Sentenced

I got this idea from MizB at Should be Reading. Take a book you're reading and feature a single sentence in a blogpost. MizB says "randomly chosen," but I thought I'd pick one that struck me as special in some way.

I've been reading Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey, which was a much heralded book in its day. Wilder's plays have always been among my favorites, but I had never read any of his novels till now. "Bridge" is one of those books that has sat on my shelf practically all my life it seems, but I'm just now getting to it.

Anyway, Wilder is a true craftsman with words. Some of his sentences are quite beautiful, and there is in all hiswork a great wisdom about human nature and about mortality. Here's one that is perhaps not exactly beautiful, but a gem of characterization.

He possessed the six attributes of the adventurer--a memory for names and faces, with aptitude for altering his own; the gift of tongues; inexhaustible invention; secrecy; the talent for falling into conversation with strangers; and the freedom from conscience which springs from a contempt for the dozing rich he prayed upon.

Discipleship on the Edge

Have I told you how much I love Darrell' Johnson's Discipleship on the Edge? I have? Well, I'm telling you again. It's one of the most exciting and encouraging books I've ever read, and it has caused me to love The Revelation to John. And it had renewed in me a sense of excitement about what it means to be a disciple.

Daily Needs

What are we praying for when we pray for our daily bread? Not bread alone, surely, but all the things we need--the things we really need--to get us through the day. I don't assume these are exclusively material things--like bread--but I don't think we should dismiss the material as unimportant as we high-mindedly focus on spiritual things. Real bread. A real roof over your head. Real things really matter!

So, when I pray the Lord's prayer for my loved ones, it's at this point that I think of their actual physical needs. Sometimes I'm pretty sure I know what they are, so I name them, but I'm also aware that God knows them better than I, so that little phrase "daily bread" sort of leaves it up to God. Lord, please make sure my boys have everything they need today. Everything they really need.

I try not to speculate too much about these needs. I concede that God knows them better than I, in any case. But praying for daily needs does tend to focus my mind on the question, what do I really need? What do my sons really need? What does my wife really need? Really.

And asking these questions brings to mind some other questions. What am I here for? What's my purpose today? Why, after all, do I need what I need?

This prayer, remember, is a prayer for disciples. What we think about our daily needs will depend upon how we see ourselves positionally before God and therefore our very purpose in praying to begin with. A disciple represents (re-presents) Jesus to the world, and so to pray as a disciple is to pray with the perspective of one who desires above all else to do that representing well, and whose highest and best dream is of God's kingdom coming.

Do you see how this focuses our thoughts? Instead of scanning the canvas of our lives for this or that need to throw into the prayer-hopper, we will tend to hone in on our part in God's great kingdom plan and purpose. Or, if we're praying for others, the fulfillment of their own unique purpose in that same plan. Daily bread, in other words, is important, but it is important for a reason. Not simply because we don't want to go hungry, but we don't want our daily needs to distract us from fulfilling our purpose in God.

This is a prayer that the evil one does not want us to pray. He wants us distracted and preoccupied. This is a honing in and a focusing that positions us on the cutting edge of the God's coming kingdom.

Lord, thank you for daily bread. As I pray for my loved ones, may I pray them into your purpose for them, which goes far beyond the satisfaction of physical hunger. I thank you for such satisfaction, Lord. But blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, you say, so please give them more of that kind of hunger, and give them, until your kingdom of righteousness comes, a foretaste of your satisfaction of that hunger, even today Lord. Even today! For yours is the bread, and yours is the righteousness, in Jesus' name. Amen.

The March Poem

I said I would write one poem per month, each poem named for the month in which it was written. [Here's January and February.] Every poem so far has been about birds. A theme of mine, I suppose. Faithful reader Nancy reminded me that this one was nearly due. Here you go!

March 2010

What's all this hubbub from on high?
This skyward squawking? These
streaming v's

of long-necked messengers
high-hurrying
north?

I think they spell desire
in their cloudy wind-disheveled script.

I think
they do not understand despair.

What question do they ask and answer
in their fleeting speech?

"Look! Do you not see it?
Even now it springs up!"

Up to the bridles?

I've been talking about Darrell W. Johnson's Discipleship on the Edge for some time now. It's a wonderful book, and I begin to suspect that it has reinvigorated my own sense of mission and purpose. Johnson uses the Revelation to John as his blueprint for understanding our times, and the role of a disciple--a follower of Jesus--in these times.

