Tag: Books

Endorsements for The Grumbler’s Guide to Giving Thanks

I”m excited to announce the release of my new book, The Grumbler’s Guide to Giving Thanks: Reclaiming the Gifts of a Lost Spiritual Discipline. My aim is to help the reader see how pervasive thanksgiving is in the Bible and how practical it is for the Christian life. It’s an everyday rhythm. On a daily basis, our heart gravitates toward either grumbling or gratitude. Each brings with it a host of friends. Grumbling invites pride, fear, anxiety, discontentment, and idolatry. Gratitude is accompanied by joy, worship, contentment, trust, and intimacy with God. Choose to give thanks rather than grumble.

As we give thanks, we not only enjoy God’s gifts to us and care for us, but we better know Him. Thanksgiving, then, is meant to lead us from gifts to the Giver. Even in trials, we practice “gritty gratitude” to trust God and thank Him for how He’s at work.

Below are three of the endorsements for the book.

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Recommended Resources from August

I’ve realized how easy it is to consume news, information, and even spiritual knowledge without retaining it. We move from social-media post to online article to amusing YouTube video to online shopping seamlessly. One of the downsides is we don’t reflect on or respond to what we’re reading, viewing, and hearing. Because of the amount of information that inundated us, we also tend to forget what we read (that mattered) and fail to hold on to or prioritize what was actually beneficial.

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10 Quotes from Enough About Me by Jen Oshman

“Let’s admit that we are not enough, and turn to the God who is.” Jen Oshman

Quotes from a book are a bit like tasting samples at the ice-cream shop. They can draw you in and give a feel for what a full cone (or book) offers. But books are always more than a few quotes. Books include longer stories and illustrations to provide context to those quotes, and suggested applications to live them out. Books build and sustain arguments and ideas that can become part of how you live faithfully in the world, even if you never have a quote ready.

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10 Quotes from *Gentle and Lowly* by Dane Ortlund

Every year there are a couple of Christian books published that fall into the “must buy” category. Dane Ortlund’s Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers is one of those books. We mature by marveling at Jesus (Col. 1:28). That means a good book must partially be judged by how much it compels us with the glory and goodness of Jesus. That’s what Ortlund’s book is all about. While it certainly unpacks the person and work of Christ, what’s unique is it’s angle of showing us the heart of Christ. How does he view and treat us as sinners and sufferers? We all want that question answered. If we’re bold enough to say it, we even wonder how he feels about us.

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New Book Available on Amazon

You can now purchase a copy of my new book Finding Satisfaction in Christ: A Devotional Study of Colossians in paperback or kindle formats. I wrote this over the course of a few years. What began as a small group study on Colossians in the home of our friends Dan and Emily later turned into a Group Discussion Guide for College Park Church that blossomed into a full-length book slowly written off-and-on over the course of a few years. As any writer or teacher struggles with, I hope my personal joy and benefit of studying Colossians leads to your joy and encouragement as you read through Colossians with me. Here’s a bit about the book.

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Favorite Books Read in 2019

“I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.” Jane Austen

“Reading is a gift, but only if the words are taken into the soul—eaten, chewed, gnawed, received in unhurried delight.” Eugene Peterson

I love books. Give me a good library or an hour at your used book store and I’m a happy man. There are a lot of things that make a book good, let alone enjoyable, so my list is admittedly subjective. But to add to the chorus of top books read in 2019, here’s my top-ten list. My criteria was reading them in 2019, not publication date, though most were printed in 2019. In no particular order…

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Thin Beliefs and The Need for Deeper Thinking

One thing making personal and public conversations difficult, inside and outside the church, is we live in a day and age where our understanding of an issue is weak but our passion is strong. This creates over-confidence in our opinions—when we should continue listening and learning—and animosity toward those we disagree with.[1] A lack of committed study and critical thinking is undercutting healthy conversations. We need to recommit ourselves to not only listening, but also to learning. We need to be diligent about better understanding matters we express opinions on.

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Favorite Quotes on Faith & Politics by Jonathan Leeman

I recently read and recommended How the Nations Rage: Rethinking Faith and Politics in a Divided Age by Jonathan Leeman , not only for what it says but how it says it. The book focuses on faith and politics, though in the conversations many other significant hot-button issues get brought up. The book not only helps us root our thinking about politics in the Bible (the what of the book), but I recommend the book because it also teaches us how to engage tough topics as Christians. With 2020 promising to be a heated and divisive year in our country, this book will be a timely read.

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