Month: June 2011

Tolle Lege: If You Could Ask God One Question

Readability:  1

Length: 121

Author: Paul Williams and Barry Cooper

This book has some good questions. But that alone isn’t a reason to buy it, it also has good answers with British wit and sarcasm to boot.

If You Could Ask God One Question deals with twelve questions skeptics often ask today and deals with them scripturally, concisely, and humorously while remaining reverent. This is a great book if you want some answers for yourself or for a friend. Its friendly sarcasm and brevity make it great to give away and have conversations over. Here are the questions dealt with.

  1. If you’re really there, God, why on earth don’t you prove it?
  2. Isn’t the Bible just a bunch of made up stories?
  3. All good people go to heaven, right?
  4. If you’re a God of love, why send anyone to Hell?
  5. If Jesus really was your Son, how come He got killed?
  6. If I can be forgiven everything, doesn’t that mean I can do whatever I like?
  7. How can anyone be sure there’s life after death?
  8. What about followers of other religions?
  9. Isn’t faith just a psychological crutch?
  10. Why do you allow suffering?
  11. Why do you hate sex?
  12. Why don’t you just do a miracle?

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The Sweet Dropper: Kill Your Heifer!

For the devil ploughs with our heifer. The most mischief that he hath done in the world, it is by the correspondency that he hath with our flesh, our enemy within.   – Richard Sibbes, An Exposition of 2 Corinthians 1

Tolle Lege: Far as the Curse Is Found

Readability:  3

Length: 302

Author: Michael D. Williams

Traversing a section of the Grand Canyon is majestic enough, but to really capture its grandeur you need a bird’s eye view. I am consistently awed to dive into a book of the Bible, but it is often when I step back to see its relation to the whole that I am most stunned by glory.

Do you have problems grasping the big story of the Bible? Confused as to how God’s covenant with Noah relates to His covenant to Israel? More confused still as to how the covenants of the Old Testament relate to those of the New? Then I highly encourage Far as the Curse Is Found.

I think overall that I like Robertson’s Christ of the Covenants better, I would have to read them both again to determine that, but I know that I appreciated and enjoyed Williams greater emphasis on the redemption of the earth. Also, while Williams may be more practical, realting all of this to daily life. If you are wondering what role the earth plays in God’s eternal plan, Williams is the better book to go to. Also I think Williams did a better job clarifying the relationship of the law to the gospel, perhaps he was just more easily understood, to make a fair assessment I would need to read them both again.

On resurrection morning God was able to say again what he had exclaimed over creation so long ago: ‘It is good. It is very good.’

Existence is not the issue. Of course the gods exist. Man makes them. He can hold his idol in his hand. The issue is action, person, character. The false god of the idol maker is blind; it sees nothing. It does nothing, for it is made of wood. It can speak no word that man does not first give it. It is an impotent dead thing. Yahweh is no such manmade, lifeless god. He is not the thing made. Yahweh is the maker of all. What sets Yahweh off from the idols is the fact that he is the sovereign one, the one who comes to us, not who comes from us.

As we will see, the function of law within Scripture is the maintenance of relationship, not the creation of relationship. Legal obligation is not the precondition for life and relationship. Rather, life and relationship form the necessary environment for obligation. I tell my son that he must pick up her room and neatly put things away. I require him to do it. It is necessary for a healthy and happy relationship between us. But the ground of our relationship is not his picking up his toys and books. If it were, a visiting playmate could straighten up Saywer’s room and then earn the right to become my son. But relationship precedes obligation.

The Sweet Dropper: Humility Is Always Thankful

If we be less than the least, then we must be thankful for the least. Humility is always thankful. A humble man thinks himself unworthy of anything, and therefore he is thankful for anything.  – Richard Sibbes, An Exposition of 2 Corinthians 1

The Depths of His Wisdom

If you drop and ax head in the ocean of God’s wisdom and come back in a thousand years, it will still be sinking.  – John Piper
.
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
“For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?”
“Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?”
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.  – Romans 11:33-36

Tolle Lege: Is It Nothing to You?

Readability:  1

Length: 134

Author: Frederick Leahy

Frederick Leahy has written a trilogy, The Cross He Bore, The Victory of the Lamb and Is It Nothing to You?, of short little books on the cross that are all dynamite. Of the three Is It Nothing to You? is my least favorite, but it is still well worth reading. I would recommend anyone to read all three.

Leahy has a gift, a gift very valuable to a minister of the Word. It is the gift of a sanctified imagination. While remaining faithful to the word of God, Leahy takes you to the cross, and helps you to see vividly the spiritual realities of what happens there. There is both light and heat here.

