contronts mysterious forces trying to take over Centerville.
The Last Christmas: The Holiday Scheme to Stop Spirit Flyers by John Bibee
For Barry Smedlowe, Centerville would never be the same. Sloan Favor stole his clubhouse, then stole his party and finally stole his club members themselves. Everythign was falling to pieces. After the Halloween War, even the whole country seemed in turmoil. And the attempts of the ORDER Party to get the nation under control looked suspicious. Were they trying to fix the elections? Why did they put all the people with Spirit Flyers bicycles in jail?With the holidays drawing near and problems getting bigger and more complicated, Barry felt all alone. He could hardly imagine that what seemed like the last Christmas would actually become his first.
The Runaway Parents: The Parable of Problem Parents by John Bibee
What's a family to do when the parents get in trouble and run away from home? That's the problem the Kramers faced. The whole family had decided to follow the way of Spirit Flyers. But Mom and Dad turned against them and joined the powerful and sinister Goliath Industries--who were taking over not only Centerville, but the country and the world as well.Would they come back? Would the children be able to forgive them? Would Grandfather Kramer? Would the runaway parents be able to forgive themselves? Here is a fast-paced adventure with an enduring message.
The Perfect Star: Becoming Children of the True King by John Bibee
Tiffany Favor, the most popular girl in Centerville, always dreamed of being a movie star. Her mother and father certainly did all they could to help her be the best. Now Goliath Industries was giving her her big chance. But it could mean putting her family and the whole town in danger.Goliath's plans for Tiffany bring to a climax their efforts to take over Centerville and the whole country. Here is the dramatic conclusion of the battle between the forces of the Spirit Flyers and Goliath Industries.
The Journey of Wishes: A Trip That Changed John Adam for Good by John Bibee
Sent to live with cousins on a farm during World War II, young John Adam finds himself on a strange journey, astride a rusty tractor bearing the "Spirit Harvester" logo.
-
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
"Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray makes a Faustian bargain to sell his soul in exchange for eternal youth and beauty. Under the influence of Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, where he is able to indulge his desires while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only Dorian's picture bears the traces of his decadence." "A knowing account of a secret life and an analysis of the darker side of Victorian society, The Picture of Dorian Gray offers a disturbing portrait of an individual coming face to face with the reality of his soul."--BOOK JACKET.
The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story by Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen
"This is a marvelous book that everyone in the church would benefit from reading! Written by two professors at Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada, it tells the whole biblical story from Genesis to Revelation as a drama in six acts with an interlude in the middle. In the first three "acts" God establishes his kingdom (creation), there is rebellion in that kingdom (the Fall), and God through Israel initiates redemption. In the interlude (the "intertestamental period") God's kingdom story waits for an ending. Then the story is completed with the coming of the King (redemption accomplished), the spread of the news (the church's mission), and the return of the King (redemption completed). What is marvelous about this book is that it is written so creatively without cliches so the reader sees the biblical story as if for the first time. The authors are convinced that most people read the Bible as a mere jumble of history, poetry, lessons in morality and theology, comforting promises, guiding principles, and commands. They never realize that the Bible is fundamentally coherent and challenges the "idols" of modern culture. This book deserves a place in everyone's library" (Amazon reviewer "Professor of Theology").
So what books are on my 2007 reading list? I admit it's an ambitious list... and in no particular order... with no promises that I will actually achieve reading every book on the list.... but 14 books on the list so far is a good start, don't you think?"
title="I am currently reading two books. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde "Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray makes a Faustian bargain to sell his soul in exchange for eternal youth and beauty. Under the influence...">From the Bookstore to the Bookshelf to the Hand (My Reading List for 2007)
Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation by Graeme Goldsworthy
Graeme Goldsworthy examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief as it applies to the interpretation of the Bible. He then surveys the hemeneutical history of the Christian church in a attempt to see where alien approaches have deconstructed our way of reading Scripture. Finally, he reconstructs an evangelical hermeneutics rightly centered in the gospel and rightly influenced by the method of biblical theology.
This Beautiful Mess: Practicing the Presence of the Kingdom of God by Rick McKinley and David Kopp
"If all we value is the salvation gospel, we tend to miss the rest of Christ's message. Taken out of the context of the kingdom, the call to faith in Christ gets reduced to something less than the New Testament teaches. The reverse is also true: if we value a kingdom gospel at the expense of the liberating message of the Cross and the empty tomb and a call to repentance, we miss a central tenet of kingdom life. Without faith in Jesus, there is no transforming of our lives into the new world of the kingdom."
The Lamb of God by Robert Reymond
"The central theme of Holy Scripture is the unfolding revelation of its doctrinal teaching on Jesus as the 'slain Lamb of God'. The doctrine of Jesus as God's slain lamb runs like a thick cable from Genesis to Revelation binding the entirety of Scripture together. Indeed Revelation 13:8 speaks of Jesus as the lamb who was slain from the creation of the world, while 1 Peter 1:19-20 speaks of the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect who was chosen before the creation of the world. Reymond examines the biblical depictions concerning the Lamb of God – illuminating to us the central place that the suffering of the Messiah as God’s lamb occupies in God's eternal purpose and earths history. Christ's Lamb work is to be found throughout the Old and New Testaments and its pivotal importance for each of our lives is explored in depth."
Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture by Graeme Goldsworthy
"While strong, gospel-centered preaching abounds, many Christian pastors and lay preachers find it difficult to preach meaningfully from the Old Testament. This practical handbook offers help. Graeme Goldsworthy teaches the basics of preaching the whole Bible in a consistently Christ-centered way.
Goldsworthy first examines the Bible, biblical theology, and preaching and shows how they relate in the preparation of Christ-centered sermons. He then applies the biblical-theological method to the various types of literature found in the Bible, drawing out their contributions to expository preaching focused on the person and work of Christ.
Clear, complete, and immediately applicable, this volume will become a fundamental text for teachers, pastors, and students preparing for ministry."
The Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel The Main Thing by C.J. Mahaney
"Remember Jesus Christ? Although it seems almost too obvious, the center of our faith is surprisingly easy to forget. Dynamic pastor C.J. Mahaney shows how to overcome our tendency to move on from the gospel of grace. Finding joy in the gospel -- whose promises allow us to escape condemnation whenever it attacks -- helps us avoid the prevalent trap of legalism. With practical suggestions, Mahaney demonstrates the difference between knowing the gospel... and making it the main thing in daily decisions and daily living."
The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges
"We know we need grace. Without it we'd never come to Christ in the first place. But being a Christian is more than just coming to Christ. It's about growing and becoming more like Jesus. It's about pursing holiness. The pursuit of holiness is hard work, and that's were we turn from grace to discipline. Grace is every bit as important for growing as a Christian as it is for becoming a Christian in the first place. Grace is at the heart of the gospel, and without a clear understanding of the gospel and grace we can easily slip into a performance based lifestyle that bears little resemblance to what the gospel has to offer us. The Discipline Of Grace offers a clear and thorough explanation of the gospel and what it means to the believer, and how the same grace that brings us to faith in Christ also disciplines us in Christ, and how we learn to discipline ourselves in the areas of commitment, convictions, choices, watchfulness, and adversity. The Discipline Of Grace is highly recommended reading for anyone struggling to overcome the world in Christ."
Humility: True Greatness by C.J. Mahaney
"e Transformed by Christ's Example "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." - 1 Peter 5:5 A battle rages within every one of us every day. It's the clash between our sense of stubborn self-sufficiency and God's call to recognize that we're really nothing without Him. It's pride versus humility. And it's a fight we can't win without looking repeatedly to Christ and the cross. C. J. Mahaney raises a battle cry to daily, diligently, and deliberately weaken our greatest enemy (pride) and cultivate our greatest friend (humility). His thorough examination clarifies misconceptions, revealing the truth about why God detests pride and turns His active attention to the humble. Because pride is never passive, defeating it demands an intentional attack. The blessing that follows is God's abundant favor."
FrankensteinDon't Waste Your Life by John Piper
"John Piper writes, “I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider this story from the February 1998 Reader’s Digest: A couple ‘took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball and collect shells. . . .’ Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: ‘Look, Lord. See my shells.’ That is a tragedy.
“God created us to live with a single passion: to joyfully display his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life. The wasted life is the life without this passion. God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work not to be made much of, but to make much of him in every part of our lives.”
Most people slip by in life without a passion for God, spending their lives on trivial diversions, living for comfort and pleasure, and perhaps trying to avoid sin. This book will warn you not to get caught up in a life that counts for nothing. It will challenge you to live and die boasting in the cross of Christ and making the glory of God your singular passion. If you believe that to live is Christ and to die is gain, read this book, learn to live for Christ, and don’t waste your life!"
Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
"This companion volume to the Tales of Mystery and Imagination contains Edgar Allan Poe's best-known poetry, a selection of his very best stories (many of which originate in 1840s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque) along with his finest tales from the last decade of his tragically short life. Many of these stories and poems tell of familiar Poe themes of murder, obsession and love but this volume also contains many overlooked tales of the fantastic, black comedies, parodies and hoaxes such as "The Unparalleled Adventure of Hans Pfaall," "Mesmeric Revelation," "Hop-Frog" and "The Imp of the Perverse."
Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
"On December 27, 1831, the young naturalist Charles Darwin left Plymouth Harbor aboard the HMS Beagle. For the next five years, he conducted research on plants and animals from around the globe, amassing a body of evidence that would culminate in one of the greatest discoveries in the history of mankind - the theory of evolution" (from the publisher).
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
"You don't know about me, without you've read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain't no matter. The book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things he stretched, but mainly he told the truth."
Huckleberry Finn is being 'sivilized'. He has, rather inconveniently, come into the sum of six thousand dollars. The Widow Douglas has put him in a new suit of clothes, and is making him wash and go to school. He is not allowed to gape, stretch or smoke, and he is desperate to run away...
What began life as a sequel to Tom Sawyer quickly became one of the most important of all American novels. Mark Twain's story of a young hobo and a escaped slave who set off to find freedom on the Mississippi is an exuberant and nostalgic children's book, with subtle undertones of adult melancholy and yearning."
More to come....
-
Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation
Graeme Goldsworthy examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief as it applies to the interpretation of the Bible. He then surveys the hemeneutical history of the Christian church in a attempt to see where alien approaches have deconstructed our way of reading Scripture. Finally, he reconstructs an evangelical hermeneutics rightly centered in the gospel and rightly influenced by the method of biblical theology.
" title="Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation Graeme Goldsworthy examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief as it applies to the interpretation of the Bible. He then surveys the hemeneutical history of the Christian church in a...">From Bookstore to Bookshelf: (More) Books On My Reading List
This Beautiful Mess: Practicing the Presence of the Kingdom of God
"If all we value is the salvation gospel, we tend to miss the rest of Christ's message. Taken out of the context of the kingdom, the call to faith in Christ gets reduced to something less than the New Testament teaches. The reverse is also true: if we value a kingdom gospel at the expense of the liberating message of the Cross and the empty tomb and a call to repentance, we miss a central tenet of kingdom life. Without faith in Jesus, there is no transforming of our lives into the new world of the kingdom."
The Lamb of God by Robert Reymond
"The central theme of Holy Scripture is the unfolding revelation of its doctrinal teaching on Jesus as the 'slain Lamb of God'. The doctrine of Jesus as God's slain lamb runs like a thick cable from Genesis to Revelation binding the entirety of Scripture together. Indeed Revelation 13:8 speaks of Jesus as the lamb who was slain from the creation of the world, while 1 Peter 1:19-20 speaks of the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect who was chosen before the creation of the world. Reymond examines the biblical depictions concerning the Lamb of God – illuminating to us the central place that the suffering of the Messiah as God’s lamb occupies in God's eternal purpose and earths history. Christ's Lamb work is to be found throughout the Old and New Testaments and its pivotal importance for each of our lives is explored in depth."
Christian Worldview
-
Let me explain."But if Jesus is who he said he is, and if his promises are as rewarding as the Bible claims they are, then we may discover that satisfaction in our lives and success in the church are not found in what our culture deems most important but in radical abandonment to Jesus." ~Platt p3
"'Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.' Now this is taking it to another level. Pick up an instrument of torture and follow me. This is getting plain weird...and kind of creepy. Imagine a leader coming on the scene today and inviting all who would come after him to pick up an electric chair and become his disciple. Any takers?
"As if this were not enough, Jesus finished his seeker-sensitive plea with a pull-at-your-heartstrings conclusion. 'Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.' Give up evertying you have, carry a cross, and hate your family. This sounds a lot different than 'Admit, believe, confess, and pray a prayer after me.'" ~Platt pp10-11
Throughout the book, there is a plea to surrender to Jesus, which is good, but the pleas are expressed either by making a person feel guilty or via a command to surrender.
There is no connection with the Gospel itself. How does my surrender flow from and out of the Gospel? How does my surrender to Jesus get motivated by Jesus' birth, life, death, and resurrection? This is the Gospel, and my surrender MUST, it MUST, flow out and from the Gospel.
The Gospel is mentioned but the "surrender to Jesus" is not connected WITH the Gospel.
Yes, we can "surrender to Jesus" but how do you know your surrender is sincere enough? How do you know your surrender to Jesus is surrender enough? Can you surrender EVERYTHING for Jesus?
Sure. We WANT to surrender everything, but the reality is, our sin touches every part of our being, sin corrupts our every molecule to such a degree that even our best surrender and abandonment to Jesus is as filthy or polluted rags before God. See Isaiah 64:6.
Ask yourself this: Can I absolutely, 100% abandon EVERYTHING in my life for Jesus? This means there is NO turning back; this means you cannot, even for a split second, think "wow, it'd be nice to have X for a moment" or "I miss X...."
I cannot do that. I want to. But I cannot DO it. It is a law I cannot fulfill.
But Jesus DID do it. For me. In my place. And it is HIS work of surrender and abandonment to God that I rest in.
Speaking of Jesus parable of the treasure in a field in Matthew 13:"This is the picture of Jesus in the gospel. He is something--someone--worth losing everything for. And if we walk away from the Jesus of the gospel, we walk away from eternal riches. The cost of non-discipleship is profoundly greater for us than the cost of discipleship. For when we abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus, we discover the infinite treasure of knowing and experiencing him."
This is very true, but this statement does not go far enough.
How does the Gospel motivate me to "abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus?"
Platt explains the Gospel very well, but there is a disconnect between the Gospel and its motivation of our doing.
Without this connection of our motivation with the Gospel, the command to surrender all is just a command, a heavy weight placed upon us we can never fulfill.
Show me the beauty of the Gospel, don't just tell me it's beautiful.
Let me quote large portions of Radical and let Platt speak for himself:"Biblical proclamation of the gospel beckons us to a much different response and leads us down a much different road. Here the gospel demands and enables us to turn from our sin, to take up our cross, to die to ourselves, and to follow Jesus. These are the terms and phrases we see in the Bible. And salvation now consists of a deep wrestling in our souls with the sinfulness of our hearts, the depth of our depravity, and the desperation of our need for his grace. Jesus is no longer one to be accepted or invited in but one who is infinitely worthy of our immediate and total surrender.
'You might think this sounds as though we have to earn our way to Jesus through radical obedience, but that is not the case at all. Indeed, 'it is by grace you [are] saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast.' We are saved from our sins by a free gift of grace, something that only God can do in us and that we cannot manufacture ourselves.
"But that gift of grace involves the gift of a new heart. New desires. New longings. For the first time, we want God. We see our need for him, and we love him. We seek after him, and we find him, and we discover that he is indeed the great reward of our salvation. We realize that we are saved not just to be forgiven of our sins or to be assured of our eternity in heaven, but we are saved to know God. So we yearn for him. We want him so much that we abandon everything else to experience him. This is the only proper response to the revelation of God in the gospel."This is why men and women around the world risk their lives to know more about him. This is why we must avoid cheap caricatures of Christianity that fail to exalt the revelation of God in his Word. This is why you and I cannot settle for anything less than a God-centered, Christ-exalting, self-denying gospel.
"I pray continually for this kind of hunger in the church God has given me to lead and in churches spread across our country's landscape. I pray that we will be a people who refuse to gorge our spiritual stomachs on the entertaining pleasures of this world, because we have chosen to find our satisfaction in the eternal treasure of his Word. I pray that God will awaken in your heart and mind a deep and abiding passion for the gospel as the grand revelation of God." ~Platt pp38-40
"The dangerous assumption we unknowingly accept in the American dream is that our greatest asset is our own ability. The American dream prizes what people can accomplish when they believe in themselves and trust in themselves, and we are drawn toward such thinking. But the gospel has different priorities. The gospel beckons us to die to ourselves and to believe in God and to trust in his power. In the gospel, God confronts us with our utter inability to accomplish anything of value apart from him. This is what Jesus meant when he said, 'I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.'" ~Platt p46
"It is the way of Christ. Instead of asserting ourselves, we crucify ourselves. Instead of imagining all the things we can accomplish, we ask God to do what only he can accomplish. Yes, we work, we plan, we organize, and we create, but we do it all while we fast, while we pray, and while we constantly confess our need for the provision of God. Instead of dependence on ourselves, we express radical desperation for the power of his Spirit, and we trust that Jesus stands ready to give us everything we ask for so that we might make much of our Father in the world.
Think about it. Would you say that your life is marked right now by desperation for the Spirit of God? Would you say that the church you are a part of is characterized by this sense of desperation?
Why would we ever want to settle for Christianity according to our ability or settle for church according to our resources? The power of the one who raised Jesus from the dead is living in us, and as a result we have no need to muster up our own might. Our great need is to fall before an almighty Father day and night and to plead for him to show his radical power in and through us, enabling us to accomplish for his glory what we could never imagine in our own strength. And when we do this, we will discover that we were created for a purpose much greater than ourselves, the kind of purpose that can only be accomplished in the power of his Spirit. ~Platt p60
Do you have this desperation for the Spirit of God? How do I know my desperation for the Spirit of God is enough?
I can tell you, my desperation will NEVER be desperate enough. My abandonment will NEVER be abandoning enough. To command me to do these things even in the context of the Gospel is still placing a law upon me I can never fulfill. Connect me to the Gospel. Connect my doing to the Gospel and that fruit will grow in my life because only my conforming into Christ's image will be done."'Abandon all, take up your cross and follow me.' If in responding to this command our stress is primarily upon our own responsibility, we will first look within, at the quality and sincerity of our own faith and repentance, rather than without, at the vicarious life and death of Christ. 'Gospel proclamation' that leads Christians to think mainly about what they must do, rather than mainly about what Jesus has done as our substitute inclines the hearers to stray from gospel-centered missional living.
