Category: Tolle Lege

Readability: 1

Length: 204 pp

Author: David Sitton

Few books capture the cross-carrying, lay-down-your-life, radical nature of discipleship that Jesus says is essential. Fewer still capture it by example. Here is not just a call for us to lay down our lives so the the name of Jesus will be exalted by the nations, here is an example of it. David Sitton’s Reckless Abandon is a modern missions tale that grips me the way the classics do. It makes me want to cry out with Paul, “But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.”

reckless abandon /rˈe-kləs ə-bˈan-dən/: to give oneself unrestrainedly to the cause of Jesus and the promotion of his kingdom without concern for danger and the consequences of that action.

By this definition are we to be recklessly abandoned for Christ and the gospel among the nations? Or should we be more cautious? Should we only go into the world with the gospel where we can safely do so? What do we do when we find that it’s impossible to manage the risks or to minimize the dangers to reasonable levels? Do we go – no matter what? Or do we wait until the red carpet rolled out for us?

It is puzzling to me as a leader in mission, when I am cautioned, even rebuked, by stateside believers that we should restrict our missionaries to only the “safe places.” It seems as though many in the West believe we should attempt to engage only those people groups that present “reasonable risks” to our missionaries. The not-so-subtle assumption is that missionaries should be routinely evacuated out of danger zones.

Why is it presumed that American missionaries have the “right” to require safe living conditions? By the way, this is almost completely a Western concept. Believers in the rest of the world assume that following Christ is naturally hazardous to their health! They live as lambs among wolves, expecting to be mistreated because wolves eat lambs! Why do we think we should be exempt from what Jesus said would be the normal experience of His followers?

If it is admirable for military men to die on foreign soil for American freedom and laudable for firemen to risk their lives for citizens in peril, why are missionaries dubbed as irresponsible fools when they choose to remain in perilous situations with their families, “risking their necks” for their friends and the gospel of Christ?

Here is my rationale for regularly sending missionaries with the gospel into hostile surroundings: Risk assumes the possibility of loss and is always determined by the value of the mission. The gospel is so valuable that no risk is unreasonable. Life is gained by laying it down for the gospel. If I live, I win and get to keep on preaching Christ. If I die, I win bigger by going directly to be with Christ and I get to take a few tribes with me.

 

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Readability: 1

Length: 168 pp

Author: Douglas Wilson

This recommendation isn’t for everyone. What I Learned in Narnia is for those who “grew up” in Narnia, either as children, or as adults who wish that they had lived their longer. If you then are one for whom this recommendation does not pertain, then I suggest you remedy the situation by making it pertain to you. The Chronicles of Narnia is recommended for everyone, no matter their age. You can “grow up” here. You can learn things here.

For those who already love Narnia, Wilson will thrill your eyes with truths you may not have noticed, warmly remind you of some you may have forgot, and freshly capture those you have long adored. Don’t worry about Wilson ruining Narnia by moralizing it. Wilson is not some disinterested scientist dissecting Narnia, he is a resident. He is a longtime disciple of Lewis having grown up Narnia himself.

A rush to moralize has wrecked many a good story, and I don’t want to do that here. But at the same time, good stories are the sorts of stories you do learn from – as C.S. Lewis knew fully well. And if we learn from his wonderful stories we should be albe to discuss it.

You should never trust people who have strong views of authority when talking about people under them, but have very weak views of authority when talking about people over them.

True submission never grovels, true authority never accepts flattery.

Aslan cares about confession of sin, but there is always something beyond it. In other words, being honest about our faults and failings is like washing up for dinner, so you can enjoy that dinner with clean hands. But imagine if someone just washed up for dinner, all the time, over and over, but they never came to the table? Washing is important, but it is so that we can enjoy the meal.

Stories are powerful things, and that is why the villains always try to undermine them from within. It is far easier for bad guys to mix a true story in with their lies than to invent a new story from scratch, because by doing so they can take advantage of the power of true stories while twisting them to their own needs.

