My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I admit it: I have become weary of the “life purpose” discussion. Not because I do not believe that God had a purpose for our lives; the Bible is clear that he does. Purpose has become coopted by both the religious, like good ole Rick Warren, and by the non-religious alike. It is hard for me not to roll my eyes when talking to people who are disappointed with their jobs because they don't think that they have quite found what they were “made to do.”

I have read Kevin DeYoung before, and so when I found his book on the topic of purpose and finding God's will, well, I can't say that I wasn't skeptical. Yet, if anyone could give the topic a good treatment I have to say that I expected him to be one. Conclusion: not disappointed.

Simply put: DeYoung says everything I have wanted to say about finding purpose and God's will that I have wanted to say, and more. Does God have a plan for your life? Yes. Is it the kind of plan that he will tell you in advance? No. Have you read the Bible? Even the “heroes” of the Bible rarely, if ever, get told what God wants them to do in advance. Even the prophets generally are told “you are my prophet,” then “say this.” Even Moses, granted he was told that he would be the one to lead the people out of Egypt, he was only told what the ultimate end would be, but only one step at a time in the process.

God's will is for your sanctification. God wants you to become holy. That is his main purpose for your life. Everything you go through is to accomplish that goal in your life and in the lives of those around you. God's purpose for your life may be extremely hard and challenging. It may bring heartache and tears. Finding yourself in the gutter may not be any indication of your having made a misstep or fallen from God's will. It may be the crucible in which you are being pruified and perfected.

Stop fretting about what God's will is for your life; just love him and then just do something!

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It was often a curiosity of mine how my dad could be so tired after several hours of driving when all he was doing was sitting, touching the wheel, and keeping his foot poised over the gas pedal. Vigilance takes so much energy, and it is vigilance that is required in motoring down the highway and managing a child's chronic illness.

Yes, Tinsley is getting better. He continues to improve and we often now joke that he is making our lives more and more dull because of the ubiquity of 100% oxygen saturation readings, even while he is asleep. For Mom and Dad it is the constant vigilance that makes it difficult to keep the eyes seeing and the brain processing. Just in the last week I have found my brain coming back online, so it only seemed apropos to bring it back online in the blog.

I have spent much time thinking about the blog. What do I want to say? How does the title A Great Work guide my purpose in writing this blog? Here is what I have come up with and what you should be able to expect for the foreseeable future:

1. In the spirit of Dear Mr. Henshaw, I plan to write posts to particular people that I have known in my life. I don't intend to begin any post with “Dear So and So,” but I plan to write with a particular person in mind. The hope is that it will help me to hone my thoughts rather than attempt to write to everyone. I expect that all who read these posts will continue to appreciate them as much as before, but it may at times feel more like walking in on a conversation. Leaning on the benefits of this being an online log, you do have the option of posing questions and asking for more information at different points.
2. I will continue to review books, specifically good Christian resources that I would recommend. You may occasionally find a review of a substandard book here, but that will definitely be the exception.
3. If you are reading this and think that I have sold out on my “discernment” writing at this point, be warned: there is more than one way to practice discernment. If one teaches the truth with fervency and diligence, it will no doubt enable recognition of counterfeit.
4. Finally I plan to increase the frequency of posts, although, knowing my own mentality regarding schedules and deadlines, I cannot see setting myself any particular rate. My hope is that my writing will be organic in the way that ideas germinate, while avoiding the tendency to write simply because a post is “due.”
5. Comments will all be reviewed and approved individually. Too often initial comments have grossly strayed from the original topic and distracts from other points of conversation. To that end I plan to reserve the right to either completely dismiss a comment, save the comment for use as a topic of a subsequent post, or post it for appropriate interaction. I have been aware that some people simply do not comment or interact because the conversation is either so off track or is intimidating, thus my hope that this will encourage more of this kind of interaction. This is no way is intended to limit discussion on hot topic areas, but rather to keep conversations on topic, allow me to have adequate time and opportunity for response, and to encourage interaction from more people.

Nehemiah's “good work” was building the wall of Jerusalem. The wall and the temple were the symbols of God's favor on his people, all having fallen into disrepair. Building the wall showed that the people's hearts were turning back to God, and under Nehemiah's inspired guidance the people were moved to serve by examining the faults of the wall and then building its strength. While the work of discernment does require identifying weakness and faults, it cannot stop there.

I hope that in returning to writing this blog I can help to build strength. Sometimes I may find myself pointing out places in the wall in need of repair, but my intention is to spend the majority of my energy building… and I pray we can build together.

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Somehow people have gotten the impression that Christians, at least the conservative ones, really like the idea of hell.  I do really love the idea of sin and death being cast away for all eternity; can you imagine a world like that?  But people must visualize God as Mr. Burns, wringing his hands just waiting for the chance to make the lowly condemned people in sector 7G get what is coming to them for their shoddy disregard for the task he demands of them.

