The father patiently endures the loss of honour and the pain of rejected love. Ordinarilary when our love is rejected we get angry, retaliate, and do what we can to diminish our affection for the rejecting person, so we won’t hurt so much. But this father maintains his affection for his son and bears the agony.
Tim Keller, The Prodigal God [p20]
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A love that won’t let go
The Prodigal God
Last month I spoke 3 times in different settings on the Parable of the Lost Son (Luke 15) – in preparing and speaking I became convinced that this story is not primarily about either of the sons, but about the Father.
In the same way that the other parables aren’t about the sheep or the coin, but the one who looks for them!
Here are some things the Father does, He: gives, looks, sees, has compassion, runs, embraces, kisses… he gives again, he clothes, he celebrates… he pleads, he’s always been giving!
All this said, I’m really happy the Tim Keller’s new book ‘The Prodigal God‘ has been released in the UK… and I’m really really happy that the Good Book Company are stocking it, and for the bargain price of £10, that’s cheaper than Amazon!! I’ve ordered my copy, you should do the same!
Discipleship Explored DVD
So last night I went to All Souls, Langham Place in London for the launch event for the Discipleship Explored course DVD… on the train up I happened to bump in to the chaplain at my Uni (well I’ve graduated now), Hi Gavin, if you happen to be reading! We chatted for the whole hour of the train journey about whether you can be an Anglican but not Protestant… so I got a history lesson of the Reformation, and we had some good debates about the inerrancy of Scripture and sacramental theology… he’s a clever man but he did says that ‘legally’ I won the debate with my trump card – The 39 Articles! Anyway, that’s an aside… but another aside I had the pleasure of meeting a couple of people I’d only known virtually; fellow blogger Dan Green and Emily from GBC – Hi Emily!
So why was I here?? Well I’m sure most people reading have heard of Christianity Explored… I’m sure that most, but probably a few less have heard of it’s follow up course, Discipleship Explored which has been around for a few years. The great thing about the DVD is that it makes it much easier to run a course!
Here’s a trailer for the DVD, giving you a flavour…
The DVD takes you through the book of Philippians in 8 sessions . Each session is about 10 minutes long; the passage is read by a guy with a cool Scottish accent, then a key verse is picked out. The key verse along with the rest of the passage is explained, common questions about the Christian life are answered, the presenter Barry Cooper does a great job of clearly explaining stuff and getting us to the point. These sessions aren’t really a substitute for a talk or Bible study but they’re a great launching block into the passage, and a great way to start a group and get people thinking.
Here’s another little video. Rico Tice interviewing Barry Cooper about the Discipleship Explored DVD… great question and answer is the one to the first question “Why Philippians?”… sorry about the angle of filming, couldn’t be bothered to move:
Coming soon… a couple of short video interviews, one with Barry Cooper, and one with Rico Tice.
For more information and to order resources visit the Good Book Company… the Discipleship Explored DVD is available for just £30.
Mark Driscoll on Good Book Company
Good news. Not only are the Good Book Company selling Mark Driscoll books, but they are cheaper than Amazon!! The little ‘Book you’ll actually read’ books are selling for just £5!! And I expect there’ll be a little discount on top of that if you have a UCCF student card. On Amazon they’ll cost you £6.29… you fools who bought from Amazon, get them cheap from GBC!!
News to come soonish about some books for men (grrr) and bible reading notes for adults and young people available from the Good Book Company.
Ps. Tom, if you’re reading, I hope you will complete the collection… Radical Reformission and Confessions?? Don’t forget also Death by Love and Vintage Church coming soon. You saw how popular they were at Dwell!!
Pps. Emily, if you’re reading, got the books and study notes (thank you), will review soon! Holiday reading 
Online Commentary Survey
A new site has been launched called BestCommentaries.com which gives an online survey of just about every commentary. The site takes it information from survey information from; Don Carson, John Piper, John Glynn, Trempar Longman, R.C. Sproul and others. You can see commentaries by book of the Bible, by series or by author. There’s also a list of the two top rated commentaries for each book of the Bible and a list of forthcoming commentaries.
So for each commentary there’s a rating, price, where you can buy it, categories on the ‘type’ or ‘level’ of commentary. There’s a cool feature which is a flash bookshelf (below) it shows you what the commentary looks like, even the thickness as you pull it off the book shelf! Helpfully there’s the facility for site members to add reviews of commentaries as well as that all reviews from Amazon.com are imported. Definately a good place to go if you need to acquire a commentary or build a collection.
