Coming to the Resource Center April 6, 2014

Here are just a few of the new books you can find in the church Resource Center tomorrow, April 6, 2014. In this edition, we offer two more works by David Wells, a book celebrating the power and passion of Easter, and a gospel-driven book on productivity that will both challenge and encourage you regardless of your occupation. (All text copy from Goodreads unless otherwise stated):

God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams (1994) David F. Wells

David F. Wells’s award-winning book No Place for Truth -called a stinging indictment of evangelicalism’s theological corruption by TIME magazine - woke many evangelicals to the fact that their tradition has slowly but surely capitulated to the values and structures of the modern world. In God in the Wasteland, Wells continues his work on a biblical antidote to the modernity that has invaded today’s church.

Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World (2005) David F. Wells

In our postmodern world, every view has a place at the table but none has the final say. How should the church confess Christ in today's cultural context?

Above All Earthly Pow'rs, the fourth and final volume of the series that began in 1993 with No Place for Truth, portrays the West in all its complexity, brilliance, and emptiness. As David F. Wells masterfully depicts it, the postmodern ethos of the West is relativistic, individualistic, therapeutic, and yet remarkably spiritual. Wells shows how this postmodern ethos has incorporated into itself the new religious and cultural relativism, the fear and confusion, that began with the last century's waves of immigration and have continued apace in recent decades.

Wells's book culminates in a critique of contemporary evangelicalism aimed at both unsettling and reinvigorating readers. Churches that market themselves as relevant and palatable to consumption-oriented postmoderns are indeed swelling in size. But they are doing so, Wells contends, at the expense of the truth of the gospel. By placing a premium on marketing rather than truth, the evangelical church is in danger of trading authentic engagement with culture for worldly success.

Welding extensive cultural analysis with serious theology, Above All Earthly Pow'rs issues a prophetic call that the evangelical church cannot afford to ignore. (Publisher’s description)

Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross: Experiencing the Passion and Power of Easter (2009) Nancy Guthrie, ed.

This collection of readings, drawn from the writings and sermons of 25 classic and contemporary theologians and Bible teachers, focuses on the wonder of Christ's sacrifice.

In a culture where crosses have become little more than decorative accessories and jewelry, how easy it is for even the most well-intended Christian to rush from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday without thoughtfully contemplating the cross and all that it means. Yet we miss out on spiritual riches when we do.

So that we all may linger at the cross during the Lenten season-and stay near it the whole year through-editor Nancy Guthrie has compiled this special anthology. It draws from the works and sermons of classic theologians such as Luther, Edwards, Spurgeon, Ryle, and Augustine, and from leading contemporary communicators such as John Piper, R. C. Sproul, Francis Schaeffer, John MacArthur, Skip Ryan, and Joni Eareckson Tada to help readers enter into an experience of Christ's passion and anchor their hope in the power of his resurrection.

Each essay in this collection holds to a high view of Scripture and expounds on a particular aspect of the Easter story using the appropriate Scripture passage from the ESV Bible. These readings are sure to prepare people's hearts for a fresh experience of the cross each and every Easter season.

What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done (2014) Matt Perman

Do work that matters. Productivity isn't just about getting more things done. It's about getting the right things done---the things that count, make a difference, and move the world forward. In our current era of massive overload, this is harder than ever before. So how do you get more of the right things done without confusing mere activity for actual productivity? When we take God's purposes into account, a revolutionary insight emerges. Surprisingly, we see that the way to be productive is to put others first---to make the welfare of other people our motive and criteria in determining what to do (what's best next). As both the Scriptures and the best business thinkers show, generosity is the key to unlocking our productivity. It is also the key to finding meaning and fulfillment in our work. What's Best Next offers a practical approach for improving your productivity in all areas of life. It will help you better understand: 

Why good works are not just rare and special things like going to Africa, but anything you do in faith even tying your shoes. 

How to create a mission statement for your life that actually works. 

How to delegate to people in a way that actually empowers them. 

How to overcome time killers like procrastination, interruptions, and multitasking by turning them around and making them work for you. 

How to process workflow efficiently and get your email inbox to zero every day. 

How your work and life can transform the world socially, economically, and spiritually, and connect to God's global purposes. 

By anchoring your understanding of productivity in God's purposes and plan, What's Best Next will give you a practical approach for increasing your effectiveness in everything you do.

