Whitefield

“The daily pace he kept for 30 years meant that many weeks he was speaking more than he was sleeping.”

John Piper speaking recently about the tireless preaching of George Whitefield, whose sum total of sermons and exhortations during the span of his ministry reached upward of 30,000.

2009 Band of Bloggers

Any fellow bloggers attending the Gospel Coalition NatCon?

If so, I invite you to the 2009 Band of Bloggers gathering (April 22 in Chicago). Seven of the most influential reformed bloggers will be in the house—tbrister, jtaylor, manderson, tchallies, ejohnson, ttchividjian, smccoy—addressing how we can better serve the church through our blogging efforts.

And there will be free books.

I will have the honor of addressing the topic: How can bloggers steward the teaching of the young, old, and the dead? I hope to encourage other average bloggers (like myself) to consider using their blogging skills to steward the wisdom of others, working alongside their pastors and church to blog locally, how to identify men who should have broader influence within the Church and how serve alongside them (C.J. Mahaney), and how to use blogs to spread the influence of the timeless men who are no longer with us (Herman Bavinck). These are topics near my heart, but thoughts I have never developed and articulated for presentation. So please pray for me.

Registration opens soon. More BoB’09 conference details here.

See you there.

Weekend Miscellanea

Two notes:

Interview

This morning I completed an interview with Welsh blogger Guy Davies, aka the Exiled Preacher. Guy is a sharp and prolific pastor/blogger. He asked some great questions, like: If Jonathan Edwards was alive, do you think he would be blogging? … Which writers have you found most helpful, and why? You can now read the interview here. I think you will enjoy it. Me enjoyed it.

Conference

Also, I’ll be out for a bit, traveling to North Carolina to attend my second 20/20 Collegiate Conference at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. Conference topic: The relevance of the Gospel in everyday life.

Teachers include Daniel Aiken (Southeastern Seminary president), Mark Driscoll, Bill Brown, and C.J. Mahaney.

Last year musical worship was led by the very capable, and very cross-centered, Daniel Renstrom. I hear he will be leading again, and I look forward to it.

In the Wake Forest, N.C. area? This is a collegiate conference worth the price of admission ($25-35).

Enjoy your weekend!

Tony

Psalm 3: Smashing Faces, Lifting Heads

Absalom stole David’s throne and stole from David the hearts of Israel. And David hightailed out of Dodge.

Overnight, David was tossed from his throne and hunted in the wilderness. Now he is pressed against a dark cave, listening in the distance for the sound of approaching hunters, enduring the heart-stopping responses to the smallest sounds, listening for the crack of twigs, holding his breath.

David cried out to God.

I fear too often the god I cry out to is a god of my imagination, fitted with padded boxing gloves, a stick for a sword, and a cap gun to make a lot of noise. He becomes a god who cannot break a sweat, and could never break an enemy.

This is not our God.

Our God is the lifter of heads, holding up the downcast, the discouraged, the fearful, and the hunted. But He is also dressed for battle, at war against sin, and fully aware of every enemy crouching in the bushes waiting to rise.

God is also the smasher of faces.

And as violent as this sounds, it’s under the shield of this God that David finally rests, being hunted but no longer in danger, shielded from the blows of his enemy, released from fear, released from the adrenaline kick that kept him watchful and alert, free from the worry that raced his heart, released from tension, sustained in God, now slowly becoming limp, a powerless body mercifully given over to sleep.

Perhaps because we fail to balance both sides of our God, we lack confidence in Him as our shield. And we don’t sleep well. We respond to the blows of life as if there is no iron shield to protect us, as if we are abandoned in the cave by a God who is too busy, too unconcerned, or simply too incapable to help us.

The god who cannot break his enemies is a god who will not comfort the fear-filled.

Among a thousand worries we are safe in Him. And if this is our God we have no cause for fear. No longer do we need fear over the economy, worry over personal finances, and toss and turn all night in the sleepless tumult of tension, worry, hypotheticals, and the fear of the unknown.

This Psalm teaches me a simple lesson: God is both the One who lifts heads and breaks teeth. A powerful, sustaining, defending God like this can remove all fear. He is strong enough to spread a blanket of sleep over the foxhole of life.

Holy Love

The love
that won on the cross
and wins the world
is a love that is
driven,
determined,
and defined by
holiness.
It is a love that flows out of the heart of a God who is
transcendent,
majestic,
infinite in righteousness,
who loves justices as much as He loves goodness;
who blazes with a
fiery,
passionate
love for Himself above all things.
He is Creator,
Sustainer,
Beginning and End.
He is robed in a splendor
and eternal purity
that is blinding.
He rules,
He reigns,
He rages
and roars,
then bends down to whisper loves songs to His creatures.

