Books that shaped my 2011.

Ok, It's that time of year. The time when lists of every kind and sort show up on anonymous blogs everywhere. So as I seem to be in the spirit today, I'll share with you some books that churned my heart, invigorated my mind, and fed my soul in 2011. So here they are, in no particular order. I hope you enjoy.

The Call by Os Guinness



I was assigned this book to read for a spiritual formation class, and from the look of it, was not excited. But I was really floored from the introduction on by Os Guinness' ability to weave art, literature, history and the humanities into gripping illustrations of spiritual longing and transformation. The book is written from a Biblical worldview, but is quite accessible to anyone yearning for a deeper meaning in life without having to default to fluffy New-Age Oprahism. What was particularly helpful were the chapters on calling as a way of life, not just a vocation. He successfully crushes the idea of "ministry" that is only available in the full-time vocational places like the pastorate or missionary work. I would highly recommend this to any person who wants to target what the call of their life is in respond to the calling of Jesus Christ.

A Meal With Jesus by Tim Chester



Tim Chester lays out here a biblical theology of meals and hospitality here with wisdom and insight, showing that a seemingly mundane event can reveal to us God's grace, draw us into God's community, and send us out on God's mission. I was deeply moved multiple times while reading of how "The Son of Man came eating and drinking..." and how Jesus used meal to bring healing and to point the a bigger reality in which we will all someday eat a meal with God in His kingdom. He brings you from Genesis to Revelation, pulling the thread of meals through the entirety of Scripture, and showing us how to eat to God's glory.

Notes From The Tilt-A-Whirl by N.D. Wilson



An intellectually and spiritually rousing collection of prose, opening us up to the wonder of the world we live in, all spoken by an infinitely powerful but intrinsically available God. If you feel like so much of the literature on apologetics is dry, wooden and unengaging, I would suggest you pick up a copy of this book. He opens up the blinds and shows you a beautiful, but badly broken world. A world that never stops moving, a world that is more alive than we ever imagined, and behind this beautiful world is a beautiful Poet, a magnificent Artist who is just waiting for his masterpiece to see Him and rejoice with Him in all that he has done.

King's Cross by Tim Keller



You can never go wrong with a book by Tim Keller. He is my favorite author, and I never get sick of reading him tell a story and weave the Gospel beautifully through it. King's Cross is no different, and I would argue might be Keller at his best. He goes through the Gospel of Mark, showing that the story of the whole world --- all of our goals, our stories, our desires are seen most clearly in the life of Jesus. In every story Keller pulls through the storyline of the Bible, centers it on Jesus, and invites us to take part in the story that shapes all of history. Please don't pass this book up. I promise you won't be disappointed.

The Hidden Life of Prayer by David M'Intyre



An old classic, reprinted for a new generation to glean from; few things in the world of publishing are better. That is what we find in David M'Intyre's little treatise on prayer. the good minister focuses in on one verse, where Jesus tells his disciples that "But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you", and spends 120 pages bringing that into the ordinary Christians life. I personally was captured up by M'Intyre's vision of communion with the Lord, and it has profoundly shaped my private prayer life.

The Same Kind Of Different As Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore



This may have been the most powerful book of the year for me. The story is told from two different angles: one man, a powerful and successful art dealer, and the other man, a sharecropper's son, in all accounts, a modern-day slave. Each chapter is told by one of these men, recalling the sometimes unbelievable details of their lives, and showing the power of the Gospel to change men of every sort. I rarely cry while reading, but this book had me broken in several place, and rejoicing over grace in others. I had a tough time putting it down at many times, and would gladly pass it on to you.

When People Are Big And God is Small by Edward Welch



Some books are for the mind, like "Notes...", some are for the hear like "Same Kind..." and some are for you soul. Ed Welch's book on the fear of man is definitely one of those books. Dr. Welch, speaking from his own experiences, scholarly expertise and years of counseling brings us before God's gracious presence to show us what fear does to a soul, what we do to enable others to control us, and what God has done in Jesus to free us from that. He builds a stunning case from Scripture about how to understand the fear of man, and how to graciously come under the fear of God. I would commend this book to anyone who feels that they cower under the demands of others and how the Gospel can address a heart broken by fear and co-dependancy.

