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My Book Addiction

By Jeremy Myers
13 Comments

My Book Addiction

I have a problem.

It’s more than a problem; it’s an addiction. There I said it. The first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem, right? Of course, I’m not sure I want to recover from this problem. That’s probably another problem.

I have a book addiction.

Book Addiction

But it gets worse. My wife has the same addiction. So do my three daughters.

We are doomed.

When we moved from Montana to Texas several years ago, our moving van was half filled with books…over 100 boxes. While in seminary, I easily added another 30 boxes. I have probably added a 5 boxes every year since then.

In my study, I have ten bookshelves crammed with books, and on top of every shelf is a pile of books almost to the ceiling. Out in the garage, there are 20-30 boxes of books that I was not able to unpack because there wasn’t room in my study.

And I am not just a “book collector.” There is not a single book I own that I don’t want to read. The ones I don’t want to read, I give away, throw out, or sell on Amazon. I want to read every single book I own.

The Books I Read

Here’s why I am posting this. I counted today, and in my pile of books that I absolutely MUST read as soon as possible, there were 191 books. With a lot of pain and heart-wrenching agony, I was able to narrow it down to just 40. As I looked over these 40 books, I realized that they fell into three categories: Bible backgrounds, church planting/leadership, and missional living.

That tells me a lot about what I want to do with my life and where I am headed. I want to understand the Bible so that I can take what it says and lead a church to reach out into this world with the love of Jesus Christ. Even as I think about this, it gets me excited.

To see some of my favorite books, check out my list of Top Books Every Christian Should Read, and my lists of books that I am reading.

So what’s on your reading list, and what does it tell you about who you are?

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: best books, books, Books I'm Reading, Christian books

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Jerks for Jesus

By Jeremy Myers
10 Comments

Jerks for Jesus

When I was a pastor, I wish I’d had the courage to walk across the street.

Oh sure, I walked across it every day back and forth to the church parsonage. But a bit further down the road was an atheist who had never set foot in our church, and probably never would. I wish I had gone over there and asked him out for lunch. It’s one of the great regrets of my years as a pastor. I thought about it every week, but I never had the courage.

Jim and Caspar Go To ChurchRecently I read Jim and Casper Go to Church. Jim is a Christian who makes a regular habit of befriending atheists. Casper is an atheist. Together, they attend churches and then write about what they heard and experienced.

If you want to know what unbelievers think about you and your church, you should go ask them. But if you want to read about it instead (since it’s so much safer and easier), you can be like me and just read Jim and Casper’s book, and others like it (e.g., They Like Jesus but Not the Church by Dan Kimball).

Jerks for JesusJim has a ministry called Off the Map devoted to helping “Christians learn to communicate better with non-Christians, or as some of my more outspoken ‘lost’ friends prefer to put it, Off the Map helps Christians learn how to not be jerks” (p. xxii). It’s true. We can be real jerks. I’m sure it makes Jesus proud.

Anyway, here are a few quotes from Jim with comments by me:

Humanity is divided into two groups: (1) people who follow Jesus, and (2) everybody else. It doesn’t matter to me whether you call yourself a Christian, a Buddhist, a humanist, an agnostic, or an atheist. If you aren’t following Jesus, you’re in group two (p. xxiv).

I could be wrong, but I don’t think he means that there can be Buddhists, agnostics, and atheists who follow Jesus. Sure, some may claim to follow the teachings of Jesus, but they would have to reject some of them.

Just like many of us Christians do as well.

And that’s his point. Just because you call yourself a Christian doesn’t mean you are following Jesus. I wholeheartedly agree with that. He goes on to say that “some professed Christians are not actually following Jesus but are instead following religion” (p. xxv). So true. I’m one such person in many ways.

He goes on to say that authors of a generation ago (and even many today):

…Provided Christians a way to defend the faith-the expectation being that if we provide a biblical response to the arguments of atheists of doubters and essentially prove them wrong, they will be forced to admit the error of their ways and join us. (Short of that, we will at least experience the pleasure of intellectually humiliating them.) (p. xxxii).

I’ve been in “witnessing” encounters like this. The only results that I could discern were increased blood pressure, as evidenced by red faces and bulging neck veins. Jim says, “Ordinary Christians like me know that when you start defending the faith, you also start losing your friends” (p. xxxiii).