"The good news of the gospel is that Jesus has done it all--for us and in our place. Only as we believe and live in the reality of what he has done are we progressively freed to live truly missional and radically obedient lives in a broken world.
"As we grow in understanding the reality of who Jesus is for us, we are progressively freed from our personal and missional paralysis and empowered to turn outward for the gospel-good of others. The good news of who Jesus was and is for us as the God-man turns dread into joy and frees us from self-preoccupation to move outward in mission."
All this to say, say these things; just say them in a different way--in a way in which the Gospel is my motivation not a command.
" >[Review] Radical - Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
-
Internet Monk (iMonk) wrote a Gospel-Centered article called The Man in the Shadow of Adultery.
Joshua Harris also has a few articles relating to love and lust taken from his book Sex is not the Problem (Lust is). Fighting Internet Porn (aka Purity Download - Tip 1). Purity Download - Tip 2. Purity Download - Tip 3. Purity Download - Tip 4. Too bad Joshua (and SGM) won't provide this great book as a free download.David Powlison from Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation has provided a free resource for pornography addiction - Breaking Pornography Addiction.And last but not least, Mark Driscoll has recently released a PDF book called Porn Again Christian. You can download it here. Be warned, Mark takes no hostages as he addresses the topic. It is a frank discussion.UPDATED (3/10/2011): Tim Challies wrote a book called Sexual Detox. You can find out more here: http://www.cruciformpress.com/our-books/sexual-detox/UPDATED (4/21/2011): Closing the Window: Steps to Living Porn Free by Tim Chester" >The Issue of the Gospel and Purity
-
Lord Foulgrin's Letters by Randy Alcorn
This repack of Randy Alcorn's gripping bestseller delivers us from ignorance of the devil's schemes. Foulgrin, a high-ranking demon, instructs his subordinate on how to deceive and destroy Jordan Fletcher and his family. It's like placing a bugging device in hell's war room, where we overhear our enemies assessing our weaknesses and strategizing attack. Lord Foulgrin's Letters is a Screwtape Letters for our day, equally fascinating yet destinctly different -- a dramatic story with earthly characters, setting, and plot. A creative, insightful, and biblical depiction of spiritual warfare, this book will guide readers to Christ-honoring counterstrategies for putting on the full armor of God and resisting the devil. Alcorn says to win the battle we must know our God, know ourselves, and know our enemy. Lord Foulgrin's Letters, in unparalleled and compelling fashion, helps us better know each.
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Dorothea Brooke, a young woman of impeccable character, marries the embittered Mr. Casaubon, who almost immediately dies. Eliot takes the reader through a labyrinth of nineteenth-century morals and conventions as Dorothea searches for fulfillment and happiness. Walter's delicious, upper-crust English accent and understated English inflections immerse the listener in a little-known world of hedgerows and manners. This reading would have been a complete success had the narrator only taken more care with the timing surrounding omitted sections of the abridged text. She races ahead without pause, often confounding the listener, who finds the action has suddenly moved to the next county--or country--without warning. A worthy, though flawed, presentation. R.B.F. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine"
title="I must actively stop looking for more books to add to my 2007 reading list. Here are the last few I have decided to place on the list. Again, I am not promising I'll be able to get to all...">From Bookstore to Hand (Even More on my 2007 Reading List)
The Existence and Attributes of God by Stephen Charnock
Stephen Charnock has written a book that deserves to be read prayerfully, slowly, and with your Bible open. A very comprehensive analysis of who God is, what His role is in our lives, why we should worship him, and what the Bible says about Him. He discusses atheism, both theoretical and practical, and systematically explores God's omniscience, omnipotence, wisdom, power, and so forth.
The Life of God in the Soul of Man by Henry Scougal
All I can say is WOW! I fell flat on my face after reading this young man's terrifying insight. I cannot express in greater terms the absolute need to read this book. Look at the title of it. That's it isn't it? Galations 2:20: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and delivered Himself up for me".
Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis, is one of the very few sets of books that should be read three times: in childhood, early adulthood, and late in life. In brief, four children travel repeatedly to a world in which they are far more than mere children and everything is far more than it seems. Richly told, populated with fascinating characters, perfectly realized in detail of world and pacing of plot, and profoundly allegorical, the story is infused throughout with the timeless issues of good and evil, faith and hope. This boxed set edition includes all seven volumes.
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkein
Hobbits and wizards and Sauron--oh, my! Mild-mannered Oxford scholar John Ronald Reuel Tolkien had little inkling when he published The Hobbit; Or, There and Back Again in 1937 that, once hobbits were unleashed upon the world, there would be no turning back. Hobbits are, of course, small, furry creatures who love nothing better than a leisurely life quite free from adventure. But in that first novel and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the hobbits Bilbo and Frodo and their elfish friends get swept up into a mighty conflict with the dragon Smaug, the dark lord Sauron (who owes much to proud Satan in Paradise Lost), the monstrous Gollum, the Cracks of Doom, and the awful power of the magical Ring. The four books' characters--good and evil--are recognizably human, and the realism is deepened by the magnificent detail of the vast parallel world Tolkien devised, inspired partly by his influential Anglo-Saxon scholarship and his Christian beliefs. (He disapproved of the relative sparseness of detail in the comparable allegorical fantasy his friend C.S. Lewis dreamed up in The Chronicles of Narnia, though he knew Lewis had spun a page-turning yarn.) It has been estimated that one-tenth of all paperbacks sold can trace their ancestry to J.R.R. Tolkien. But even if we had never gotten Robert Jordan's The Path of Daggers and the whole fantasy genre Tolkien inadvertently created by bringing the hobbits so richly to life, Tolkien's epic about the Ring would have left our world enhanced by enchantment. --Tim Appelo
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
"All of Camus's literary work rests on his philosophical essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, which, taking its title from the legend of Sisyphus, and his eternal rock-pushing, analyzes a contemporary intillectual malady, the recognition of the absurdity of human life."
King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green
Retold out of the old romances, this collection of Arthurian tales endeavors to make each adventure--"The Quest for the Round Table, " "The First Quest of Sir Lancelot, " "How the Holy Grail Came to Camelot, " and so forth--part of a fixed pattern that effectively presents the whole story, as it does in Le Morte D'Arthur, but in a way less intimidating to young readers.
And now to prioritize my reading.....
-
From Bookstore to Hand - My Ever-Growing Reading List for 2007 (Nostalgia Edition)
Magic Bicycle: The Story of a Bicycle That Found a Boy by John Bibee
"Once there was a magic bicycle that found a boy," begins this tale of adventure and suspense. When John Kramer comes across an old, rusty Spirit Flyer bicycle, he finds it far from ordinary. First, the bike helps him save a neighbor's barn from burning. Then it brings him into conflict with the boys in the Cobra Club, a representative of Goliath Toys and other forces that not only want John's bike, but want it destroyed.While John learns abou the Magic in the bicycle, every reader will be delighted as they join him for this fantastic ride.
The Toy Campaign: The Plot to Trick a Town With Toys by John Bibee
What would happen if someone decided to trick a whole town--by giving them toys? But not just any toys, you understand. Toys that had a powerful and sinister effect on their owners. And what if only two children knew the evil plot was in the works?The magic continues as John and Susan Kramar speed through this book of mystery and adventure. As the Fourth of July approaches, they know some scheme is brewing. Armed only with bicycles that possess wonderful powers, their job is to find out what the plan is and stop it.
The Only Game in Town by John Bibee
Winner of a 1988 Christian Home and School C.S. Lewis Gold Medal award! Everyone wants to be Number One--the fastest, the smartest, the best looking. That's the way it was in Centerville. And the local toy store, run by Mrs. Happy, was all too willing to help by keeping track of all your points so everyone would know who was really on top. It was, after all, the only game in town.But Dan found himself at the bottom of this game. He was new in town and he had a limp. With two strikes like that against him, there was no way he could win. No way, that is, until Mrs. Happy offered to make him the envy of every kind in town. Would he accept, or would he follow the Spirit Flyers bicycles of John and Susan Kramar? Would he win the game and lose the biggest prize of all?Find out in another exciting adventure of magic and mystery from John Bibee.
Bicycle Hills: How One Halloween Almost Got Out of Hand by John Bibee
Uncle Bunkie, the clown, had every kid in Centerville buzzing. A new amusement park had opened just outside of town--Bicycle Hills. There were all kinds of games for anyone who wanted to have fun on a bike.There were other games too, like Caves and Cobras--games the chuldren weren't supposed to tell their parents about. But as Halloween approached, children and adults begin to wonder if the fun of pretending was getting out of handOnce again John Bibee spins a fascinating take as the magic of Spirit Flyer bicycles contronts mysterious forces trying to take over Centerville.
The Last Christmas: The Holiday Scheme to Stop Spirit Flyers by John Bibee
For Barry Smedlowe, Centerville would never be the same. Sloan Favor stole his clubhouse, then stole his party and finally stole his club members themselves. Everythign was falling to pieces. After the Halloween War, even the whole country seemed in turmoil. And the attempts of the ORDER Party to get the nation under control looked suspicious. Were they trying to fix the elections? Why did they put all the people with Spirit Flyers bicycles in jail?With the holidays drawing near and problems getting bigger and more complicated, Barry felt all alone. He could hardly imagine that what seemed like the last Christmas would actually become his first.
The Runaway Parents: The Parable of Problem Parents by John Bibee
What's a family to do when the parents get in trouble and run away from home? That's the problem the Kramers faced. The whole family had decided to follow the way of Spirit Flyers. But Mom and Dad turned against them and joined the powerful and sinister Goliath Industries--who were taking over not only Centerville, but the country and the world as well.Would they come back? Would the children be able to forgive them? Would Grandfather Kramer? Would the runaway parents be able to forgive themselves? Here is a fast-paced adventure with an enduring message.
The Perfect Star: Becoming Children of the True King by John Bibee
Tiffany Favor, the most popular girl in Centerville, always dreamed of being a movie star. Her mother and father certainly did all they could to help her be the best. Now Goliath Industries was giving her her big chance. But it could mean putting her family and the whole town in danger.Goliath's plans for Tiffany bring to a climax their efforts to take over Centerville and the whole country. Here is the dramatic conclusion of the battle between the forces of the Spirit Flyers and Goliath Industries.
The Journey of Wishes: A Trip That Changed John Adam for Good by John Bibee
Sent to live with cousins on a farm during World War II, young John Adam finds himself on a strange journey, astride a rusty tractor bearing the "Spirit Harvester" logo.
-
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
"Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray makes a Faustian bargain to sell his soul in exchange for eternal youth and beauty. Under the influence of Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, where he is able to indulge his desires while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only Dorian's picture bears the traces of his decadence." "A knowing account of a secret life and an analysis of the darker side of Victorian society, The Picture of Dorian Gray offers a disturbing portrait of an individual coming face to face with the reality of his soul."--BOOK JACKET.
The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story by Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen
"This is a marvelous book that everyone in the church would benefit from reading! Written by two professors at Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada, it tells the whole biblical story from Genesis to Revelation as a drama in six acts with an interlude in the middle. In the first three "acts" God establishes his kingdom (creation), there is rebellion in that kingdom (the Fall), and God through Israel initiates redemption. In the interlude (the "intertestamental period") God's kingdom story waits for an ending. Then the story is completed with the coming of the King (redemption accomplished), the spread of the news (the church's mission), and the return of the King (redemption completed). What is marvelous about this book is that it is written so creatively without cliches so the reader sees the biblical story as if for the first time. The authors are convinced that most people read the Bible as a mere jumble of history, poetry, lessons in morality and theology, comforting promises, guiding principles, and commands. They never realize that the Bible is fundamentally coherent and challenges the "idols" of modern culture. This book deserves a place in everyone's library" (Amazon reviewer "Professor of Theology").
So what books are on my 2007 reading list? I admit it's an ambitious list... and in no particular order... with no promises that I will actually achieve reading every book on the list.... but 14 books on the list so far is a good start, don't you think?"
title="I am currently reading two books. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde "Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray makes a Faustian bargain to sell his soul in exchange for eternal youth and beauty. Under the influence...">From the Bookstore to the Bookshelf to the Hand (My Reading List for 2007)
Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation by Graeme Goldsworthy
Graeme Goldsworthy examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief as it applies to the interpretation of the Bible. He then surveys the hemeneutical history of the Christian church in a attempt to see where alien approaches have deconstructed our way of reading Scripture. Finally, he reconstructs an evangelical hermeneutics rightly centered in the gospel and rightly influenced by the method of biblical theology.
This Beautiful Mess: Practicing the Presence of the Kingdom of God by Rick McKinley and David Kopp
"If all we value is the salvation gospel, we tend to miss the rest of Christ's message. Taken out of the context of the kingdom, the call to faith in Christ gets reduced to something less than the New Testament teaches. The reverse is also true: if we value a kingdom gospel at the expense of the liberating message of the Cross and the empty tomb and a call to repentance, we miss a central tenet of kingdom life. Without faith in Jesus, there is no transforming of our lives into the new world of the kingdom."
The Lamb of God by Robert Reymond
"The central theme of Holy Scripture is the unfolding revelation of its doctrinal teaching on Jesus as the 'slain Lamb of God'. The doctrine of Jesus as God's slain lamb runs like a thick cable from Genesis to Revelation binding the entirety of Scripture together. Indeed Revelation 13:8 speaks of Jesus as the lamb who was slain from the creation of the world, while 1 Peter 1:19-20 speaks of the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect who was chosen before the creation of the world. Reymond examines the biblical depictions concerning the Lamb of God – illuminating to us the central place that the suffering of the Messiah as God’s lamb occupies in God's eternal purpose and earths history. Christ's Lamb work is to be found throughout the Old and New Testaments and its pivotal importance for each of our lives is explored in depth."
Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture by Graeme Goldsworthy
"While strong, gospel-centered preaching abounds, many Christian pastors and lay preachers find it difficult to preach meaningfully from the Old Testament. This practical handbook offers help. Graeme Goldsworthy teaches the basics of preaching the whole Bible in a consistently Christ-centered way.
Goldsworthy first examines the Bible, biblical theology, and preaching and shows how they relate in the preparation of Christ-centered sermons. He then applies the biblical-theological method to the various types of literature found in the Bible, drawing out their contributions to expository preaching focused on the person and work of Christ.
Clear, complete, and immediately applicable, this volume will become a fundamental text for teachers, pastors, and students preparing for ministry."
The Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel The Main Thing by C.J. Mahaney
"Remember Jesus Christ? Although it seems almost too obvious, the center of our faith is surprisingly easy to forget. Dynamic pastor C.J. Mahaney shows how to overcome our tendency to move on from the gospel of grace. Finding joy in the gospel -- whose promises allow us to escape condemnation whenever it attacks -- helps us avoid the prevalent trap of legalism. With practical suggestions, Mahaney demonstrates the difference between knowing the gospel... and making it the main thing in daily decisions and daily living."
The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges
"We know we need grace. Without it we'd never come to Christ in the first place. But being a Christian is more than just coming to Christ. It's about growing and becoming more like Jesus. It's about pursing holiness. The pursuit of holiness is hard work, and that's were we turn from grace to discipline. Grace is every bit as important for growing as a Christian as it is for becoming a Christian in the first place. Grace is at the heart of the gospel, and without a clear understanding of the gospel and grace we can easily slip into a performance based lifestyle that bears little resemblance to what the gospel has to offer us. The Discipline Of Grace offers a clear and thorough explanation of the gospel and what it means to the believer, and how the same grace that brings us to faith in Christ also disciplines us in Christ, and how we learn to discipline ourselves in the areas of commitment, convictions, choices, watchfulness, and adversity. The Discipline Of Grace is highly recommended reading for anyone struggling to overcome the world in Christ."
Humility: True Greatness by C.J. Mahaney
"e Transformed by Christ's Example "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." - 1 Peter 5:5 A battle rages within every one of us every day. It's the clash between our sense of stubborn self-sufficiency and God's call to recognize that we're really nothing without Him. It's pride versus humility. And it's a fight we can't win without looking repeatedly to Christ and the cross. C. J. Mahaney raises a battle cry to daily, diligently, and deliberately weaken our greatest enemy (pride) and cultivate our greatest friend (humility). His thorough examination clarifies misconceptions, revealing the truth about why God detests pride and turns His active attention to the humble. Because pride is never passive, defeating it demands an intentional attack. The blessing that follows is God's abundant favor."
FrankensteinDon't Waste Your Life by John Piper
"John Piper writes, “I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider this story from the February 1998 Reader’s Digest: A couple ‘took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball and collect shells. . . .’ Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: ‘Look, Lord. See my shells.’ That is a tragedy.
“God created us to live with a single passion: to joyfully display his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life. The wasted life is the life without this passion. God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work not to be made much of, but to make much of him in every part of our lives.”
Most people slip by in life without a passion for God, spending their lives on trivial diversions, living for comfort and pleasure, and perhaps trying to avoid sin. This book will warn you not to get caught up in a life that counts for nothing. It will challenge you to live and die boasting in the cross of Christ and making the glory of God your singular passion. If you believe that to live is Christ and to die is gain, read this book, learn to live for Christ, and don’t waste your life!"
Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
"This companion volume to the Tales of Mystery and Imagination contains Edgar Allan Poe's best-known poetry, a selection of his very best stories (many of which originate in 1840s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque) along with his finest tales from the last decade of his tragically short life. Many of these stories and poems tell of familiar Poe themes of murder, obsession and love but this volume also contains many overlooked tales of the fantastic, black comedies, parodies and hoaxes such as "The Unparalleled Adventure of Hans Pfaall," "Mesmeric Revelation," "Hop-Frog" and "The Imp of the Perverse."
Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
"On December 27, 1831, the young naturalist Charles Darwin left Plymouth Harbor aboard the HMS Beagle. For the next five years, he conducted research on plants and animals from around the globe, amassing a body of evidence that would culminate in one of the greatest discoveries in the history of mankind - the theory of evolution" (from the publisher).
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
"You don't know about me, without you've read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain't no matter. The book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things he stretched, but mainly he told the truth."
Huckleberry Finn is being 'sivilized'. He has, rather inconveniently, come into the sum of six thousand dollars. The Widow Douglas has put him in a new suit of clothes, and is making him wash and go to school. He is not allowed to gape, stretch or smoke, and he is desperate to run away...