I had never thought of Revelation as a disciple-training and encouragement document. Although I have read Revelation often, until now I have never loved it. And to tell you the truth, some of its passages have seemed quite awful to me. One such passage is in chapter 14, where the blood is up to "the horses' bridles" the length and breadth of Israel. Johnson's treatment of that imagery, which follows in the footsteps of George Caird and F. F. Bruce, was eye-opening for me. And wonderful.  This is not a gruesome image of the blood of unrepentant sinners (one common interpretation), but a symbolic image of the the great extent of the salvific value of the blood of Jesus.

Last year I left a church I had been attending for ten years, and since then I've started attending an Acts 29 church. It's a good church, I have no complaints, but for reasons of my own I have not exactly gotten plugged in yet. You might say I'm in the wilderness. But Johnson's book has been  extremely helpful to me. He shows me that Revelation is a picture of our times and all times, and a delineation of what is at stake. At the end of his discussion of Revelation 14, he allows the imagery to lead him into four "re-evaluations":

1. Decisions about who or what one shall worship have consequences.
2. There is a remedy for wrong decisions.
3. Why be driven by that which is fallen?  Why try to keep pace with that which is collapsing?  Here he references 1 John 2:15-17
4. "Our role in the world is to join the angels in announcing the gospel.  To keep taking whatever flack we get and keep on announcing 'the hour has come.'  'Babylon is always falling.'  'Worship the living God.'  'There is blood enough for the whole world.' " 

Friday is for the Doe See Doe

The late great John Hartford wrote it. Jones Street Station performs:

"...all these strange turns"

From John Piper's exquisitely titled, A Sweet and Bitter Providence:

Life is not a straight line leading from one blessing to the next and then finally to heaven. Life is a winding and troubled road. Switchback after switchback. And the point of biblical stories like Joseph and Job and Esther and Ruth is to help us feel in our bones (not just know in our heads) that God is for us in all these strange turns. God is not just showing up after the trouble and cleaning it up. He is plotting the course and managing the troubles with far-reaching purposes for our good and for the glory of Jesus Christ.

HT: Joe Thorn

Visions of the Kingdom

From Herman Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics:

“Just as the caterpillar becomes a butterfly, as carbon is converted into diamond, as the grain of wheat upon dying in the ground produces other grains of wheat, as all of nature revives in the spring and dresses up in celebrative clothing, as the believing community is formed out of Adam’s fallen race, as the resurrection body is raised from the body that is dead and buried in the earth, so too, by the re-creating power of Christ, the new heaven and the new earth will one day emerge from the fire-purged elements of this world, radiant in enduring glory and forever set free from the ‘bondage to decay.’”

HT: Tony Reinke.

To whom it may concern...

I've decided to activate Google Ads on my blog.  Not exactly sure why.  When I see these ads on other blogs I just automatically ignore them.  Internet ads have a certain invisibility for me, at least most of the time.  But anyway, there they are, just below the top post.  

Also, I've activated Amazon Associates in blogger.   I link to so many books here, I thought it might make things easier, and I truly do like Amazon as a book vendor.  I once worked as an acquisitions librarian for a university library, buying books full time, and I learned to value Amazon as one of my primary sources.  They do what they do very well.  I've learned to use them as a tool for discovering new books, much more useful than the best library catalog!  

As an associate, I guess you make a few pennies when somebody buys a book via your link.  With as little traffic as I get here, it won't amount to much, but there you have it.  In the past I've often debated with myself as to what vendor to link to in a post.  I love Barnes and Noble, and I love Booksprice.com, which compares many book vendors for the best price.  I believe in getting the best price!  But from here on in the primary way I link to book info will be through Amazon.com.  

Lynn Anderson on Living the Green Leaf

Stumbled across this, by the way, at PreacherMike. Lynn Anderson is the author of If I Really Believe, Why Do I Have These Doubts?

Praying for "Daily Needs"

Here's something from Eugene Peterson, whom I consider one of the wisest men on the planet.

"We have short attention spans. Having been introduced to God, we soon lose interest in God and become preoccupied with ourselves. Self expands and soul atrophies. Psychology trumps theology. ... [And this] usually adds up to a workable life ... But -- it is not the practice of resurrection, it is not growing up in Christ, it is not living in the company of the Trinity, it is not living out of our beginnings, our begettings." [Quote found at Jesus Creed.]

