Forgiveness: A Journey to the Center of the Hurt by Robert E. Marshall

My son loaned me this book, and he in turn got it from his sister, who probably got it directly from the author, a personal friend and her family's pastor. I've heard him teach a number of times, and shared time with him and his family on occasion, so the funny thing about reading his book is that I "hear" the narration in my head in his voice, which has a distinctive and homey southern feel. An odd effect.

I don't particularly feel that I have any traumatic incidences of being hurt by people in my past, for which I need to practice forgiveness, but still this book has made me pause to think about those sorts of issues, and to consider whether I have forgiveness issues when it comes to the smaller "offenses" against me. What was it Thoreau said about "the unexamined life"?

Anyway, a good book on forgiving and being forgiven.

The Emmaus Code by David Limbaugh

This turned out to be one of those books that I actually had to purchase a copy of  for my personal library, so that I can refer to it whenever I feel the need. Despite the title, there's no "code" involved, just a serious and thorough study of the Old Testament which reveals the promise and presence of Christ permeating the text far more than I, after years sitting in the pews, had ever realized.

Limbaugh gives us some good information summarizing the contents and purpose of each of the OT books right up front, covers the locations of a surprising number of recapitulations of the history of God's redemption plan for his people from Deuteronomy through Psalms, then continued in the New Testament, put there for both for the purpose of reminding the Israelites of the things he had done for them already and his plan for their future and for the disciples to demonstrate how that history set the scene for Christ's gospel.



One little tidbit that I hadn't understood before was concerning the origins of the Samaritans (remember the tales of the Good Samaritan, and of the woman Jesus met at the well?). When Assyria conquered Israel in 722 BC, they removed a large portion of the population, and replaced them with forced settlement by other conquered people. When these settlers intermarried with the remnants of Israel, they eventually became the Samaritans.



There is a nice section on all of the biblical covenants (most Christians could probably only identify the Mosaic and New Covenants), from the Edenic to the Adamic, Noahic and Abrahamic, Mosaic, Palestinian and Davidic, culminating in the New Covenant established by Christ. Like the repeated histories, the essence of the covenants is repeated many times throughout scripture, beginning in Genesis and ending in Revelation. He also explains the difference between conditional covenants, where God promises to do certain things in response to Man's behavior, versus the unconditional covenants, where God's actions are not predicated upon Man's actions, but will be fulfilled by God without fail.



Limbaugh also clarifies one little doctrinal issue that I'm sure I've heard preached on before, but simply forgot - the difference between Dispensationalists and non-Dispensationalists. The Dispensationalists believe that the New Covenant promises are still applicable to Israel, while the other side believes that Israel has lost the favor of God.



Many biblical prophecies are a type of progressive revelation, wherein God reveals a bit of his plan at first, gives more information at a later date, and eventually fully reveals what he has in store for Israel and/or Christians.



In Chapter 8, Limbaugh begins to discuss the subject of Titles, Christophanies, Typology, Prophecy and Analogy in the OT. He explains the difference between the pre- and post-Incarnate appearances of Christ, and shows examples of the appearance of the triune godhead in the Old Testament.


All in all, I found this a very enlightening book, and will definitely return to it for reference in the future.

The Blessing by Gary Smalley and John Trent

 Something I was reading must have pointed me to this book by Smalley and Trent. I've enjoyed reading Gary Smalley's books ever since I heard him speak at a Promise Keepers conference  a decade or so ago, but unfortunately this one was so dated that I had very few takeaways, and got about five or six chapters in before giving up on it as a waste of time for me at this point in my life.

Smalley and Trent begin with the concept of the biblical patriarchal blessing and stretch a point nearly to the point of breaking showing how children and adults are negatively affected by not being "blessed" by their parents and other loved ones.

Meh.

The Green Letters by Miles J. Stanford

 While flying to Omaha last Spring, I fulfilled a divine appointment with a gentleman on the plane who is deeply involved in ministry to veterans all around the country. Our conversation led him to send me a couple of interesting devotional books to read, and this one fell through the cracks for a while. Stanford evidently carried on a lively minsterial correspondence for about five decades with a large following, and this is one collection of his studies on spiritual growth. I read it slowly and carefully; it's jam packed with key concepts about our walk as Christians, and made note of a few things that leaped off the page at me.

