Author: Josh King

Readability:  2

Length:  180 pgs

Author:  John Piper

Marriage finds power, not by making much of husband and wife, but by making much of Christ and His church.  Marriage is glorious, but it will dissolve into something greater, it is “a parable of permanence”.  I remember first listening via podcast to this book in sermon form in 2007 hoping it would become a book.  It has – This Momentary Marriage. There is power here for your marriage.  “How to” pragmatic books have their place, but too often they are absent of power.  The gospel is that power.

The most important implication of this conclusion is that keeping covenant with our spouse is as important as telling the truth about God’s covenant with us in Jesus Christ.  Marriage is not mainly about being or staying in love.  It’s mainly about telling the truth with our lives.  It’s about portraying something true about Jesus Christ and the way he relates to his people.  It’s about showing in real life the glory of the gospel.

If we make secondary things primary, they cease to be secondary and become idolatrous. They have their place. But they are not first, and they are not guaranteed. Life is precarious, and even if it is long by human standards, it is short. “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14). “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring” (Prov. 27:1).

So it is with marriage. It is a momentary gift. It may last a lifetime, or it may be snatched away on the honeymoon. Either way, it is short. It may have many bright days, or it may be covered with clouds. If we make secondary things primary, we will be embittered at the sorrows we must face. But if we set our face to make of marriage mainly what God designed it to be, no sorrows and no calamities can stand in our way. Every one of them will be, not an obstacle to success, but a way to succeed. The beauty of the covenant-keeping love between Christ and his church shines brightest when nothing but Christ can sustain it.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT-cqLZNfao]

Readability:  1

Length:  179 pgs

Authors:  C.J. Mahaney, Craig Cabaniss, Bob Kauflin, Dave Harvey,  and Jeff Pursewell

Worldliness is comprised of six chapters written by members of the Sovereign Grace team and edited by C.J. Mahaney.  They cover worldliness in relation to the media, music, stuff, and clothes.  (Ladies there is an appendix on modesty which you can view here.  Using it would go a long way to serving your brothers in Christ.)

This little book is packed with conviction, and grace.  It is gracious conviction.  I am worldly.  Now I am better equipped to see it and battle it.  I plead with you – read it!

Today, the greatest challenge facing American evangelicals is not persecution from the world, but seduction by the world.

The greater our difference from the world, the more true our testimony for Christ – and the more potent our witness against sin.

Jesus Christ is most important.  We must fight worldliness because it dulls our affections for Christ and distracts our attention from Christ.  Worldliness is so serious because Christ is so glorious.

Jerry Bridges is a gospel doctor.  I always exit his books feeling convicted of my sins and encouraged in the gospel.  The Pursuit of Holiness is his classic work, it does this perhaps better than any.  Early on Jerry identifies three basic problem areas in realtion to holiness.  I give you these as a teaser.

Our first problem is that our attitude toward sin is more self-centered than God-centered. We are more concerned about our own “victory” over sin than we are about the fact that our sins grieve the heart of God. We cannot tolerate failure in our struggle with sin chiefly because we are success-oriented, not because we know it is offensive to God.

God wants us to walk in obedience—not victory. Obedience is oriented toward God; victory is oriented toward self. This may seem to be merely splitting hairs over semantics, but there is a subtle, self-centered attitude at the root of many of our difficulties with sin. Until we face this attitude and deal with it, we will not consistently walk in holiness.

This is not to say God doesn’t want us to experience victory, but rather to emphasize that victory is a byproduct of obedience. As we concentrate on living an obedient, holy life, we will certainly experience the joy of victory over sin.

Our second problem is that we have misunderstood “living by faith” (Galatians 2:20) to mean that no effort at holiness is required on our part. In fact, sometimes we have even suggested that any effort on our part is “of the flesh.”

Our third problem is that we do not take some sin seriously.  We have mentally categorized sins into that which is unacceptable and that which may be tolerated a bit.

Are we willing to call sin “sin” not because it is big or little, but because God’s law forbids it? We cannot categorize sin if we are to live a life of holiness. God will not let us get away with that kind of attitude.

