It Feels Nice to Finish...

It has been a little while since I finished a book. For the past couple months I have not spent much time reading at all. Recently I've started to find time each night to read a chapter or two and finally finished "Living for God's Glory" by Joel Beeke. It took me a while for sure, but it feels great to finish a book again. I'm feeling encouraged to continue on.

The book was very good. It's basically an introduction to Calvinism, but it goes past the normal discussion of the five points. There are multiple chapters of discussion on Calvinist, Reformed and Puritan views on family, marriage, politics and ethics, centered around historical accounts of how these viewpoints developed. It was a nice, engaging read and I was glad to finally be able to read one of Joel Beeke's books after hearing him speak at PCRT and seeing his work in the "Meet the Puritans" resource.

Next up I intend to read through "Desiring God" by Piper. I've tried to read it multiple times but have gotten distracted every time. Maybe taking some notes and putting together a couple blog posts will help me to keep focused. Hopefully I can finish sometime in February before I try to kick off a reading of "The Christian in Complete Armor" with a couple friends.

I started "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer Adler again as well, but I've decided to table it until a little later in the spring. Instead I'm going to be reading "The Back of the Napkin" by Dan Roam to add a little variety to my reading. It seems like its going to be a fun read about using pictures to communicate ideas.

Looking Forward, Part 2

A couple more areas I'm looking to grow this year.

3. Increasing Fellowship - Seeking fellowship with other believers hasn't been as much of a priority for me recently. This is primarily because I was not engaging God myself, so I didn't really have a lot to talk about in that regard. I really want to grow in this over this year, both with friends as well as my soon-to-be wife.

4. Writing About It - Blogging is not a necessity for life but it helps me to critically process what I am reading instead of just increasing the information in my head. I would like to get back to posting regularly. I'd also like to try and increase my engagement during reading by taking notes. Journaling is something else that seems like it could be helpful in evaluating myself and seeing God's grace in my own life.

5. Physical Discipline - I've come to see that my lack of exercise and poor eating not is not a result of a busy schedule but mostly laziness and selfishness on my part. Plus, I have found that its easier to maintain other disciplines when I am also exercising self-control over my body. Over the course of the year, I plan on seeking to evaluate and make changes to my life in light of this.

Obviously, not all of these things are going to be completed. At least not to the extent that I imagine in my head. Everyone jokes that resolutions are made to be broken. However, these are areas that would be helpful to change at any time of the year. Now just happens to be a time when we all reflect on that. God provides us the grace to change when we ask. Sometimes it doesn't come as fast as we'd like, but God also gives the grace to persevere.

Looking Forward, Part 1

Maybe it's getting a little late for gearing up for the new year, but I thought it might be good to kick out a post with a couple of my plans if only for accountability to myself.

1. Growth in Bible Study - I've spent the past couple months struggling with the discipline to meet with God by reading his Word and praying. By God's grace, I've been convicted again of the importance of this practice and God has helped me to begin to reestablish this practice in my life. As the routine returns, I also want to deepen this time during the year by growing in prayer and in application of what I am reading.

I'm using the plan in D.A. Carson's book "For the Love of God Vol. 2" and reading in the ESV Study Bible. If I stick to the plan, I should get through the entire Bible at least once and some portions twice.

2. Back to Books - Similarly, I haven't spent as much time reading books other than the Bible either. It is a lot harder to find time to sit down and read than in the past. I read a great post by a well-read blogger who explained how little time one has to spend reading each day to read a large number of books in a year. So I've started to find small bits of time every day to find a bit and it still surprises me how fast you can get through a book reading just a chapter a day.

I've got several book goals for this year. I intend to finish a couple big books that I've been meaning to read for awhile and finally finish a few books I've started multiple times. Four books I intend to read this year are "The Christian in Complete Armor" by William Gurnall, "Institutes of the Christian Religion" by John Calvin, "Desiring God" by John Piper and "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer Adler. I'd obviously like to read some other things as well, but I hope to get all these books in for sure.

Information Overload

Tim Challies has a thought provoking post today. He takes some time to discuss the amount of information currently created by people in our society and the easy access we have to almost all of that information. This increase in information production and availability has affected our culture, both positively and negatively.