On the contrary, like a parent warning that a knife is not the best thing to put into a light socket, the Christian who is passionate about the topic of hell is so because of the fervent fear that people will indeed find themselves perishing.  In fact, it is said to be impossible to really understand Christianity without also facing the reality of our due penalty in hell.

In his book Erasing Hell, Francis Chan does a very good job at describing his own pain when he considers the idea of hell and how his quest for the truth from the Bible about this unpopular concept in effort, at least in part, to simply explain it away.

Not coincidentally written on the heels of Rob Bell’s now infamous book Love Wins, Chan debunks the idea that hell is some general concept about reaping what we sow on earth, and how Jesus himself really did teach that hell is a real place and that people will really go there.

Because of the nature and content of this review, I am turning off comments for this post.  If you would like to interact on this topic, hit me up on Twitter or send me a message via the Contact and Connect page.

Audio version of this book available at christianaudio.com.

Legal: a review copy of this work was provided by the publisher as compensation for this review.  No requirements for a positive review were made; these are my honest thoughts about this work.

In a recent, shall we say “discussion” with my wife I felt this creeping goblin behind me.  We had had very little sleep and were just missing each other all day.  Trying to get things done around the house when it is full of zombies, I suppose, requires some level of force.  The conversation came to a head, and I will not begin to make myself look good.  We came to an unspoken truce and decided that we needed time to cool off.  I went to wash dishes (the dishwasher being on the fritz) and began to think.

Ever notice how doing something so mundane as dishes can be a great opportunity for thinking?

Almost as if the garden window dropped a screen and showed a replay of the argument, I noticed a shadow lurking just over my shoulder.  As if in a whisper, it seemed to suggest that if I would go to my wife and apologize, she had better follow suit.  It was even worse than that: it was as if my apology was not really an apology at all, but a covert way of demanding that she apologize to me.

How old am I?

Yet in true Romans seven-tinian fashion, I saw my dark side for what it truly is.  That gargoyle, though I would like to think it is a demon, is really my own sin nature.  That sinful part of me that continues to feed on the grace that God gives me through Christ just won’t let go.  Fortunately Jesus has not left me to fight this fight alone.  It is the second part of Christ’s salvation, not yet complete.  He saved us from slavery to sin, he is now saving us through the Holy Spirit’s work of sanctification, and he will save us to meet him in heaven some day.  Did you notice how that second part is a sort of work-in-progress?

My sin nature, by making my apology a demand for my wife’s, caused me to live a life of law and not of grace at that moment.  Essentially, I did not believe that I needed to forgive because I had believed that I could justify myself.  I did not believe the gospel for my own forgiveness and justification, so I demanded it of my wife.  The whole reason that I am free to offer forgiveness is that I have already been forgiven and when I attempt to justify myself I resist the justification that Jesus provides from the cross.  I have already been forgiven, not because I deserve forgiveness, because I am a sinner helpless to save myself.  That and by no merit of my own, the Son of God stepped down from heaven and made a way for me.  Christ has already paid the price for her wrong against me and my wrong against her.  Every sin is first a sin against God and it is in the blood of Jesus that he has already forgiven my past, present, and future sins.  We are free to confess our sins and share forgiveness because of what Christ has done.

I must confess that every time I apologize I do not truly “say it like I mean it.”  There is always some part of me that vies for attention, that wants to steal the freedom of the gospel from my life.  It is an incredible comfort to know that in Christ “it is finished.”  I don’t have to continue to struggle to forgive perfectly, or to ask for forgiveness perfectly.  Did you know that is what that means?  When we sin we do not nail Jesus back on the cross; he died once and for all for the sins of the whole world for all time.  We confess our sins, not because we need him to do that finished work again, but because it keeps us in our place: in total and desperate need for a Savior.

Encounters with Jesus can affect people in so many ways.  In our own day there are people that use Jesus’ teachings to as permission to hate other people, to burden people with requirements on how they should live, and some reject him either quietly or sometimes loudly.  Even when Jesus walked on the earth people felt much the same way as they came for healing, for blessing, or to curse and eventually plot to kill him.

RC Sproul tells a story of Davey, a little donkey who had a unique encounter with Jesus.  Even though he was passed by for other important jobs, Davey was picked to be the one for Jesus to ride into Jerusalem as king on Palm Sunday.  On going back home, however, Davey decided that he did not need to do his regular work because he was special enough to carry a king.