Readability (1-3):  2

Length:   1128 pgs

Author:  Arnold Dallimore

D.A. Carson in a talk “The Scholar as Pastor” said the following about the author of this work,

This is the time, I think, to recognize that God assigns hugely different gifts, so that one of the things this evening must not do is give the impression that there is only one legitimate path to working out pastoral and scholarly vocations. Arnold Dallimore was a Baptist pastor who took theological training with my Dad. His only degree, his terminal degree, was a B.Th. For forty years he served one church in the small Ontario town of Cottam. Nevertheless he also set himself the task of mastering material on George Whitefield. It became a hobby, a summer challenge, a life goal. He traveled frequently to England, ransacked archives, found material that no one had ever used before, and wrote his magnificent two-volume biography of Whitefield. Few books make me weep, but on occasion that biography did. For all of its technical competence and heavy documentation, it made me pray, more than once, “O God, do it again!” But no one insists that every pastor has the intellectual gift and long-term stamina to do the research and writing that that magnificent project entailed.

I thank God for Dallimore’s years of quiet toil over this masterful biography.  And I hope his prayer concerning the book be heard by our Almighty God.

Nevertheless, this book goes forth with a mission. It is written with the profound conviction that the paramount need of the twentieth century is a mighty evangelical revival such as that which was experienced two hundred years ago. Thus, I have sought to show what were the doctrines used of God in the eighteenth-century Revival, and to display the extraordinary fervour which characterized the men whom God raised up in that blessed work. Yea, this book is written in the desire—perhaps in a measure of inner certainty—that we shall see the great Head of the Church once more bring into being His special instruments of revival, that He will again raise up unto Himself certain young men whom He may use in this glorious employ. And what manner of men will they be? Men mighty in the Scriptures, their lives dominated by a sense of the greatness, the majesty and holiness of God, and their minds and hearts aglow with the great truths of the doctrines of grace. They will be men who have learned what it is to die to self, to human aims and personal ambitions; men who are willing to be ‘fools for Christ’s sake’, who will bear reproach and falsehood, who will labour and suffer, and whose supreme desire will be, not to gain earth’s accolades, but to win the Master’s approbation when they appear before His awesome judgment seat. They will be men who will preach with broken hearts and tear-filled eyes, and upon whose ministries God will grant an extraordinary effusion of the Holy Spirit, and who will witness ‘signs and wonders following’ in the transformation of multitudes of human lives.

Indeed, this book goes forth with the earnest prayer that, amidst the rampant iniquity and glaring apostasy of the twentieth century God will use it toward the raising up of such men and toward the granting of a mighty revival such as was witnessed two hundred years ago.

In hopes that your appetite may be whetted to know the great evangelist I offer you only one quotation from his own lips that should be sufficient to stir affection toward this humble servant.  In response to requests to start his own party or denomination he replied:

Let my name be forgotten, let me be trodden under the feet of all men, if Jesus may thereby be glorified. I care not who is uppermost. I know my place, even to be servant of all.

Let my name die everywhere, let even my friends forget me, if by that means the cause of the blessed Jesus may be promoted.

I want to bring souls, not to a party… but to a sense of their undone condition by nature, and to true faith in Jesus Christ.

Readability :  3

Length:  742 pgs

Author:  John Frame

Currently there are three volumes in John Frame’s ‘Theology of Lordship’ series.  I had read excerpts and so many great reviews that while at the Gospel Coalition Conference this year I purchased all three at a great price ($51 instead of retail $115.97 for all three).  The Doctrine of God is the first of the works that I have read and I was not disappointed.  The work often fed my mind and warmed my heart with our big God.  The theme that runs through the book is that central to God is Lordship.  He is the Sovereign Lord of creation and the covenant.  He has all authority, all power and is present with man as Covenant Lord.

Frame’s theology though rich and deep is not hard to read nor burdened with technical jargon.  It is a college level read for the serious student.  It is well worth thirty minutes a day for approximately four months.

The first thing, and in once sense the only thing, we need to know about God is that he is Lord.  Surely no name, no description of God is more central to Scripture than this.

God is the supremely relevant one.  Without him, nothing else could exist or function.  Without him, there could be no meaning in life.