Tag: John Piper

Book Recommendations: God's Will, Suffering, & Apologetics

Posted on February 26, 2009

I’ve found myself recommending a number of good books to people recently. The fact is that we can glean a lot of wisdom and encouragement from authors who have walked in our shoes and done so very thoughtfully. On these topics, the shoe fits!

Step by Step: Decision Making and the Will of God

Becoming A Dad: An Emotional, Spiritual, Practical Guide (on sale for $5.53!)

Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism

Suffering and the Sovereignty of God (free online)

Piper's Potential Writing Projects

Posted on February 6, 2009

  1. Make a serious beginning on a longer book on divine providence, perhaps called something like Sightings of the Sovereignty of God. The idea here is to encompass all of Scripture and show from it the hundreds of ways God reveals his absolute sovereignty over all things. This would probably take more than one writing leave.
  2. Write a shorter book called perhaps Reasoning with Jesus: Thinking for the Glory of Christ.I have most of the raw material for this already on paper in several messages. The idea would be to provide a plea, perhaps especially to younger people, to devote their best mental efforts to understanding and living out the Christian faith.But it would be for everybody and would be different from lots of books about the intellectual life in that it would be largely expositions of Scripture. What does it mean to love God with our minds? How important is education (which is not the same as “school”)? What are people doing with their minds today that makes Jesus angry?
  3. Preparing the Ruth cycle of Advent poems for publication without Christmas endings so that in the next year we can put together a suite of materials on Ruth including the book I just finished (Ruth: A Sweet and Bitter Providence) and a set of video messages on the book to be recorded next December.
  4. I dream of writing a children’s book. It may be as small as one of the old Arch Books, retelling biblical stories in poetry form. Or it may be a little longer and more substantial in parabolic form.
  5. There is churning in me a book on issues of race and ethnicity in the church and in America. If I live, it will be done. It’s a matter of timing. I never feel qualified to write it. But, as with marriage, I may just have to do it anyway and let the chips fall where they may.
  6. I might be stirred to do one more book on justification.What needs to be done to complete the picture I have drawn in the first two books (Counted Righteous in Christ and The Future of Justification) is a biblical exposition of how “works” function in relationship to justification. This would involve a treatment of the nature of the faith that justifies, and how it relates to works.
  7. Make a serious beginning toward publishing the Romans sermons in four volumes, possibly editing one volume per year for four years.

Read the whole thing here.

Worldliness

Posted on September 19, 2008

I typically stay away from these kinds of titles—Worldliness—judging the book by its title. However, knowing a bit about the author I decided to crack the cover. C. J. Mahaney did not disappoint; in fact, he stirred me to love Christ not “the world.” This book is sure to ruffle some feathers, and you won’t agree with everything in it, but why just read books that reinforce your opinions and worldview? Consider this excerpt from C.J.’s heart-centered view of worldliness:

David Powlison, paraphrasing John Calvin, wrote, “The evil in our desires often lies not in what we want, but in the fact that we want it too much.”10 It’s difficult to improve upon this insight. The “cravings of sinful man” are legitimate desires that have become false gods we worship. It’s wanting too much the things of this fallen world. A sinful craving is when a legitimate desire for financial success becomes a silent demand for financial success; an interest in clothes and fashion becomes a preoccupation; love of music morphs into an obsession with the hottest band; or the desire to enjoy a good movie becomes a need to see the latest blockbuster.

There may be nothing wrong with these desires in and of themselves; but when they dominate the landscape of our lives, when we must have them or else!-we’ve succumbed to idolatry and worldliness. And as Calvin says, our hearts are a perpetual factory of idols. We’re pumping out these thingson a regular basis.

Preface (by John Piper) and first chapter here.