One of the effects that he notes for Christians is that it can be very easy to be distracted and therefore neglect spending quiet time focusing on God. I know in my own life I have seen how so many devices and technology can easily draw my mind away from God and stop me from taking time to spend alone with Him. Even though I am grateful for all the benefits of technology and the blessing that it is, I need to be aware of these tendencies.

How are you working to spend time with God despite the distractions of our busy, information overloaded culture?

New Attitude 2008 Review - Mark Dever & Al Mohler

I'm combining Dever and Mohler together in an effort to actually get through my review of NA messages before NA rolls around again. Also, they both provide a lot of the framework for analyzing for some of the intellectual issues that define how we interact with Scripture. I don't actually have any notes to break down for Mohler's Q&A session but I would recommend you listen to it and think about some of the questions he covers. If nothing else, it challenged me to want to know the Bible better.

Mark Dever delivered the second message of the conference which dealt primarily with the authority of Scripture. He started by saying that faith in Christ can only occur where the truth about Him is known. So the question then became, how can we have confidence in the Bible?

Before he started, he suggested three books that might prove helpful in wrestling with this issue (The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable by F.F. Bruce, Fundamentalism and the Word of God by J.I. Packer, Christ and the Bible by John Wenham). His message was broken down into two main points, the reliability of the Bible and the authority of Scripture.

He began by addressing the reliablility of the Bible. There were four main questions/objections that he addressed. First, how can we know the Bible if there are so many translations available? He responded by saying that this is first an evidence that translation is possible. He then went on to emphasize that decades of work are put into a committee translation so they are reliable.

Second, is what we have what was written down originally? We can be very confident because there is a vast body of ancient manuscripts. Also, there is a stronger body of historical evidence for the Bible than any other ancient work.

Thirdly, is what was written down accurate? Dever first touched on the fact that some of what was written down was originally passed on orally, but memorization is a reliable way of transferring knowledge. Also, people did not have to write it down immediately for it to be accurate. Many writers, such as Paul and Luke were very concerned with historically accuracy. Also, facts are relayed in the Bible which would not be fabricated if someone was making it up. For example, a crucified savior or women being recorded as the first witnesses to the resurrection. Also, early attacks on Christianity did not challenge the resurrection, which lends credence because people would have still been alive who were there.

Lastly, is it true? For this Dever noted that the disciples reaction is a key factor in looking at this. Why would the disciples willingly die for something that they knew was a lie. Obviously, there is a lot more that could be said on the reliability of the Bible, but you could check out some of the resources Dever suggested for more information.

Next, he started to talk about the authority of Scripture in our lives. I don't have quite as good notes for this part as he was rattling off quite a lot of scripture references. I plan to listen to this message again and you might want to snag it off the NA website and do the same. However, Dever did mention that though we can't know God or the Bible fully, we can know them truly. Just because I don't know everything, doesn't mean that I don't know anything. God is the one who is revealing himself to us so it is possible to know him.

He mentioned that studying the Bible is one of the main ways we can be encouraged. Also, the Scriptures are presented as having the attributes of God (There are a ton of scripture references after this point, download the message for the full effect). Also, Jesus did not reject the jewish view of Scripture. Mark said something to the effect of "To follow Christ, we must treat Scripture as Jesus treated Scripture". That's certainly very challenging considering how well Christ knew Scripture and how often he quoted it.

He ended with a couple challenges. God's Word must be applied. We need to ask ourselves if we are building our lives on the Word of God? Also, do we treasure the privlege of reading and hearing God's Word? Finally, what part of the Word am I not putting into practice?

It's Not My Fault

A very convicting guest post over at the Desiring God blog today. It's dealing with our tendency to blame-shift when we are confronted with our sin. The author then runs down a list of 12 examples of sin where we tend to try and place the blame outside ourselves. Here's an example:

1) Anger
I wouldn’t lose my temper if my co-workers were easier to get along with, or if my kids behaved better, or if my spouse were more considerate.

I could identify with pretty much everything he had on the list. While circumstances do exert pressure, difficulty and temptation in our lives, ultimately we are responsible for our sin. Instead of blame-shifting, we need to accept responsiblity for our sin, run to the cross, repent and seek to fight that sin. If we never actually acknowledge that we have sinned, no growth will ever occur in our lives.

Affection for God and Worship

Tim Challies has an excellent post today about worshipping God and our affections. Growing in knowledge about God should cause us to grow in affection for God. Worship is an overflowing expression of that affection.

HT: Tim Challies