So, those are the books that have shaped my life, heart and thinking this year, and I hope they can be helpful to you as well.

The Last Words of a King.

Near the end of J.R.R. Tolkien's magnum opus series "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King", Aragorn, the wandering ranger and true king of Gondor gives a rousing last call to fight hard and die well. He is preparing his army, which is being surrounded by an army of 10,000 orcs, to fight with everything they have until the very end, and he is willing to die on the battlefield with his men, like a true king. He yells, triumphantly,

"Sons of Gondor! Of Rohan! My brothers. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of Men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the Age of Men comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!"

We, who likewise belong to a kingdom, have all heard the same call from our King: The last words that have driven His people forward for almost 2000 years.

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

This time of year we remember how our King stepped of His throne, out of His castle and entered our pitiful village. He called men to follow him, and then led the charge against our enemies of Satan, sin, death and hell, dying on the battlefield of Golgotha, winning the fight we could not win, by giving up the life we should've given. Like a true king, he dies on the battlefield. But death couldn't hold our King. He rose to take His throne, and rule his people righteously. And as this Kingdom rule is revealed, the King declares that it must be heralded. Good news must be told of this victorious King and his Kingdom of Grace.

But I was thinking as I watched Aragorn, Gandalf, Legolas and others tear through a wall of orcs, what would have happened if Aragorn's speech had fallen on deaf ears? As they were surrounded by swarms of enemies, would they just collapse under pressure? Aragorn knew that the only way out of hell, was through it. So, what would've happened if Jesus' disciples left the mission of the Gospel behind? The most important and life-altering event in history would've passed unnoticed. We would sit, two millennia removed, knowing nothing of the salvation and kingship of Jesus Christ, and we would remain lost, wandering in a foreign and oppressive kingdom with no knowledge of the rescuing King and his Kingdom of Grace.

Don't go AWOL, move forward with the command of our good King. Tell of His great battle with death, his victory over sin, and His gracious reign and rule over all of life. Herald Him as the Great King he is, and bring His kingdom into view in all of life.

The longest Sabbath ever.

"On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment."
Luke 23:56

This does not seem like the proper response after your rabbi, master and lord has just been executed for a crime he did not commit. If I was one of the disciples I would most certainly freaking out right now, despite Jesus' multiple proclamations that this is exactly what was going to happen (see Luke 9:18-22). In my mind, Jesus was going to be established as king, overthrow Rome, and usher a new Golden Age of Israel. He was definitely NOT going to die by the hands of these very same Romans. But isn't it interesting that the one full day Jesus lay dead in a tomb just happened to be the Sabbath? Now, the Sabbath is all about rest. In Genesis, God makes everything in six days, and on the seventh He rests. God does not need to rest. God is not tired after a full work week. God is doing something here. He is intentionally wiring the world to work in a certain way, a certain rhythm. God wants creation to enter a rhythm of work and rest, work and rest. The Sabbath teaches us not to rely on ourselves but to trust in God by resting in His work for us.

