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Book Review: Religion Saves

Listened to on 3/25/10

Religion Saves: And Nine Other Misconceptions by Mark Driscoll

I’m a Driscoll fan. I’m not a “follower” because I only follow Jesus, but I am a fan. Sometimes a guy needs a good swift kick, you know. Driscoll will give it to you. The basis of this book was a series that Mars Hill Church did a couple years ago. A poll went out to the church, encouraging people to ask some tough questions and they would be answered in an upcoming series. The list of questions was condensed and widdled down to nine. Here the ones I really listened to. The others are very good, but I skimmed them :-)

• Question 9: Birth Control
• Question 8: Humor
• Question 7:Predestination

This book was a great view of Mark’s view of these issues and very informative research, etc. If you get the book or listen to it, I encourage you to at least go through these questions. Enjoy!

-AOD

Slap in the Face

My blog seems kind of boring, and more for me than anyone else, mostly because I’m probably the only one that reads it :-) I was reading what Ben said about the “platform of the future” and it hit me. It “slapped me in the face” you might say.

Visual entertainment for me is sitting down and watching a TV show with my wife at night. Ya, I know, pretty old fashioned. But when I saw THIS GUY’S youtube channel, I thought, “this is the new TV”. It was funny, hilarious at times and he comes off as someone we all know. Mostly, because he’s being himself, I suppose. Watch the video on his home page. Most of them are around 10 minutes long.

So, how do I fit this type of entertainment into my normal routine of sitting down and having an entertaining laugh with my wife? 10 minutes of video is longer than the typical “come check out this video, babe!” Setting up my computer and hooking it up to the TV is pretty cumbersome and annoying. It needs to be something more fluid, more efficient. Maybe like the new Vizio/Internet TV, idk.

Then I discovered Blippy. It’s basically your financial purchases in Twitter form. I was blown away again!! Just read about it HERE before you make any judgments :-)

Technology moves so quickly, but it seems like there are only a few innovations that are just brilliant and somewhat useful!

What technology do you use to be entertained?

-AOD

Book Review: The Principle of the Path

Listened to on 3/18/2010

The Principle of the Path by Andy Stanley

Even though I listen to him a lot and love his teaching about leadership, I have never read an Andy Stanley book before (believe it or not). I was ready to get into it! Stanley has a great way of bringing out the depth of God’s Word and applying it to leadership and in this case, any aspect of life. The Principle of the Path is this:

                    Direction—Not Intention—Determines Our Destination

This principle is the basis for the entire book. A principle is something that just “is”. Archimedes principle states that the buoyant force on a submerged object is equal to the weight of the fluid that is displaced by the object. And whether you understand that or not, it applies to you when you are in water (even if you do not float :-). The principle of the path affects you everyday of your life. If you make a decision to purchase a used car with cash, but you go to the dealer and in the emotion of the moment, you get talked into a new car with payments for 72 months, you chose your direction. So, your path will consist of a burden of payments and debt and you living above your means. Which, then leads to more bad financial decisions because that is your “path” you have chosen. Destination=financial ruin.

This is just one example in the “real life” setting, but what about the biblical basis for this? In 1 Samuel 23, David was running from Saul. After a tough battle, Saul and his men were resting when he got word that David was nearby. So, he went after him. During the search the Bible tells us that Saul had to “relieve himself”, so he went in a cave. This cave happened to be where David was hiding. David knew Saul was hunting him down and Saul had already tried to kill him more than once. Here was his chance. God had delivered Saul into his hands. David’s men could just see themselves at the right had of King David in the near future. So David crept up to Saul and took out his knife and cut a piece of Saul’s cloak! He didn’t kill him, he spared him…why?!

David was a warrior, he had seen a lot of blood in his time. Instead of going in for the kill, he decided to claim the promise that God would deliver the kingship to him. David would not have to do anything, but be a man of God. David kept his cool under the intense emotional pressure. The thought may have gone through his head “well, it’s against the law to kill the king, would this be what God wants?” Think about that! The pride and rooting for the underdog mindset that we have sometimes makes us overlook what is right in God’s eyes. If David was going to be a great king, it would be a very bad start of his reign to break a law of God right off the bat. He chose a path, a direction, his attention was focused on what was right in God’s eyes. That is the last point…attention.

Attention determines direction. What are you focused on? What is distracting you from that focus? Whether you choose to keep you eyes on the path or the distractions on the left or right, THIS WILL DETERMINE YOUR DIRECTION. Whatever you pay attention to, this will determine your direction and eventually your destination.

A lot of this information is expanded WAY more in the book. I urge you to get it or listen to it. This principle is nothing new or profound, really. Sometimes we need some new packaging or a fresh coat of paint, if you will, to have a new or fresh understanding.

-AOD

Book Review: Jesus Wants to Save Christians

Listened to on 3/11/2010

Jesus Wants to Save Christians by Rob Bell, Don Golden

The first thing I noticed about this book was that in true Rob Bell fashion, it was creatively read like a conversation between the two authors without the rigidity of a “professional” reader.

The first couple chapters cover the meta-narrative of scripture. What I mean is the big-picture story of the Bible. The book spoke to me about how our God is a god of the poor and the broken, always providing for them through His people. (Ex. 22:21) I have been thinking and praying about this A LOT lately, including doing a preaching series for our youth and our “big church” services. This was more confirmation that our God uses the weak to show His great strength. He used the nation of Israel who were the outcasts and were not even faithful to Him. He used kings that committed adultery (King David). He used prophets that were mere men and had their own sets of issues (Jeremiah) in order to call the nation to turn back to God! He used a humble teenage nobody to be the mother of the only perfect human being to walk the earth. Through Jesus, we now are reconciled to God. He is our intermediary! (1 Tim 2:5) And then he uses lowly servants like you and me, that just want to see His name glorified and not our own.

This is a quote from the book’s website…”Jesus wants to save us from shrinking the Gospel down to a transaction about the removal of sin and not about every single particle of creation being reconciled to its maker.” This is a great truth that we need to digest. We have made the Gospel a formulaic endeavor that gets us out of heaven. And therefore, we get people that accept Jesus as Savior in our churches, but they do not accept Him as Lord of their life!

Finally, Jesus Wants to Save Christians uses the Old Testament Exodus from Egypt as an allegory for Jesus leading a New Testament Exodus from our present day Egypt. So, my final point here, is directed at you, the reader. Is there a “cruel bondage” (Ex. 6:9) that you might be in? Do you need a leader to come in on your behalf and say to the leader of that cruel bondage, “Let my people go!!”? This present day Moses is a man we know as Jesus Christ. He will lead you from your cruel bondage of sin to the promised land. But don’t be mistaken, the promised land is not some great life that you now get to live and be rich and prosperous. That is a modern day, cultural distortion of the Gospel. Jesus came to free from sin and then use YOU to further His Kingdom, for His glory! NOT your own glory.

“But, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” Matt 6:33

Grace and Peace,

-AOD