Book Recommendation: Unbroken

Unbroken is, in a word, amazing - easily one of the best books I read in 2010. It is written by Laura Hillenbrand who also penned Seabiscuit. This new book shot straight to #2 on the New York Times list of bestsellers just days after its release.

Book Recommendation: Just Do Something

To be honest, I don’t know that we really need another book—yet another book—on guidance and the will of God. Having said that, there is probably no genre of book I recommend more often than this simply because experience shows that many Christians, too many Christians, do not understand how God expects us to know his will and how we may expect him to guide us to those things that please him.

Book Recommendation: What Did You Expect?

Marriage, according to Scripture, will always involve two flawed people living with each other in a fallen world. Yet, in pastor Paul Tripp's professional experience, the majority of couples enter marriage with unrealistic expectations, leaving them unprepared for the day-to-day realities of married life.

Three Weeks to Form a New Habit

They say that it takes three weeks to establish a habit, whoever “they” are, and apparently, that goes for good habits and bad ones. Occasionally, I talk with people who are interested in starting to run. I am by no means an expert or a trained professional on the topic of running, but I do enjoy it. One piece of advice that I do feel fairly comfortable passing along is that the first three weeks of running are often the greatest challenge. Week one is typically miserable. Week two is often tolerable. Week three is generally manageable. Then, nine times out of ten, sometime during week four, the effort becomes almost enjoyable. Finally, the body has managed to adjust to the new routine and begins to experience a happy response.

Marriage Matters Resources Available

Last month, Pastor Alistair Begg shared from God’s word about the gravity, integrity, and sanctity of the marriage covenant, as well as offering practical advice from his own experiences as a husband and as a pastor.

If you were unable to attend this two-session workshop, here are some useful links to help you have a Christ-centered, God-glorifying marriage that matters!

Book Recommendation: Listen Up! A Practical Guide to Listening to Sermons By Ch

"Why on earth do we need a book like this?" Author Christopher Ash asks and answers this question in his pithy, 31-page booklet, Listen Up! A Practical Guide to Listening to Sermons. Ash offers seven key ingredients for listening to sermons effectively, from expecting God to speak to doing what the Bible says and rejoice. Additionally, there is a refreshingly honest final section to this easy-to-read booklet that offers guidance on listening to a sermon that may be dull, biblically inadequate, or even heretical.

Book Recommendation: The Best Kept Secret of Christian Mission

This book comes out of years of reflection, failures, and some successes in the task of reaching out to others with the gospel. Many Christians think of the task of mission as an entirely verbal activity, when perhaps the best kept secret of New Testament teaching about mission is that it involves a whole range of activities that explicitly promote Christ to the world and draw others to him, and only a few of them involve speaking. Without diminishing or downplaying the importance of speaking the gospel, John Dickson shows that, on the other hand, downplaying the range of activities that promote Christ to the world has its own set of problems.

Book Recommendation: "What is an Evangelical?"

This month's recommended reading selection is "What is an Evangelical?" by Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones.  The slim volume is a collection of three talks Lloyd-Jones delivered in 1971 to the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students through which Lloyd-Jones addressed his concerns about the "subtle, but real shifts in commitment to the biblical gospel." 

Book Recommendation: The Prodigal God, by Timothy Keller

Reviewed by Tim Challies, discerningreader.com

After the publication of The Reason for God, Newsweek hailed Tim Keller as "a C.S. Lewis for the twenty-first century." That is a lofty comparison and one I'm sure must make Keller quite uncomfortable. Yet at some level the comparisons are becoming undeniable. Keller's ability to communicate to believers and unbelievers alike and to do so on an intellectual level clearly parallels that of Lewis. Where Keller's first book offered an explanation as to why we should believe in God, his second, The Prodigal God, focuses on Jesus' best-known parable (and potentially the best-known and most-loved story of all-time) to challenge both believers and skeptics.

Book Recommendation: By Grace Alone, How The Grace of God Amazes Me

As a pastor and professor of theology, Dr. Sinclair Ferguson has probably encountered hundreds of un-amazed Christians in his classes and congregations. In fact, myriads of Christian men and women do not find the grace of God amazing. Do you? Or have you become accustomed to it?