What began life as a sequel to Tom Sawyer quickly became one of the most important of all American novels. Mark Twain's story of a young hobo and a escaped slave who set off to find freedom on the Mississippi is an exuberant and nostalgic children's book, with subtle undertones of adult melancholy and yearning."
More to come....
-
Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation
Graeme Goldsworthy examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief as it applies to the interpretation of the Bible. He then surveys the hemeneutical history of the Christian church in a attempt to see where alien approaches have deconstructed our way of reading Scripture. Finally, he reconstructs an evangelical hermeneutics rightly centered in the gospel and rightly influenced by the method of biblical theology.
" title="Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation Graeme Goldsworthy examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief as it applies to the interpretation of the Bible. He then surveys the hemeneutical history of the Christian church in a...">From Bookstore to Bookshelf: (More) Books On My Reading List
This Beautiful Mess: Practicing the Presence of the Kingdom of God
"If all we value is the salvation gospel, we tend to miss the rest of Christ's message. Taken out of the context of the kingdom, the call to faith in Christ gets reduced to something less than the New Testament teaches. The reverse is also true: if we value a kingdom gospel at the expense of the liberating message of the Cross and the empty tomb and a call to repentance, we miss a central tenet of kingdom life. Without faith in Jesus, there is no transforming of our lives into the new world of the kingdom."
The Lamb of God by Robert Reymond
"The central theme of Holy Scripture is the unfolding revelation of its doctrinal teaching on Jesus as the 'slain Lamb of God'. The doctrine of Jesus as God's slain lamb runs like a thick cable from Genesis to Revelation binding the entirety of Scripture together. Indeed Revelation 13:8 speaks of Jesus as the lamb who was slain from the creation of the world, while 1 Peter 1:19-20 speaks of the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect who was chosen before the creation of the world. Reymond examines the biblical depictions concerning the Lamb of God – illuminating to us the central place that the suffering of the Messiah as God’s lamb occupies in God's eternal purpose and earths history. Christ's Lamb work is to be found throughout the Old and New Testaments and its pivotal importance for each of our lives is explored in depth."
Family Blogs
-
Let me explain."But if Jesus is who he said he is, and if his promises are as rewarding as the Bible claims they are, then we may discover that satisfaction in our lives and success in the church are not found in what our culture deems most important but in radical abandonment to Jesus." ~Platt p3
"'Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.' Now this is taking it to another level. Pick up an instrument of torture and follow me. This is getting plain weird...and kind of creepy. Imagine a leader coming on the scene today and inviting all who would come after him to pick up an electric chair and become his disciple. Any takers?
"As if this were not enough, Jesus finished his seeker-sensitive plea with a pull-at-your-heartstrings conclusion. 'Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.' Give up evertying you have, carry a cross, and hate your family. This sounds a lot different than 'Admit, believe, confess, and pray a prayer after me.'" ~Platt pp10-11
Throughout the book, there is a plea to surrender to Jesus, which is good, but the pleas are expressed either by making a person feel guilty or via a command to surrender.
There is no connection with the Gospel itself. How does my surrender flow from and out of the Gospel? How does my surrender to Jesus get motivated by Jesus' birth, life, death, and resurrection? This is the Gospel, and my surrender MUST, it MUST, flow out and from the Gospel.
The Gospel is mentioned but the "surrender to Jesus" is not connected WITH the Gospel.
Yes, we can "surrender to Jesus" but how do you know your surrender is sincere enough? How do you know your surrender to Jesus is surrender enough? Can you surrender EVERYTHING for Jesus?
Sure. We WANT to surrender everything, but the reality is, our sin touches every part of our being, sin corrupts our every molecule to such a degree that even our best surrender and abandonment to Jesus is as filthy or polluted rags before God. See Isaiah 64:6.
Ask yourself this: Can I absolutely, 100% abandon EVERYTHING in my life for Jesus? This means there is NO turning back; this means you cannot, even for a split second, think "wow, it'd be nice to have X for a moment" or "I miss X...."
I cannot do that. I want to. But I cannot DO it. It is a law I cannot fulfill.
But Jesus DID do it. For me. In my place. And it is HIS work of surrender and abandonment to God that I rest in.
Speaking of Jesus parable of the treasure in a field in Matthew 13:"This is the picture of Jesus in the gospel. He is something--someone--worth losing everything for. And if we walk away from the Jesus of the gospel, we walk away from eternal riches. The cost of non-discipleship is profoundly greater for us than the cost of discipleship. For when we abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus, we discover the infinite treasure of knowing and experiencing him."
This is very true, but this statement does not go far enough.
How does the Gospel motivate me to "abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus?"
Platt explains the Gospel very well, but there is a disconnect between the Gospel and its motivation of our doing.
Without this connection of our motivation with the Gospel, the command to surrender all is just a command, a heavy weight placed upon us we can never fulfill.
Show me the beauty of the Gospel, don't just tell me it's beautiful.
Let me quote large portions of Radical and let Platt speak for himself:"Biblical proclamation of the gospel beckons us to a much different response and leads us down a much different road. Here the gospel demands and enables us to turn from our sin, to take up our cross, to die to ourselves, and to follow Jesus. These are the terms and phrases we see in the Bible. And salvation now consists of a deep wrestling in our souls with the sinfulness of our hearts, the depth of our depravity, and the desperation of our need for his grace. Jesus is no longer one to be accepted or invited in but one who is infinitely worthy of our immediate and total surrender.
'You might think this sounds as though we have to earn our way to Jesus through radical obedience, but that is not the case at all. Indeed, 'it is by grace you [are] saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast.' We are saved from our sins by a free gift of grace, something that only God can do in us and that we cannot manufacture ourselves.
"But that gift of grace involves the gift of a new heart. New desires. New longings. For the first time, we want God. We see our need for him, and we love him. We seek after him, and we find him, and we discover that he is indeed the great reward of our salvation. We realize that we are saved not just to be forgiven of our sins or to be assured of our eternity in heaven, but we are saved to know God. So we yearn for him. We want him so much that we abandon everything else to experience him. This is the only proper response to the revelation of God in the gospel."This is why men and women around the world risk their lives to know more about him. This is why we must avoid cheap caricatures of Christianity that fail to exalt the revelation of God in his Word. This is why you and I cannot settle for anything less than a God-centered, Christ-exalting, self-denying gospel.
"I pray continually for this kind of hunger in the church God has given me to lead and in churches spread across our country's landscape. I pray that we will be a people who refuse to gorge our spiritual stomachs on the entertaining pleasures of this world, because we have chosen to find our satisfaction in the eternal treasure of his Word. I pray that God will awaken in your heart and mind a deep and abiding passion for the gospel as the grand revelation of God." ~Platt pp38-40
"The dangerous assumption we unknowingly accept in the American dream is that our greatest asset is our own ability. The American dream prizes what people can accomplish when they believe in themselves and trust in themselves, and we are drawn toward such thinking. But the gospel has different priorities. The gospel beckons us to die to ourselves and to believe in God and to trust in his power. In the gospel, God confronts us with our utter inability to accomplish anything of value apart from him. This is what Jesus meant when he said, 'I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.'" ~Platt p46
"It is the way of Christ. Instead of asserting ourselves, we crucify ourselves. Instead of imagining all the things we can accomplish, we ask God to do what only he can accomplish. Yes, we work, we plan, we organize, and we create, but we do it all while we fast, while we pray, and while we constantly confess our need for the provision of God. Instead of dependence on ourselves, we express radical desperation for the power of his Spirit, and we trust that Jesus stands ready to give us everything we ask for so that we might make much of our Father in the world.
Think about it. Would you say that your life is marked right now by desperation for the Spirit of God? Would you say that the church you are a part of is characterized by this sense of desperation?
Why would we ever want to settle for Christianity according to our ability or settle for church according to our resources? The power of the one who raised Jesus from the dead is living in us, and as a result we have no need to muster up our own might. Our great need is to fall before an almighty Father day and night and to plead for him to show his radical power in and through us, enabling us to accomplish for his glory what we could never imagine in our own strength. And when we do this, we will discover that we were created for a purpose much greater than ourselves, the kind of purpose that can only be accomplished in the power of his Spirit. ~Platt p60
Do you have this desperation for the Spirit of God? How do I know my desperation for the Spirit of God is enough?
I can tell you, my desperation will NEVER be desperate enough. My abandonment will NEVER be abandoning enough. To command me to do these things even in the context of the Gospel is still placing a law upon me I can never fulfill. Connect me to the Gospel. Connect my doing to the Gospel and that fruit will grow in my life because only my conforming into Christ's image will be done."'Abandon all, take up your cross and follow me.' If in responding to this command our stress is primarily upon our own responsibility, we will first look within, at the quality and sincerity of our own faith and repentance, rather than without, at the vicarious life and death of Christ. 'Gospel proclamation' that leads Christians to think mainly about what they must do, rather than mainly about what Jesus has done as our substitute inclines the hearers to stray from gospel-centered missional living.
"The good news of the gospel is that Jesus has done it all--for us and in our place. Only as we believe and live in the reality of what he has done are we progressively freed to live truly missional and radically obedient lives in a broken world.
"As we grow in understanding the reality of who Jesus is for us, we are progressively freed from our personal and missional paralysis and empowered to turn outward for the gospel-good of others. The good news of who Jesus was and is for us as the God-man turns dread into joy and frees us from self-preoccupation to move outward in mission."
All this to say, say these things; just say them in a different way--in a way in which the Gospel is my motivation not a command.
" >[Review] Radical - Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
-
Internet Monk (iMonk) wrote a Gospel-Centered article called The Man in the Shadow of Adultery.
Joshua Harris also has a few articles relating to love and lust taken from his book Sex is not the Problem (Lust is). Fighting Internet Porn (aka Purity Download - Tip 1). Purity Download - Tip 2. Purity Download - Tip 3. Purity Download - Tip 4. Too bad Joshua (and SGM) won't provide this great book as a free download.David Powlison from Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation has provided a free resource for pornography addiction - Breaking Pornography Addiction.And last but not least, Mark Driscoll has recently released a PDF book called Porn Again Christian. You can download it here. Be warned, Mark takes no hostages as he addresses the topic. It is a frank discussion.UPDATED (3/10/2011): Tim Challies wrote a book called Sexual Detox. You can find out more here: http://www.cruciformpress.com/our-books/sexual-detox/UPDATED (4/21/2011): Closing the Window: Steps to Living Porn Free by Tim Chester" >The Issue of the Gospel and Purity
-
Lord Foulgrin's Letters by Randy Alcorn
This repack of Randy Alcorn's gripping bestseller delivers us from ignorance of the devil's schemes. Foulgrin, a high-ranking demon, instructs his subordinate on how to deceive and destroy Jordan Fletcher and his family. It's like placing a bugging device in hell's war room, where we overhear our enemies assessing our weaknesses and strategizing attack. Lord Foulgrin's Letters is a Screwtape Letters for our day, equally fascinating yet destinctly different -- a dramatic story with earthly characters, setting, and plot. A creative, insightful, and biblical depiction of spiritual warfare, this book will guide readers to Christ-honoring counterstrategies for putting on the full armor of God and resisting the devil. Alcorn says to win the battle we must know our God, know ourselves, and know our enemy. Lord Foulgrin's Letters, in unparalleled and compelling fashion, helps us better know each.
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Dorothea Brooke, a young woman of impeccable character, marries the embittered Mr. Casaubon, who almost immediately dies. Eliot takes the reader through a labyrinth of nineteenth-century morals and conventions as Dorothea searches for fulfillment and happiness. Walter's delicious, upper-crust English accent and understated English inflections immerse the listener in a little-known world of hedgerows and manners. This reading would have been a complete success had the narrator only taken more care with the timing surrounding omitted sections of the abridged text. She races ahead without pause, often confounding the listener, who finds the action has suddenly moved to the next county--or country--without warning. A worthy, though flawed, presentation. R.B.F. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine"
title="I must actively stop looking for more books to add to my 2007 reading list. Here are the last few I have decided to place on the list. Again, I am not promising I'll be able to get to all...">From Bookstore to Hand (Even More on my 2007 Reading List)
The Existence and Attributes of God by Stephen Charnock
Stephen Charnock has written a book that deserves to be read prayerfully, slowly, and with your Bible open. A very comprehensive analysis of who God is, what His role is in our lives, why we should worship him, and what the Bible says about Him. He discusses atheism, both theoretical and practical, and systematically explores God's omniscience, omnipotence, wisdom, power, and so forth.
The Life of God in the Soul of Man by Henry Scougal
All I can say is WOW! I fell flat on my face after reading this young man's terrifying insight. I cannot express in greater terms the absolute need to read this book. Look at the title of it. That's it isn't it? Galations 2:20: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and delivered Himself up for me".
Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis, is one of the very few sets of books that should be read three times: in childhood, early adulthood, and late in life. In brief, four children travel repeatedly to a world in which they are far more than mere children and everything is far more than it seems. Richly told, populated with fascinating characters, perfectly realized in detail of world and pacing of plot, and profoundly allegorical, the story is infused throughout with the timeless issues of good and evil, faith and hope. This boxed set edition includes all seven volumes.
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkein
Hobbits and wizards and Sauron--oh, my! Mild-mannered Oxford scholar John Ronald Reuel Tolkien had little inkling when he published The Hobbit; Or, There and Back Again in 1937 that, once hobbits were unleashed upon the world, there would be no turning back. Hobbits are, of course, small, furry creatures who love nothing better than a leisurely life quite free from adventure. But in that first novel and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the hobbits Bilbo and Frodo and their elfish friends get swept up into a mighty conflict with the dragon Smaug, the dark lord Sauron (who owes much to proud Satan in Paradise Lost), the monstrous Gollum, the Cracks of Doom, and the awful power of the magical Ring. The four books' characters--good and evil--are recognizably human, and the realism is deepened by the magnificent detail of the vast parallel world Tolkien devised, inspired partly by his influential Anglo-Saxon scholarship and his Christian beliefs. (He disapproved of the relative sparseness of detail in the comparable allegorical fantasy his friend C.S. Lewis dreamed up in The Chronicles of Narnia, though he knew Lewis had spun a page-turning yarn.) It has been estimated that one-tenth of all paperbacks sold can trace their ancestry to J.R.R. Tolkien. But even if we had never gotten Robert Jordan's The Path of Daggers and the whole fantasy genre Tolkien inadvertently created by bringing the hobbits so richly to life, Tolkien's epic about the Ring would have left our world enhanced by enchantment. --Tim Appelo
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
"All of Camus's literary work rests on his philosophical essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, which, taking its title from the legend of Sisyphus, and his eternal rock-pushing, analyzes a contemporary intillectual malady, the recognition of the absurdity of human life."
King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green
Retold out of the old romances, this collection of Arthurian tales endeavors to make each adventure--"The Quest for the Round Table, " "The First Quest of Sir Lancelot, " "How the Holy Grail Came to Camelot, " and so forth--part of a fixed pattern that effectively presents the whole story, as it does in Le Morte D'Arthur, but in a way less intimidating to young readers.
And now to prioritize my reading.....
-
From Bookstore to Hand - My Ever-Growing Reading List for 2007 (Nostalgia Edition)
Magic Bicycle: The Story of a Bicycle That Found a Boy by John Bibee
"Once there was a magic bicycle that found a boy," begins this tale of adventure and suspense. When John Kramer comes across an old, rusty Spirit Flyer bicycle, he finds it far from ordinary. First, the bike helps him save a neighbor's barn from burning. Then it brings him into conflict with the boys in the Cobra Club, a representative of Goliath Toys and other forces that not only want John's bike, but want it destroyed.While John learns abou the Magic in the bicycle, every reader will be delighted as they join him for this fantastic ride.
The Toy Campaign: The Plot to Trick a Town With Toys by John Bibee
What would happen if someone decided to trick a whole town--by giving them toys? But not just any toys, you understand. Toys that had a powerful and sinister effect on their owners. And what if only two children knew the evil plot was in the works?The magic continues as John and Susan Kramar speed through this book of mystery and adventure. As the Fourth of July approaches, they know some scheme is brewing. Armed only with bicycles that possess wonderful powers, their job is to find out what the plan is and stop it.
The Only Game in Town by John Bibee
Winner of a 1988 Christian Home and School C.S. Lewis Gold Medal award! Everyone wants to be Number One--the fastest, the smartest, the best looking. That's the way it was in Centerville. And the local toy store, run by Mrs. Happy, was all too willing to help by keeping track of all your points so everyone would know who was really on top. It was, after all, the only game in town.But Dan found himself at the bottom of this game. He was new in town and he had a limp. With two strikes like that against him, there was no way he could win. No way, that is, until Mrs. Happy offered to make him the envy of every kind in town. Would he accept, or would he follow the Spirit Flyers bicycles of John and Susan Kramar? Would he win the game and lose the biggest prize of all?Find out in another exciting adventure of magic and mystery from John Bibee.
Bicycle Hills: How One Halloween Almost Got Out of Hand by John Bibee
Uncle Bunkie, the clown, had every kid in Centerville buzzing. A new amusement park had opened just outside of town--Bicycle Hills. There were all kinds of games for anyone who wanted to have fun on a bike.There were other games too, like Caves and Cobras--games the chuldren weren't supposed to tell their parents about. But as Halloween approached, children and adults begin to wonder if the fun of pretending was getting out of handOnce again John Bibee spins a fascinating take as the magic of Spirit Flyer bicycles contronts mysterious forces trying to take over Centerville.
The Last Christmas: The Holiday Scheme to Stop Spirit Flyers by John Bibee
For Barry Smedlowe, Centerville would never be the same. Sloan Favor stole his clubhouse, then stole his party and finally stole his club members themselves. Everythign was falling to pieces. After the Halloween War, even the whole country seemed in turmoil. And the attempts of the ORDER Party to get the nation under control looked suspicious. Were they trying to fix the elections? Why did they put all the people with Spirit Flyers bicycles in jail?With the holidays drawing near and problems getting bigger and more complicated, Barry felt all alone. He could hardly imagine that what seemed like the last Christmas would actually become his first.
The Runaway Parents: The Parable of Problem Parents by John Bibee
What's a family to do when the parents get in trouble and run away from home? That's the problem the Kramers faced. The whole family had decided to follow the way of Spirit Flyers. But Mom and Dad turned against them and joined the powerful and sinister Goliath Industries--who were taking over not only Centerville, but the country and the world as well.Would they come back? Would the children be able to forgive them? Would Grandfather Kramer? Would the runaway parents be able to forgive themselves? Here is a fast-paced adventure with an enduring message.
