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4000 Books 2012

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books

This post simply contains a list of books I read in 2012, with short reviews for each book.

My goal is to average one book per week. At this rate, a person can only read about 4000 books in their lifetime. I own way more than this number of books already, which is depressing for me to think about! I already own more books than I can read! It certainly makes me choose wisely which books I spend time reading!

Here is my count so far:

I welcome review books

Though I am very careful about which books I read, I am always open to reviewing books. If you send me a copy of your book, I will usually read it within one month, and will post reviews in a regular blog post, on Amazon, and as a comment below. If you have a book you would like me to review, contact me through the contact form on my About page.

I like to blog about books with other bloggers

Another thing I like to do is read and blog about books with other bloggers. Check out the short list of some of the books I plan to read this coming year. If you see one or two you want to read along with me, or if you have a different suggestion, contact me through the contact form on my About page.

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Best Books from 2011

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Best Books of 2011

Books I read in 2011

I read 69 books in 2011.

Here are my 5 favorite:

Simply Jesus by NT Wright1. Simply Jesus by N. T. Wright

This book may simply be the best book about Jesus I have ever read (Yes, yes. Apart from the Bible. Does it really need to be said?)

But the book is not just about Jesus. It is about the church, the Gospel, the Kingdom of God, Israel, history, government, social involvement, eschatology, and a mind-numbing array of other topics, all of which swirl around and center upon the person and work of Jesus Christ. Read the full review here.

Till We Have Faces by CS Lewis2. Till We Have Faces by CS Lewis

Though I love The Chronicles of Narnia, this is my favorite novel by C. S. Lewis.

He wrote that it was his favorite as well, though when the book came out, it was not well received by the public, and never gained much notoriety. Even today, few people even know that he wrote the book. Learn more about the story, and read my full review here.

Walter Wink Powers Trilogy3.  Engaging the Powers by Walter Wink

This is the third book is a three part series which addresses the biblical, theological, and practical issue of Satan, demons, the demonic, and the world of spiritual powers.

Of the three books, this one is the the most practical, though the other two lay the biblical and theological groundwork for the ideas in this book. Unless you read the first two, the ideas of this book may sound outlandish, unsupported, and even extreme. Read the full review of this book here.

The King Jesus Gospel by Scot McKnight4.  The King Jesus Gospel by Scot McKnight.

Scot McKnight is concerned that that most evangelicals have a very narrow and unbiblical understanding of the Gospel.

Most of us, he believes, hold to something which he calls “a soterian Gospel” which is the idea that the Gospel message primarily concerns me and my salvation. Read the full review here.

Finding Organic Church by Frank Viola5. Finding Organic Church by Frank Viola

This book is a good guide to help people find or develop a community of like-minded people with whom they can live and worship. While I haven’t read everything on the subject, I know of no other book like it on the market, and it really helped answer some of my own questions and provide me some direction as I seek to follow Jesus by loving and serving others in my community. The book provided a fairly clear picture of Viola’s experience with the organic church and the Scriptural basis for this model. Read the full review here.
[Read more…]

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The key to prayer is to ASK (Ask, Seek, Knock)

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Ask Seek Knock

Jesus taught us to be answers to our own prayers when, in the Sermon on the Mount, He told His disciples, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened” (Matthew 7:7-8).

When reading Matthew 7:7-8, most people think that Jesus was saying the same thing three different times: pray, and your prayer will get answered. In other words they read “Ask, seek, knock” as “Pray, pray, and pray again.”

But there may be a better way of understanding the words of Jesus.

Jesus is not simply telling His disciples to pray, but is giving them instructions on how to see answers to their own prayers.

Ask

First, Jesus tells them to ask. This is the prayer part. It is taking our requests and needs to God, and presenting them before Him. It is not that He is unaware of our needs, for He knows what we need before we ask Him (Matthew 6:8).

Just as we talk over the issues of our day with our spouse or friends, so also God wants us to communicate with Him about the issues and needs which are heavy on our hearts and minds. So, we ask Him about these things. This is the first step to prayer.

Seek

But after we ask, we don’t simply keep asking. We must begin to seek. This is the second step. Seeking is when we look around for how God might answer our prayers. After we ask God for something, the next thing we must do is start looking around with eyes of faith for how God might be providing answers to the issues we discussed with Him.

Knock

Seeking answers to our prayers leads to the third step in getting our prayers answer: knocking. After we ask God to help us with our needs, and as we seek for possible ways that God might answer our requests, we must then step out in faith and knock on the doors that present themselves. When we ask, we ask with faith.

When we seek, we seek possible answers with eyes of faith. And when we knock, we step out and take risks with faith by pursuing opportunities that were brought to our attention during the seeking phase.

Ask Seek KnockSometimes the first door we knock on is the one that opens, but this is usually not the case. Sometimes we have to knock on ten, fifty, even hundreds of doors.

For this reason, the knocking phase is often the most difficult, but it is here that perseverance is vitally important if we are going to see answers to our prayers.

Want to see more answers to prayer?

Don’t just ask God for things. Step out and seek ways that He might answer them, and then knock on the doors of opportunity that are presented.

In this way, praying is more than just asking God for things and then sitting around, waiting for Him to respond.

Do you want to pray like never before?

Do you what to talk to God like you talk to a friend? Do you want to see more answers to prayer?