We see a prime example of this in our prayer life. It is a tendency we should resist, for none are immune. "Self expands and the soul atrophies." When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he taught them to put God first, to glorify his name and pray for his kingdom. But in our own prayers we typically expand on ourselves, and thereby shrink God and dismiss his kingdom.

We do this to the Bible as well of course. The Bible is put to the service of therapy. Anything that is not immediately recognizable as therapeutic is simply overlooked. This way of dealing with the Word of God is promoted in most daily devotionals. People don't even recognize the possibility of an alternative.

The same is true, as I was saying, of prayer. We put it to the use as a tool of therapy, not as a conversation with the One whose mission includes far more than our need for ease. Self expands, and the soul atrophies. Psychology trumps theology, and we don't even notice.

It's as if "give us this day our daily bread" expanded to take over the whole Jesus prayer, crowding out God and his kingdom. Or, better, as if we simply cut away the rest, ripped "daily bread" from its context, and let it mean whatever we needed it to mean. Kinda like we do with the rest of the Bible.

In my group prayer experience, of which I have had much, this has been a more or less relentless form of prayer. Daily needs above all, and everything else merely paid lip service. And that little phrase, "daily needs," comes to mean anything and everything we happen to desire. Prayer in the service of desire. Prayer as "want list." But how does our understanding of "daily needs" change if we restore that phrase to the whole context of the Jesus prayer? If we see these things, these needs, in the light of the kingdom of God and the desire that it come in fullness right away?

Put it this way: if you first pray for the reality of heaven to be made manifest completely and forever here on the earth, many of the things we think of as our "needs" would then become far less important. How strange to pray "on earth as it is in heaven," and then to pray, "and also, Lord, I really need to get to the gym more often, so will you please help me to make the time for that."

Do you see the disconnect? And yet, that's how we pray. And since we really do want to go to the gym more often, and on the other hand we're not so sure how much we want the world as we know it to vanish in a cataclysmic transition to the New Creation, the thing we desire most naturally takes on the most urgency, while the thing God might desire most fades and is forgotten.

The fundamental truth here is, our desires are not always God's desires. But if we are ambassadors of that New Creation, disciples of Jesus who learn at his feet and have his mind, his way of thinking, wouldn't we think very differently about daily needs? "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven," would form our understanding of "daily needs." Now we would see the self recede, little by little, and the foreground of our thoughts would be occupied by the kingdom of God.

In short, our daily needs would become all the things we need today in order to carry out our part in the great mission of God for his world. What does an ambassador of the kingdom need? What does he/she need daily? I highly recommend that we set our minds and hearts on this question, and seek its answer in the word of God and, yes, in prayer.

[BTW, the whole Jesus Prayer series is here.]

Monday Whatnot

Only one item this week, but a good one. Paul Tripp on counterfeit gospels. My opinion, it's important for all of us to be honestly self-critical about these things. This isn't so much about criticizing church as ourselves.

Praying on the Edge

I really didn't expect to be going on about the Jesus Prayer for post after post, but here I am again, back on the same theme. In the first post, Praying for the Kingdom of God, I tried to emphasize that the Jesus prayer has little in common with the way we usually pray. We usually pray with our "needs" uppermost, instead of the kingdom of God. And in the second post, The Jesus Prayer is a Missional Prayer, I tried to emphasize the related point that Jesus was teaching disciples how to pray. It is a prayer format for disciples.

There are a few things I want to say before going further. First, my prayer-life is no model of Christian piety. Believe me, I am no expert. I am a stuttering, befuddled, mind-wandering kind of pray-er. I pray often, throughout the day in fact, most often the age-old gem, "Help me, Lord!" But what I have found is that praying for myself and others in the way that Jesus taught us to pray has tended to cleanse my prayer-life of self-focused pleading, and helped me to picture myself as I pray not as the client of some wise and supernaturally gifted therapist and sugar-daddy, but as a front-line representative (one of many) of God's onrushing Kingdom.

I've been reading Darrell Johnson's book about The Revelation to John called Discipleship on the Edge, which emphasizes that The Revelation is primarily intended as an encouragement to disciples. I want to borrow something from Johnson that helps us to understand the position of the disciple in the plan of God to make his will be done "on earth as it is in heaven." This understanding frees us from reading The Revelation as a book of prognostication (as if John were an early Nostradamus). But it is not only a book for disciples, but a book for disciples "on the edge." When we see what Johnson means by that, it will help us to understand the real need for praying the way Jesus taught.