The Perfect Star: Becoming Children of the True King by John Bibee
Tiffany Favor, the most popular girl in Centerville, always dreamed of being a movie star. Her mother and father certainly did all they could to help her be the best. Now Goliath Industries was giving her her big chance. But it could mean putting her family and the whole town in danger.Goliath's plans for Tiffany bring to a climax their efforts to take over Centerville and the whole country. Here is the dramatic conclusion of the battle between the forces of the Spirit Flyers and Goliath Industries.
The Journey of Wishes: A Trip That Changed John Adam for Good by John Bibee
Sent to live with cousins on a farm during World War II, young John Adam finds himself on a strange journey, astride a rusty tractor bearing the "Spirit Harvester" logo.
-
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
"Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray makes a Faustian bargain to sell his soul in exchange for eternal youth and beauty. Under the influence of Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, where he is able to indulge his desires while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only Dorian's picture bears the traces of his decadence." "A knowing account of a secret life and an analysis of the darker side of Victorian society, The Picture of Dorian Gray offers a disturbing portrait of an individual coming face to face with the reality of his soul."--BOOK JACKET.
The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story by Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen
"This is a marvelous book that everyone in the church would benefit from reading! Written by two professors at Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada, it tells the whole biblical story from Genesis to Revelation as a drama in six acts with an interlude in the middle. In the first three "acts" God establishes his kingdom (creation), there is rebellion in that kingdom (the Fall), and God through Israel initiates redemption. In the interlude (the "intertestamental period") God's kingdom story waits for an ending. Then the story is completed with the coming of the King (redemption accomplished), the spread of the news (the church's mission), and the return of the King (redemption completed). What is marvelous about this book is that it is written so creatively without cliches so the reader sees the biblical story as if for the first time. The authors are convinced that most people read the Bible as a mere jumble of history, poetry, lessons in morality and theology, comforting promises, guiding principles, and commands. They never realize that the Bible is fundamentally coherent and challenges the "idols" of modern culture. This book deserves a place in everyone's library" (Amazon reviewer "Professor of Theology").
So what books are on my 2007 reading list? I admit it's an ambitious list... and in no particular order... with no promises that I will actually achieve reading every book on the list.... but 14 books on the list so far is a good start, don't you think?"
title="I am currently reading two books. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde "Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray makes a Faustian bargain to sell his soul in exchange for eternal youth and beauty. Under the influence...">From the Bookstore to the Bookshelf to the Hand (My Reading List for 2007)
Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation by Graeme Goldsworthy
Graeme Goldsworthy examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief as it applies to the interpretation of the Bible. He then surveys the hemeneutical history of the Christian church in a attempt to see where alien approaches have deconstructed our way of reading Scripture. Finally, he reconstructs an evangelical hermeneutics rightly centered in the gospel and rightly influenced by the method of biblical theology.
This Beautiful Mess: Practicing the Presence of the Kingdom of God by Rick McKinley and David Kopp
"If all we value is the salvation gospel, we tend to miss the rest of Christ's message. Taken out of the context of the kingdom, the call to faith in Christ gets reduced to something less than the New Testament teaches. The reverse is also true: if we value a kingdom gospel at the expense of the liberating message of the Cross and the empty tomb and a call to repentance, we miss a central tenet of kingdom life. Without faith in Jesus, there is no transforming of our lives into the new world of the kingdom."
The Lamb of God by Robert Reymond
"The central theme of Holy Scripture is the unfolding revelation of its doctrinal teaching on Jesus as the 'slain Lamb of God'. The doctrine of Jesus as God's slain lamb runs like a thick cable from Genesis to Revelation binding the entirety of Scripture together. Indeed Revelation 13:8 speaks of Jesus as the lamb who was slain from the creation of the world, while 1 Peter 1:19-20 speaks of the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect who was chosen before the creation of the world. Reymond examines the biblical depictions concerning the Lamb of God – illuminating to us the central place that the suffering of the Messiah as God’s lamb occupies in God's eternal purpose and earths history. Christ's Lamb work is to be found throughout the Old and New Testaments and its pivotal importance for each of our lives is explored in depth."
Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture by Graeme Goldsworthy
"While strong, gospel-centered preaching abounds, many Christian pastors and lay preachers find it difficult to preach meaningfully from the Old Testament. This practical handbook offers help. Graeme Goldsworthy teaches the basics of preaching the whole Bible in a consistently Christ-centered way.
Goldsworthy first examines the Bible, biblical theology, and preaching and shows how they relate in the preparation of Christ-centered sermons. He then applies the biblical-theological method to the various types of literature found in the Bible, drawing out their contributions to expository preaching focused on the person and work of Christ.
Clear, complete, and immediately applicable, this volume will become a fundamental text for teachers, pastors, and students preparing for ministry."
The Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel The Main Thing by C.J. Mahaney
"Remember Jesus Christ? Although it seems almost too obvious, the center of our faith is surprisingly easy to forget. Dynamic pastor C.J. Mahaney shows how to overcome our tendency to move on from the gospel of grace. Finding joy in the gospel -- whose promises allow us to escape condemnation whenever it attacks -- helps us avoid the prevalent trap of legalism. With practical suggestions, Mahaney demonstrates the difference between knowing the gospel... and making it the main thing in daily decisions and daily living."
The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges
"We know we need grace. Without it we'd never come to Christ in the first place. But being a Christian is more than just coming to Christ. It's about growing and becoming more like Jesus. It's about pursing holiness. The pursuit of holiness is hard work, and that's were we turn from grace to discipline. Grace is every bit as important for growing as a Christian as it is for becoming a Christian in the first place. Grace is at the heart of the gospel, and without a clear understanding of the gospel and grace we can easily slip into a performance based lifestyle that bears little resemblance to what the gospel has to offer us. The Discipline Of Grace offers a clear and thorough explanation of the gospel and what it means to the believer, and how the same grace that brings us to faith in Christ also disciplines us in Christ, and how we learn to discipline ourselves in the areas of commitment, convictions, choices, watchfulness, and adversity. The Discipline Of Grace is highly recommended reading for anyone struggling to overcome the world in Christ."
Humility: True Greatness by C.J. Mahaney
"e Transformed by Christ's Example "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." - 1 Peter 5:5 A battle rages within every one of us every day. It's the clash between our sense of stubborn self-sufficiency and God's call to recognize that we're really nothing without Him. It's pride versus humility. And it's a fight we can't win without looking repeatedly to Christ and the cross. C. J. Mahaney raises a battle cry to daily, diligently, and deliberately weaken our greatest enemy (pride) and cultivate our greatest friend (humility). His thorough examination clarifies misconceptions, revealing the truth about why God detests pride and turns His active attention to the humble. Because pride is never passive, defeating it demands an intentional attack. The blessing that follows is God's abundant favor."
FrankensteinDon't Waste Your Life by John Piper
"John Piper writes, “I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider this story from the February 1998 Reader’s Digest: A couple ‘took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball and collect shells. . . .’ Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: ‘Look, Lord. See my shells.’ That is a tragedy.
“God created us to live with a single passion: to joyfully display his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life. The wasted life is the life without this passion. God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work not to be made much of, but to make much of him in every part of our lives.”
Most people slip by in life without a passion for God, spending their lives on trivial diversions, living for comfort and pleasure, and perhaps trying to avoid sin. This book will warn you not to get caught up in a life that counts for nothing. It will challenge you to live and die boasting in the cross of Christ and making the glory of God your singular passion. If you believe that to live is Christ and to die is gain, read this book, learn to live for Christ, and don’t waste your life!"
Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
"This companion volume to the Tales of Mystery and Imagination contains Edgar Allan Poe's best-known poetry, a selection of his very best stories (many of which originate in 1840s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque) along with his finest tales from the last decade of his tragically short life. Many of these stories and poems tell of familiar Poe themes of murder, obsession and love but this volume also contains many overlooked tales of the fantastic, black comedies, parodies and hoaxes such as "The Unparalleled Adventure of Hans Pfaall," "Mesmeric Revelation," "Hop-Frog" and "The Imp of the Perverse."
Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
"On December 27, 1831, the young naturalist Charles Darwin left Plymouth Harbor aboard the HMS Beagle. For the next five years, he conducted research on plants and animals from around the globe, amassing a body of evidence that would culminate in one of the greatest discoveries in the history of mankind - the theory of evolution" (from the publisher).
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
"You don't know about me, without you've read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain't no matter. The book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things he stretched, but mainly he told the truth."
Huckleberry Finn is being 'sivilized'. He has, rather inconveniently, come into the sum of six thousand dollars. The Widow Douglas has put him in a new suit of clothes, and is making him wash and go to school. He is not allowed to gape, stretch or smoke, and he is desperate to run away...
What began life as a sequel to Tom Sawyer quickly became one of the most important of all American novels. Mark Twain's story of a young hobo and a escaped slave who set off to find freedom on the Mississippi is an exuberant and nostalgic children's book, with subtle undertones of adult melancholy and yearning."
More to come....
-
Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation
Graeme Goldsworthy examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief as it applies to the interpretation of the Bible. He then surveys the hemeneutical history of the Christian church in a attempt to see where alien approaches have deconstructed our way of reading Scripture. Finally, he reconstructs an evangelical hermeneutics rightly centered in the gospel and rightly influenced by the method of biblical theology.
" title="Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation Graeme Goldsworthy examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief as it applies to the interpretation of the Bible. He then surveys the hemeneutical history of the Christian church in a...">From Bookstore to Bookshelf: (More) Books On My Reading List
This Beautiful Mess: Practicing the Presence of the Kingdom of God
"If all we value is the salvation gospel, we tend to miss the rest of Christ's message. Taken out of the context of the kingdom, the call to faith in Christ gets reduced to something less than the New Testament teaches. The reverse is also true: if we value a kingdom gospel at the expense of the liberating message of the Cross and the empty tomb and a call to repentance, we miss a central tenet of kingdom life. Without faith in Jesus, there is no transforming of our lives into the new world of the kingdom."
The Lamb of God by Robert Reymond
"The central theme of Holy Scripture is the unfolding revelation of its doctrinal teaching on Jesus as the 'slain Lamb of God'. The doctrine of Jesus as God's slain lamb runs like a thick cable from Genesis to Revelation binding the entirety of Scripture together. Indeed Revelation 13:8 speaks of Jesus as the lamb who was slain from the creation of the world, while 1 Peter 1:19-20 speaks of the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect who was chosen before the creation of the world. Reymond examines the biblical depictions concerning the Lamb of God – illuminating to us the central place that the suffering of the Messiah as God’s lamb occupies in God's eternal purpose and earths history. Christ's Lamb work is to be found throughout the Old and New Testaments and its pivotal importance for each of our lives is explored in depth."
Gospel Blogs
-
Let me explain."But if Jesus is who he said he is, and if his promises are as rewarding as the Bible claims they are, then we may discover that satisfaction in our lives and success in the church are not found in what our culture deems most important but in radical abandonment to Jesus." ~Platt p3
"'Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.' Now this is taking it to another level. Pick up an instrument of torture and follow me. This is getting plain weird...and kind of creepy. Imagine a leader coming on the scene today and inviting all who would come after him to pick up an electric chair and become his disciple. Any takers?
"As if this were not enough, Jesus finished his seeker-sensitive plea with a pull-at-your-heartstrings conclusion. 'Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.' Give up evertying you have, carry a cross, and hate your family. This sounds a lot different than 'Admit, believe, confess, and pray a prayer after me.'" ~Platt pp10-11
Throughout the book, there is a plea to surrender to Jesus, which is good, but the pleas are expressed either by making a person feel guilty or via a command to surrender.
There is no connection with the Gospel itself. How does my surrender flow from and out of the Gospel? How does my surrender to Jesus get motivated by Jesus' birth, life, death, and resurrection? This is the Gospel, and my surrender MUST, it MUST, flow out and from the Gospel.
The Gospel is mentioned but the "surrender to Jesus" is not connected WITH the Gospel.
Yes, we can "surrender to Jesus" but how do you know your surrender is sincere enough? How do you know your surrender to Jesus is surrender enough? Can you surrender EVERYTHING for Jesus?
Sure. We WANT to surrender everything, but the reality is, our sin touches every part of our being, sin corrupts our every molecule to such a degree that even our best surrender and abandonment to Jesus is as filthy or polluted rags before God. See Isaiah 64:6.
Ask yourself this: Can I absolutely, 100% abandon EVERYTHING in my life for Jesus? This means there is NO turning back; this means you cannot, even for a split second, think "wow, it'd be nice to have X for a moment" or "I miss X...."
I cannot do that. I want to. But I cannot DO it. It is a law I cannot fulfill.
But Jesus DID do it. For me. In my place. And it is HIS work of surrender and abandonment to God that I rest in.
Speaking of Jesus parable of the treasure in a field in Matthew 13:"This is the picture of Jesus in the gospel. He is something--someone--worth losing everything for. And if we walk away from the Jesus of the gospel, we walk away from eternal riches. The cost of non-discipleship is profoundly greater for us than the cost of discipleship. For when we abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus, we discover the infinite treasure of knowing and experiencing him."
This is very true, but this statement does not go far enough.
How does the Gospel motivate me to "abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus?"
Platt explains the Gospel very well, but there is a disconnect between the Gospel and its motivation of our doing.
Without this connection of our motivation with the Gospel, the command to surrender all is just a command, a heavy weight placed upon us we can never fulfill.
Show me the beauty of the Gospel, don't just tell me it's beautiful.
Let me quote large portions of Radical and let Platt speak for himself:"Biblical proclamation of the gospel beckons us to a much different response and leads us down a much different road. Here the gospel demands and enables us to turn from our sin, to take up our cross, to die to ourselves, and to follow Jesus. These are the terms and phrases we see in the Bible. And salvation now consists of a deep wrestling in our souls with the sinfulness of our hearts, the depth of our depravity, and the desperation of our need for his grace. Jesus is no longer one to be accepted or invited in but one who is infinitely worthy of our immediate and total surrender.
'You might think this sounds as though we have to earn our way to Jesus through radical obedience, but that is not the case at all. Indeed, 'it is by grace you [are] saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast.' We are saved from our sins by a free gift of grace, something that only God can do in us and that we cannot manufacture ourselves.
"But that gift of grace involves the gift of a new heart. New desires. New longings. For the first time, we want God. We see our need for him, and we love him. We seek after him, and we find him, and we discover that he is indeed the great reward of our salvation. We realize that we are saved not just to be forgiven of our sins or to be assured of our eternity in heaven, but we are saved to know God. So we yearn for him. We want him so much that we abandon everything else to experience him. This is the only proper response to the revelation of God in the gospel."This is why men and women around the world risk their lives to know more about him. This is why we must avoid cheap caricatures of Christianity that fail to exalt the revelation of God in his Word. This is why you and I cannot settle for anything less than a God-centered, Christ-exalting, self-denying gospel.
"I pray continually for this kind of hunger in the church God has given me to lead and in churches spread across our country's landscape. I pray that we will be a people who refuse to gorge our spiritual stomachs on the entertaining pleasures of this world, because we have chosen to find our satisfaction in the eternal treasure of his Word. I pray that God will awaken in your heart and mind a deep and abiding passion for the gospel as the grand revelation of God." ~Platt pp38-40
"The dangerous assumption we unknowingly accept in the American dream is that our greatest asset is our own ability. The American dream prizes what people can accomplish when they believe in themselves and trust in themselves, and we are drawn toward such thinking. But the gospel has different priorities. The gospel beckons us to die to ourselves and to believe in God and to trust in his power. In the gospel, God confronts us with our utter inability to accomplish anything of value apart from him. This is what Jesus meant when he said, 'I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.'" ~Platt p46
"It is the way of Christ. Instead of asserting ourselves, we crucify ourselves. Instead of imagining all the things we can accomplish, we ask God to do what only he can accomplish. Yes, we work, we plan, we organize, and we create, but we do it all while we fast, while we pray, and while we constantly confess our need for the provision of God. Instead of dependence on ourselves, we express radical desperation for the power of his Spirit, and we trust that Jesus stands ready to give us everything we ask for so that we might make much of our Father in the world.
Think about it. Would you say that your life is marked right now by desperation for the Spirit of God? Would you say that the church you are a part of is characterized by this sense of desperation?
Why would we ever want to settle for Christianity according to our ability or settle for church according to our resources? The power of the one who raised Jesus from the dead is living in us, and as a result we have no need to muster up our own might. Our great need is to fall before an almighty Father day and night and to plead for him to show his radical power in and through us, enabling us to accomplish for his glory what we could never imagine in our own strength. And when we do this, we will discover that we were created for a purpose much greater than ourselves, the kind of purpose that can only be accomplished in the power of his Spirit. ~Platt p60
Do you have this desperation for the Spirit of God? How do I know my desperation for the Spirit of God is enough?
I can tell you, my desperation will NEVER be desperate enough. My abandonment will NEVER be abandoning enough. To command me to do these things even in the context of the Gospel is still placing a law upon me I can never fulfill. Connect me to the Gospel. Connect my doing to the Gospel and that fruit will grow in my life because only my conforming into Christ's image will be done."'Abandon all, take up your cross and follow me.' If in responding to this command our stress is primarily upon our own responsibility, we will first look within, at the quality and sincerity of our own faith and repentance, rather than without, at the vicarious life and death of Christ. 'Gospel proclamation' that leads Christians to think mainly about what they must do, rather than mainly about what Jesus has done as our substitute inclines the hearers to stray from gospel-centered missional living.
"The good news of the gospel is that Jesus has done it all--for us and in our place. Only as we believe and live in the reality of what he has done are we progressively freed to live truly missional and radically obedient lives in a broken world.
"As we grow in understanding the reality of who Jesus is for us, we are progressively freed from our personal and missional paralysis and empowered to turn outward for the gospel-good of others. The good news of who Jesus was and is for us as the God-man turns dread into joy and frees us from self-preoccupation to move outward in mission."
All this to say, say these things; just say them in a different way--in a way in which the Gospel is my motivation not a command.
" >[Review] Radical - Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
-
Internet Monk (iMonk) wrote a Gospel-Centered article called The Man in the Shadow of Adultery.