So then why is Jesus in the ground on the Sabbath? Because he has finished his work and now it is time to rest in that work. That is what God does. Jesus as the eternal God already has a track record of resting after a magnificent work; first in creation, and secondly in salvation. But Jesus does not need to rest after the work of the cross. The rest is for us. We are the ones that need to rest in God's work. If the disciples actually listened to Jesus and understood what was taking place, then they would be resting in the fact that God has finished His redemptive work and wait for Jesus to rise from death. But instead they had lost all hope that Jesus was who he said he was. Luke 24:21 accounts two disciples reaction to the whole scenario, "We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel." I can just hear the despair in their voices; "we had hoped..." I'm quite sure that although God had planned to have the death of Jesus land on a Sabbath, the disciples did not grasp the full reality of this move. for them the Sabbath was a routine part of life, and so the deep truth of this Sabbath must have been lost on them. Maybe it's just me, but I think that the reason God puts so much weight and emphasis on the Sabbath was for this specific day. Every command of God is not just a command in itself, but always points to a bigger reality. The entirety of existence in a sense is packed into 3 days. On Good Friday God works in a magnificent display of glory, He rests on the Sabbath, and then He ushers in a new creation. God's intent in the Sabbath falling between the cross and resurrection is to teach us to rest in God's work for us, trusting in his atoning work and looking forward to his resurrecting power. And notice that he is not "suggesting" we rest, he is commanding it. "On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment (emphasis mine). Our command is not to impress God in our work, but to be impressed by His work and rest in that.

So if we take this passage and zoom out to see all of redemptive history, it would seem that we are living in the longest Sabbath ever. we live between Good Friday (God's magnificent work) and Easter Sunday (His new creation). The whole life of a Christian is one long Sabbath; we behold the work of God on our behalf, live our lives in light of that work, not adding to it, and we wait for Him to resurrect everything. So behold the marvelous atoning work of Jesus, rest in it, and wait in hope for the New Creation.

A Brother Lawrence moment

I think I had a Brother Lawrence moment tonight...

Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection was a monk living in Paris in the 17th century who, although keeping a lowly position as a kitchen worker in a monestary, has had a profound influence on believers for centuries, mainly for his book "The Practice of the Presence of God" which accounts how Brother Lawrence communed with God in mundane, everyday tasks. It was said that people would come from miles around just to watch him do the dishes, because he did them with such joy, and that joy was infectious to others.


At the end of a long and exhausting (but incredible) day, I spill a whole bucket of mop water all over the floor at Origin Coffee right before I was ready to leave. But before I had the chance to get frustrated and angry, God stilled my heart and asked me to enjoy this moment. Everything seemed to slow down, and I just started praying for a friend whom I saw tonight and it turned out to be the best part of my day (which is no small remark considering I saw two of my best friends get married, danced and partied with some crazy awesome people AND played Mumford covers at open mic night). There, mopping up the huge mess I just made, I was at peace, and felt the joy of the presence of God. Anything could've happened in that moment, and I would have been ok, because my joy was rooted in such a way that nothing could be taken from me, even if EVERYTHING was. It's funny, because we chase after that moment, that experience, that feeling, and forget the object that is behind our catharsis. People travel to distant countries, uproot their whole lives, join massive movements, all to find some sense of satisfaction, joy or excitement, and I stumbled upon it in a puddle of dirty mop water. God wants to be with you in the ordinary, often more than in the extraordinary because we live most of our lives in that; the everyday not-specialness. God wants your laundry time and your rush hour commute and your smoke break and your cleaning accidents.

Leave the mountaintops to the religious; let's live with Jesus here in the valley.

Behind the shadow.

As a child, I was fascinated by shadows. I vividly remember Independence Day when I was four, and my parents took me to the park in our small mountain town where a 4th of July carnival was going on. As we walked down the street in the late afternoon, our shadows seemed to dance on the pavement, and my parents seemed tall as giants, their massive limbs swaying like the branches of an autumn tree, seemingly weightless with the absence of its leaves. But oddly, as my shadow grew along with me, my fascination with it did not. The mystical quality of them dwindled, and as shadows seem to blend into the night, irrecognizable from the surrounding darkness, so did my fascination with them. This was until my sophomore year of high school, when an encounter with Jesus in the Scriptures re-ignited a curiosity once lost with these dancers of the dark. As I read the Bible, and other theological works, I began to see what both Paul in Colossians and the author of Hebrews describe as “…a shadow of things to come” (Col.2:17, Heb. 10:1). I've been reading Exodus a lot lately, and this theme has literally been jumping out at me, so I thought I share a bit. The Book of Exodus is a story of redemption, and of the making of a redeemed people, by and for a personal God, who reveals himself simply as “It is I who will be with you”

