Discipleship – indycrowe

Endorsements for Your Wilderness Is Not A Waste

With the release of Your Wilderness Is Not a Waste: God’s Purpose in Suffering and Struggles, I wanted to share two of the endorsements. My hope is the book is an encouragement to those in a trial, in a season of waiting, disappointed by life’s circumstances, or confused by where God is leading them.

New Book Releases Today

I’m excited to announce my new book releases today with Moody Publishers. Your Wilderness Is Not a Waste: God’s Purpose in Suffering and Struggles can be ordered wherever you buy books, including Amazon, Moody Publishers, Barnes & Noble, Christianbook.com, 10ofthose, and WTSbooks,

The book walks through some of the physical and spiritual wildernesses in the Bible and offers us windows of hope to see how God works in our trials, troubles, and temptations. I’m praying it’s an encouragement for readers!

Known & Loved by Glenna Marshall

I don’t rate books based on stars or numbers. I tend to classify them mentally more in terms of books: “to avoid,” “not worth your time,” “good for a specific person or season,” or “everyone should prioritize reading this.” It’s not as memorable or clean as the stars approach, but it’s how I think about books (especially as a pastor who views recommended resources as part of shepherding).

Glenna Marshall’s newest book, Known & Loved: Experiencing the Affection of God in Psalm 139, would be in the “everyone should prioritize reading it” class. The structure (Psalm 139) and style (deeply personal and deeply biblical) root the reader in Scripture with the aim of seeing just how much God’s knowledge of us and love for us can change our everyday life.

A Helpful Book on Anxiety

There are many good books on anxiety written by Christians. It’s a broad and complex issue, and no book can say everything, so there are also a lot of angles in which to approach it. One of the books I’ve found most helpful is Struck Down but Not Destroyed: Living Faithfully with Anxiety by Pierce Taylor Hibbs.

Gratitude: All Year Long

One of the reasons I wrote The Grumbler’s Guide to Giving Thanks was to speak into the misconception that gratitude is seasonal. Many Christians see giving thanks as a bonus discipline to practice during November and they neglect it the rest of the year. But the whole of Scripture encourages and exhorts believers to cultivate it in all things. Every day. In all seasons. In all circumstances. Whatever mood you might be in.

So even though it’s Spring, now is a great time to focus on cultivating gratitude to God for who He is and all He’s done. Moody Publishers has a 50% off sale on all their books, which includes The Grumbler’s Guide to Giving Thanks.

Hold on to Hope: Eight Elements of Biblical Hope

“Hope is like the sun. If you only believe in it when you see it, you’ll never make it through the night.” Leia Organa in Star Wars: Episode VIII

“Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” Andy Dufresney in The Shawshank Redemption

What is Hope?

In the Bible, “hope” is not a wish, dream, or something that has a chance of happening. Hope doesn’t spring from optimism about circumstances but confidence in God. It’s something we can expect and anticipate, even have assurance of, though it might require much waiting and trust. Biblical hope is anchored in the character, promises, and work of God, which is why the Bible calls God our hope (Ps. 71:5; 1 Tim. 1:1) or the gospel a gospel of hope (Col. 1:23; Rom. 15:13).

“For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth.” (Ps. 71:5)

Beholding the Beauty of Being Chosen by God

A couple years ago, my wife and I visited the Grand Canyon. It’s a sight to behold, whether at sunrise when the dawn slowly lights up the cold canyon, during the day as its scope can be appreciated, or at night when countless stars fill the sky.

We enjoy hiking, and even though it had recently snowed, we wanted to descend into the canyon. (It’s estimated that only five percent of the more than six million annual visitors go below the rim.) The path along the canyon’s rim is a peaceful place to enjoy the view, but you get to behold the sheer size and beauty of the canyon in a whole different way when you walk down into it. Your eyes are caught by the layers of rock, each offering its own shade and color. You feel your smallness and the canyon’s enormity beneath the rim’s surface. After a couple miles, especially when slowed by trekking through snow and ice, you look up thinking you’ll be further into the canyon only to realize it’s bigger and deeper than you imagined. But whether it’s looking down from above or scanning the canyon from inside, the more you see the layers within the canyon the more in awe you will be of the Grand Canyon as a whole (and its Maker).

Why Does It Matter that God is WITH His People (And What Happened When He Wasn’t)?

In the Bible, there’s a secret advantage that can turn any “mission: impossible” into guaranteed success. God calls His people to do difficult things they could never accomplish in their own strength or wisdom. How could a stuttering Moses who spent his middle age tending sheep in the desert tell Pharoah to free all the Hebrew slaves? How could Israel then make it all the way from Egypt to Canaan, both escaping Pharoah’s chariot in pursuit and enduring the desert littered with danger? How could Joshua lead God’s people into the promised land despite their overwhelming fear of its inhabitants? Or what supplied David with victory after victory despite overwhelming odds against him?

7 Facets of Christ from Dane Ortlund’s book, Deeper

Some of our staff is slowly reading through Dane Ortlund’s Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners together. Like his book, Gentle and Lowly, it’s beautifully written and is simultaneously rich in theology, warm and pastoral in its tone, and immensely practical. I appreciate how he communicates deep truths in uncomplicated ways.

The thrust of the book is that to change or to grow, we grow in Jesus, meaning knowing more of who he is and then what means for us who are united to him. “Our growth is not independent personal improvement. It is growth in Christ.”

Spiritual Disciplines: Grace or Guilt?

“To experience the richness of life in God’s kingdom, we must reorder our lives. We need to see through the shallow promises of our culture, and we need rhythms, signposts, and practices that reorient us to another world.” Mike Cosper

My wife (Melissa) is an excellent cook. I’d much rather find myself in front of a home cooked meal from Café Crowe than any other restaurant—and not just because I’m ~~cheap~~ frugal. But, there was one time when her cooking didn’t sit so well with my stomach. It was eggplant parmesan. I’m still not sure what it was, but something about this eggplant made me very sick to my stomach (to say it nicely). If you’ve ever gotten nauseous after eating a particular food, you know how it scars you…maybe forever. Even today, several years after “the meal,” the very mention of eggplant sends a shiver down my spine. It’s now “it which shall not be named” in our house.

For some people in the church, the language of “spiritual disciplines” can hit them with similar effects. Maybe those words brings on guilt or disappointment, or maybe they bring on joy and excitement. If you and “spiritual disciplines” have a long, baggage-filled history that leaves a sour taste in your mouth when you hear about them, then you might have any number of reactions to a class on spiritual disciplines.