Joshua Harris also has a few articles relating to love and lust taken from his book Sex is not the Problem (Lust is). Fighting Internet Porn (aka Purity Download - Tip 1). Purity Download - Tip 2. Purity Download - Tip 3. Purity Download - Tip 4. Too bad Joshua (and SGM) won't provide this great book as a free download.David Powlison from Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation has provided a free resource for pornography addiction - Breaking Pornography Addiction.And last but not least, Mark Driscoll has recently released a PDF book called Porn Again Christian. You can download it here. Be warned, Mark takes no hostages as he addresses the topic. It is a frank discussion.UPDATED (3/10/2011): Tim Challies wrote a book called Sexual Detox. You can find out more here: http://www.cruciformpress.com/our-books/sexual-detox/UPDATED (4/21/2011): Closing the Window: Steps to Living Porn Free by Tim Chester" >The Issue of the Gospel and Purity
-
Lord Foulgrin's Letters by Randy Alcorn
This repack of Randy Alcorn's gripping bestseller delivers us from ignorance of the devil's schemes. Foulgrin, a high-ranking demon, instructs his subordinate on how to deceive and destroy Jordan Fletcher and his family. It's like placing a bugging device in hell's war room, where we overhear our enemies assessing our weaknesses and strategizing attack. Lord Foulgrin's Letters is a Screwtape Letters for our day, equally fascinating yet destinctly different -- a dramatic story with earthly characters, setting, and plot. A creative, insightful, and biblical depiction of spiritual warfare, this book will guide readers to Christ-honoring counterstrategies for putting on the full armor of God and resisting the devil. Alcorn says to win the battle we must know our God, know ourselves, and know our enemy. Lord Foulgrin's Letters, in unparalleled and compelling fashion, helps us better know each.
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Dorothea Brooke, a young woman of impeccable character, marries the embittered Mr. Casaubon, who almost immediately dies. Eliot takes the reader through a labyrinth of nineteenth-century morals and conventions as Dorothea searches for fulfillment and happiness. Walter's delicious, upper-crust English accent and understated English inflections immerse the listener in a little-known world of hedgerows and manners. This reading would have been a complete success had the narrator only taken more care with the timing surrounding omitted sections of the abridged text. She races ahead without pause, often confounding the listener, who finds the action has suddenly moved to the next county--or country--without warning. A worthy, though flawed, presentation. R.B.F. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine"
title="I must actively stop looking for more books to add to my 2007 reading list. Here are the last few I have decided to place on the list. Again, I am not promising I'll be able to get to all...">From Bookstore to Hand (Even More on my 2007 Reading List)
The Existence and Attributes of God by Stephen Charnock
Stephen Charnock has written a book that deserves to be read prayerfully, slowly, and with your Bible open. A very comprehensive analysis of who God is, what His role is in our lives, why we should worship him, and what the Bible says about Him. He discusses atheism, both theoretical and practical, and systematically explores God's omniscience, omnipotence, wisdom, power, and so forth.
The Life of God in the Soul of Man by Henry Scougal
All I can say is WOW! I fell flat on my face after reading this young man's terrifying insight. I cannot express in greater terms the absolute need to read this book. Look at the title of it. That's it isn't it? Galations 2:20: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and delivered Himself up for me".
Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis, is one of the very few sets of books that should be read three times: in childhood, early adulthood, and late in life. In brief, four children travel repeatedly to a world in which they are far more than mere children and everything is far more than it seems. Richly told, populated with fascinating characters, perfectly realized in detail of world and pacing of plot, and profoundly allegorical, the story is infused throughout with the timeless issues of good and evil, faith and hope. This boxed set edition includes all seven volumes.
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkein
Hobbits and wizards and Sauron--oh, my! Mild-mannered Oxford scholar John Ronald Reuel Tolkien had little inkling when he published The Hobbit; Or, There and Back Again in 1937 that, once hobbits were unleashed upon the world, there would be no turning back. Hobbits are, of course, small, furry creatures who love nothing better than a leisurely life quite free from adventure. But in that first novel and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the hobbits Bilbo and Frodo and their elfish friends get swept up into a mighty conflict with the dragon Smaug, the dark lord Sauron (who owes much to proud Satan in Paradise Lost), the monstrous Gollum, the Cracks of Doom, and the awful power of the magical Ring. The four books' characters--good and evil--are recognizably human, and the realism is deepened by the magnificent detail of the vast parallel world Tolkien devised, inspired partly by his influential Anglo-Saxon scholarship and his Christian beliefs. (He disapproved of the relative sparseness of detail in the comparable allegorical fantasy his friend C.S. Lewis dreamed up in The Chronicles of Narnia, though he knew Lewis had spun a page-turning yarn.) It has been estimated that one-tenth of all paperbacks sold can trace their ancestry to J.R.R. Tolkien. But even if we had never gotten Robert Jordan's The Path of Daggers and the whole fantasy genre Tolkien inadvertently created by bringing the hobbits so richly to life, Tolkien's epic about the Ring would have left our world enhanced by enchantment. --Tim Appelo
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
"All of Camus's literary work rests on his philosophical essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, which, taking its title from the legend of Sisyphus, and his eternal rock-pushing, analyzes a contemporary intillectual malady, the recognition of the absurdity of human life."
King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green
Retold out of the old romances, this collection of Arthurian tales endeavors to make each adventure--"The Quest for the Round Table, " "The First Quest of Sir Lancelot, " "How the Holy Grail Came to Camelot, " and so forth--part of a fixed pattern that effectively presents the whole story, as it does in Le Morte D'Arthur, but in a way less intimidating to young readers.
And now to prioritize my reading.....
-
From Bookstore to Hand - My Ever-Growing Reading List for 2007 (Nostalgia Edition)
Magic Bicycle: The Story of a Bicycle That Found a Boy by John Bibee
"Once there was a magic bicycle that found a boy," begins this tale of adventure and suspense. When John Kramer comes across an old, rusty Spirit Flyer bicycle, he finds it far from ordinary. First, the bike helps him save a neighbor's barn from burning. Then it brings him into conflict with the boys in the Cobra Club, a representative of Goliath Toys and other forces that not only want John's bike, but want it destroyed.While John learns abou the Magic in the bicycle, every reader will be delighted as they join him for this fantastic ride.
The Toy Campaign: The Plot to Trick a Town With Toys by John Bibee
What would happen if someone decided to trick a whole town--by giving them toys? But not just any toys, you understand. Toys that had a powerful and sinister effect on their owners. And what if only two children knew the evil plot was in the works?The magic continues as John and Susan Kramar speed through this book of mystery and adventure. As the Fourth of July approaches, they know some scheme is brewing. Armed only with bicycles that possess wonderful powers, their job is to find out what the plan is and stop it.
The Only Game in Town by John Bibee
Winner of a 1988 Christian Home and School C.S. Lewis Gold Medal award! Everyone wants to be Number One--the fastest, the smartest, the best looking. That's the way it was in Centerville. And the local toy store, run by Mrs. Happy, was all too willing to help by keeping track of all your points so everyone would know who was really on top. It was, after all, the only game in town.But Dan found himself at the bottom of this game. He was new in town and he had a limp. With two strikes like that against him, there was no way he could win. No way, that is, until Mrs. Happy offered to make him the envy of every kind in town. Would he accept, or would he follow the Spirit Flyers bicycles of John and Susan Kramar? Would he win the game and lose the biggest prize of all?Find out in another exciting adventure of magic and mystery from John Bibee.
Bicycle Hills: How One Halloween Almost Got Out of Hand by John Bibee
Uncle Bunkie, the clown, had every kid in Centerville buzzing. A new amusement park had opened just outside of town--Bicycle Hills. There were all kinds of games for anyone who wanted to have fun on a bike.There were other games too, like Caves and Cobras--games the chuldren weren't supposed to tell their parents about. But as Halloween approached, children and adults begin to wonder if the fun of pretending was getting out of handOnce again John Bibee spins a fascinating take as the magic of Spirit Flyer bicycles contronts mysterious forces trying to take over Centerville.
The Last Christmas: The Holiday Scheme to Stop Spirit Flyers by John Bibee
For Barry Smedlowe, Centerville would never be the same. Sloan Favor stole his clubhouse, then stole his party and finally stole his club members themselves. Everythign was falling to pieces. After the Halloween War, even the whole country seemed in turmoil. And the attempts of the ORDER Party to get the nation under control looked suspicious. Were they trying to fix the elections? Why did they put all the people with Spirit Flyers bicycles in jail?With the holidays drawing near and problems getting bigger and more complicated, Barry felt all alone. He could hardly imagine that what seemed like the last Christmas would actually become his first.
The Runaway Parents: The Parable of Problem Parents by John Bibee
What's a family to do when the parents get in trouble and run away from home? That's the problem the Kramers faced. The whole family had decided to follow the way of Spirit Flyers. But Mom and Dad turned against them and joined the powerful and sinister Goliath Industries--who were taking over not only Centerville, but the country and the world as well.Would they come back? Would the children be able to forgive them? Would Grandfather Kramer? Would the runaway parents be able to forgive themselves? Here is a fast-paced adventure with an enduring message.
The Perfect Star: Becoming Children of the True King by John Bibee
Tiffany Favor, the most popular girl in Centerville, always dreamed of being a movie star. Her mother and father certainly did all they could to help her be the best. Now Goliath Industries was giving her her big chance. But it could mean putting her family and the whole town in danger.Goliath's plans for Tiffany bring to a climax their efforts to take over Centerville and the whole country. Here is the dramatic conclusion of the battle between the forces of the Spirit Flyers and Goliath Industries.
The Journey of Wishes: A Trip That Changed John Adam for Good by John Bibee
Sent to live with cousins on a farm during World War II, young John Adam finds himself on a strange journey, astride a rusty tractor bearing the "Spirit Harvester" logo.
-
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
"Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray makes a Faustian bargain to sell his soul in exchange for eternal youth and beauty. Under the influence of Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, where he is able to indulge his desires while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only Dorian's picture bears the traces of his decadence." "A knowing account of a secret life and an analysis of the darker side of Victorian society, The Picture of Dorian Gray offers a disturbing portrait of an individual coming face to face with the reality of his soul."--BOOK JACKET.
The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story by Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen
"This is a marvelous book that everyone in the church would benefit from reading! Written by two professors at Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada, it tells the whole biblical story from Genesis to Revelation as a drama in six acts with an interlude in the middle. In the first three "acts" God establishes his kingdom (creation), there is rebellion in that kingdom (the Fall), and God through Israel initiates redemption. In the interlude (the "intertestamental period") God's kingdom story waits for an ending. Then the story is completed with the coming of the King (redemption accomplished), the spread of the news (the church's mission), and the return of the King (redemption completed). What is marvelous about this book is that it is written so creatively without cliches so the reader sees the biblical story as if for the first time. The authors are convinced that most people read the Bible as a mere jumble of history, poetry, lessons in morality and theology, comforting promises, guiding principles, and commands. They never realize that the Bible is fundamentally coherent and challenges the "idols" of modern culture. This book deserves a place in everyone's library" (Amazon reviewer "Professor of Theology").
So what books are on my 2007 reading list? I admit it's an ambitious list... and in no particular order... with no promises that I will actually achieve reading every book on the list.... but 14 books on the list so far is a good start, don't you think?"
title="I am currently reading two books. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde "Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray makes a Faustian bargain to sell his soul in exchange for eternal youth and beauty. Under the influence...">From the Bookstore to the Bookshelf to the Hand (My Reading List for 2007)
Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation by Graeme Goldsworthy
Graeme Goldsworthy examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief as it applies to the interpretation of the Bible. He then surveys the hemeneutical history of the Christian church in a attempt to see where alien approaches have deconstructed our way of reading Scripture. Finally, he reconstructs an evangelical hermeneutics rightly centered in the gospel and rightly influenced by the method of biblical theology.
This Beautiful Mess: Practicing the Presence of the Kingdom of God by Rick McKinley and David Kopp
"If all we value is the salvation gospel, we tend to miss the rest of Christ's message. Taken out of the context of the kingdom, the call to faith in Christ gets reduced to something less than the New Testament teaches. The reverse is also true: if we value a kingdom gospel at the expense of the liberating message of the Cross and the empty tomb and a call to repentance, we miss a central tenet of kingdom life. Without faith in Jesus, there is no transforming of our lives into the new world of the kingdom."
The Lamb of God by Robert Reymond
"The central theme of Holy Scripture is the unfolding revelation of its doctrinal teaching on Jesus as the 'slain Lamb of God'. The doctrine of Jesus as God's slain lamb runs like a thick cable from Genesis to Revelation binding the entirety of Scripture together. Indeed Revelation 13:8 speaks of Jesus as the lamb who was slain from the creation of the world, while 1 Peter 1:19-20 speaks of the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect who was chosen before the creation of the world. Reymond examines the biblical depictions concerning the Lamb of God – illuminating to us the central place that the suffering of the Messiah as God’s lamb occupies in God's eternal purpose and earths history. Christ's Lamb work is to be found throughout the Old and New Testaments and its pivotal importance for each of our lives is explored in depth."
Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture by Graeme Goldsworthy
"While strong, gospel-centered preaching abounds, many Christian pastors and lay preachers find it difficult to preach meaningfully from the Old Testament. This practical handbook offers help. Graeme Goldsworthy teaches the basics of preaching the whole Bible in a consistently Christ-centered way.
Goldsworthy first examines the Bible, biblical theology, and preaching and shows how they relate in the preparation of Christ-centered sermons. He then applies the biblical-theological method to the various types of literature found in the Bible, drawing out their contributions to expository preaching focused on the person and work of Christ.
Clear, complete, and immediately applicable, this volume will become a fundamental text for teachers, pastors, and students preparing for ministry."
The Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel The Main Thing by C.J. Mahaney
"Remember Jesus Christ? Although it seems almost too obvious, the center of our faith is surprisingly easy to forget. Dynamic pastor C.J. Mahaney shows how to overcome our tendency to move on from the gospel of grace. Finding joy in the gospel -- whose promises allow us to escape condemnation whenever it attacks -- helps us avoid the prevalent trap of legalism. With practical suggestions, Mahaney demonstrates the difference between knowing the gospel... and making it the main thing in daily decisions and daily living."
The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges
"We know we need grace. Without it we'd never come to Christ in the first place. But being a Christian is more than just coming to Christ. It's about growing and becoming more like Jesus. It's about pursing holiness. The pursuit of holiness is hard work, and that's were we turn from grace to discipline. Grace is every bit as important for growing as a Christian as it is for becoming a Christian in the first place. Grace is at the heart of the gospel, and without a clear understanding of the gospel and grace we can easily slip into a performance based lifestyle that bears little resemblance to what the gospel has to offer us. The Discipline Of Grace offers a clear and thorough explanation of the gospel and what it means to the believer, and how the same grace that brings us to faith in Christ also disciplines us in Christ, and how we learn to discipline ourselves in the areas of commitment, convictions, choices, watchfulness, and adversity. The Discipline Of Grace is highly recommended reading for anyone struggling to overcome the world in Christ."
Humility: True Greatness by C.J. Mahaney
"e Transformed by Christ's Example "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." - 1 Peter 5:5 A battle rages within every one of us every day. It's the clash between our sense of stubborn self-sufficiency and God's call to recognize that we're really nothing without Him. It's pride versus humility. And it's a fight we can't win without looking repeatedly to Christ and the cross. C. J. Mahaney raises a battle cry to daily, diligently, and deliberately weaken our greatest enemy (pride) and cultivate our greatest friend (humility). His thorough examination clarifies misconceptions, revealing the truth about why God detests pride and turns His active attention to the humble. Because pride is never passive, defeating it demands an intentional attack. The blessing that follows is God's abundant favor."
FrankensteinDon't Waste Your Life by John Piper
"John Piper writes, “I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider this story from the February 1998 Reader’s Digest: A couple ‘took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball and collect shells. . . .’ Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: ‘Look, Lord. See my shells.’ That is a tragedy.
“God created us to live with a single passion: to joyfully display his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life. The wasted life is the life without this passion. God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work not to be made much of, but to make much of him in every part of our lives.”
Most people slip by in life without a passion for God, spending their lives on trivial diversions, living for comfort and pleasure, and perhaps trying to avoid sin. This book will warn you not to get caught up in a life that counts for nothing. It will challenge you to live and die boasting in the cross of Christ and making the glory of God your singular passion. If you believe that to live is Christ and to die is gain, read this book, learn to live for Christ, and don’t waste your life!"
Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
"This companion volume to the Tales of Mystery and Imagination contains Edgar Allan Poe's best-known poetry, a selection of his very best stories (many of which originate in 1840s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque) along with his finest tales from the last decade of his tragically short life. Many of these stories and poems tell of familiar Poe themes of murder, obsession and love but this volume also contains many overlooked tales of the fantastic, black comedies, parodies and hoaxes such as "The Unparalleled Adventure of Hans Pfaall," "Mesmeric Revelation," "Hop-Frog" and "The Imp of the Perverse."
Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
"On December 27, 1831, the young naturalist Charles Darwin left Plymouth Harbor aboard the HMS Beagle. For the next five years, he conducted research on plants and animals from around the globe, amassing a body of evidence that would culminate in one of the greatest discoveries in the history of mankind - the theory of evolution" (from the publisher).
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
"You don't know about me, without you've read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain't no matter. The book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things he stretched, but mainly he told the truth."
Huckleberry Finn is being 'sivilized'. He has, rather inconveniently, come into the sum of six thousand dollars. The Widow Douglas has put him in a new suit of clothes, and is making him wash and go to school. He is not allowed to gape, stretch or smoke, and he is desperate to run away...
What began life as a sequel to Tom Sawyer quickly became one of the most important of all American novels. Mark Twain's story of a young hobo and a escaped slave who set off to find freedom on the Mississippi is an exuberant and nostalgic children's book, with subtle undertones of adult melancholy and yearning."
More to come....
-
Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation
Graeme Goldsworthy examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief as it applies to the interpretation of the Bible. He then surveys the hemeneutical history of the Christian church in a attempt to see where alien approaches have deconstructed our way of reading Scripture. Finally, he reconstructs an evangelical hermeneutics rightly centered in the gospel and rightly influenced by the method of biblical theology.
" title="Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation Graeme Goldsworthy examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief as it applies to the interpretation of the Bible. He then surveys the hemeneutical history of the Christian church in a...">From Bookstore to Bookshelf: (More) Books On My Reading List
This Beautiful Mess: Practicing the Presence of the Kingdom of God
"If all we value is the salvation gospel, we tend to miss the rest of Christ's message. Taken out of the context of the kingdom, the call to faith in Christ gets reduced to something less than the New Testament teaches. The reverse is also true: if we value a kingdom gospel at the expense of the liberating message of the Cross and the empty tomb and a call to repentance, we miss a central tenet of kingdom life. Without faith in Jesus, there is no transforming of our lives into the new world of the kingdom."