Being one of those people who can be extremely self-critical when my performance isn't up to my exacting standards, this tidbit was particularly stinging.

"To be disappointed with yourself is to have believed in yourself."

As Christians, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, our strength, power and true accomplishment comes from God, and God alone, not from our own skills and abilities. Anything we do in the flesh is vanity, and allowing God to work through us, despite our weakness, is the only thing in which we should glory.

Even in evangelical circles, where we know, at least in our heads, if not in our hearts, that our salvation comes through faith and not by works, we often work like crazy to be good enough for God to love us.

"Let us cease laying down to the saints long lists of 'conditions' of entering into the blessed life in Christ; and instead, as the primal preparation for leading them into the experience of this life, show them what their position, possessions, and privileges in Christ already are. Thus shall we truly work with the Holy Spirit, and thus shall we have more, and much more abiding fruit of our labors among the people of God."

Positionally, once we are saved, we have been given by God the full inheritance of Christ's position at his side, and gifted with everything necessary to fulfill His purpose in us. But we often forget this, and spend our lives chasing proficiency in "being godly."

For those of us constantly struggling with sin,

"You believe the Lord Jesus died for your sins because God said so. Now take the next step. Accept by faith the further fact that you died with Him, i.e., that your 'old man was crucified with Him'"

Our bondage to sin was broken, and its body buried with Christ, we are risen new and free.

"Sin need have no more power over the believer than he grants it through unbelief. If he is alive unto sin it will be due largely to the fact that he has failed to reckon himself dead unto sin."

I've had, for a number of years, an aversion to the addiction some churches have to the "altar call".

"How often the average congregation is put through this routine. How often the individual believer is maneuvered down front to consecrate and reconsecrate, surrender and re-surrender, commit and recommit himself to Christ! Why is it that after awhile the believer comes to dread such meetings and messages?"

I'm hoping to find some more of Standish's correspondences in my wanderings amid the stacks at used book stores. I think he'll join C.S. Lewis on my shelves as worthy of keeping and re-reading.

Live 10 by Terry A. Smith

It's a sad thing when an old Christian becomes jaded, you know. Reading Live 10 left me merely with a sense of deja vu; nothing new to see, just a new wrapper around old ideas. When I was in my twenties, I read nearly every positive thinking book published at the time - I owned several boxes full before I gave most of them away to a friend in real estate. Norman Vincent Peale, Dale Carnegie, Robert Schuller, Og Mandino, Zig Ziglar, Dennis Waitley, Charles Clason, and a whole host of others. I'm also well-steeped in Christian apologetics and devotionals, from such worthies as C.S. Lewis, R.G. Spruill, Max Lucado, Lee Stroebel, Charles Swindoll, Henry Blackaby and many more. So it's very very seldom that anything new comes along. The last thing I read that had what seemed to be a new take on things was the Purpose Driven stuff by Rick Warren.

Heinlein wrote one time that every generation thinks they invented sex. The same thing may be true about the positive thinking, name-it-and-claim-it self help topic that surges every so often in church circles. Live 10 may be all the rage in "young" churches these days. It seems mostly to promote the idea that God wants you to pursue your dreams, no matter how big, and to be successful, happy, and fulfilled, demonstrating His glory in all aspects of your life.

He may, or He may not.

Remember the story of the men who died when the tower collapsed, and the disciples wondering who sinned, resulting in those deaths, or the blind man about whom they had the same question? Sometimes, there is no "short term" reason for tragedies, and sometimes God's glory is displayed when He heals them, thus justifying their earlier suffering, but there ARE NO guarantees of any of that in this life. Read Job.

Honestly folks, God may or may not want your business to succeed, either in order to bless you, to teach you something, to bless someone else (maybe the person who buys your bankrupt business and founds an orphanage there), or do something else entirely. I've seen wonderful ministries start and succeed, start and fail, start with one leader, but only succeed when another leader comes along...basically all possible iterations of success and failure possible in Christian lives - and let's not even get started on what happens to Christian marriages in this era!

Heh, I haven't even talked much yet about what IS actually in the book, have I?

