Category: Books and Reading

Eugene Peterson. Run With Horses: The Quest for Life At Its Best. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. 2009

One of the supreme tasks of the faith community is to announce to us early and clearly the kind of life into which we can grow, to help us set our sights on what it means to be a human being. Not one of us, at this moment, is complete. In another hour, another day, we will have changed. We are in the process of becoming either less or more. There are a million chemical and electrical interchanges going on in each of us this very moment. There are intricate moral decisions and spiritual transactions taking place. What are we becoming? Less or more?

Dane C. Ortlund:

New birth does not simply change us by giving us a new power to do the same things we always wanted to do. It changes us by getting down underneath even the very level of our desires and changing what we want. Sovereign, regenerating grace does not enable us to do what we don’t want to do. More deeply, it brings us to want to do what we should want to do. Regenerating grace is grace that softens us way down deep at the core of who we are. This is taste-bud transformation. In a miracle that can never be humanly manufactured, we find ourselves, strangely, delighting to love God. We are changed. The will itself is renovated. We see things as they really are.

Dane C. Ortlund:

How does a man who never typed an e-mail or drove a car or swung a golf club or watched a Super Bowl or blogged or tweeted or Skyped help me live my twenty-first-century Christian life? Not much if what matters essentially in Christian living is what we do. A lot if what matters essentially in Christian living is what we are.

Edwards walks us through the wardrobe into Narnia. We are given glasses– not sunglasses, which dim everything, but their opposite: lenses that brighten everything.

January 1. It’s that time of the year again when people sit down to list down goals that need to be accomplished in the next 365 days. These are my reading goals for this year. I don’t want to burden myself with unrealistic expectations so I’d just aim for a few books:

1.) Read my ESV Bible from cover to cover. I know I haven’t been successful at doing this in the past but I still want to do this anyway. I am choosing Jason DeRouchie’s Kingdom Bible Reading Plan this year. If you are using OliveTree Bible App on iOS, you can download the reading plan on your mobile device. If you need other options, Justin Taylor’s post might be helpful to you. Continue reading Dare to Read Difficult Books

Mike Cosper’s new book “The Stories We Tell” is a very fascinating analysis of why we love stories. For the first time I understood why I really wanted Professor Snape to be redeemed even if I hated him.

Christians believe an audacious fact. At the heart of our faith is the bold claim that in a world full of stories, with a world’s worth of heroes, villains, comedies, tragedies, twists of fate, and surprise endings , there is really only one story. One grand narrative subsumes and encompasses all the other comings and goings of every creature— real or fictitious— on the earth. Theologians call it “redemption history”; my grandfather called it the “old, old story.” Continue reading The Stories We Tell

Without introductions, let’s dive!

1. Grace Awakening (Charles Swindoll). This is the first proper Christian book that I read from cover to cover and for that reason, I will always think of it as my number one favorite next to the Bible, even if my taste has changed and my understanding has grown ever since. Swindoll opened my eyes to the wonderful concept of grace.

2. Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien). This is the most difficult series I read so far and that’s mainly because of the kind of English Tolkien used. I read all four books before I switched to electronic reading so I literally had to carry a dictionary around to help me with my vocabulary. It was difficult and tedious but it felt like I entered into a magical world. Tolkien’s skill with words is unmatched. He could describe the falling of the morning dew in exquisite detail like it was the most glorious thing in the world. When he described the natural beauty of Lothlorien, it sounded like he was describing heaven.

Continue reading 10 Books Something