The Lamb of God by Robert Reymond
"The central theme of Holy Scripture is the unfolding revelation of its doctrinal teaching on Jesus as the 'slain Lamb of God'. The doctrine of Jesus as God's slain lamb runs like a thick cable from Genesis to Revelation binding the entirety of Scripture together. Indeed Revelation 13:8 speaks of Jesus as the lamb who was slain from the creation of the world, while 1 Peter 1:19-20 speaks of the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect who was chosen before the creation of the world. Reymond examines the biblical depictions concerning the Lamb of God – illuminating to us the central place that the suffering of the Messiah as God’s lamb occupies in God's eternal purpose and earths history. Christ's Lamb work is to be found throughout the Old and New Testaments and its pivotal importance for each of our lives is explored in depth."
Gospel-Centered Audio Sermons
-
Let me explain."But if Jesus is who he said he is, and if his promises are as rewarding as the Bible claims they are, then we may discover that satisfaction in our lives and success in the church are not found in what our culture deems most important but in radical abandonment to Jesus." ~Platt p3
"'Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.' Now this is taking it to another level. Pick up an instrument of torture and follow me. This is getting plain weird...and kind of creepy. Imagine a leader coming on the scene today and inviting all who would come after him to pick up an electric chair and become his disciple. Any takers?
"As if this were not enough, Jesus finished his seeker-sensitive plea with a pull-at-your-heartstrings conclusion. 'Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.' Give up evertying you have, carry a cross, and hate your family. This sounds a lot different than 'Admit, believe, confess, and pray a prayer after me.'" ~Platt pp10-11
Throughout the book, there is a plea to surrender to Jesus, which is good, but the pleas are expressed either by making a person feel guilty or via a command to surrender.
There is no connection with the Gospel itself. How does my surrender flow from and out of the Gospel? How does my surrender to Jesus get motivated by Jesus' birth, life, death, and resurrection? This is the Gospel, and my surrender MUST, it MUST, flow out and from the Gospel.
The Gospel is mentioned but the "surrender to Jesus" is not connected WITH the Gospel.
Yes, we can "surrender to Jesus" but how do you know your surrender is sincere enough? How do you know your surrender to Jesus is surrender enough? Can you surrender EVERYTHING for Jesus?
Sure. We WANT to surrender everything, but the reality is, our sin touches every part of our being, sin corrupts our every molecule to such a degree that even our best surrender and abandonment to Jesus is as filthy or polluted rags before God. See Isaiah 64:6.
Ask yourself this: Can I absolutely, 100% abandon EVERYTHING in my life for Jesus? This means there is NO turning back; this means you cannot, even for a split second, think "wow, it'd be nice to have X for a moment" or "I miss X...."
I cannot do that. I want to. But I cannot DO it. It is a law I cannot fulfill.
But Jesus DID do it. For me. In my place. And it is HIS work of surrender and abandonment to God that I rest in.
Speaking of Jesus parable of the treasure in a field in Matthew 13:"This is the picture of Jesus in the gospel. He is something--someone--worth losing everything for. And if we walk away from the Jesus of the gospel, we walk away from eternal riches. The cost of non-discipleship is profoundly greater for us than the cost of discipleship. For when we abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus, we discover the infinite treasure of knowing and experiencing him."
This is very true, but this statement does not go far enough.
How does the Gospel motivate me to "abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus?"
Platt explains the Gospel very well, but there is a disconnect between the Gospel and its motivation of our doing.
Without this connection of our motivation with the Gospel, the command to surrender all is just a command, a heavy weight placed upon us we can never fulfill.
Show me the beauty of the Gospel, don't just tell me it's beautiful.
Let me quote large portions of Radical and let Platt speak for himself:"Biblical proclamation of the gospel beckons us to a much different response and leads us down a much different road. Here the gospel demands and enables us to turn from our sin, to take up our cross, to die to ourselves, and to follow Jesus. These are the terms and phrases we see in the Bible. And salvation now consists of a deep wrestling in our souls with the sinfulness of our hearts, the depth of our depravity, and the desperation of our need for his grace. Jesus is no longer one to be accepted or invited in but one who is infinitely worthy of our immediate and total surrender.
'You might think this sounds as though we have to earn our way to Jesus through radical obedience, but that is not the case at all. Indeed, 'it is by grace you [are] saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast.' We are saved from our sins by a free gift of grace, something that only God can do in us and that we cannot manufacture ourselves.
"But that gift of grace involves the gift of a new heart. New desires. New longings. For the first time, we want God. We see our need for him, and we love him. We seek after him, and we find him, and we discover that he is indeed the great reward of our salvation. We realize that we are saved not just to be forgiven of our sins or to be assured of our eternity in heaven, but we are saved to know God. So we yearn for him. We want him so much that we abandon everything else to experience him. This is the only proper response to the revelation of God in the gospel."This is why men and women around the world risk their lives to know more about him. This is why we must avoid cheap caricatures of Christianity that fail to exalt the revelation of God in his Word. This is why you and I cannot settle for anything less than a God-centered, Christ-exalting, self-denying gospel.
"I pray continually for this kind of hunger in the church God has given me to lead and in churches spread across our country's landscape. I pray that we will be a people who refuse to gorge our spiritual stomachs on the entertaining pleasures of this world, because we have chosen to find our satisfaction in the eternal treasure of his Word. I pray that God will awaken in your heart and mind a deep and abiding passion for the gospel as the grand revelation of God." ~Platt pp38-40
"The dangerous assumption we unknowingly accept in the American dream is that our greatest asset is our own ability. The American dream prizes what people can accomplish when they believe in themselves and trust in themselves, and we are drawn toward such thinking. But the gospel has different priorities. The gospel beckons us to die to ourselves and to believe in God and to trust in his power. In the gospel, God confronts us with our utter inability to accomplish anything of value apart from him. This is what Jesus meant when he said, 'I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.'" ~Platt p46
"It is the way of Christ. Instead of asserting ourselves, we crucify ourselves. Instead of imagining all the things we can accomplish, we ask God to do what only he can accomplish. Yes, we work, we plan, we organize, and we create, but we do it all while we fast, while we pray, and while we constantly confess our need for the provision of God. Instead of dependence on ourselves, we express radical desperation for the power of his Spirit, and we trust that Jesus stands ready to give us everything we ask for so that we might make much of our Father in the world.
Think about it. Would you say that your life is marked right now by desperation for the Spirit of God? Would you say that the church you are a part of is characterized by this sense of desperation?
Why would we ever want to settle for Christianity according to our ability or settle for church according to our resources? The power of the one who raised Jesus from the dead is living in us, and as a result we have no need to muster up our own might. Our great need is to fall before an almighty Father day and night and to plead for him to show his radical power in and through us, enabling us to accomplish for his glory what we could never imagine in our own strength. And when we do this, we will discover that we were created for a purpose much greater than ourselves, the kind of purpose that can only be accomplished in the power of his Spirit. ~Platt p60
Do you have this desperation for the Spirit of God? How do I know my desperation for the Spirit of God is enough?
I can tell you, my desperation will NEVER be desperate enough. My abandonment will NEVER be abandoning enough. To command me to do these things even in the context of the Gospel is still placing a law upon me I can never fulfill. Connect me to the Gospel. Connect my doing to the Gospel and that fruit will grow in my life because only my conforming into Christ's image will be done."'Abandon all, take up your cross and follow me.' If in responding to this command our stress is primarily upon our own responsibility, we will first look within, at the quality and sincerity of our own faith and repentance, rather than without, at the vicarious life and death of Christ. 'Gospel proclamation' that leads Christians to think mainly about what they must do, rather than mainly about what Jesus has done as our substitute inclines the hearers to stray from gospel-centered missional living.
"The good news of the gospel is that Jesus has done it all--for us and in our place. Only as we believe and live in the reality of what he has done are we progressively freed to live truly missional and radically obedient lives in a broken world.
"As we grow in understanding the reality of who Jesus is for us, we are progressively freed from our personal and missional paralysis and empowered to turn outward for the gospel-good of others. The good news of who Jesus was and is for us as the God-man turns dread into joy and frees us from self-preoccupation to move outward in mission."
All this to say, say these things; just say them in a different way--in a way in which the Gospel is my motivation not a command.
" >[Review] Radical - Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
-
Internet Monk (iMonk) wrote a Gospel-Centered article called The Man in the Shadow of Adultery.
Joshua Harris also has a few articles relating to love and lust taken from his book Sex is not the Problem (Lust is). Fighting Internet Porn (aka Purity Download - Tip 1). Purity Download - Tip 2. Purity Download - Tip 3. Purity Download - Tip 4. Too bad Joshua (and SGM) won't provide this great book as a free download.David Powlison from Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation has provided a free resource for pornography addiction - Breaking Pornography Addiction.And last but not least, Mark Driscoll has recently released a PDF book called Porn Again Christian. You can download it here. Be warned, Mark takes no hostages as he addresses the topic. It is a frank discussion.UPDATED (3/10/2011): Tim Challies wrote a book called Sexual Detox. You can find out more here: http://www.cruciformpress.com/our-books/sexual-detox/UPDATED (4/21/2011): Closing the Window: Steps to Living Porn Free by Tim Chester" >The Issue of the Gospel and Purity
-
Lord Foulgrin's Letters by Randy Alcorn
This repack of Randy Alcorn's gripping bestseller delivers us from ignorance of the devil's schemes. Foulgrin, a high-ranking demon, instructs his subordinate on how to deceive and destroy Jordan Fletcher and his family. It's like placing a bugging device in hell's war room, where we overhear our enemies assessing our weaknesses and strategizing attack. Lord Foulgrin's Letters is a Screwtape Letters for our day, equally fascinating yet destinctly different -- a dramatic story with earthly characters, setting, and plot. A creative, insightful, and biblical depiction of spiritual warfare, this book will guide readers to Christ-honoring counterstrategies for putting on the full armor of God and resisting the devil. Alcorn says to win the battle we must know our God, know ourselves, and know our enemy. Lord Foulgrin's Letters, in unparalleled and compelling fashion, helps us better know each.
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Dorothea Brooke, a young woman of impeccable character, marries the embittered Mr. Casaubon, who almost immediately dies. Eliot takes the reader through a labyrinth of nineteenth-century morals and conventions as Dorothea searches for fulfillment and happiness. Walter's delicious, upper-crust English accent and understated English inflections immerse the listener in a little-known world of hedgerows and manners. This reading would have been a complete success had the narrator only taken more care with the timing surrounding omitted sections of the abridged text. She races ahead without pause, often confounding the listener, who finds the action has suddenly moved to the next county--or country--without warning. A worthy, though flawed, presentation. R.B.F. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine"
title="I must actively stop looking for more books to add to my 2007 reading list. Here are the last few I have decided to place on the list. Again, I am not promising I'll be able to get to all...">From Bookstore to Hand (Even More on my 2007 Reading List)
The Existence and Attributes of God by Stephen Charnock
Stephen Charnock has written a book that deserves to be read prayerfully, slowly, and with your Bible open. A very comprehensive analysis of who God is, what His role is in our lives, why we should worship him, and what the Bible says about Him. He discusses atheism, both theoretical and practical, and systematically explores God's omniscience, omnipotence, wisdom, power, and so forth.
The Life of God in the Soul of Man by Henry Scougal
All I can say is WOW! I fell flat on my face after reading this young man's terrifying insight. I cannot express in greater terms the absolute need to read this book. Look at the title of it. That's it isn't it? Galations 2:20: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and delivered Himself up for me".
Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis, is one of the very few sets of books that should be read three times: in childhood, early adulthood, and late in life. In brief, four children travel repeatedly to a world in which they are far more than mere children and everything is far more than it seems. Richly told, populated with fascinating characters, perfectly realized in detail of world and pacing of plot, and profoundly allegorical, the story is infused throughout with the timeless issues of good and evil, faith and hope. This boxed set edition includes all seven volumes.
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkein
Hobbits and wizards and Sauron--oh, my! Mild-mannered Oxford scholar John Ronald Reuel Tolkien had little inkling when he published The Hobbit; Or, There and Back Again in 1937 that, once hobbits were unleashed upon the world, there would be no turning back. Hobbits are, of course, small, furry creatures who love nothing better than a leisurely life quite free from adventure. But in that first novel and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the hobbits Bilbo and Frodo and their elfish friends get swept up into a mighty conflict with the dragon Smaug, the dark lord Sauron (who owes much to proud Satan in Paradise Lost), the monstrous Gollum, the Cracks of Doom, and the awful power of the magical Ring. The four books' characters--good and evil--are recognizably human, and the realism is deepened by the magnificent detail of the vast parallel world Tolkien devised, inspired partly by his influential Anglo-Saxon scholarship and his Christian beliefs. (He disapproved of the relative sparseness of detail in the comparable allegorical fantasy his friend C.S. Lewis dreamed up in The Chronicles of Narnia, though he knew Lewis had spun a page-turning yarn.) It has been estimated that one-tenth of all paperbacks sold can trace their ancestry to J.R.R. Tolkien. But even if we had never gotten Robert Jordan's The Path of Daggers and the whole fantasy genre Tolkien inadvertently created by bringing the hobbits so richly to life, Tolkien's epic about the Ring would have left our world enhanced by enchantment. --Tim Appelo
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
"All of Camus's literary work rests on his philosophical essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, which, taking its title from the legend of Sisyphus, and his eternal rock-pushing, analyzes a contemporary intillectual malady, the recognition of the absurdity of human life."
King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green
Retold out of the old romances, this collection of Arthurian tales endeavors to make each adventure--"The Quest for the Round Table, " "The First Quest of Sir Lancelot, " "How the Holy Grail Came to Camelot, " and so forth--part of a fixed pattern that effectively presents the whole story, as it does in Le Morte D'Arthur, but in a way less intimidating to young readers.
And now to prioritize my reading.....
-
From Bookstore to Hand - My Ever-Growing Reading List for 2007 (Nostalgia Edition)
Magic Bicycle: The Story of a Bicycle That Found a Boy by John Bibee
"Once there was a magic bicycle that found a boy," begins this tale of adventure and suspense. When John Kramer comes across an old, rusty Spirit Flyer bicycle, he finds it far from ordinary. First, the bike helps him save a neighbor's barn from burning. Then it brings him into conflict with the boys in the Cobra Club, a representative of Goliath Toys and other forces that not only want John's bike, but want it destroyed.While John learns abou the Magic in the bicycle, every reader will be delighted as they join him for this fantastic ride.
The Toy Campaign: The Plot to Trick a Town With Toys by John Bibee
What would happen if someone decided to trick a whole town--by giving them toys? But not just any toys, you understand. Toys that had a powerful and sinister effect on their owners. And what if only two children knew the evil plot was in the works?The magic continues as John and Susan Kramar speed through this book of mystery and adventure. As the Fourth of July approaches, they know some scheme is brewing. Armed only with bicycles that possess wonderful powers, their job is to find out what the plan is and stop it.
The Only Game in Town by John Bibee
Winner of a 1988 Christian Home and School C.S. Lewis Gold Medal award! Everyone wants to be Number One--the fastest, the smartest, the best looking. That's the way it was in Centerville. And the local toy store, run by Mrs. Happy, was all too willing to help by keeping track of all your points so everyone would know who was really on top. It was, after all, the only game in town.But Dan found himself at the bottom of this game. He was new in town and he had a limp. With two strikes like that against him, there was no way he could win. No way, that is, until Mrs. Happy offered to make him the envy of every kind in town. Would he accept, or would he follow the Spirit Flyers bicycles of John and Susan Kramar? Would he win the game and lose the biggest prize of all?Find out in another exciting adventure of magic and mystery from John Bibee.
Bicycle Hills: How One Halloween Almost Got Out of Hand by John Bibee
Uncle Bunkie, the clown, had every kid in Centerville buzzing. A new amusement park had opened just outside of town--Bicycle Hills. There were all kinds of games for anyone who wanted to have fun on a bike.There were other games too, like Caves and Cobras--games the chuldren weren't supposed to tell their parents about. But as Halloween approached, children and adults begin to wonder if the fun of pretending was getting out of handOnce again John Bibee spins a fascinating take as the magic of Spirit Flyer bicycles contronts mysterious forces trying to take over Centerville.
The Last Christmas: The Holiday Scheme to Stop Spirit Flyers by John Bibee
For Barry Smedlowe, Centerville would never be the same. Sloan Favor stole his clubhouse, then stole his party and finally stole his club members themselves. Everythign was falling to pieces. After the Halloween War, even the whole country seemed in turmoil. And the attempts of the ORDER Party to get the nation under control looked suspicious. Were they trying to fix the elections? Why did they put all the people with Spirit Flyers bicycles in jail?With the holidays drawing near and problems getting bigger and more complicated, Barry felt all alone. He could hardly imagine that what seemed like the last Christmas would actually become his first.
The Runaway Parents: The Parable of Problem Parents by John Bibee
What's a family to do when the parents get in trouble and run away from home? That's the problem the Kramers faced. The whole family had decided to follow the way of Spirit Flyers. But Mom and Dad turned against them and joined the powerful and sinister Goliath Industries--who were taking over not only Centerville, but the country and the world as well.Would they come back? Would the children be able to forgive them? Would Grandfather Kramer? Would the runaway parents be able to forgive themselves? Here is a fast-paced adventure with an enduring message.
The Perfect Star: Becoming Children of the True King by John Bibee
Tiffany Favor, the most popular girl in Centerville, always dreamed of being a movie star. Her mother and father certainly did all they could to help her be the best. Now Goliath Industries was giving her her big chance. But it could mean putting her family and the whole town in danger.Goliath's plans for Tiffany bring to a climax their efforts to take over Centerville and the whole country. Here is the dramatic conclusion of the battle between the forces of the Spirit Flyers and Goliath Industries.
The Journey of Wishes: A Trip That Changed John Adam for Good by John Bibee
Sent to live with cousins on a farm during World War II, young John Adam finds himself on a strange journey, astride a rusty tractor bearing the "Spirit Harvester" logo.
-
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
"Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray makes a Faustian bargain to sell his soul in exchange for eternal youth and beauty. Under the influence of Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, where he is able to indulge his desires while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only Dorian's picture bears the traces of his decadence." "A knowing account of a secret life and an analysis of the darker side of Victorian society, The Picture of Dorian Gray offers a disturbing portrait of an individual coming face to face with the reality of his soul."--BOOK JACKET.