This was paradoxical service: the greatest of all became the least of all, and he who clothes everything, retained nothing, that we might be clothed with the perfect spotless robe of righteousness.

The Sweet Dropper: Prevail by Prayer

Prayer is a prevailing course with God.

It prevails for the removing of ill, or for the preventing of ill, or for the obtaining of good, ‘I shall be delivered,’ I shall be continued in the state of deliverance; but yet you must pray. Your prayers will obtain and beg this of God.

Reason 1. Prayer is a prevailing course, because, as I said, it is obedience to God’s order. He bids us call upon him, and he will hear us. Prayer binds him with his own promise. Lord, thou canst not deny thyself, thou canst not deny thy promise, thou hast promised to be near all those that call upon thee in truth; and though with much weakness, yet we call upon thee in truth; therefore we cannot but be persuaded of thy goodness that thou wilt be near us. So it is a prevailing course, because it is obedience to God’s order.

Reason 2. And it is a prevailing course, because likewise it sets God on work. Faith, that is in the heart, and that sets prayer on work, for prayer is nothing but the voice of faith, the flame of faith. The fire is in the heart and spirit, but the voice, the flame, the expression of faith, is prayer. Faith in the heart sets prayer on work. What doth prayer? That goes into heaven, it pierceth heaven, and that sets God on work; because it brings him his promise, it brings him his nature. Thy nature is to be Jehovah, good and gracious, and merciful to thine! thy promise is answerable to thy nature, and thou hast made rich and precious promises. As faith sets prayer on work, so prayer sets God on work; and when God is set on work by prayer (as prayer must needs bind him, bringing himself to himself, bringing his word to him; every man is as his word, and his word is as himself), God being set on work, he sets all on work. He sets heaven and earth on work, when he is set on work by prayer. Therefore it is a prevailing course. He sets all his attributes on work for the deliverance and rescue of his church from danger, and for the doing of any good. He sets his mercy and goodness on work, and his love, and whatsoever is in him.  – Richard Sibbes, An Exposition of 2 Corinthians 1

Tolle Lege: Thriving at College

Readability:  1

Length: 317

Author: Alex Chediak

I wish this book had been published before I started college and that someone had given it to me. It is the book I will give to all high school graduates, and I will recommend it to all college students as well. Alex is an “insider”, a former student who is now a professor, giving you mature wisdom from both angles. Thriving at College deals with faith, friendships, finances, family, academics, and character; every crucial area receives thorough treatment.

Each of the ten chapters deals with a common mistake made by college students. Here is the table of contents:

PART 1: COLLEGE MATTERS

  • Common Mistake #1: Chucking Your Faith
  • Common Mistake #2: Treating College as if It Were High School

PART 2: RELATIONSHIPS MATTER

  • Common Mistake #3: Not Being Intentional
  • Common Mistake #4: Distorting Dating and Romance
  • Common Mistake #5: Refusing to Grow Up

PART 3: CHARACTER MATTERS

  • Common Mistake #6: Being a Flake
  • Common Mistake #7: Living out of Balance

PART 4: ACADEMICS MATTER

  • Common Mistake #8: Being Too Passive or Too Cocky
  • Common Mistake #9: Living for Grades
  • Common Mistake #10: Wasting Opportunities

I made the decision to go to college almost by accident. What else was I supposed to do after high school? I was a fairly good student, but I lacked the maturity to make that really huge decision in a constructive, sensible manner. Frankly, my college years could have been better. Today, I look back on my younger self in college and wish I could have a cup of coffee with him. I wish I could give him somehard- earned advice.

That’s why I’m writing this book. I can’t take my younger self out to coffee. There’s no time machine for that. But as a college professor today, I have the chance to observe students and how they live their lives. I’m amazed at how many of them remind me of my former self. This book is, in essence, an attempt at taking you out to Starbucks and telling you what I’ve learned about the college years— and, most  important, telling you how to make your college season the best years of your life (so far). I cannot tell you how much I wish someone had told me these things when I was in college.

The Sweet Dropper: All Esteemed, None Proud

God will have it thus in his wise dispensation, because he will have every man esteemed, and because he will have no man to be proud. He will humble his own to let them know that they stand in need of the prayers of the weakest. Every man in the church of God hath some gifts, that none should be despised; and none have all gifts, that none should presume over-much and be proud. In the church of God, in the body of Christ, there is no idle member. In the communion of saints there is none unprofitable. Every one can do good in his kind.  – Richard Sibbes, An Exposition of 2 Corinthians 1