This book presents a simple, yet challenging story of the life of the Christian.  Even though we have been chosen for salvation, we have also been given work to do, and any work assigned by the king is kingly work and should be done in his honor.  Davey learns this valuable lesson by witnessing the life of Jesus firsthand and we can learn from his experience and by the witness of the Bible:

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.
Colossians 3:23

With warm and vibrant pictures, Sproul tells Davey’s story that intersects with Christ’s during Holy Week, but it is not overtly an Easter story.  Share this book with your children any time of the year to help them learn the value of their everyday lives in service to God who loves them enough to send his Son to take their place.

Note: a copy of this book was provided by the publisher for review.  No obligation was given to give the book a positive review; all views expressed are my own and not influenced by the publisher.

Follow this link to the post at the other blog to which I contribute.

“Sure, Jesus was the Son of God, which means he was fully man, but he was also fully God, right?”  That is certainly where most of us Christians like to draw the line.  After all, when we consider the majority of attacks on our faith, talking about Jesus’ humanity is really not a priority.  Why, then, in trying to defend our faith against those who deny the divinity of Christ do we bother looking into his humanity?

 That is perhaps a perfect question to bring you to read this impressive book by Patrick Henry Reardon.  The spotlight is turned to the humanity of Christ, his formation, and his understanding of his personal mission to save sinners.  Reardon talks about how it may be that Christ did not just know his goal was to die on the cross, but that he may have come to that understanding gradually.  After all, Mary was told that he would “save his people from their sins,” but it was not a plan fully innumerated.

Reardon also makes brilliant points about how Christ’s humanity means as much as his divinity in his role as our intercessor, our substitution, and our imputed righteousness.  After all, the fact that Jesus lived a human life and never failed to live up to God’s standard means not only that he qualified to be our substitute, but that we stand to inherit his perfect record; his perfection is credited to our account!

Although there were sections that went a bit off track into other aspects of his character, this was a book that definitely challenged me to see more clearly what the book of Hebrews means when it says that Jesus was not ashamed to call us his brothers.

Note: a copy of this book was provided by the publisher for review.  No obligation was given to give the book a positive review; all views expressed are my own and not influenced by the publisher.

What would a Christian martyr want to say to us beyond the grave? What wisdom would he impart having passed beyond this world? What unique perspective would he share? In his book Letters From A Martyred Christian, H.L. Hussman takes on the guise of Aulus Aurelius, a man who died for his faith in Christ in the first century, and talks about the meaning of life and spirituality.

Frustrations with this book began from the preface. Hussman says that this is a work of fiction, loosely based on the life of Aurelius. However, only the first chapter recounted his story, and because of a general lack of knowledge of the historical record, it is impossible to separate what may have been fact from what is fiction. At the end of the book is a list of questions to use in discussing the book in a small group, but he already said in the preface that it is a work of fiction and should not be taken seriously.

After the first chapter, stories ranging from a bizarre space journey to tales whose point is to simply draw emotion rounded out this short book. It was difficult to decide what point the book makes as a whole and why it had to be told through the perspective of someone we know so little about.

Quixotic at best, this collection of Lucadoian stories were very disappointing. My trust in the author was immediately betrayed by his premise and did not offer much to justify the time spent reading it. Had the premise not frustrated me so much, I am not sure how much I would have appreciated the rest of the book. However, had I known this book was a collection of man-centered moralistic stories I would not have read it in the first place.

I simply cannot recommend this book.

Do you ever feel alone? Do you have resentments about the past and regrets about where those bad decisions have taken you? Have you found yourself in the gutter with no idea of how you got there? Are you aware that as much as you have tried, you still do not see how you can live a pure and moral life?

If we are honest, we have all been there and may be there still. Our world is wrecked beyond recognition of those who saw God’s original design for his creation. We all bare the stain of sin and wickedness. But it is no state that God cannot not find us.

In his book Relentless Pursuit, Ken Gire takes us into the raw ugliness that life can bring and shows us that even in these bleak times, God seeks after what is lost with wreckless abandon. He leaves behind the 99 who have been found to search for the one who is lost.

Gire sets this scene in the haunting poem ‘The Hound of Heaven’ by Francis Thompson, who in the late 1800s found himself alone, abandoned, and addicted. Yet in his most desperate condition, he experienced God’s incessant involvement in his life, as a hound that chased him with the goal of his capture. What started as something fearful to escape, Thompson, at the end of the poem, describes his surrender to the only one who could save him.

The first chapters of this book were beautiful, and at times even the prose were poetic as the author shares not only his story, but experiences of others who have described their pursuit by God in so many powerful ways. The appreciation of this book breaks down for me in later chapters as the author begins to deemphasize God’s loving pursuit and begins to turn the light on us as individuals and lays on the burden of self-discovery and self-recovery. I had a difficult time connecting what the author thinks of the pursuit of God and our personal responsibility in the process.