The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story by Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen
"This is a marvelous book that everyone in the church would benefit from reading! Written by two professors at Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada, it tells the whole biblical story from Genesis to Revelation as a drama in six acts with an interlude in the middle. In the first three "acts" God establishes his kingdom (creation), there is rebellion in that kingdom (the Fall), and God through Israel initiates redemption. In the interlude (the "intertestamental period") God's kingdom story waits for an ending. Then the story is completed with the coming of the King (redemption accomplished), the spread of the news (the church's mission), and the return of the King (redemption completed). What is marvelous about this book is that it is written so creatively without cliches so the reader sees the biblical story as if for the first time. The authors are convinced that most people read the Bible as a mere jumble of history, poetry, lessons in morality and theology, comforting promises, guiding principles, and commands. They never realize that the Bible is fundamentally coherent and challenges the "idols" of modern culture. This book deserves a place in everyone's library" (Amazon reviewer "Professor of Theology").
So what books are on my 2007 reading list? I admit it's an ambitious list... and in no particular order... with no promises that I will actually achieve reading every book on the list.... but 14 books on the list so far is a good start, don't you think?"
title="I am currently reading two books. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde "Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray makes a Faustian bargain to sell his soul in exchange for eternal youth and beauty. Under the influence...">From the Bookstore to the Bookshelf to the Hand (My Reading List for 2007)
Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation by Graeme Goldsworthy
Graeme Goldsworthy examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief as it applies to the interpretation of the Bible. He then surveys the hemeneutical history of the Christian church in a attempt to see where alien approaches have deconstructed our way of reading Scripture. Finally, he reconstructs an evangelical hermeneutics rightly centered in the gospel and rightly influenced by the method of biblical theology.
This Beautiful Mess: Practicing the Presence of the Kingdom of God by Rick McKinley and David Kopp
"If all we value is the salvation gospel, we tend to miss the rest of Christ's message. Taken out of the context of the kingdom, the call to faith in Christ gets reduced to something less than the New Testament teaches. The reverse is also true: if we value a kingdom gospel at the expense of the liberating message of the Cross and the empty tomb and a call to repentance, we miss a central tenet of kingdom life. Without faith in Jesus, there is no transforming of our lives into the new world of the kingdom."
The Lamb of God by Robert Reymond
"The central theme of Holy Scripture is the unfolding revelation of its doctrinal teaching on Jesus as the 'slain Lamb of God'. The doctrine of Jesus as God's slain lamb runs like a thick cable from Genesis to Revelation binding the entirety of Scripture together. Indeed Revelation 13:8 speaks of Jesus as the lamb who was slain from the creation of the world, while 1 Peter 1:19-20 speaks of the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect who was chosen before the creation of the world. Reymond examines the biblical depictions concerning the Lamb of God – illuminating to us the central place that the suffering of the Messiah as God’s lamb occupies in God's eternal purpose and earths history. Christ's Lamb work is to be found throughout the Old and New Testaments and its pivotal importance for each of our lives is explored in depth."
Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture by Graeme Goldsworthy
"While strong, gospel-centered preaching abounds, many Christian pastors and lay preachers find it difficult to preach meaningfully from the Old Testament. This practical handbook offers help. Graeme Goldsworthy teaches the basics of preaching the whole Bible in a consistently Christ-centered way.
Goldsworthy first examines the Bible, biblical theology, and preaching and shows how they relate in the preparation of Christ-centered sermons. He then applies the biblical-theological method to the various types of literature found in the Bible, drawing out their contributions to expository preaching focused on the person and work of Christ.
Clear, complete, and immediately applicable, this volume will become a fundamental text for teachers, pastors, and students preparing for ministry."
The Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel The Main Thing by C.J. Mahaney
"Remember Jesus Christ? Although it seems almost too obvious, the center of our faith is surprisingly easy to forget. Dynamic pastor C.J. Mahaney shows how to overcome our tendency to move on from the gospel of grace. Finding joy in the gospel -- whose promises allow us to escape condemnation whenever it attacks -- helps us avoid the prevalent trap of legalism. With practical suggestions, Mahaney demonstrates the difference between knowing the gospel... and making it the main thing in daily decisions and daily living."
The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges
"We know we need grace. Without it we'd never come to Christ in the first place. But being a Christian is more than just coming to Christ. It's about growing and becoming more like Jesus. It's about pursing holiness. The pursuit of holiness is hard work, and that's were we turn from grace to discipline. Grace is every bit as important for growing as a Christian as it is for becoming a Christian in the first place. Grace is at the heart of the gospel, and without a clear understanding of the gospel and grace we can easily slip into a performance based lifestyle that bears little resemblance to what the gospel has to offer us. The Discipline Of Grace offers a clear and thorough explanation of the gospel and what it means to the believer, and how the same grace that brings us to faith in Christ also disciplines us in Christ, and how we learn to discipline ourselves in the areas of commitment, convictions, choices, watchfulness, and adversity. The Discipline Of Grace is highly recommended reading for anyone struggling to overcome the world in Christ."
Humility: True Greatness by C.J. Mahaney
"e Transformed by Christ's Example "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." - 1 Peter 5:5 A battle rages within every one of us every day. It's the clash between our sense of stubborn self-sufficiency and God's call to recognize that we're really nothing without Him. It's pride versus humility. And it's a fight we can't win without looking repeatedly to Christ and the cross. C. J. Mahaney raises a battle cry to daily, diligently, and deliberately weaken our greatest enemy (pride) and cultivate our greatest friend (humility). His thorough examination clarifies misconceptions, revealing the truth about why God detests pride and turns His active attention to the humble. Because pride is never passive, defeating it demands an intentional attack. The blessing that follows is God's abundant favor."
FrankensteinDon't Waste Your Life by John Piper
"John Piper writes, “I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider this story from the February 1998 Reader’s Digest: A couple ‘took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball and collect shells. . . .’ Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: ‘Look, Lord. See my shells.’ That is a tragedy.
“God created us to live with a single passion: to joyfully display his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life. The wasted life is the life without this passion. God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work not to be made much of, but to make much of him in every part of our lives.”
Most people slip by in life without a passion for God, spending their lives on trivial diversions, living for comfort and pleasure, and perhaps trying to avoid sin. This book will warn you not to get caught up in a life that counts for nothing. It will challenge you to live and die boasting in the cross of Christ and making the glory of God your singular passion. If you believe that to live is Christ and to die is gain, read this book, learn to live for Christ, and don’t waste your life!"
Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
"This companion volume to the Tales of Mystery and Imagination contains Edgar Allan Poe's best-known poetry, a selection of his very best stories (many of which originate in 1840s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque) along with his finest tales from the last decade of his tragically short life. Many of these stories and poems tell of familiar Poe themes of murder, obsession and love but this volume also contains many overlooked tales of the fantastic, black comedies, parodies and hoaxes such as "The Unparalleled Adventure of Hans Pfaall," "Mesmeric Revelation," "Hop-Frog" and "The Imp of the Perverse."
Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
"On December 27, 1831, the young naturalist Charles Darwin left Plymouth Harbor aboard the HMS Beagle. For the next five years, he conducted research on plants and animals from around the globe, amassing a body of evidence that would culminate in one of the greatest discoveries in the history of mankind - the theory of evolution" (from the publisher).
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
"You don't know about me, without you've read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain't no matter. The book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things he stretched, but mainly he told the truth."
Huckleberry Finn is being 'sivilized'. He has, rather inconveniently, come into the sum of six thousand dollars. The Widow Douglas has put him in a new suit of clothes, and is making him wash and go to school. He is not allowed to gape, stretch or smoke, and he is desperate to run away...
What began life as a sequel to Tom Sawyer quickly became one of the most important of all American novels. Mark Twain's story of a young hobo and a escaped slave who set off to find freedom on the Mississippi is an exuberant and nostalgic children's book, with subtle undertones of adult melancholy and yearning."
More to come....
-
Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation
Graeme Goldsworthy examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief as it applies to the interpretation of the Bible. He then surveys the hemeneutical history of the Christian church in a attempt to see where alien approaches have deconstructed our way of reading Scripture. Finally, he reconstructs an evangelical hermeneutics rightly centered in the gospel and rightly influenced by the method of biblical theology.
" title="Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation Graeme Goldsworthy examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief as it applies to the interpretation of the Bible. He then surveys the hemeneutical history of the Christian church in a...">From Bookstore to Bookshelf: (More) Books On My Reading List
This Beautiful Mess: Practicing the Presence of the Kingdom of God
"If all we value is the salvation gospel, we tend to miss the rest of Christ's message. Taken out of the context of the kingdom, the call to faith in Christ gets reduced to something less than the New Testament teaches. The reverse is also true: if we value a kingdom gospel at the expense of the liberating message of the Cross and the empty tomb and a call to repentance, we miss a central tenet of kingdom life. Without faith in Jesus, there is no transforming of our lives into the new world of the kingdom."
The Lamb of God by Robert Reymond
"The central theme of Holy Scripture is the unfolding revelation of its doctrinal teaching on Jesus as the 'slain Lamb of God'. The doctrine of Jesus as God's slain lamb runs like a thick cable from Genesis to Revelation binding the entirety of Scripture together. Indeed Revelation 13:8 speaks of Jesus as the lamb who was slain from the creation of the world, while 1 Peter 1:19-20 speaks of the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect who was chosen before the creation of the world. Reymond examines the biblical depictions concerning the Lamb of God – illuminating to us the central place that the suffering of the Messiah as God’s lamb occupies in God's eternal purpose and earths history. Christ's Lamb work is to be found throughout the Old and New Testaments and its pivotal importance for each of our lives is explored in depth."
News
-
Let me explain."But if Jesus is who he said he is, and if his promises are as rewarding as the Bible claims they are, then we may discover that satisfaction in our lives and success in the church are not found in what our culture deems most important but in radical abandonment to Jesus." ~Platt p3
"'Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.' Now this is taking it to another level. Pick up an instrument of torture and follow me. This is getting plain weird...and kind of creepy. Imagine a leader coming on the scene today and inviting all who would come after him to pick up an electric chair and become his disciple. Any takers?
"As if this were not enough, Jesus finished his seeker-sensitive plea with a pull-at-your-heartstrings conclusion. 'Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.' Give up evertying you have, carry a cross, and hate your family. This sounds a lot different than 'Admit, believe, confess, and pray a prayer after me.'" ~Platt pp10-11
Throughout the book, there is a plea to surrender to Jesus, which is good, but the pleas are expressed either by making a person feel guilty or via a command to surrender.
There is no connection with the Gospel itself. How does my surrender flow from and out of the Gospel? How does my surrender to Jesus get motivated by Jesus' birth, life, death, and resurrection? This is the Gospel, and my surrender MUST, it MUST, flow out and from the Gospel.
The Gospel is mentioned but the "surrender to Jesus" is not connected WITH the Gospel.
Yes, we can "surrender to Jesus" but how do you know your surrender is sincere enough? How do you know your surrender to Jesus is surrender enough? Can you surrender EVERYTHING for Jesus?
Sure. We WANT to surrender everything, but the reality is, our sin touches every part of our being, sin corrupts our every molecule to such a degree that even our best surrender and abandonment to Jesus is as filthy or polluted rags before God. See Isaiah 64:6.
Ask yourself this: Can I absolutely, 100% abandon EVERYTHING in my life for Jesus? This means there is NO turning back; this means you cannot, even for a split second, think "wow, it'd be nice to have X for a moment" or "I miss X...."
I cannot do that. I want to. But I cannot DO it. It is a law I cannot fulfill.
But Jesus DID do it. For me. In my place. And it is HIS work of surrender and abandonment to God that I rest in.
Speaking of Jesus parable of the treasure in a field in Matthew 13:"This is the picture of Jesus in the gospel. He is something--someone--worth losing everything for. And if we walk away from the Jesus of the gospel, we walk away from eternal riches. The cost of non-discipleship is profoundly greater for us than the cost of discipleship. For when we abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus, we discover the infinite treasure of knowing and experiencing him."
This is very true, but this statement does not go far enough.
How does the Gospel motivate me to "abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus?"
Platt explains the Gospel very well, but there is a disconnect between the Gospel and its motivation of our doing.
Without this connection of our motivation with the Gospel, the command to surrender all is just a command, a heavy weight placed upon us we can never fulfill.
Show me the beauty of the Gospel, don't just tell me it's beautiful.
Let me quote large portions of Radical and let Platt speak for himself:"Biblical proclamation of the gospel beckons us to a much different response and leads us down a much different road. Here the gospel demands and enables us to turn from our sin, to take up our cross, to die to ourselves, and to follow Jesus. These are the terms and phrases we see in the Bible. And salvation now consists of a deep wrestling in our souls with the sinfulness of our hearts, the depth of our depravity, and the desperation of our need for his grace. Jesus is no longer one to be accepted or invited in but one who is infinitely worthy of our immediate and total surrender.
'You might think this sounds as though we have to earn our way to Jesus through radical obedience, but that is not the case at all. Indeed, 'it is by grace you [are] saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast.' We are saved from our sins by a free gift of grace, something that only God can do in us and that we cannot manufacture ourselves.
"But that gift of grace involves the gift of a new heart. New desires. New longings. For the first time, we want God. We see our need for him, and we love him. We seek after him, and we find him, and we discover that he is indeed the great reward of our salvation. We realize that we are saved not just to be forgiven of our sins or to be assured of our eternity in heaven, but we are saved to know God. So we yearn for him. We want him so much that we abandon everything else to experience him. This is the only proper response to the revelation of God in the gospel."This is why men and women around the world risk their lives to know more about him. This is why we must avoid cheap caricatures of Christianity that fail to exalt the revelation of God in his Word. This is why you and I cannot settle for anything less than a God-centered, Christ-exalting, self-denying gospel.
"I pray continually for this kind of hunger in the church God has given me to lead and in churches spread across our country's landscape. I pray that we will be a people who refuse to gorge our spiritual stomachs on the entertaining pleasures of this world, because we have chosen to find our satisfaction in the eternal treasure of his Word. I pray that God will awaken in your heart and mind a deep and abiding passion for the gospel as the grand revelation of God." ~Platt pp38-40
"The dangerous assumption we unknowingly accept in the American dream is that our greatest asset is our own ability. The American dream prizes what people can accomplish when they believe in themselves and trust in themselves, and we are drawn toward such thinking. But the gospel has different priorities. The gospel beckons us to die to ourselves and to believe in God and to trust in his power. In the gospel, God confronts us with our utter inability to accomplish anything of value apart from him. This is what Jesus meant when he said, 'I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.'" ~Platt p46
"It is the way of Christ. Instead of asserting ourselves, we crucify ourselves. Instead of imagining all the things we can accomplish, we ask God to do what only he can accomplish. Yes, we work, we plan, we organize, and we create, but we do it all while we fast, while we pray, and while we constantly confess our need for the provision of God. Instead of dependence on ourselves, we express radical desperation for the power of his Spirit, and we trust that Jesus stands ready to give us everything we ask for so that we might make much of our Father in the world.
Think about it. Would you say that your life is marked right now by desperation for the Spirit of God? Would you say that the church you are a part of is characterized by this sense of desperation?
Why would we ever want to settle for Christianity according to our ability or settle for church according to our resources? The power of the one who raised Jesus from the dead is living in us, and as a result we have no need to muster up our own might. Our great need is to fall before an almighty Father day and night and to plead for him to show his radical power in and through us, enabling us to accomplish for his glory what we could never imagine in our own strength. And when we do this, we will discover that we were created for a purpose much greater than ourselves, the kind of purpose that can only be accomplished in the power of his Spirit. ~Platt p60
Do you have this desperation for the Spirit of God? How do I know my desperation for the Spirit of God is enough?
I can tell you, my desperation will NEVER be desperate enough. My abandonment will NEVER be abandoning enough. To command me to do these things even in the context of the Gospel is still placing a law upon me I can never fulfill. Connect me to the Gospel. Connect my doing to the Gospel and that fruit will grow in my life because only my conforming into Christ's image will be done."'Abandon all, take up your cross and follow me.' If in responding to this command our stress is primarily upon our own responsibility, we will first look within, at the quality and sincerity of our own faith and repentance, rather than without, at the vicarious life and death of Christ. 'Gospel proclamation' that leads Christians to think mainly about what they must do, rather than mainly about what Jesus has done as our substitute inclines the hearers to stray from gospel-centered missional living.
"The good news of the gospel is that Jesus has done it all--for us and in our place. Only as we believe and live in the reality of what he has done are we progressively freed to live truly missional and radically obedient lives in a broken world.
"As we grow in understanding the reality of who Jesus is for us, we are progressively freed from our personal and missional paralysis and empowered to turn outward for the gospel-good of others. The good news of who Jesus was and is for us as the God-man turns dread into joy and frees us from self-preoccupation to move outward in mission."
All this to say, say these things; just say them in a different way--in a way in which the Gospel is my motivation not a command.
" >[Review] Radical - Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
-
Internet Monk (iMonk) wrote a Gospel-Centered article called The Man in the Shadow of Adultery.
Joshua Harris also has a few articles relating to love and lust taken from his book Sex is not the Problem (Lust is). Fighting Internet Porn (aka Purity Download - Tip 1). Purity Download - Tip 2. Purity Download - Tip 3. Purity Download - Tip 4. Too bad Joshua (and SGM) won't provide this great book as a free download.David Powlison from Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation has provided a free resource for pornography addiction - Breaking Pornography Addiction.And last but not least, Mark Driscoll has recently released a PDF book called Porn Again Christian. You can download it here. Be warned, Mark takes no hostages as he addresses the topic. It is a frank discussion.UPDATED (3/10/2011): Tim Challies wrote a book called Sexual Detox. You can find out more here: http://www.cruciformpress.com/our-books/sexual-detox/UPDATED (4/21/2011): Closing the Window: Steps to Living Porn Free by Tim Chester" >The Issue of the Gospel and Purity
-
Lord Foulgrin's Letters by Randy Alcorn
This repack of Randy Alcorn's gripping bestseller delivers us from ignorance of the devil's schemes. Foulgrin, a high-ranking demon, instructs his subordinate on how to deceive and destroy Jordan Fletcher and his family. It's like placing a bugging device in hell's war room, where we overhear our enemies assessing our weaknesses and strategizing attack. Lord Foulgrin's Letters is a Screwtape Letters for our day, equally fascinating yet destinctly different -- a dramatic story with earthly characters, setting, and plot. A creative, insightful, and biblical depiction of spiritual warfare, this book will guide readers to Christ-honoring counterstrategies for putting on the full armor of God and resisting the devil. Alcorn says to win the battle we must know our God, know ourselves, and know our enemy. Lord Foulgrin's Letters, in unparalleled and compelling fashion, helps us better know each.