This personal God makes Himself known and declares He will redeem those whom He has promised blessing and will secure them against all their enemies. He then works against these enemies with mighty acts of power to save them from endless slavery. But redemption is never free, and the cost is severe. Blood must be spilt to snatch people from the clutches of bondage and death. This sacrifice institutes a feast, where they celebrate the fact that God has looked over their sin because of the blood that was spilled. Then God makes them a people by sending help and offering Himself if they will have faith in Him. He makes order out of chaos, appointing people to carry out the charges He gives them, and gives them authority to lead and guide this Redeemed into the fullness of joy and blessing. As they live out this blessed life, in touch with their Creator and Rescuer, others, who are trapped in their own slavery, look to this Redeemer for transformation in their lives, and the pattern continues. The Redeemed become instruments of hope, bringing the story of redemption to everyone near them, in hops that they will “taste and see that the LORD is good’ and be saved from their bondage to false lords and false gods. So, I come back to my point at the beginning; we can see a shadow and have an idea what is casting it, but with out seeing the full form, we will always be in the dark. That is why we have to remember; behind the shadow, there’s a person.

Business as usual.

I saw this as I drove around, trying to acclimate myself somewhat to the City of Reno, and it immediately brought up some questions like, "What kind of church was this?", "What happened?", "Where did the people go?", and "How long did it take for the Gospel to lose it's power and for religious duty to set in?". As I pondered these things today, I came to realize that for many of the churches peppering the American landscape, the stark reality is that they don't look much different than this bank does. Many churches treat Christian faith like an exchange of goods and services. You come in, deposit something of value, get sound advice from a professional and hope that you earn a return on your investment. So the question is "Are you surprised by this church-bank conversion?" I'm saddened for sure, but surprised, I am not. Now obviously I didn't know this church personally, but I do know the Gospel, and I understand the cultural landscape of Reno pretty well. What inevitably happens in every church that stops proclaiming the Gospel is that first the mission goes, then the giving goes, then the community goes, and on and on until there is no longer a gospel people doing gospel things for gospel reasons, but a people who revert to "business as usual" by just coming, consuming and refusing to serve or give themselves to any task that is not about them. See, the Gospel is the opposite of "business as usual", and the church stands and falls on the Gospel. No person, idea, funding or persistence can keep it alive, and eventually everyone will just give up, because they no longer have anything to fight for. So pastors, do you live, lead and preach like your building a business, or are you receiving a kingdom and building into that? Christians, why do you come to church? do you come for an exchange of goods and services, hoping to increase your spiritual pay-off, or do you come to sacrificially love, serve and give for the sake of the Gospel?

May our churches never look like banks, but like hospitals for the sick, families for the orphans and refuge for the vagrants.

The Sins Of Our Fathers.

I have been in a funk lately. For the last couple weeks it seems like nothing I do has had any meaning or validity to it. It has felt like I left my life at the bus stop or the mall around Thanksgiving and never made the effort to go back and find it but instead have just tried to get by without; like my livelihood has been that favorite pair of jeans that are dirty but I've just been too lazy to wash them so I just stick with wearing the ones that are a size too small. Something was wrong, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I hadn't stolen anything, looked at porn or betrayed anyone lately, so why did I feel like crap? I was reading my Bible, but the words seemed distant, I was spending time in prayer, but my praises and requests seemed too ephemeral, like they were getting lost somewhere between me and God. I felt lonely, even though I was constantly surrounded by people; good people. What was this thing, this feeling that was keeping me down, keeping me stuck in second gear? I asked God to show me, but all I could think about was my Dad.