-Timothy J. Stoner, The God Who Smokes: Scandalous Meditations on Faith (NavPress, 2008 ) p. 30.

Reading Digest #3 (Feb. 2, 2009)

I appreciate all the nice comments on the YouTube video of my home library. I value your feedback.

And you are probably wondering if I have absentmindedly forgotten about the Reading Digests… Nope, I haven’t forgotten.

For each book I attempt to communicate the following information: % read, rating out of 5 stars, and a brief summary.

DEVOTIONS …

Judges. I am currently reading through this OT book very slowly, traversing this period of the Warlords with a trusty handbook (Bruce Waltke’s chapter in An Old Testament Theology).

Psalms. My goal is to read and meditate on a single Psalm each week, reading Derek Kidner’s commentary, gleaning personal edification from each chapter, and writing my meditations into a short essay. Currently meditating on Psalm 3 (essays completed and posted on Psalm 1 and 2).

CURRENTLY READING …

Halls of Fame: Essays by John D’Agata (50%, 4.00 stars). D’Agata is one of the most creative essayists of our generation, blending poetry and prose together until they dissolve into a single artful style. Not written from a Christian worldview.

Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style by Virginia Tufte (30%, 3.40 stars). Collection of over 1,000 sentences from the writings of the modern literary greats, organized topically, with syntactical exegesis to expound the stylistic construction of each sentence. I love the organization, the format, and the depth of explanation. Few books on style are as valuable. Artful Sentences is a rare book that excels at explaining abstract style within concrete examples straight from the pages of modern literature.

The God Who Smokes: Scandalous Meditations on Faith by Timothy J. Stoner (20%, 2.80 stars). Stoner is a very snappy writer, plainly discussing the blunt side of Scripture with a raw honesty I appreciate. Stoner makes no apology about the complexity of God’s character; God is a blazing furnace that singes mountains and a tender and merciful father that welcomes prodigal sons home. This book comprises part of a comparative study I’ve begun to evaluate the different ways God’s holiness is currently being communicated by the church to our culture.

Unpacking Forgiveness: Biblical Answers for Complex Questions and Deep Wounds by Chris Brauns (50%, ^3.50 stars). Good book on how Christians forgive others. Written with immediate application in mind. Explains the fascinating (and I think biblical) concept of forgiving others for their sin only when they ask for forgiveness and not before.

Uprooting Anger: Biblical Help For a Common Problem by Robert D. Jones. (50%, ^3.90 stars). Anger may manifest itself as red-hot or ice-cold. Anger is the manifestation of sin rooted in selfish unmet desires, fears, idols, comforts, passions etc (James 4). Very helpful book.

Getting Things Done by David Allen (60%, 4.30 stars). The classic book on personal planning and time management. I have recently implemented a computer-based system to help organize projects and have seen the fruit (OmniFocus). Allen helps clarify for me the conceptual framework of how best to utilize this and other tools of organization.

RECENTLY COMPLETED …

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath (100%, 4.50 stars). Marketing and communication book. “Sticky” has become a new word in my daily language and a persisting challenge to rethink what I say and how I say it. Writers, preachers, and really anyone else in communications, will benefit from this wonderfully sticky book.

White House Ghosts: Presidents and their Speechwriters by Robert Schlesinger (100%, 2.90 stars). Listening to a gifted president flex his oratorical muscle is an act so riveting that a whole nation will stop to listen. Yet behind most presidential speeches is a team of tireless writers who go unnamed and unnoticed. What they say about making sausage is true of making presidential speeches. Eye-opening.

The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller (100%, 4.00 stars). Excellent book making clear God’s abundant mercy, forgiveness, and the free grace offered to sinners in the gospel. Keller’s book takes the jackhammer to my concrete pedestal of self-righteousness.

Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose (65%, 4.50 stars). Riveting story of Easy Company during WWII. I read this over Christmas vacation and was so captured by the story that I put the book aside to watch the HBO series with my wife (finished part 7 last night).

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin (80%, ^2.80 stars). Leadership. Groups stand around together, tribes communicate and provoke one another. How do leaders harness the potential of these online tribes and lead them via Web 2.0—blogs, Facebook, Twitter. The book improved at about the 30% mark but was not overall impressive.

ON THE DOCKET …

A. Lincoln: A Biography by Ronald C. White, Jr. A spanking new, and highly endorsed, biography of president Lincoln. A hearty 900-page volume that I expect will be worth the time!

Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling by Andy Crouch. Dipped into this book long enough to know this is a book I want to read cover-to-cover.

Death By Love: Letters from the Cross by Mark Driscoll. The cross of Christ, applied to personal sin and trials, and written in the form of letters from a pastor.