I have entitled this book Discipleship on the Edge because, as I hope to make clear, Revelation is not a crystal ball revealing esoteric secrets that enable us to escape the harsh realities of life on earth, but a down-to-earth manual on how to be a disciple of Jesus facing the harsh realities of life on the earth; in particular, how to do this the way Jesus did and does. Edge because, as I also hope to make clear, that is the "place" where we are called to be Jesus' disciples. I am using the image of an edge to refer to three places. First, to refer to living on the edge of the final inbreaking of the kingdom of God, on the edge between this world and the next. Second, to refer to living on the edge where the inbreaking kingdom of God presently comes up against the kingdoms of this world which are out of sync with it. And third, "edge" refers to living before the "sharp, two-edged sword" that proceeds from the mouth of the risen Jesus.... This "edge" is very sharp--like a surgeon's scalpel--with the same intent of deep healing and freedom. As we will see . . . the whole book is written to bring us to the razor-sharp point of decision: who will be the Lord of my life and of the world? Whose way leads to the establishing of God's just rule amnong the nations?

Now, I've included this lengthy quote about discipleship because I want to emphasize that we who call ourselves Jesus followers live on this edge, and pray on this edge. This edge is a violent place where the enemies of God's kingdom make sorties and ambushes and full-scale assaults on God's kingdom ambassadors and intercessors. Satan is not interest in your "health and wealth," but in disabling you as a disciple of the triumphant Lamb! We long for this edge to be obliterated at last, for the time when we shall at last say "the kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever." [Rev. 11:15]

All this being the case, it changes the way we see, for example, our daily needs. We pray differently because we learn to "want" differently, for ourselves, and for our loved ones. Just as seeing Revelation as a discipleship book changes the way you read and understand its rich content, seeing the Jesus prayer as a discipleship prayer (and ourselves as disciples) changes the way we pray. It changes the way we want. It changes our hopes and dreams and the desires of our hearts. This is the work of the Holy Spirit, who is in the disciple-making business. That just happens to be one of the ways God is working out his kingdom plan.

In the next few posts I'm going to take the four requests laid out in the second half of the prayer of Jesus (provision, forgiveness, protection from temptation, protection from the evil one), and expand on how these things fit in our prayer-life as discipleship.

Final note: you might think that, since I'm quoting Darrell Johnson and all, I might at least quote his book on the Lord's prayer, called Fifty-Seven Words that Change the World: A Journey through the Lord's Prayer. All I can say is, it's in the mail.

The Jesus Prayer is a Missional Prayer

Our part in God's mission, says Leslie Newbigin in The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, is threefold: to announce the Kingdom of God, to share in the life of Jesus, and to do the work of the Spirit. Although I haven't read Newbigin's classic text (it's on my list), I do think this little triad seems a good way to think about discipleship.

In my last post on praying in the way that Jesus taught, I tried to emphasize that the Jesus prayer of Matthew 6 was essentially a prayer of discipleship. A disciple is a follower of Jesus and, as Dallas Willard says, a student of Jesus. The Jesus prayer is the way of Jesus in prayer, his way of thinking through his "prayer needs." The prayer of Jesus shows us what was most important to Jesus, and what was the context in which he embedded all his intercession. The context was this: May your kingdom come, Father. Now. All the way. Forever.

That's the vision behind "hallowed be your name." It's the vision behind "on earth as it is in heaven." Jesus is not talking about hints and foretastes here, or about a really great worship set at church. He is talking about the Great Day that will be the end of days as we know it, and the beginning of something we oh so inadequately call "glory." That this day should come, ever, should be the dream of every Christian, and it is the mission of God to bring it to pass.

But short of that, short of the fullness of time and heavenly trumpets, every eye seeing, every knee bowing, the prayer of Jesus is for the four fundamental needs that will allow us to take our part in this great mission of God as it unfolds through history. These are: provision (daily needs), an attitude of forgiveness, power to overcome temptation, and protection from the evil one. These four needs correspond to four conditions that threaten our ability to carry out our mission as disciples (that is, to take our place in the mission of God). These four conditions are: want, bitterness, weakness with regard to temptation, and fear with regard to the evil one. Want, bitterness, weakness, and fear.