His birthday was a couple of weeks ago, and although I have made a couple of efforts to see him, I just couldn't track him down. He can be a hard man to find at times. He doesn't own a cell phone, has never been on a computer, and I would be surprised if he knew what the Internet was. He is 54 and lives with some friends in a mobile home in the small mountain town I grew up in. He works as a roofer, has worn the same ratty Giant's hat for the last 20 years and I can't picture him without a beer in his hand. He is a good, kind-hearted man who would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. He is also the definition of the word pagan. Now, most of us when we hear the word "pagan" conjure up images of men in black robes with goats and pentagrams tattooed on their arms dancing around a fire in the woods. While that maybe one description of the term, it's certainly not what the people of Jesus' time thought of. The word pagan in its greek roots refers to people who live in rural areas and work with the land for survival and tend to worship things like trees, animals and other objects in the natural order. A professor I once had defined a pagan as "the guy who lives on the farm." Now my father would never be described as a religious man, but my mother once told me that the one conversation she had with him on the subject had my father telling her that he believed in the Sun, that we were grown in the ground and the Sun grows us and we should worship the Sun because that is were life comes from(I could make a really cheesy christian joke right now about worshipping "the Son" and totally over-spiritualize this, but I'll save that for my friend Andy). That my friends is paganism. I never really thought he was serious about this until I started thinking about his life and the way it plays out. You see, my father is a man completely devoid of any purpose, goals or aspirations, and has been since as far back as I can remember. Now he is not lazy or irresponsible in the traditional sense; he works hard at a blue-collar construction job and has since before I was born, but he is extremely lazy and irresponsible in the sense of having his life go somewhere. Nothing drives him. Nothing stirs him. Nothing tugs at his inner being and pulls him to achieve or excel. If I could link these two things together, his paganistic beliefs and his complete lack of purpose, I would have to say that because he sees life as just part of the natural order, no different than a tree or a waterfall or a badger, then that is what leads him to be totally bankrupt of drive and desire. I wondered what it must be like for my dad, floating through life aimlessly, moving from job to job, bar to bar, never quite having a destination but driving anyway. Then it hit me, this is how I have felt for the last 3 weeks.

You see, we all inherit things from our parents; things like eye color, metabolism and heart disease. But we also inherit spiritual qualities. we carry around a generational sin, an iniquity that can be traced down the very roots of our family tree. for some of us it's anger, for some it's alcoholism, for me it's laziness and futility. My father passed down to me and my brothers(although both of them have taken two wildly different paths with it) a sense that nothing we do matters, and it's too hard to do anyway, so why bother? It has permeated nearly every area of my life and has been something I have fought for 10 years, with mixed results. To be completely honest, It is a daily battle for me to get up early, shower, brush my teeth, eat right, exercise, do my homework, and take care of myself, and these last couple weeks have been a massive failure on most of those fronts. It has been a sin I have needed to repent of, and this is my confession. God has been showing me that I am not my father, I do not have to live his life and It would be sin of the highest order to deny the new life He has given me for my dad's life that I was sure to repeat without God's mercy and intervention. It will be 10 years that I have been walking(or stumbling) with Jesus this week and I have been dwelling on the state of my life had it had not been for the irresistible call of of the Gospel on that cold Thursday night a decade ago. The problem is that I have been living like that never happened. I have been living like God hasn't call me out of darkness and into light, beckoning me toward the godward life of making much of Jesus. It is so easy for us to revert to some old version of ourselves because we know where that self will go and what they will do, but to live in the moment, as one chasing after Jesus is the most dangerous thing one can experience. That is what we were made for, not some meaningless cycle of eat, sleep, work, repeat, die. It is so hard for me to live purposefully, proclaiming the name of Jesus, but it is the only reason I am alive. It is the only reason you are alive. For those that know me, I invite you into my life. Help keep me accountable to the life God has called me to. I only seeing it getting harder, but God has not given me my fathers life. He has given me my own and does not expect to live his mistakes, follies or regrets. I hope this has been a blessing to you, and that God will show you that you have been given no one else's life but your own, and even though we carry around the burden of our parents sin, "The Spirit has set us free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death"(Romans 8:2), and we no longer need to follow their mistakes, but learn by the grace of God that he is true when he says "Look, I am making all things new!"