The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith

Wow! This book is perhaps one of the most simply-spoken, profound gospel presentations I have ever heard.

Central to this book is the idea that we are not just prodigal sons, but God is also a prodigal God. In other words, we not only radically rebelled against God and sinfully turned away from him, but that He was all the more radical for taking us back. No matter our idolization of other things--in the case of the prodigal son in Luke 15, the son idolized pleasure and living the good life--God radically accepts us in the depths of our sin and receives us back with a welcome-home party of great proportions. In fact, as I learned, the father in the parable risked his family's name to celebrate the return of his lost, sinful son.

Keller starts to get radical himself when we deepens the discussion, defining the elder son with just as much "lostness" as the younger. We often forget, as he points out, that a self-righteousness will no more save us than losing our righteousness, or dignity, as the younger son does. I found this to be the most revolutionary truth of the book. I will let Keller explain:

"Here, then, is Jesus's radical redefinition of what is wrong with us. Nearly everyone defines sin as breaking a list of rules. Jesus, though, shows us that a man who has violated virtually nothing on the list of moral misbehaviors can be every bit as spiritually lost as the most profligate, immoral person. Why? Because sin is not just breaking the rules, it is putting yourself in the place of God as Savior, Lord, and Judge just as each son sought to displace the authority of the father in his own life." (pg 43)

I found this book a fascinating, quick read. I would recommend this book to absolutely everyone. It presents the gospel in such fresh way that you cannot not change after reading it.

-ae

10 Million Words Blog - Tim Challies

I recently discovered Tim Challies' new blog entitled "10 Million Words" which you can find here. You can also go to his original blog entitled "Informing the Reforming" here. Challies is an evangelical blogger and author.

His newest blog's undertaking is to read every top-15 non-fiction book on the New York Times bestseller list throughout all of 2010. If accomplished, as you can guess, this will add up to more than 10 million words read and an average of 3 books read each week. According to Challies' overall goal of the project, "I am interested in the cultural and worldview implications of all of these books. They will provide, I’m sure, a snapshot of where America is at as she enters a new decade."

Personally, I think this is a fascinating idea and I am anxious to see how this blog unfolds. I have been following it for about 2 weeks, and so far, it has indeed proven to be really interesting.

- ae

Humility: True Greatness - C.J. Mahaney

I recently enjoyed my read-through of "Humility" by C.J. Mahaney and I wanted to say a couple of words.

I found this to be a quick but powerful read on the severity of pride as sin and the necessity of humility before the Lord. The central Scripture that this book is centered on is James 4:6b, which says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

Mahaney does a good job of taking us exactly where we need to go to rid of our pride--the humbling display of God's grace through Jesus on the cross. If we are to mortify the sin of pride, we must do so out of the power of the cross, for Christ rescued us from our sin by being our very ransom:

"the emphasis of the ransom image is on our sorry state--indeed our captivity in sin--which made the act of divine rescue necessary...So to hear the Savior speak the word ransom and understand it rightly is to be freshly reminded and affected by our own serious and sorry state, our miserable lostness and wretched bondage to sin. We cannot free ourselves from pride and selfish ambition: a divine rescue is absolutley necessary." (pg 51-52)

As C.J regularly teaches (esp. in "The Cross-Centered Life"), our lives must focus on the cross of Christ through every life situation. He does a great job of portraying this truth throughout "Humility."

-ae