Jesus is telling his disciples to pray against these conditions, which can undermine their own part in the unfolding plan of God. To take our place in the plan is to proclaim the arrival of his kingdom, share the life of Jesus with others, and keep in step with the Spirit. That is the mission of the Christian. And so our fundamental reason for praying is to be that kind of disciple, for the sake of the kingdom. It's the way Jesus prayed, and the way he taught his disciples to pray. He wants us to take our place, and do our part, in the unfolding mystery of the kingdom of God.

Praying for the Kingdom of God

In this recent post I talked about how the Lord's prayer, as it is called, provides a format for intercession that keeps us from being self-absorbed in our prayers. Now I want to say something more.

When I pray, I try to pray in this format, starting out by focusing on the kingdom of God, thinking about the kingdom and longing for it to come at last in fullness and glory; and then, with some sense of kingdom-wonder lingering in my thoughts, I move on to the second half of the Jesus format: personal provision, forgiveness, protection from temptation and the evil one. Sometimes I focus more on one of these than the others, but I try always to start with the kingdom.

When we pray "may your kingdom come," we're praying for the biggest most momentous event we can ever imagine happening. We're praying that today, in our presence, Revelation 21 would happen. Here's just a sample of what that will be like:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”

Folks, this prayer is not about having a good day, getting along with your boss, getting good grades in school, or getting over your sore throat. It's a prayer for ultimate things, and when it comes, we will be on our faces in holy fear. When you begin here, you move on to other things with a certain sense of "perspective."

But maybe the prayer for ultimate things will not be answered today. Maybe the New Jerusalem is still not yet. Maybe today will be like all the days that have come before. Well then, short of the kingdom of God in fullness, what should be our deepest desire for today? How about, at the very least, a foretaste of that kingdom. An inkling. A sense of what the Holy Spirit of God is doing around you. Paul mentions this in Ephesians 1:13-14, where he speaks of the Spirit as a guarantee of our inheritance. That is, a down-payment today of the kingdom-fullness that is to come.

What does that look like? Well, I believe it looks like "daily bread." and it looks like an ongoing attitude of repentance and forgiveness. And it looks like temptation overcome and protection from the lies, slander, and threats of the evil one. In other words, the rest of the Jesus prayer is a prayer for a little more of the kingdom now until the not yet finally comes in fullness.

So the Jesus prayer is a prayer for the kingdom from start to finish. It's an awesome prayer, a prayer for things far above our full understanding, a prayer for beauty and light and every tear disposed of and hopelessness obliterated and all sin done away with. The lamb is on the throne, and a river of life runs from there to all the nations. But it is also a prayer that positions us on the cutting edge of what God is doing in his world. It's the prayer, in other words (and I can't emphasize this enough), of a disciple.

The Christian Leadership Sidetrack

Steve at Cruciorm Life has posted something of great significance, in my opinion [HT: Milton Stanley]. It's called, Is Leadership a Healthy Christian Aim?

I read a lot about the missional church movement and I thinnk it's one of the best things to happen in the church world in some time, but the conversation is almost always among leaders, about leadership, about being a better leader, etc. It sometimes seems, and I think I've even heard it said, that everybody is supposed to aspire to leadership, and there's a whole branch of the Christian publishing industry to help us do so. I think it's mostly half-baked nonsense.

No doubt we need leaders, but aspiration to leadership, thirst for leadership, can be a dangerous thing. Steve quotes Church historian John Hannah:

If we don’t develop a generation of people who are not afraid of anonymity, who are willing to be nothing as far as being unknown, who don’t see sacrifice as a crime, and who realize God has commanded contentment not happiness, then what will happen to the missionary enterprise in two generations?

After all, who was David speaking of when he refers to the quiet in the land. There is a passage in Romans 12 where Paul sums up the aspiration of the common (non-leader) Christian. It is not to have a successful ministry, but to:

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

That's quite a to-do list, and it doesn't necessarily include leading. Maybe Henri Nouwen, who was in my opinion a fine leader, had this in mind when he said that the Christian leader must aspire to downward mobility. I think most of our talk about leadership militates against this vision of Paul's. We need to look more closely, and more questioningly, at this whole issue of leadership. Are we getting it all wrong? I think so.

[Addendum: Steve's follow-up post is here. And I'm nodding in agreement throughout.]