A Loving Life Paul E. Miller

A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships (NF 2014) Paul E. Miller
Crossway, $12.99
ISBN 9781433537325

A few years ago I read Paul Miller’s A Praying Life (2009), a book that continues to change my prayer life. It’s a book I’ve recommended it to others and have sometimes given as a gift. When I heard about Miller’s new book, A Loving Life, based on the Book of Ruth, I was certainly eager to read it. 

Miller does a wonderful job of describing hesed love, which could be translated “steadfast love” and thought of as “love without an exit strategy.” It’s certainly not a self-centered, “What-can-I-get-out-of-this-relationship” love, but a love that gives, even when that love is not reciprocated. Such a love, as Miller often points out, is not based on feeling, which often drives a lot of what we normally call love. It is rather a love based on serving others, a love that loves in spite of the dangers of that love not being returned or even acknowledged. In short, hesed love is the way Jesus loves. 

Miller provides many examples of hesed love from the Book of Ruth, as well as from other Scriptures and stories he has encountered in his own life. The vast majority of the book is filled with helpful, biblical information and teaching. I particularly appreciate Miller’s idea of “God in the Shadows” (Chapter 19), giving examples of how Jesus often deliberately kept to the outer edges of several situations, humbly allowing others to have space in order that faith might emerge. (Examples include the sinful woman crashing the party in Luke 7, the woman caught in adultery in John 8, Jesus hiding his identity on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24, etc.) When we love rightly, we often “disappear” so that God can be discovered. 

A Loving Life is filled with many such valuable ideas based on biblical teaching. I do, however, want to make sure I’m not misreading parts of Miller’s book. For instance, while suffering in silence can certainly be an important part of hesed love, I can think of some situations (such as abusive relationships) where suffering should not be silent. I also felt Miller sometimes points a finger at our culture (Oprah, in particular) in a way that clearly identifies a problem (or the symptoms of a problem), but harps on those problems with more force than is necessary. Again, these instances could all be misreadings on my part. 

A Loving Life is a book that will challenge your thoughts on how we think about love in a biblical, God-honoring way. Please consider reading it. 

Some Interesting Thoughts about the Source Material for Noah

I hadn't really planned on seeing Noah, but I thought this review from Dr. Brian Mattson and the video follow-up to it were worth reading and watching. 

A Few Thoughts on Evolving in Monkey Town by Rachel Held Evans

Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions (NF 2010) Rachel Held Evans

(The following is not so much a review as a few thoughts on the book.)

Imagine being a Christian when your hometown is Dayton, Tennessee, home of the famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. You’d have to have a strong faith and some strong strategies for defending it. Yet after defending her faith for several years, Rachel Held Evans found she had some questions. Some serious questions. 

Evolving in Monkey Town is an honest look at questioning your faith, a memoir of discovery, and a candid examination of why we believe what we believe. It’s also an unflinching look at doubt. Is doubt necessarily a bad thing? It depends. Evans says (p. 219), 

Doubt is a difficult animal to master because it requires that we learn the difference between doubting God and doubting what we believe about God. The former has the potential to destroy faith; the latter has the power to enrich and refine it. The former is a vice, the latter a virtue. 

Doubt and questioning can be very strong components of drawing nearer to God. (Another excellent book on this topic is The Sacredness of Questioning Everything by David Dark.) 

Evans spends a significant amount of time in the first part of the book describing how convinced she was that she was right (and, by implication, that others were wrong) about faith and belief. This really hit home for me. I’ve been a part of churches that had the “We’re right, you’re wrong” attitude that can really cause you to distance yourself from the very people you should be trying to help. I still often ask myself, “Am I trying to serve others or just trying to be right?” 

“Most of the people I’ve encountered,” Evans says (p. 222), “are looking not for a religion to answer all their questions but for a community of faith in which they can feel safe asking them.” Sadly, when they find that they have disagreements with others, some Christians withdraw, saying, “Well, we have nothing further to talk about.” No, that’s when the conversations should just be getting started. Please don’t misunderstand: no one’s saying you have to water down your beliefs or change your convictions to talk to someone else, but differences in faith should not end conversations and/or relationships. 

  

Some of Evans’s struggles may surprise you, maybe even shock you. I know I found myself in many of these pages at different stages of my life. Maybe you will too. I was also reminded of some hard lessons. Maybe you will be, too. Evans isn’t afraid to ask hard, controversial questions, some of them questions I continue to struggle with as a Christian. Maybe you do, too. Evolving in Monkey Town is an excellent book for anyone who has questions, doubts, fears and struggles. It’s an even better book for those who think they have all the answers.