This is why Lewis said that a good adventure story is truer than a dull history. The events in the story might not have happened, but it more closely resembles the type of world that God made than a soulless retelling of true events. And when we finally enter heaven we will realize in full how all the best stories were prefiguring that last, greatest story of all.

Beware of anyone who claims to be neutral, for they always have an agenda.

 

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Readability: 1

Length: 268 pp

Author: Paul Miller

Next to A Call to Spiritual Reformation, Paul Miller’s A Praying Life is my favorite book on prayer. You won’t just learn about prayer, you will be moved to pray.

Still I offer one caution. I am hesitant to say anything because I like to use these posts for book recommendations, not book reviews. I am thankful for reviews, but may aim is to commend more than critique. I never agree with everything in a book and I assume my readers understand this. For this reason I think a mystical reference here and a poor use of the text there unworthy of mention. Yet there is some language here that makes me quite uncomfortable.

The opening words of the Lord’s Prayer are Our Father. You are the center of your heavenly Father’s affection. That is where you find rest for your soul. If you remove prayer from the welcoming heart of God (as much teaching on the Lord’s Prayer does), prayer becomes a legalistic chore.

I agree that we must remember that we pray to our Father, not so that He will be our Father, or fatherly to us, but because He is our Father, yet, I wish that Paul would have said that Jesus is central to the Father’s affections, and that because we are in Christ we are loved. We are not loved with a different love, rather the love that the Father has toward the Son is His love to us. We are loved in the Beloved. The Son is chief in His Father’s affections, and this adds more stability, more power, and more warmth not less. I am unshakably and eternally loved in the Son.

Elsewhere, and more troubling to me, Paul writes,

The Father deliberately delayed a book [that Paul was writing] about the beauty of his Son for the sake of Kim [Paul’s daughter] for the sake of Kim being able to speak more clearly. He put Kim ahead of His own Son’s honor. I do not understand that kind of love. I guess that is what the cross is all about.

God puts nothing before or above the honor of His Son. All things were created through Him and for Him that in everything He might be preeminent. The cross and everything else works together for His eternal glory. Paul’s book about Christ being delayed does not mean the putting of Kim above the Son, but the magnifying of the Son in a different way. One notable way is in Paul’s Christ-like, Spirit-empowered self-sacrifice for his daughter.

I think Paul would agree with me as to the Father’s chief love and aim in all things, so perhaps the issues here are pastoral more than theological. Read the book yourself and note the context. But even despite these huge issues I highly commend this book because it is otherwise so solid and good.

Oddly enough, many people struggle to learn how to pray because they are focusing on praying, not on God. Making prayer the center is like making conversation the center of a family mealtime. In prayer, focusing on the conversation is like trying to drive while looking at the windshield instead of through it. It freezes us, making us unsure of where to go. Conversation is only the vehicle through which we experience one another. Consequently, prayer is not the center of this book. Getting to know a person, God, is the center.

The great struggle of my life is not trying to discern God’s will; it is trying to discern and then disown my own.

I have prayed for humility, and it dawned on me that God was answering my prayer. I would have preferred humility to come over me like magic. Instead, God teaches humility in humble places. He keeps me sane by letting me pick up dog manure after I’ve spoken at a conference.

Prayer is where I do my best work as a husband, dad, worker, and friend.

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Readability: 1

Length: 222 pp

Author: Matt Chandler

The Explicit Gospel aims to make the gospel, well… explicit. Chandler does a swell job by presenting the gospel in systematic categories (God, man, Christ, response), which he labels “the gospel on the ground”, and within the Biblical storyline (creation, fall, reconciliation, consummation), which he labels “the gospel in the air”.  In theologian’s terms he presents the gospel using both systematic and Biblical theology. While I might squirm a little at the sparse language of “being missional” and “redeeming the culture,” (for why read this book) there is everything here that I love about Chandler’s ministry – the gospel is clearly communicated and set against moralistic therapeutic deism.