Another Brennan Manning Moment:

Probably the moment in my own life when I was closest to the Truth who is Jesus Christ was the experience of being a hopeless derelict in the gutter in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In his novel The Moviegoer, Walker Percy says: “Only once in my life was the grip of everydayness broken: when I lay bleeding in the ditch.” Paradoxically, such an experience of powerlessness does not make one sad. It is a great relief because it makes us rely not on our own strength but on the limitless power of God. The realization that God is the main agent makes the yoke easy, the burden light, and the heart still.

[HT: It's a Beautiful Gospel]

Christian Positive Thinking

Michael Patton lists eight things he hates about Christianity. In the end he asks, "What about you?"

Well, I think Michael just about covers it, but I'll add one item, number nine, which I'll call "Christian positive thinking" [CPT]. That's when a Christian thinks of the positive outcome he or she is hoping for and then concludes, "I'm believing it will happen."

• "I'm believing this rain will end and the game won't be postponed."
• "I'm believing the tumor will just disappear."
• "I'm believing the Sox are going to win it all this year."

You get the picture. I always want to say, "Why should I care what you're believeing, pal?" It's all about faith, these people say, and maybe they quote the late Tug McGraw: "You gotta believe!" Where do they get this notion that faith in God equates to all good things coming to you, as long as you believe! It's Jiminy Cricket Christianity, for crying out loud.

Christian Positive Thinking often includes positive thinking about oneself, emphasizing just how wonderful we are. Oh, there's usually a brief nod to the Lord and a humble admission that it was God who made us so dang awesome, but the subject of CPT is usually the wondrous self. CPT worship songs are always about how much we love God, how dedicated we are to loving people, etc.

All this is so prevalent and so unquestioned in Christian circles, but I have a brief quote from Czeslaw Milosz which may act as an antidote:

To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.

[By the way, I found the Milosz quote at First Known When Lost.]

Monday Whatnot

Check out A Striped Armchair. This is a reader's blog. That is to say, the blog of one dedicated reader. She read 400 books last year alone!

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Janet Goodrich at Across the Page has recently finished reading The Revelation. She draws a few wise conclusions.

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What do we do with our desires? 1) Feed them. 2) Deny them. The Jazz Theologian riffs on this theme quite nicely here. Provocative quote: "I think that most Christians, in practice at least, are as Buddhist as Tiger wants to be ... unfortunately." Great post.

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Here's something that I think everybody should read. It's simply a sample of Tim Keller's booklet on idolatry, which is of course your fundamental sin and mine too. It's profoundly important, filling a massive teaching-gap in the body of Christ. Really, you should read it carefully. It's only one piece of Keller's small group teaching package called The Gospel in Life.

Saturday Book Notes

Books I've come across on the Web this week, that I think I want to read:

Two from Crossway (what a great publishing house they are):
Only One Way?: Reaffirming the Exclusive Truth Claims of Christianity (a collection of essays by assorted authors)
Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus, by D. A. Carson

I've never read a Seth Godin book, but Linchinpin: Are You Indispensable? looks like the one for me.

By Edward P, Meadors: Idolatry and the Hardening of the Heart

Meanwhile here's what other readers have found.

Ain't No Grave

On putting the kingdom first

I've been thinking about the prayer that Jesus taught the disciples to pray, recorded in Matthew 6. It occurs to me that we almost never pray this way, at least when we pray in groups. When I was a small group leader, we always had a prayer time, and I always asked people about their "prayer needs." Putting it that way is practically an invitation to think of prayer as self-absorbed pleading before God. And that's what we did. We prayed for healing, for jobs, for relationships, for emotional health, for safety on journeys, for communication skills, relief of stress and on an on.

None of that was exactly wrong. That is not my point. But notice how Jesus teaches us to pray, and then think again about how we prayed in our small group. Here's the Jesus prayer:

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.

There are ten lines in this little poem-like prayer. The first five embody a longing for the Kingdom of God. That's what the whole first half of the prayer is about. Only then does the prayer turn to immediate personal needs of the one doing the praying, and I would add they are as much spiritual needs as temporal.

Note: the prayer is not an encouragement to self-absorption. It is not a litany of personal needs. More importantly, it puts first things first. The need above all other needs, the supreme subject of prayer, we might say, is the Kingdom. "Your kingdom come." The personal prayer requests (such as "daily bread," which is a far cry, by the way, from praying for prosperity) come after, and within the kingdom context.