Middlemarch by George Eliot
Dorothea Brooke, a young woman of impeccable character, marries the embittered Mr. Casaubon, who almost immediately dies. Eliot takes the reader through a labyrinth of nineteenth-century morals and conventions as Dorothea searches for fulfillment and happiness. Walter's delicious, upper-crust English accent and understated English inflections immerse the listener in a little-known world of hedgerows and manners. This reading would have been a complete success had the narrator only taken more care with the timing surrounding omitted sections of the abridged text. She races ahead without pause, often confounding the listener, who finds the action has suddenly moved to the next county--or country--without warning. A worthy, though flawed, presentation. R.B.F. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine"
title="I must actively stop looking for more books to add to my 2007 reading list. Here are the last few I have decided to place on the list. Again, I am not promising I'll be able to get to all...">From Bookstore to Hand (Even More on my 2007 Reading List)
The Existence and Attributes of God by Stephen Charnock
Stephen Charnock has written a book that deserves to be read prayerfully, slowly, and with your Bible open. A very comprehensive analysis of who God is, what His role is in our lives, why we should worship him, and what the Bible says about Him. He discusses atheism, both theoretical and practical, and systematically explores God's omniscience, omnipotence, wisdom, power, and so forth.
The Life of God in the Soul of Man by Henry Scougal
All I can say is WOW! I fell flat on my face after reading this young man's terrifying insight. I cannot express in greater terms the absolute need to read this book. Look at the title of it. That's it isn't it? Galations 2:20: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and delivered Himself up for me".
Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis, is one of the very few sets of books that should be read three times: in childhood, early adulthood, and late in life. In brief, four children travel repeatedly to a world in which they are far more than mere children and everything is far more than it seems. Richly told, populated with fascinating characters, perfectly realized in detail of world and pacing of plot, and profoundly allegorical, the story is infused throughout with the timeless issues of good and evil, faith and hope. This boxed set edition includes all seven volumes.
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkein
Hobbits and wizards and Sauron--oh, my! Mild-mannered Oxford scholar John Ronald Reuel Tolkien had little inkling when he published The Hobbit; Or, There and Back Again in 1937 that, once hobbits were unleashed upon the world, there would be no turning back. Hobbits are, of course, small, furry creatures who love nothing better than a leisurely life quite free from adventure. But in that first novel and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the hobbits Bilbo and Frodo and their elfish friends get swept up into a mighty conflict with the dragon Smaug, the dark lord Sauron (who owes much to proud Satan in Paradise Lost), the monstrous Gollum, the Cracks of Doom, and the awful power of the magical Ring. The four books' characters--good and evil--are recognizably human, and the realism is deepened by the magnificent detail of the vast parallel world Tolkien devised, inspired partly by his influential Anglo-Saxon scholarship and his Christian beliefs. (He disapproved of the relative sparseness of detail in the comparable allegorical fantasy his friend C.S. Lewis dreamed up in The Chronicles of Narnia, though he knew Lewis had spun a page-turning yarn.) It has been estimated that one-tenth of all paperbacks sold can trace their ancestry to J.R.R. Tolkien. But even if we had never gotten Robert Jordan's The Path of Daggers and the whole fantasy genre Tolkien inadvertently created by bringing the hobbits so richly to life, Tolkien's epic about the Ring would have left our world enhanced by enchantment. --Tim Appelo
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus
"All of Camus's literary work rests on his philosophical essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, which, taking its title from the legend of Sisyphus, and his eternal rock-pushing, analyzes a contemporary intillectual malady, the recognition of the absurdity of human life."
King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green
Retold out of the old romances, this collection of Arthurian tales endeavors to make each adventure--"The Quest for the Round Table, " "The First Quest of Sir Lancelot, " "How the Holy Grail Came to Camelot, " and so forth--part of a fixed pattern that effectively presents the whole story, as it does in Le Morte D'Arthur, but in a way less intimidating to young readers.
And now to prioritize my reading.....
-
From Bookstore to Hand - My Ever-Growing Reading List for 2007 (Nostalgia Edition)
Magic Bicycle: The Story of a Bicycle That Found a Boy by John Bibee
"Once there was a magic bicycle that found a boy," begins this tale of adventure and suspense. When John Kramer comes across an old, rusty Spirit Flyer bicycle, he finds it far from ordinary. First, the bike helps him save a neighbor's barn from burning. Then it brings him into conflict with the boys in the Cobra Club, a representative of Goliath Toys and other forces that not only want John's bike, but want it destroyed.While John learns abou the Magic in the bicycle, every reader will be delighted as they join him for this fantastic ride.
The Toy Campaign: The Plot to Trick a Town With Toys by John Bibee
What would happen if someone decided to trick a whole town--by giving them toys? But not just any toys, you understand. Toys that had a powerful and sinister effect on their owners. And what if only two children knew the evil plot was in the works?The magic continues as John and Susan Kramar speed through this book of mystery and adventure. As the Fourth of July approaches, they know some scheme is brewing. Armed only with bicycles that possess wonderful powers, their job is to find out what the plan is and stop it.
The Only Game in Town by John Bibee
Winner of a 1988 Christian Home and School C.S. Lewis Gold Medal award! Everyone wants to be Number One--the fastest, the smartest, the best looking. That's the way it was in Centerville. And the local toy store, run by Mrs. Happy, was all too willing to help by keeping track of all your points so everyone would know who was really on top. It was, after all, the only game in town.But Dan found himself at the bottom of this game. He was new in town and he had a limp. With two strikes like that against him, there was no way he could win. No way, that is, until Mrs. Happy offered to make him the envy of every kind in town. Would he accept, or would he follow the Spirit Flyers bicycles of John and Susan Kramar? Would he win the game and lose the biggest prize of all?Find out in another exciting adventure of magic and mystery from John Bibee.
Bicycle Hills: How One Halloween Almost Got Out of Hand by John Bibee
Uncle Bunkie, the clown, had every kid in Centerville buzzing. A new amusement park had opened just outside of town--Bicycle Hills. There were all kinds of games for anyone who wanted to have fun on a bike.There were other games too, like Caves and Cobras--games the chuldren weren't supposed to tell their parents about. But as Halloween approached, children and adults begin to wonder if the fun of pretending was getting out of handOnce again John Bibee spins a fascinating take as the magic of Spirit Flyer bicycles contronts mysterious forces trying to take over Centerville.
The Last Christmas: The Holiday Scheme to Stop Spirit Flyers by John Bibee
For Barry Smedlowe, Centerville would never be the same. Sloan Favor stole his clubhouse, then stole his party and finally stole his club members themselves. Everythign was falling to pieces. After the Halloween War, even the whole country seemed in turmoil. And the attempts of the ORDER Party to get the nation under control looked suspicious. Were they trying to fix the elections? Why did they put all the people with Spirit Flyers bicycles in jail?With the holidays drawing near and problems getting bigger and more complicated, Barry felt all alone. He could hardly imagine that what seemed like the last Christmas would actually become his first.
The Runaway Parents: The Parable of Problem Parents by John Bibee
What's a family to do when the parents get in trouble and run away from home? That's the problem the Kramers faced. The whole family had decided to follow the way of Spirit Flyers. But Mom and Dad turned against them and joined the powerful and sinister Goliath Industries--who were taking over not only Centerville, but the country and the world as well.Would they come back? Would the children be able to forgive them? Would Grandfather Kramer? Would the runaway parents be able to forgive themselves? Here is a fast-paced adventure with an enduring message.
The Perfect Star: Becoming Children of the True King by John Bibee
Tiffany Favor, the most popular girl in Centerville, always dreamed of being a movie star. Her mother and father certainly did all they could to help her be the best. Now Goliath Industries was giving her her big chance. But it could mean putting her family and the whole town in danger.Goliath's plans for Tiffany bring to a climax their efforts to take over Centerville and the whole country. Here is the dramatic conclusion of the battle between the forces of the Spirit Flyers and Goliath Industries.
The Journey of Wishes: A Trip That Changed John Adam for Good by John Bibee
Sent to live with cousins on a farm during World War II, young John Adam finds himself on a strange journey, astride a rusty tractor bearing the "Spirit Harvester" logo.
-
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
"Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray makes a Faustian bargain to sell his soul in exchange for eternal youth and beauty. Under the influence of Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, where he is able to indulge his desires while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only Dorian's picture bears the traces of his decadence." "A knowing account of a secret life and an analysis of the darker side of Victorian society, The Picture of Dorian Gray offers a disturbing portrait of an individual coming face to face with the reality of his soul."--BOOK JACKET.
The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story by Craig G. Bartholomew and Michael W. Goheen
"This is a marvelous book that everyone in the church would benefit from reading! Written by two professors at Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada, it tells the whole biblical story from Genesis to Revelation as a drama in six acts with an interlude in the middle. In the first three "acts" God establishes his kingdom (creation), there is rebellion in that kingdom (the Fall), and God through Israel initiates redemption. In the interlude (the "intertestamental period") God's kingdom story waits for an ending. Then the story is completed with the coming of the King (redemption accomplished), the spread of the news (the church's mission), and the return of the King (redemption completed). What is marvelous about this book is that it is written so creatively without cliches so the reader sees the biblical story as if for the first time. The authors are convinced that most people read the Bible as a mere jumble of history, poetry, lessons in morality and theology, comforting promises, guiding principles, and commands. They never realize that the Bible is fundamentally coherent and challenges the "idols" of modern culture. This book deserves a place in everyone's library" (Amazon reviewer "Professor of Theology").
So what books are on my 2007 reading list? I admit it's an ambitious list... and in no particular order... with no promises that I will actually achieve reading every book on the list.... but 14 books on the list so far is a good start, don't you think?"
title="I am currently reading two books. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde "Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray makes a Faustian bargain to sell his soul in exchange for eternal youth and beauty. Under the influence...">From the Bookstore to the Bookshelf to the Hand (My Reading List for 2007)
Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation by Graeme Goldsworthy
Graeme Goldsworthy examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief as it applies to the interpretation of the Bible. He then surveys the hemeneutical history of the Christian church in a attempt to see where alien approaches have deconstructed our way of reading Scripture. Finally, he reconstructs an evangelical hermeneutics rightly centered in the gospel and rightly influenced by the method of biblical theology.
This Beautiful Mess: Practicing the Presence of the Kingdom of God by Rick McKinley and David Kopp
"If all we value is the salvation gospel, we tend to miss the rest of Christ's message. Taken out of the context of the kingdom, the call to faith in Christ gets reduced to something less than the New Testament teaches. The reverse is also true: if we value a kingdom gospel at the expense of the liberating message of the Cross and the empty tomb and a call to repentance, we miss a central tenet of kingdom life. Without faith in Jesus, there is no transforming of our lives into the new world of the kingdom."
The Lamb of God by Robert Reymond
"The central theme of Holy Scripture is the unfolding revelation of its doctrinal teaching on Jesus as the 'slain Lamb of God'. The doctrine of Jesus as God's slain lamb runs like a thick cable from Genesis to Revelation binding the entirety of Scripture together. Indeed Revelation 13:8 speaks of Jesus as the lamb who was slain from the creation of the world, while 1 Peter 1:19-20 speaks of the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect who was chosen before the creation of the world. Reymond examines the biblical depictions concerning the Lamb of God – illuminating to us the central place that the suffering of the Messiah as God’s lamb occupies in God's eternal purpose and earths history. Christ's Lamb work is to be found throughout the Old and New Testaments and its pivotal importance for each of our lives is explored in depth."
Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture by Graeme Goldsworthy
"While strong, gospel-centered preaching abounds, many Christian pastors and lay preachers find it difficult to preach meaningfully from the Old Testament. This practical handbook offers help. Graeme Goldsworthy teaches the basics of preaching the whole Bible in a consistently Christ-centered way.
Goldsworthy first examines the Bible, biblical theology, and preaching and shows how they relate in the preparation of Christ-centered sermons. He then applies the biblical-theological method to the various types of literature found in the Bible, drawing out their contributions to expository preaching focused on the person and work of Christ.
Clear, complete, and immediately applicable, this volume will become a fundamental text for teachers, pastors, and students preparing for ministry."
The Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel The Main Thing by C.J. Mahaney
"Remember Jesus Christ? Although it seems almost too obvious, the center of our faith is surprisingly easy to forget. Dynamic pastor C.J. Mahaney shows how to overcome our tendency to move on from the gospel of grace. Finding joy in the gospel -- whose promises allow us to escape condemnation whenever it attacks -- helps us avoid the prevalent trap of legalism. With practical suggestions, Mahaney demonstrates the difference between knowing the gospel... and making it the main thing in daily decisions and daily living."
The Discipline of Grace by Jerry Bridges
"We know we need grace. Without it we'd never come to Christ in the first place. But being a Christian is more than just coming to Christ. It's about growing and becoming more like Jesus. It's about pursing holiness. The pursuit of holiness is hard work, and that's were we turn from grace to discipline. Grace is every bit as important for growing as a Christian as it is for becoming a Christian in the first place. Grace is at the heart of the gospel, and without a clear understanding of the gospel and grace we can easily slip into a performance based lifestyle that bears little resemblance to what the gospel has to offer us. The Discipline Of Grace offers a clear and thorough explanation of the gospel and what it means to the believer, and how the same grace that brings us to faith in Christ also disciplines us in Christ, and how we learn to discipline ourselves in the areas of commitment, convictions, choices, watchfulness, and adversity. The Discipline Of Grace is highly recommended reading for anyone struggling to overcome the world in Christ."
Humility: True Greatness by C.J. Mahaney
"e Transformed by Christ's Example "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." - 1 Peter 5:5 A battle rages within every one of us every day. It's the clash between our sense of stubborn self-sufficiency and God's call to recognize that we're really nothing without Him. It's pride versus humility. And it's a fight we can't win without looking repeatedly to Christ and the cross. C. J. Mahaney raises a battle cry to daily, diligently, and deliberately weaken our greatest enemy (pride) and cultivate our greatest friend (humility). His thorough examination clarifies misconceptions, revealing the truth about why God detests pride and turns His active attention to the humble. Because pride is never passive, defeating it demands an intentional attack. The blessing that follows is God's abundant favor."
FrankensteinDon't Waste Your Life by John Piper
"John Piper writes, “I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider this story from the February 1998 Reader’s Digest: A couple ‘took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball and collect shells. . . .’ Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: ‘Look, Lord. See my shells.’ That is a tragedy.
“God created us to live with a single passion: to joyfully display his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life. The wasted life is the life without this passion. God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work not to be made much of, but to make much of him in every part of our lives.”
Most people slip by in life without a passion for God, spending their lives on trivial diversions, living for comfort and pleasure, and perhaps trying to avoid sin. This book will warn you not to get caught up in a life that counts for nothing. It will challenge you to live and die boasting in the cross of Christ and making the glory of God your singular passion. If you believe that to live is Christ and to die is gain, read this book, learn to live for Christ, and don’t waste your life!"
Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
"This companion volume to the Tales of Mystery and Imagination contains Edgar Allan Poe's best-known poetry, a selection of his very best stories (many of which originate in 1840s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque) along with his finest tales from the last decade of his tragically short life. Many of these stories and poems tell of familiar Poe themes of murder, obsession and love but this volume also contains many overlooked tales of the fantastic, black comedies, parodies and hoaxes such as "The Unparalleled Adventure of Hans Pfaall," "Mesmeric Revelation," "Hop-Frog" and "The Imp of the Perverse."
Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
"On December 27, 1831, the young naturalist Charles Darwin left Plymouth Harbor aboard the HMS Beagle. For the next five years, he conducted research on plants and animals from around the globe, amassing a body of evidence that would culminate in one of the greatest discoveries in the history of mankind - the theory of evolution" (from the publisher).
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
"You don't know about me, without you've read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain't no matter. The book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things he stretched, but mainly he told the truth."
Huckleberry Finn is being 'sivilized'. He has, rather inconveniently, come into the sum of six thousand dollars. The Widow Douglas has put him in a new suit of clothes, and is making him wash and go to school. He is not allowed to gape, stretch or smoke, and he is desperate to run away...
What began life as a sequel to Tom Sawyer quickly became one of the most important of all American novels. Mark Twain's story of a young hobo and a escaped slave who set off to find freedom on the Mississippi is an exuberant and nostalgic children's book, with subtle undertones of adult melancholy and yearning."
More to come....
-
Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation
Graeme Goldsworthy examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief as it applies to the interpretation of the Bible. He then surveys the hemeneutical history of the Christian church in a attempt to see where alien approaches have deconstructed our way of reading Scripture. Finally, he reconstructs an evangelical hermeneutics rightly centered in the gospel and rightly influenced by the method of biblical theology.
" title="Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics: Foundations and Principles of Evangelical Biblical Interpretation Graeme Goldsworthy examines the foundations and presuppositions of evangelical belief as it applies to the interpretation of the Bible. He then surveys the hemeneutical history of the Christian church in a...">From Bookstore to Bookshelf: (More) Books On My Reading List
This Beautiful Mess: Practicing the Presence of the Kingdom of God
"If all we value is the salvation gospel, we tend to miss the rest of Christ's message. Taken out of the context of the kingdom, the call to faith in Christ gets reduced to something less than the New Testament teaches. The reverse is also true: if we value a kingdom gospel at the expense of the liberating message of the Cross and the empty tomb and a call to repentance, we miss a central tenet of kingdom life. Without faith in Jesus, there is no transforming of our lives into the new world of the kingdom."
The Lamb of God by Robert Reymond
"The central theme of Holy Scripture is the unfolding revelation of its doctrinal teaching on Jesus as the 'slain Lamb of God'. The doctrine of Jesus as God's slain lamb runs like a thick cable from Genesis to Revelation binding the entirety of Scripture together. Indeed Revelation 13:8 speaks of Jesus as the lamb who was slain from the creation of the world, while 1 Peter 1:19-20 speaks of the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect who was chosen before the creation of the world. Reymond examines the biblical depictions concerning the Lamb of God – illuminating to us the central place that the suffering of the Messiah as God’s lamb occupies in God's eternal purpose and earths history. Christ's Lamb work is to be found throughout the Old and New Testaments and its pivotal importance for each of our lives is explored in depth."