And out of our self-regard, we like to picture that a holy, glorious, splendid God—perfect solely within his Trinitarian awesomeness—wanted to be able to stand in a warm-hued living room, romantic music swelling, and look across at us to say, “You complete me.”

The point is that if we are going to orient around anything less than God—even things that look happy and shiny and pretty, even things that God himself gives us to enjoy—or slip in even a moment’s worship of something other than God, we are declaring our preference for the absence of God. This is called pride, and even a sliver of it deserves its end result: the place where God isn’t. And let’s be honest: nobody has just a sliver of pride.

Knowing this, we don’t need all thirty-six verses of “Just As I Am,” a plaintive pleading from the altar, heads bowed, eyes closed, and shaky hands raised to issue a gospel invitation. No, the invitation is bound up in the gospel message itself. The explicit gospel, by virtue of its own gravity, invites belief by demanding it.

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Readability: 1

Length: 281 pp

Author: Eric Metaxas

I’m not looking for a savior on Capitol Hill, mine died on a hill called Golgotha, but o that God would raise up politicians like William Wilberforce who love the Savior, are men of impeccable integrity, fight for great causes, possess a sanctified political brilliance, and persevere despite incredible opposition.

Some might find Metaxas’ style a bit distracting; I think the life of a eloquent and witty man excuses, perhaps even calls for a clever flourish here and there. Here is an account of a beautiful life, beautifully written.

God changed the world through Wilberforce. Wilberforce’s chief great cause that He devoted his life to was the abolition of the slave trade. May God raise up a man with the spirit of Wilberforce to fight tenaciously against what I believe is the greatest blight on our nation today – abortion. May Amazing Grace
, or another Wilberforce biography give you hope, not in Capitol Hill, but in the mercy of our God.

To fathom the magnitude of what Wilberforce did we have to see that the ‘disease’ he vanquished forever was actually neither the slave trade nor slavery. Slavery still exists around the world today, in such measure as we can hardly fathom. What Wilberforce vanquished was something even worse than slavery, something that was much more fundamental and can hardly be seen from where we stand today: he vanquished the very mind-set that made slavery acceptable and allowed it to survive and thrive for millennia. He destroyed an entire way of seeing the world, one that had held sway from the beginning of history, and he replaced it with another way of seeing the world. Included in the old way of seeing things was the idea that the evil of slavery was good. Wilberforce murdered that old way of seeing things, and so the idea that slavery was good died along with it. Even though slavery continues to exist here and there, the idea that it is good is dead. The idea that it is inextricably intertwined with human civilization, and part of the way things are supposed to be, and economically necessary and morally defensible, is gone. Because the entire mind-set that supported it is gone.

‘Dear Sir:

Unless the divine power has raised you us to be as Athanasius contra mundum [against the world], I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable villainy which is the scandal of religion, of England, and of human nature. Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be fore you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well doing! Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might, till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away before it.

Reading this morning a tract wrote by a poor African, I was particularly struck by that circumstance that a man who has a black skin, being wronged or outraged by a white man, can have no redress; it being a ‘law’ in our colonies that the oath of a black against a white goes for nothing. What villainy is this?

That he who has guided you from youth up may continue to strengthen you in this and all things, is the prayer of, dear sir,

Your affectionate servant,

John Wesley’

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Readability: 1

Length: 138 pp

Author: Tim Chester

One of the most powerful, God-glorifying things we can do with others is to eat. In surveying six narratives in Luke that deal with Jesus and meals, Tim Chester shows how meals enact grace, community, hope, mission, salvation, and promise. One of the most neglected of Christian virtues is hospitality. Chester will show you why it is so important that we recover this virtue, and how we can do it. I really loved “eating” this book. A Meal with Jesus is great food for the soul; it will not only nourish your own, but move you to nourish others souls by nourishing each others bodies as well.

