Month: June 2010

Readability: 2

Length: 226 pgs

Author: D.A. Carson

D.A. Carson’s A Call to Spiritual Reformation is currently my favorite book on prayer.  In fact it is probably my favorite Carson book.  It is one of my favorite books ever! 

The book is composed of a series of sermons surveying Paul’s prayers in his epistles.  I have heard Cason and others testify that God greatly blessed these messages when they were originally delivered and a marked difference in power was measured from those days.  I certainly can testify that as I read the book I was deeply convicted, taught, and had sweet communion with God.  God has used these sermons to impact my prayer life, I am certain He will use them to impact yours. 

Do you not sense, with me, the severity of the problem? Granted that most of us know some individuals who are remarkable prayer warriors, is it not nevertheless true that by and large we are better at organizing than agonizing? Better at administering than interceding? Better at fellowship than fasting? Better at entertainment than worship? Better at theological articulation than spiritual adoration? Better—God help us!—at preaching than at praying?

What is wrong? Is not this sad state of affairs some sort of index of our knowledge of God? Shall we not agree with J.I. Packer when he writes, ‘I believe that prayer is the measure of the man, spiritually, in a way that nothing else is, so that how we pray is as important a question as we can ever face’?  Can we profitably meet the other challenges that confront the Western church if prayer is ignored as much as it has been?

Readability: 1

Length: 154 pgs

Author: John Piper

This is a readable little book about Ruth dealing predominantly with the theme of providence.  While A Sweet and Bitter Providence is not my favorite book on Ruth, nor one of my favorite Piper books, it is full of good, solid, digestible truth.  Here are a few tidbits.

Is God’s bitter providence the last word?  Are bitter ingredients (like vanilla extract) put in the mixer to make the cake taste bad?

Knowing how this book ends gives us a sense, as we begin, that nothing will be insignificant here.

Seek refuge under the wings of God, even when they seem to cast only shadows, and at just the right time God will let you look out from his Eagle’s nest onto some spectacular sunrise.

A follower of Christ in any ethnic group is a closer relative to us than any blood relativewho rejects our Savior.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rObFF1dsi2U]