Death by Love
Mark Driscoll’s new book comes out at the end of September and is a book form of the ‘Christ on the Cross’ sermon series. Here’s the promo video…
Some quotes from Tom Carson
A day in the life…
My present plan calls for four hours study on my preaching and teaching ministry in the mornings, at least two and a half hours visitation in the afternoons, plus the extra time either for more such study or work relating to visitation. The evenings may be answering all correspondence, preparing the magazine, reading books, articles, building around the property – in other words, anything, including study and visitation which could be helpful, relaxing…
On prayer…
Prayer, the main source of strength of all,must find its necessary time in the early hours of the day, in the evening, around meal hours, without intruding on this ministry of teaching, preaching and visitation. Yet it must undergird all the ministry.
Being honest…
“Not much accomplished”
“This was a poor day… wasted in many respects”
“Preached (poorly)”
New Books
Tim Keller has a new book coming out in October called ‘The Prodigal God‘, it’s an exposition of the ‘Parable of the Prodigal Sons’ and I get the impression that like ‘Reason for God’ it will be accessible for both Christians and non-Christians alike. It’s released on the 30th and you can currently pre-order from Amazon for around £9, I’m hoping that the Good Book Company might have it in stock at a similar price nearer the time, I’ll let you know.
Here’s a short interview with Keller about the book, and a response from Keller about the use of the word ‘Prodigal’ in relation to God.
Also, Mark Driscoll has lots of books coming out this year which has prompted the launch of Resurgence Literature publishing (ReLit). The first book was Vintage Jesus, I’ve finally got round to reading that so I’ll review it soon.
The latest books out (released last week) are a series of 4 books – ‘A Book You’ll Actually Read‘ – they’re less than 100 pages on ‘The Old Testament’, ‘The New Testament’, ‘Church Leadership’ and ‘Who is God?’. These are the square shaped ones (left). At the end of July there’s a book called ‘Practical Theology for Women’ coming out by Wendy Alsup, a deacon at Mars Hill. ‘Death by Love‘ (right) is coming out at the end of September, from what I gather it is based on Driscoll’s ‘Christ on the Cross’ series and then put in to a letter format. Finally in January 2009 ‘Vintage Church‘ (middle) is being released, subtitled ‘Timeless Truths and Timely Methods’ – it’s in the style of the Vintage Jesus book and I’m guessing will be similar to the Radical Reformission, probably with more of a focus on some of his sermon series (1 Corinthians, Nehemiah) and some practical suggestions. One more thing, they’re also publishing other non-Mars-Hill books, so far just Total Church by Timmis and Chester.
Last week I picked up some books for myself at EMA – Total Church (Timmis and Chester), Why we’re not Emergent (some American guys), and The Gospel and Personal Evangelism (Dever)… will give some thoughts when I get round to reading.
Don’t Panic
You may well be in the middle of exams, you may have finished, either way I need to let you know about a great little resource from the Good Book Company called ‘Don’t Panic!‘. DP is written by Martin Cole and Andrew Roycroft and is essentially a 4-week Bible study guide to help you through exams.
The main ‘feature’ of the booklet is 4 weeks of very short Bible study / devotional times, with the aim of helping us to focus and trust in Christ at difficult times. The studies are simple and help to get our priorities sorted. We start in Nehemiah, go to the Gospels, Psalms, 1 Peter, Colossians and a few other passages here and there. They’re not deep studies going through whole books or chapters, but simple thoughts to get us to put God at the centre when there’s plenty of stressful things competing for our attention.
Each week also includes both a revision timetable and prayer diary to fill in. The booklet is very easy to keep with you during your revision and easy to turn to at any time. There’s also 3 Su Doku, and some word puzzles, the latter were too difficult for me, but it makes for a better revision break than Facebook! There’s also some short articles about how to revise and how to cope with the stress that exams bring, and an interview with a real student, particularly helpful because it’s so honest and down to earth!
Criticisms – I think the cover looks silly, and it would be nice to have the Bible passages printed in the booklet so you can be out revising and not have to carry a big Bible as well. But these are minor things, basically this is a great idea, not one that’s been done before to my knowledge, and it’s been done really well – clear, simple, biblical and God-focused. If you’re a student get it! If you’re a parent, get it for your kids! If you’re a teacher buy it for Christian students you know! If you’re a youth leader, get copies for everyone in your youth group! If you’re involved in running a CU, why not invest in a few copies for your members?
It’s a real bargain at �2.50, and the usual discounts are available if you’re buying in bulk for a group or if you have a UCCF Student Card. I’m hoping there’ll be a new edition out for next year, with new studies perhaps, new puzzles, new articles? News coming soon about some new Bible reading notes from the Good Book Company…
ESV Study Bible
I got an ESV study bible last year, I don’t think it’s an ‘official’ one though, called the Reformation Study Bible… but the big, proper one is coming in October 2008, the site was launched this week with the info.
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