Sharing a family meal has been replaced by the fancy dinner party. …

There’s nothing wrong with eating out or hosting a special meal—indeed there’s a lot right with it. But somewhere along the line the commercialization of meals has cost us something precious. Hospitality has become performance art, and we’ve lost the creation of intimacy around a meal.

Hospitality involves welcoming, creating space, listening, paying attention, and providing. Meals slow things down. Some of us don’t like that. We like to get things done. But meals force you to be people oriented instead of task oriented. Sharing a meal is not the only way to build relationships, but it is number one on the list.

When my friend Peter turned eighty, his son took him out for a birthday meal. His son is a top surgeon, so they went to a top restaurant. Peter told me that none of the menus had prices except his son’s. It was a sumptuous, delicious, perfect banquet—and an expensive one. But God will provide a lavish feast to surpass any five-star restaurant. What’s more, God’s menu has no prices on it, because the price has already been paid through the precious blood of Jesus.

The hospitality to which Jesus calls us can’t be institutionalized in programs and projects. Jesus challenges us to take mission home. It may be a surprise, given my emphasis on meals, but I loathe church lunches—those potluck suppers in drafty church halls. They’re institutionalized hospitality. Don’t start a hospitality ministry in your church: open your home.

Neither eating to live (food as fuel) nor living to eat (food as salvation) is right. We’re to eat to the glory of God and live to the glory of God. When we remove God from our lives, our relationship with food distorts.

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Readability: 1

Length: 148 pp

Author: Mike McKinley

If you are struggling as to whether or not you are a Christian I am going to recommend that you read two books: 1 John and Am I Really a Christian? By Mike McKinley. I am deeply thankful for Mike’s book as this is one of the foremost concerns brought to me as a minister. And yet, I think more people need to ask themselves this question. Many people are not doubting that likely need to. I believe this is especially true in the Bible Belt where many have been assured that they are saved because they have prayed some prayer, walked an isle, or some other action. You are not a Christian because of anything you do, but because of what Christ has done. Therefore we don’t need to see if we have done the proper action(s) so that we are a Christian, but we need to see if there is fruit in our lives as a result of our being a Christian. Mike will not speak “peace” to you when there is no peace – and that is why this book has so much potential to give you true peace; either if you are doubting, or if you should.

Imagine for a minute that we’re all running in a race. According to the rules of this race, it doesn’t matter how we place, but it is absolutely critical that we finish. Not only that, our eternal destiny hangs on whether we finish this race. Finishing means eternal joy. Failing to finish, for whatever reason, means eternal suffering. This would be a pretty important race, would it not?

Now imagine that, looking along the racecourse, we see people dressed in running shorts and fancy sneakers, but for some reason they are sitting by the side of the road. Other people are crouched down, still as statues, tense, poised, and ready in the starting blocks. But they never move; they just stay there. Some people are wandering around in circles. Still others are running the wrong way.

Suppose then we stop to talk to these wayward runners and non-runners. Quickly it becomes clear that they are convinced they’re running well. They say they’re looking forward to completing the race and receiving the substantial reward. They smile and talk dreamily about life beyond the finish line. The problem is, we know that they will never finish the race given their pace or direction.

Tell me: What would be the loving thing to do in that case? Would love motivate us to ignore their confusion? Would love motivate us to politely nod and say nothing? Of course not. Love would require us to warn them, to convince them, to plead with them to change their course.

That is the spirit in which I offer this book to you. I hope to serve you by helping you determine if you are “running your race” in the right direction.

[T]he important question is not, “Have I professed faith in Christ in the past?” but rather, “Am I trusting Christ right now for my salvation?” If you must point back to some distant event for evidence that you have an interest in Christ, you might wonder if you genuinely saved. But if you have continued trusting Christ over time, you have reason to have hope in your salvation.

www.amireallyachristian.com

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