Beethoven Flashmob

via

Belief and Obedience

So obvious, but so easy to neglect.

The message of the Cross contains two elements: (1) Promises and declarations to be believed, and (2) commandments to be obeyed. Obviously faith is necessary to the first and obedience to the second. The only thing we can do with a promise or a statement of fact is to believe it; it is physically impossible to obey it, for it is not addressed to the will, but to the understanding. It is equally impossible to believe a command; it is not addressed to our understanding, but to our will. True, we may have faith in its justice; we may have confidence that it is a good and right command, but that is not enough. Until we have either obeyed or refused to obey we have not done anything about it yet. To strain to exercise faith toward that which is addressed to our obedience is to get ourselves tangled in a maze of impossibilities."  -A. W. Tozer, Paths To Power, Chapter 3.

 

Paths To Power By A.W. Tozer / Wingspread Publishers

Balancing Ministry (or Work) and Family

We know that God won't call us to keep one command in a way that would cause us to break another. So if, over the long haul, our family suffers neglect because of our ministry, it is because we are doing things in ministry that we should not be doing because we wrongly assessed that we can handle more than we are able to handle. -Paul Tripp

2013 Bible Reading Plans

At the end of every year, I plan how I will read the Bible the next year. I find that if I don't plan to read, I just don't read. These are the plans I've used for the past few years.

2010 (2009 too, I think) - Discipleship Journal Bible Reading Plan (pdf). This plan has selections from four different parts of the Bible each day and takes you through the whole Bible in a year. It gives you a few catch-up days each month. It's biggest pro could also be a con. Reading from four different places each day keeps things varied and allows for interesting serendipities. On the other hand, the reading can seem fragmented and it takes a while to get through the long books.

2011 - The Book-at-a-Time Bible Reading Plan (pdf). This one is also from Discipleship Journal. It allows a few catch-up days each month, but provides:

two readings for each day. The first reading alternates between Old and New Testament books, giving you three or four chapters a day. The Gospels are spread throughout the year. The second reading takes you through a chapter or so of the wisdom literature and Isaiah. Combined,these readings will take you through the entire Bible in one year.

2012 - The Daily Bible Meditation Guide (pdf). This provides much shorter selections, curated by Doug Wolter at  life2getherblog.com. The selections are short, but the idea is "not to read less, but to meditate more." 2012 was the year in recent times (after having children) that I meditated most and journaled most. The short, well-selected readings were helpful for that.

2013 - My plan is to read the New Testament four times (once every three months) in four different translations.

I'm starting with The Message, and will probably read the ESV, Phillips, and the NASB or NRSV. I have all of these translations in paper, and these and many more are available for free on biblegateway.com and youversion.com. Both of these sites have free audio Bibles if that is what you're into. Various smartphone and tablet apps are also available. Many people like the youversion Bible reading app.

Here are some recent blog posts about Bible reading that I've found helpful.

• Justin Taylor's Reading the Bible in 2013

• Trent Hunter's The Bible Eater: A Plan for Feasting on Christ in 2013 (This one looks good. I'll probably use it next year.)

• Trent Hunter also recommends books as Help for Understanding the Bible in 2013. To this list I would add Henrietta Mears's What the Bible is All About. It's a good book-by-book overview. Recently Eugene Peterson's Eat This Book was recommended to me. I haven't read it yet, but it's on my wish list.

• Good words from Matt Smethurst on How Not to Read Your Bible in 2013.

Whatever plan you use, remember that we don't read the Bible to check it off our to-do list or to attempt to gain merit. God loves us and wants to speak to us through his precious word!

Want To Be Blessed in the New Year?

5 ^1-2 When Jesus saw his ministry drawing huge crowds, he climbed a hillside. Those who were apprenticed to him, the committed, climbed with him. Arriving at a quiet place, he sat down and taught his climbing companions. This is what he said:

³ “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

⁴ “You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.

⁵ “You’re blessed when you’re content with just who you are—no more, no less. That’s the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can’t be bought.

⁶ “You’re blessed when you’ve worked up a good appetite for God. He’s food and drink in the best meal you’ll ever eat.

⁷ “You’re blessed when you care. At the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for.

⁸ “You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.

