Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Two free audio books by John Piper

This month, you can get two audio books by John Piper for free. Thanks to christianaudio.com and Desiring God for these special deals. Here are the links:

Let the Nations be Glad: the Supremacy of God in Missions
(use coupon code GLAD10 at checkout; offer expires Dec. 31, 2010)

Summary: Why do we do missions? We are told, by Jesus, to preach the gospel and make disciples of all nations. So missions is duty, right? Wrong. If you do missions purely from a sense of duty you will not honor those you are reaching out to, nor will you truly honor God. Duty is the wrong place to look, so where do we find the answer to why we do missions? We turn, according to John Piper, to worship.

In our worship of God we encounter God's glory. The overflow from our worship is a desire to share God's glory with others (the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever), and we naturally become missional. When Jesus was asked what the kingdom of God was like, he compared it to a pearl so valuable that one would sell all they owned simply to possess it. Does that seem like duty to you? Instead, Jesus calls us to a new mindset, which flows from the mindset that worship creates in us. Thus, according to Piper, does worship become the goal of missions and the fuel which makes missions possible...


Don't Waste your Life

Summary: Millions of people are wasting their lives pursuing dreams of happiness that don't rise above a good marriage, nice kids, a successful career, a nice car, fun vacations, nice friends, a fun retirement, a painless death, and (hopefully) no hell. John Piper calls this a tragedy in the making. He argues that we were created for joy. We were designed to have one life-encompassing passion.

In this book he describes his own journey in discovering this great, single passion. And He pleads that at all costs we pursue our joy in the crucified Christ, who is the glory of God. The cost is great. But the joy is worth any cost. Don’t buy seductive, tragic promises of worldly joy. Don’t waste your life.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

True treasure

Many dream of “striking it rich,” but few actually succeed. Mel Fisher began his quest for riches in 1969. He started to search off the Atlantic Coast for the Atocha, one of the few remaining Spanish galleon shipwrecks never recovered. It was thought to contain a fortune.

For sixteen long years, using state of the art equipment, Fisher scoured the ocean floor for any sign of the ship. Finally, on July 20, 1985, his son Kane announced, “Put away the charts; we’ve found the main pile!” Their find was dubbed the “shipwreck of the century,” worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and has been compared to the discovery of King Tut’s tomb.

Did you know you, too, could strike it rich? I’m not talking about the lottery. The Bible says “Happy is a man who finds wisdom…for she [wisdom] is more profitable than silver, and her revenue is better than gold. She is more precious than jewels; nothing you desire compares with her” (Proverbs 3:13-15). Find wisdom, and you’ve hit the real jackpot.

Wisdom is the ability to make good and godly choices in life. It’s more than just an IQ. Wisdom is an attraction to everything good, and true, and beautiful. It is not driven by emotions. It carefully weighs each option. It acts responsibly. It thinks about long-term consequences. It is street-wise in a dangerous and confusing world. Imagine how different things would be if we all spoke and acted with wisdom!

So, how do we find wisdom? Proverbs 9:10 provides the treasure map: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.” To gain wisdom we must first develop a healthy fear and respect for the living God.

This means we must recognize that God alone is pure and powerful, able to tell us how life works. We must admit our own sense of direction is faulty. We must believe God’s Word is more reliable than our closest friend, our smartest professor, or our favorite talk show host. We must accept that Jesus alone can rescue us from our sin, for “in Him are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3).

True wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord. And the fear of the Lord begins with knowing Christ. Only then can we become truly rich. Even richer than Mel Fisher.

This article was written for publication in today's edition of our local paper, the Hi Desert Star.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Slave

Here's the trailer for MacArthur's newest book Slave, coming out in another month. He has really done some great research on this subject. Kudos also to the Holman Christian Standard Bible for translating doulos correctly!

New Blog

Today I'm closing up shop and launching a new blog called Pinch of Clay. You can visit it by clicking here . Please stop by and...