Gire definitely uses an approach to talking about God in terms of relationship and experience rather than theology and exposition of the Bible, which is what gave this book its weakness. No doubt there can be a balance between this author’s gifts of story-telling and creativity with a solid grounding in the truth of Scripture.

I do not know that I would recommend this book, even with the beauty and power of its opening chapters. If you do decide to pick this one up, don’t feel badly about abandoning it early.

Note: a copy of this book was provided by the publisher for review.  No obligation was given to give the book a positive review; all views expressed are my own and not influenced by the publisher.

When you think of God, what immediately comes to mind? Do you think of an overbearing dictator in the sky who revels in telling you what to do and punishing those who disobey? Do you imagine a score-keeper who maintains a running talley of your faults and expecting you to make good for your wrongs?

Well, if those are your perceptions, you are the person that Mike Glenn had in mind when he wrote his book The Gospel of Yes. God is not that way at all. In fact, as Glenn points out, even in the Ten Commandments God lays out the way that life works best and opens our lives up to the “yes” of the rest of existence.

Glenn does an admirable job of laying out the story of the Bible and how even from the beginning God pursued humankind, making a way back to himself. In different ways to each prominent character he made declarations of his promises and his determined mission to carry them out. I was excited to read about how desperate our need is for a “yes” in a world that constantly tells us “no.”

God tells us “yes” throughout the story of the Bible as he intimately walks with his people. His “yes” is most profound in the life and death of his son, Jesus, who from the cross and in his resurrection he gives us the “yes” of forgiveness of sin, “yes” of being set right with God, and the “yes” of our hope of resurrection with him.

However, as Glenn continued to share the story of the gospel (what God did/does for us), he switched into law (what we are required to do). Granted, it is an optimistic perspective on our life in Christ, but it lays out much that is burdensome as he talks about how the “yes” of God requires life change. Hearing the “yes” of God, according to Glenn, means we must respond with our own “yes” of forgiveness of others, simplicity, authenticity individually and in relationship, and of our specific and unique purpose in life. Rather than teaching the true freedom of the gospel, Mike expresses an urgency to do and achieve the Christian life.

I fully acknowledge that Mike did not intend to create a new list of “shalts and shalt nots,” because, after all, having purpose can be a wonderful thing. At times he does remind the reader that God’s gift of salvation is free, yet the overall tone is one of requirement. A fine example is his treatment of the Beattitudes: rather than a bestowal of blessing, Glenn interprets the passage as a sort of laundry list of qualities that we are to cultivate in our lives as Christians. The missing piece is the imputed righteousness that Christ gives us as a gift as part of his work of salvation. That is, Jesus not only died to save us and forgive us, but he also lived the perfect life we could not, for us, and in our place, and then credited his perfection to our account.

In an episode of The Middle this past year tells how the Heck family decided to change churches. The message from the service was “Get your business done.” Essentially, the pastor called the congregation to seek out their specific purpose in life and to do what they are called to do. Throughout the rest of the episode the mother, Frankie, tried everything she could think could possibly be her purpose. Failure after failure, night after night with no sleep because of obsessing on what her purpose could be, left Frankie baffled. Finally she gave up her search and found that she was probably already living out her calling in her day-to-day care for her family.

Does the Bible instruct us to find our purpose in life? Not really. Many people like to point to people like Noah, Abraham, Moses, and the prophets as people God specifically called to a specific purpose. But what about the hundreds and thousands who are never mentioned by name? Did they each have a specific life-long calling?

The Westminster Catechism asks “What is the chief end of man?” or “What is our purpose?” The answer: “…to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” Done! What more do we need than that? The real way the gospel is our “yes” for our purpose is that it frees us from the requirements of ritual and duty to the law and allows us to pursue what we will. God does not have to prescribe what your calling is an any other way than through the talents that he has given you.

Speaking of talents, do you recall that parable that Jesus told? Several servants were given varying numbers of “talents” or coins. All but one invested and received a profit that they gave to the master. The only one who angered the master was the servant who did not do anything but bury the money; he did nothing with what he was given.

God does not give you a gift and make it a secret to you. You know your talents and gifts, your job is to use them in any way you can. And the only reason that you would do so is because you want to honor God for what he has done for you. God does not make this a requirement, but simply and profoundly frees us to do what pleases us and him.

Glenn says that “yes” is likely God’s favorite word. He says “yes” to free his creation, “yes” by his limitless mercy, “yes” with his common grace on every person, “yes” with his specific grace to save sinners. He shouts his “yes” as he continues to involve himself in his created order to bring his promises to fulfillment.

Note: a copy of this book was provided by the publisher for review.  No obligation was given to give the book a positive review; all views expressed are my own and not influenced by the publisher.