Smith lays out the case that every person is specially gifted and called to do great things for God. In his world, following the passions that God gave you will result in self-actuation and accomplishing great things. He quotes extensively from some noted Biblical scholars and a number of leadership experts, and devotes a lot of time in the latter portion of the book to talking about how to become a motivational leader. Pretty standard fare.

I did find a few points of interest.

Smith quotes Dorothy Sayers on "the three humiliations of God: the incarnation (God becoming a man through Christ), the crucifixion, and the church. It is amazing that God has so reduced himself in order to win the willful participation of people in their relationships with Him and the fulfilling of his purposes and their destinies. He absolutely insists that we deliberately cooperate with Him in order to complete the human story."

He talks about the necessity of doing the right thing over and over again, even when it seems pointless to do so, and illustrates it with a baseball story.

"Martinez had repeatedly run from his position at first base in order to cover second base on similar blips to the outfield. It was tedious. It was boring. But it was the right thing to do even when, hundreds of times before, it never resulted in an out. One play on this one night influenced the outcome for one win that moved the Yankees toward perhaps the most successful season in baseball history."

On morality,

"Richard Daft wrote that there are three levels of personal moral development: preconventional, conventional, and post-conventional. Preconventional is the most immature level, typically evidenced in young children and individuals who keep the rules only because they are afraid of consequences. In the conventional level people adopt and follow the moral norm of the culture around them. They do what is expected, not necessarily because of their deep convictions but because they know it is the correct thing to do. The post-conventional level of moral development, or 'principled level,' is when 'leaders are guided by an internalized set of principles universally recognized as right or wrong.'"

Smith likes to quote Kierkegaard. Modern worship leaders would be well to heed the following:

"Soren Kierkegaard said that we suffer a certain role confusion in corporate worship. We think of the congregation as the audience, the preacher as the performer, and God as the prompter. In fact, members of the congregation are the performers, the preacher is the prompter, and God is the Audience."

I had to chuckle when I read about something he said about his mid-life crisis.

"Adult kids - kids who used to have to ask permission to leave the table - were out, making their own decisions, some of them good, and some of them decisions I wouldn't have made."

Let me make clear that (in my opinion) there's nothing terribly wrong about most of the advice in this book. If it's the first book of this genre you've run across, you'll probably enjoy it, and take away some inspiration and ideas. If you've been around a while, though, and have read some of its ancestors, I wouldn't spend the double sawbuck on picking up a copy.

A Few Minutes with Oswald #2

In today's selection, Chambers says,

"Beware of thinking that the areas of your life where you have experienced victory in the past are now the least likely to cause you to stumble and fall."

and

"The Bible characters stumbled over their strong points, never their weak ones."

While reading the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (stalled out around the halfway point), I found that he had a long term - lifetime - project of instilling in himself a number of desired virtues, and subtracting his vices from his life. He would focus on one virtue until he felt he had acquired it, then move to the next on his list. Yes, an actual handwritten list.

While I've never quite gone to that extent, which may surprise those who know me well enough to have seen first hand what an obsessed list-maker I am, I've slowly over the course of time eliminated a number of foolish behaviors, and tried to encourage the tiny seedlings of virtuous ones to grow and root deeply in my lifestyle, with varying levels of success. Without digressing too far, it's interesting that the things most folks regard as sins - sins of the flesh - are far easier to conquer than bad habits of thought - sins of the mind or heart.

So, I have to view Oswald's observations with a sense of trepidation. It would be very upsetting to be tripped up by some horrid habit I thought long vanquished. I pray it isn't so.

A Few Minutes with Oswald

A "chance" acquaintance I met on a recent trip sent me a copy of My Utmost for his Highest, by Oswald Chambers.

In today's reading, I found the following:

"Whenever we sense that Jesus Christ is rising up to take authority over some great task, we are there, but we are not ready for some obscure duty. Readiness for God means that we are prepared to do the smallest thing or the largest thing - it makes no difference. It means that we have no choice in what we want to do, but that whatever God's plans may be, we are there and ready."

I had a chance a couple of hours later to do what may have been God's work when I found a toddler wandering in the street, playing in a mud puddle, with no adult nearby. I followed the trail of discarded toys back to the open door of a nearby apartment, and alerted her mother, who had no idea that her child had wandered away when she was supposed to be napping.

A small thing? Perhaps.