The Reason for God

One of the things that we couldn't avoid during our journey in Christ would be doubt. This may come from friends, family, circumstances and even self. Doubt will always be present with us, and this is one of the things that we will always wrestle with as Christians. And this is why I would recommend anyone, either a believer or a skeptic, to read this book thoroughly. And hopefully, when you reach the end of the book, you'll eventually get to find some clarity to the questions that surround your belief.

Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper

Don't Waste Your Life is something that I would suggest all Christians should read. It will certainly act as a compass that points to where we should look and what we should look at.

It addresses the most common sickness known to the common man as well as Christians, complacency. We tend to see the cross of Christ, learn about salvation and sit back, relax, and be satisfied that we won't suffer from guilt of sin and the fires of hell. This book should challenge you to look beyond that.

So if you want to challenge yourself to look beyond mediocrity and know what we should be gunning for, go pick this book up. Read it, understand it, and enjoy it! Hopefully you'll get to understand that it's not us that we should be making much of, but Him who is worthy of all praise. Let's all strive to understand and be satisfied by that fact. So that in the end, we'll look back and say "yes, we didn't waste our life".

God loves us by liberating us from the bondage of self so that we can enjoy knowing and admiring him forever. - John Piper

A Sweet & Bitter Providence by John Piper

If there's one word that I can describe the words in the Bible, that would be inexhaustible. I've read the book of Ruth twice before I've gotten across this book and I would say, I never got to see the book of Ruth as John Piper saw it and praise God he wrote a book about it.

The first two tries in reading the Book of Ruth, I'd always tell myself to bathe in the sovereignty of God that was displayed in that book. You'll always notice the pain that Naomi have experienced in the 1st chapter and the grace and the glorious wisdom of God exercised in the last chapter, but never did I see the details such as racial significance and the obedience and purity that Ruth and Boaz demonstrated.

This book is really timing for me in the season I am in, as it challenges me to be patient and trust in God even in pain, to take risks in order to work towards the desires that is ever present in me, and to reach a level of maturity in my faith in God.

The book consists of 4 chapters bringing us along the journey that Naomi and Ruth encountered and how they acted and trusted on God above all things. And this is something that I would suggest for those who are eager about something yet discouraged that things are not working out the way they're hoping it to be and for those who are currently in pain hoping for a better day. I got to read this one over a couple of weeks and I'm sure that there are those who read more than I do would get to finish this faster and would enjoy it as I had.

My prayer and hope is that this short post would display the enthusiasm and the gratefulness that I have for John Piper in unpacking the book of Ruth in such a light manner, lighter than how he writes, to help me understand pain and love God more even in dark times.

A Sweet & Bitter Providence: Sex, Race, and the Sovereignty of God, by John Piper

Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer

And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”

(Isaiah 6:5 ESV)

These were Isaiah's words after seeing a vision of the Lord. This is truly something that we've clearly lost in this day and age. We can just utter the Lord's name in vain and just dismiss the idea of a supreme being hovering over us in this world. Discussing things about God is not accompanied by reverence but an idea that can easily be grasped and be debated upon. We embrace our ability to think and reason and we place God in a place wherein we can totally grab whole of his entirety and shelve the idea within the confines of our mind. In this generation, the fear of the Lord is totally lost and buried and replaced by the fear of man.

Woe is me! is something that I would tell myself after reading Tozer's classic. This booklet, written in the 60's, is still packed with pure theological knowledge that would make you understand something that we've completely lost. The reality of God is far greater than anything we can imagine. It is one of the things that we should recapture, and Tozer left us this book to help us seize what was revealed to him back in the day.

I would tag Knowledge of the Holy as one of the hard reads that would demand the full attention of the reader. It's written in King James English as you'd expect from a great mind back in the 1960's. It discusses the attributes of God as seen through scripture and from Tozer's studies. This is something I would recommend anyone who would want to be captivated by the magnificence of God. I would also suggest this book for anyone who would want to have a head start in the study of God. I would put this book side by side with A.W. Pink's The Attributes of God. Rarely do we see books that would discuss the known attributes of God in this day and age.

Grab hold of this book if you would want to recapture the Woe is me! and see how far we are from the God of the Bible. 

Don't Call it a Comeback: The Old Faith for a New Day

I was talking to my girlfriend one morning about what things I'd be able to write on my blog. One of those things would be a personal review on books. I was a little squirmish as I said I'd be writing reviews on books, since I didn't want to call them reviews. It's because TGC (The Gospel Coalition) raised a high standard in book reviews on their site TGCReviews which made me hold back writing them. So I guess, for now, I would just call it something else. I'd probably call it something around the area of "My take on..." since I'd be stating my own humble, non-professional opinion on books.

With that said let me kick off with this wonderful book.