The solution, Jim says, is to actually make friends with non-Christians, and live out the teachings of Jesus among them:

Jesus didn’t just teach principles; he taught practices. He gave people something to do. He didn’t just teach them about forgiveness; he told them to forgive their debtors. He didn’t just talk about love as a concept; he told people to love their enemies. He didn’t just tell people to think about changing their behaviors; he told them to repent. Sure it’s challenging, but it doesn’t take a weekend seminary to understand what he means (p. xxxiii).

This is a great book. Get your own copy here: Jim and Casper Go to Church.

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: atheists, Books I'm Reading, Discipleship, evangelism, follow Jesus

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XXX Church and The Gutter

By Jeremy Myers
29 Comments

XXX Church and The Gutter

The Gutter, by Craig GrossI recently read The Gutter: Where Life is Meant to be Lived. The basic message is that if you want to follow Jesus into the world, you better head for the gutter. This is so true. Jesus was, after all, a friend of sinners.

I was so impressed by this book, I got online to find out more about the author, Craig Gross.

I found that he is one of the co-founders of XXX Church, a ministry reaching out to those caught up in the sex industry. Whether you are a person addicted to pornography, a woman caught in prostitution, or anything in between, they want to help. Also, if you want to help keep yourself accountable when surfing the Internet, I recommend their free X3 Watch software.

If you like Craig’s book, you should also get Starving Jesus: Off the Pew, Into the World.

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: Books I'm Reading, following Jesus, homeless

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What if you spent one year obeying the entire Bible? A. J. Jacobs did exactly that

By Jeremy Myers
19 Comments

What if you spent one year obeying the entire Bible? A. J. Jacobs did exactly that

year of living biblicallyJennie Yabroff reported in Newsweekย that “After A. J. Jacobs spent a year reading the Entire Encyclopedia Britannica for his book “The Know-It-All,” he figured he had the yearlong experiment thing down. How much harder could it be to follow every rule in the Bible? Much, much harder, he soon discovered, as he found himself growing his beard, struggling not to curse, and asking strangers for permission to stone them for adultery.”

What I found most interesting about the article is some of the comments Jacobs makes in the interview. When asked how his life is now that he can sin again, he says, “I miss my sin-free life, but I guess I was never sin free. I was able to cut down on my coveting maybe 40 percent, but I was still a coveter.” Jacobs sounds a lot like the Apostle Paul, when he wrote, “But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of coveting” (Rom 7:9).ย Jacobs, like Paul, realized that nobody can perfectly obey the entire law, and trying only makes you recognize your sin more.

When asked if there were any rules he was still following, Jacobs focuses on the Sabbath. He says, “I love the Sabbath. There’s something I really like about a forced day of rest.”

Interesting, isn’t it, that this is what Jesus tells us: “The Sabbath was made for man, and not manย  for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). God knows that we need to rest from our work, and life is better when we take time to rest.

The entire law, really, is to help us live life better with God and with each other.ย The great deception of sin is that we think it helps us live life to the full, but in reality, sin only gets in the way of truly living life.

Naturally, Jacobs found many of the laws and rules impossible to obey. For example, there’s a funny story in the interview about when he stones a man for committing adultery, but he doesn’t really stone him to death as commanded in Scripture. Of course, if he did, in our culture, he would beย a murderer, which would be breaking other Biblical commands. This leads Jacobs to admit that “One of the lessons…[is that] there is some picking and choosing in following the Bible, and I think that’s OK.”

In other words, since God’s standard of righteousness is too high for us to realistically follow, we can lower the standard by picking which commands and rules to obey. How much better would it be to say, “We can’t come close to obeying all these laws, and since God demands perfect righteousness, I need to get it from somewhere else. Jesus lived in perfect righteousness, and tells us that if we believe in Him, He gives that righteousness to us” (John 3:16; 5:24; 6:47; 2 Cor 5:21).

I pray that Jacobs comes to this conclusion. It is evident that the Spirit is working on him, for now that he is without the law, he admits that he feels “unmoored, overwhelmed by choice.” Paul did tell us that the law is a tutor, to bring us to Christ (Gal 3:24-25). Jacobs lived under the tutor for a year, and we can pray it will lead him to believe in Jesus for everlasting life.

If you want to read more about this, you can get his book: The Year of Living Biblically.

God is Redeeming Life Bible & Theology Topics: Books I'm Reading, law, Sabbath, sin

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