If you have these (and other) questions about prayer, let me send you some teaching and instruction about prayer to your email inbox. You will receive one or two per week, absolutely free. Fill out the form below to get started.

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How can I see more answers to prayer?

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Prayer Requests

In a previous post, we have seen that work and prayer are both ways of accomplishing God’s will in the world.

This close connection between work and prayer as means of accomplishing God’s will in the world helps give us direction for how to see answers to our prayers, and how to go about accomplishing God’s will in this world.

Sometimes I think we confuse work and prayer: We pray when we should be working, and we work when we should be praying. There have been times in Christian history when the church has focused more on work than prayer, but I think that for the past fifty years or so, the church has focused more on prayer than work.

And this brings us back to the subject of prayer meetings. It is far more popular in many churches to get together and pray about a need in the community than it is to get together and actually do something about a need in the community.

Though prayer is a form of work, we must not think that prayer is a substitute for work.

Yet this is often what gets implicitly taught in many of our church prayer meetings.

Prayer Meetings

Making Needs Known

People come together and share prayer requests for the neighbor lady whose husband is in the hospital, for the coworker who just got laid off, for the homeless people to find work, and for more people to start showing up for church.

These are all valid issues and concerns, but I think that in addition to praying for these things and then waiting for God to answer, He might want us to go and be an answer to our own prayers. I think God sometimes makes needs known to us, not so that we can pray about it, but so that we can do something about it.

I once saw a comic strip where a guy was praying, and he said, “God, why aren’t you answering any of my prayers?” And God’s reply was, “I was about to ask you the same thing.” (I tried to find this comic strip, but was unable. Do you know where it is?)

Praying for needs is important, but one way God wants to answer our prayers is by us going out to be answers to our own prayers.

Sometimes we don’t see answers to prayer, not because God doesn’t care or doesn’t want to answer them, but because God is saying to us, “Answer your own prayer.” 

God often lays needs upon our minds so that we can both pray and do something about these needs.

The Church Advances on It’s Knees?

People often say that the church advances on its knees. While prayer is a vital activity of the church, when God presents to us a need we can meet, I don’t think He is pleased when we simply present the need right back to Him in prayer.

To really see God at work in our lives and in our churches, we sometimes need to get off our knees and serve. We need to unfold our hands, and help. We need to open our eyes and look around for the needs that God wants us to see.

Do you want to pray like never before?

Do you what to talk to God like you talk to a friend? Do you want to see more answers to prayer?

If you have these (and other) questions about prayer, let me send you some teaching and instruction about prayer to your email inbox. You will receive one or two per week, absolutely free. Fill out the form below to get started.

Membership-become-a-member

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How to get God to work in response to your prayers

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Work and Prayer

Many people believe that prayer is unnecessary, because if God wants something done, He will do it whether we pray or not, and if something is not His will, it will not happen, even if we pray for it.

No one refutes this idea better than C. S. Lewis. He has written about prayer in numerous places. Three of his best works on prayer are “Work and Prayer” in God in the Dock, “The Efficacy of Prayer” in The World’s Last Night, and what he writes about prayer in his Letters to Malcolm.

Essentially, the argument of C. S. Lewis is this: Any responsibility in this world which God can pass on to human beings, He does pass on to human beings.

God prefers not to do something if a human can do it.

And God has provided two means by which we can accomplish these God-given tasks: work and prayer. And just as we view work as a way of getting things done in the world, we must begin to view prayer similarly.

Here is what Lewis writes in “Work and Prayer”:

You cannot be sure of a good harvest whatever you do to a field. But you can be sure that if you pull up one weed that one weed will no longer be there. You can be sure that if you drink more than a certain amount of alcohol you will ruin your health or that if you go on for a few centuries more wasting the resources of the planet on wars and luxuries you will shorten the life of the whole human race. The kind of causality we exercise by work is, so to speak, divinely guaranteed, and therefore ruthless. By it we are free to do ourselves as much harm as we please. But the kind which we exercise by prayer is not like that; God has left Himself discretionary power. Had He not done so, prayer would be an activity too dangerous for man and should have the horrible state of things envisaged by Juvenal: “Enormous prayers which Heaven in anger grants.”

Prayers are not always – in the crude, factual sense of the word – “granted”. This is not because prayer is a weaker kind of causality, but because it is a stronger kind. When it “works” at all it works unlimited by space and time. That is why God has retained a discretionary power of granting or refusing it; except on that condition prayer would destroy us.

Read the whole on Prayer by C. S. Lewis here.

Do you want to pray like never before?

Do you what to talk to God like you talk to a friend? Do you want to see more answers to prayer?

If you have these (and other) questions about prayer, let me send you some teaching and instruction about prayer to your email inbox. You will receive one or two per week, absolutely free. Fill out the form below to get started.

Membership-become-a-member

Thanks for visiting this page ... but this page is for Discipleship Group members.

If you are already part of a Faith, Hope, or Love Discipleship Group,
Login here.

If you are part of the free "Grace" Discipleship group, you will need to
Upgrade your Membership to one of the paid groups.

If you are not part of any group, you may learn about the various groups and their benefits here:
Join Us Today.

Membership-become-a-member

God is Redeeming Life, Redeeming Theology Bible & Theology Topics: , , , , ,

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