⁹ “You’re blessed when you can show people how to cooperate instead of compete or fight. That’s when you discover who you really are, and your place in God’s family.

¹⁰ “You’re blessed when your commitment to God provokes persecution. The persecution drives you even deeper into God’s kingdom.

From Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of the Bible, called The Message. This famous passage from Matthew 5 is known as the Beatitudes.

Reading THE Good Book Well

This blog is about reading good books well. Most would say that the Bible is a good book, even THE Good Book. I read the Bible every day, and like many others, I read a study Bible. Jen Wilken at the Gospel Coalition questions the helpfulness of study Bible notes. She says that depending on the commentary in a study Bible can be like depending on a GPS. You get where you're going, but you don't really get to know your way around. She says that sometimes it's good to get lost.

Wilken follows up with thoughts about the right use of a study Bible and concludes with this exhortation.

So use your study Bible as it is intended to be used: as a reference point for your own conclusions, but not as a substitute for them. And get lost a little bit. Allow yourself to feel the extent of what you don't understand. It's a humbling feeling---but if your destination is wisdom and understanding, humility makes an excellent starting point for the journey. Seek with all of your heart, trusting the promise that those who do so will find that which they seek.

Read the rest.

Blog Merge

If you are one of the (very few) people who subscribe to this blog, you probably noticed a bunch of new posts. What I've done is merge my "Read Good Books Well" blog with this one. Sorry for the flood of posts after a long silence. Happy Week-between-Christmas-and-New-Year! We'll see what happens here in 2013.

Blurbing the Classics

I love this project that Justin Taylor is undertaking at the Gospel Coalition. He is curating blurbs on theological classics. These books are too old to have been blurbed about on their "original dust jackets," so they are finally getting the short commendations they deserve.

The first book is Augustine's Confessions, which I happen to have read recently. Taylor collected several blurbs and added his own take at the end. Here is Fred Sanders's.

If you took a list of the greatest books of western civilization and whittled it down to the top five, Augustine’s Confessions would still have a secure spot on that list. It might even make the cut and stay on the top three list; it’s that much of a classic. In this carefully-crafted book, Augustine does theology by listening to his life, and then listening even more carefully and passionately to the words of God. We hear him ask all the right questions and most of the wrong ones. We hear him finding the truth and saying it in his own words. Or rather, we overhear him, because from beginning to end the Confessions is one sustained prayer to the God who alone can give the soul what it needs.

Read the rest.

14 Characteristics of a Classic

I haven't posted in a while. I've been busy vacationing (saw a bear yesterday!) and finishing up Paradise Lost. An interesting article on Brain Pickings excerpts Why Read the Classics? by Italo Calvino. Calvino offers 14 characteristics of a classic book, most of which I agree with, some of which seem redundant to me.  Here are a few of my favorites.

5. A classic is a book which even when we read it for the first time gives the sense of rereading something we have read before.

8. A classic is a work which constantly generates a pulviscular cloud of critical discourse around it, but which always shakes the particles off.

 14. A classic is a work which persists as a background noise even when a present that is totally incompatible with it holds sway.

What do you think of the list?  Was "pulviscular" a new word to you like it was for me?

Twice Freed - Excellent Biblical Fiction

Twice Freed, by Patricia St. John, was a recent school assignment for my nine-year-old daughter. She was having a tough time getting into the book because of the tough vocabulary (it's recommended for 12 and up), so I decided to read it aloud with her.

I'm so glad I did. This book follows the life of Onesimus, a slave who is the topic of the book of Philemon in the Bible. My daughter and I enjoyed the story line and the struggles between and within the well-developed characters. I appreciated the accurate portrayal of society in the Roman empire including the institution of slavery, gladiators in training and in the arena, pagan festivals, guilds, shipping and dock work, and family relationships. The traits of the cities that Onesimus finds himself in--Colossae, Laodicea, Ephasus, Athens, Corinth, and Rome--are described without caricature (except maybe for Athens).

Twice Freed made me want to go back to the Bible and read Acts, Philemon, Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, and the parts of Revelation that deal with the people and places mentioned in the book.

I highly recommend this book for adults and children 11 and up, and as a read-aloud for kids as young as about eight.