I learn to understand my real need, when I see this prayer aright. When "your kingdom come" becomes the primary point--the overarching context--of my prayer, I will long for that coming whether I have a job or not, whether I'm sick or well, etc. I will readily pray for work and health, of course, but not apart from the prayer for what truly matters--God's kingdom.

In our small group, we rushed right to the second half of the prayer, with hardly a thought for the kingdom of God. My guess is that if we will set our minds on the kingdom, it will change the way we pray for ourselves.

What say you?

Monday Whatnot

Top 10 Free Ways To Discover New Music Online

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This one's been getting attention: Uncool people need Jesus too. One of those things you might think shouldn't need to be said, but, well, it needed to be said.

PS: Apparently some people were bothered. Streger apologizes and explains at What I Actually Meant.

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Lots and lots of good stuff (good thoughts, good writing, good reading) at Crave Something More.

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Every time we use scripture to justify ourselves, instead of having it convict us, we are in a dangerous position. Yup.

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Have you noticed Missional Mayhem? Good blog.

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A prayer of Spurgeon's. That about covers it.

"He looked therefore and looked again..."

From John Bunyan's, Pilgrim's Progress:

Now I saw in my dream that the highway up which Christian was to go was fenced on either side with a wall, and that wall was called Salvation. Up this way, therefore, did burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty because of the load on his back. He ran thus till he came to a place somewhat ascending. And upon that place stood a cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a sepulchre. So I saw in my dream that just as Christian came up to the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders and fell from off his back and began to tumble, and so continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more. Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a merry heart, "He hath given me rest by His sorrow and life by His death." Then he stood a while to look and wonder, for it was very surprising to him that the sight of the cross should thus ease him of his burden. He looked therefore and looked again, even till the springs that were in his head sent the water down his cheeks.

Saturday Book Notes

Eugene Peterson's new book. For me, this is a must read.

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While we're on the subject of new books, Sinclair Ferguson also hasa new one, and it's on my favorite subject!

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Books currently being read by the staff at Desiring God.

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I really appreciate Trevin Wax's book reviews. He recently considered Dallas Willard's new one on spiritual knowledge.

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And on a completely different (but still bookish) topic, the next book in my War in the Pacific Reading Marathon (every battle, book by book) is called We Band of Angels, by Elizabeth M. Norman. It's about nurses on Bataan and in the Japanese POW camps. Or, to put it more precisely, it's about real American heroes.

PS: there's a brief review at Worthwhile Books.

We're not adequate?

Ah, sorry for making myself scarce around here. Blogging has sort of fallen through the cracks. I'm not through here, just needing to find a niche in my day where blogging can routinely fit.

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Saw this wonderful quote from one of my favorite books, Brennan Manning's The Ragamuffin Gospel. The quote, by the way, was featured in a post over at It's a beautiful gospel. Here 'tis:

The portrait of Peter, the rock who proved to be a sand pile, speaks to every ragamuffin across the generations. Lloyd Ogilvie notes: “Peter had built his whole relationship with Jesus Christ on his assumed capacity to be adequate. That’s why he took his denial of the Lord so hard. His strength, loyalty, and faithfulness were his self-generated assets of discipleship. The fallacy in Peter’s mind was this: he believed his relationship was dependent on his consistency in producing the qualities he thought had earned him the Lord’s approval.

“Many of us face the same problem. We project into the Lord our own measured standard of acceptance. Our whole understanding of him is based in a quid pro quo of bartered love. He will love us if we are good, moral, and diligent. But we have turned the tables; we try to live so that he will love us, rather than living because he has already loved us.”

I know many Christians who "turn the tables" in this way. And I know many non-believers who think that the idea that we might not actually "deserve" the love of God is sheer effrontery. The notion that "but for the grace of God" we are in deep trouble turns out to be, for these people, supremely arrogant and judgmental.

Grace, it seems, is a hard doctrine to swallow. Buried beneath its winsome finish is a difficult truth: we deserve nothing. Calvinists may be outspoken on this score, but most evangelicals throw the word grace around while avoiding this core truth. Perhaps that's the reason that many non-believers find the doctrine of grace less attractive than we expect. And yet without this core truth, grace would not be grace.

Anyway, good to be back at WF. I'll try to visit more often!