One of my favorite stories of all time is “Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemingway. Today I read a very similar story with a couple of differences: 1) it is true, and 2) there is a happy ending for the fisherman.
Archive for the 'Books…Check ‘em out' Category
19
Apr
12
Old Man and The Sea
Mark Driscoll publishes “Real Marriage” in a couple of days and Ed Young publishes “Sexperiment” today. My friend Mike takes issue with the authors here for multiple reasons and I don’t plan on reading these two books. I have the feeling I can get the content of these books from reviews and twitter posts. After all, I don’t understand how Ed Young can write an entire book based on the idea of having sex with your spouse for 7 days in a row, and frankly, I don’t care to find out. It seems odd to me.I’m slightly more inclined to read Driscoll’s book because I have benefitted from some other things he has written and I appreciate many things he has to say. I enjoyed his ebook Pastor Dad. If you are looking for good books to read to benefit your marriage, I recommend these:
Paul Tripp – What did you Expect? (or on DVD) You can read my post outlining and summarizing this book here.
Doug Wilson – Reforming Marriage
Lou Priolo – The Complete Husband
Kent Hughes has a chapter on marriage in his book “Disciplines of a Godly Man“, you can read my review of it here.
Don’t waste your time with Driscoll or Young, there are too many good books to read. What books have your read that you have found helpful?
One of the books that I am currently reading is the Autobiography of George Muller. He lived in England in the early 1800′s. The book is a collection of excerpts from his personal journal over a period of years. He was highly involved in helping orphans and the poor during his lifetime, helping children obtain a biblical education, distribution of the Bible, and educating adults as well. He lived his life based on faith that God would provide for every need to do what must be done. His journal is filled with examples of God proving himself faithful in the hour of need. It was God’s responsibility to feed the orphans because he is the “Father to the Fatherless” so Muller expected God to provide the money, food, etc. to take care of the orphans. He would not let people know about the needs there were, but only approached God with them in prayer. Time and again God prompted people to meet those needs without ever knowing what they were. Muller believed this was the way in which God would receive the most glory because people were not giving in response to a need but in response to the direction of the Holy Spirit. Muller lived debt-free and gave away every penny he had yet he always had enough. This book is both deeply challenging and encouraging. It will feed a fire within your soul to trust God in his work, challenge you to align your habits and patterns of life with his will, and drive you to your knees in prayer. It has been especially encouraging to me in this hour of my life and ministry.
If you want to read it, you can borrow my copy, just email me.
Gabe Lyons analyzes some of the shifting trends in Christendom. If you have ardent beliefs about America being a Christian nation, then this book will grate against you. He divides the book into three sections. The first is really an evaluation of much of the research he presented in his previous work UnChristian. He encourages the reader to evaluate the church at large and their personal Christian context in terms of those who separate from the culture, those who resemble the culture, and those who seek to restore the culture. The second section of the book is Lyons’ articulation of how Christians can begin to make the shift to being a Restorer in their context. This is helpful because he evaluates church and culture, reaction to restoration, in multiple ways and through the multiple channels of culture (see chart on pg. 117). The final section is quite brief and is really an emphatic call for Christians to return to the Gospel in Keller-like fashion.
Overall I was encouraged by the book as Lyons moved from the “so what?” of the research to the “do this!” of what many of the Next Christians are doing.
I heard Mark Driscoll speak of similar categories to those Lyons offers for Christian interaction with culture. Driscoll frames the conversation with the words Reject, Receive, and Redeem. I believe Driscoll’s are easier to remember and communicate, but not entirely different from Lyon’s categories. Lyons does offer various subcategories under each as well, but I appreciate simplicity and felt like in Lyons’ attempt to gain in contextualized application, he lost in clarity and understanding.
Like Lyons, I am also a graduate of Liberty University, and I find much of what he says about having Restorers in every aspect of culture remarkably reminiscent of Jerry Falwell’s vision for the University. I may be mistaken, but I don’t recall him ever giving credit to this. Not that I am trying to defend Falwell, or promote Liberty University, but it was a significant part of the culture at that Christian University while I was there. Perhaps Lyons doesn’t want to be identified with that institution because of the abundant stereotypes and misconceptions, and if so, I can understand that.
The appendix of the book offers some great continued learning questions and resources and points the reader to the website that is quite helpful for thinking through much of what Lyons writes about in the book. Check it out at www.qideas.org.
I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.
What did you expect?
Paul Tripp Videos
Summary Notes
Grace Based Marriage – “Grace is a lifetime warranty on marriage”
- Jesus died for my here and now and there are present benefits to God’s Grace
- I have a deep need for God’s grace
- Books – location of problems, but not why we struggle
- All of us struggle, all of us have been disappointed
6 Commitments – not rooted in trust of Christ, not my spouse.
-I have been given grace and I want to give it to the people I live with
1. We will give ourselves to a regular lifestyle of confession and forgiveness.
2. We will make growth and change our daily agenda.
3. We will work together to build a sturdy bond of trust.
4. We will commit to building a relationship of love.
5. We will deal with our differences with appreciation and grace.
6. We will work to protect our marriage.
(Found on Amazon.com under the book review)
“Cancelling debts” – challenges in marriage
Immaturity – “I love you”; what do you know about love?
- Grace believes in process, delayed gratification, hanging in there because of love, dealing with the immaturity
- Regular confession and forgiveness – we still have bad days, selfish moments
- Point out failure, defense mechanism not thank you, offense,
- Instead of – I see your sin, let’s deal with it under grace
- If we cannot point out failure, we cannot have change
Grace vs enabling
- Grace never calls wrong, right
- Grace is needed because wrong is wrong.
- Grace is the way we put wrongs and offenses on the table
- Forgiving is not forgetting, we need to remember our own need for grace amidst our failure
- Forgiveness is not holding your sin against you, you cannot forget
Nurturing Dislike
- Is it possible to dislike someone you’re trying to love?
- Possible to have romantic feelings in some places and keep a record of wrongs that structures the way we think about one another
- We view one another not through strengths, but through immaturity and weaknesses.
- We expect the worst and when you fail, we say, “here we go again” and we put up the protective wall.
Forgiveness
- Definition – a vertical commitment (God), followed by a horizontal transaction (spouse)
- Give the wrong to the Lord
- We entrust one another to God’s care.
- We don’t want to forgive because we want judgment. WE nurture feelings of injustice and wrong.
- Rather, we entrust you to God’s wisdom, justice, and mercy and this frees us to forgive one another’s wrongs.
- Do we love our need for ‘justice’ more than we love our spouse?
- Often our problem isn’t that we haven’t loved our spouse enough, but that we haven’t loved God.
- We insert ourselves in his position and so we don’t love our spouse enough
- We make it about us – our plan, justice, circumstance.
How do you fix something vertically? (Between you and God)
- Quit telling myself that my greatest problem is outside of me.
- My greatest difficulties are inside of me
- The DNA of sin is Selfishness
- Sin is anti-social so I reduce my spouse to either a vehicle or obstacle to get what I want.
- I don’t need to be rescued from my spouse, but from my sinful, selfish instincts.
- We are equally broken, fearful, and selfish and so we both must rely upon God’s grace.
Laziness/work ethic in marriage/indifference
- Plant seeds and walk away, what happens?
- We can’t be indifferent or lazy, it won’t stay healthy.
If we don’t see it modeled, how do we know?
What role does fun play?
- Grace causes us to not take ourselves to seriously.
