prayeramedic.com » Good Reads

Books For Sale… Heavily Discounted

Dan — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 16:28:02 +0000

I can’t pass up these opportunities. An individual in the house church network, Jon Zens, is selling a bunch of books. They are all Christian books, many dealing with counseling, biblical languages, church planting, etc. Here is the list and details if anyone is interested: http://www.housechurchresource.org/ZensBooks.pdf

As a side note, I know I haven’t posted in awhile. Something new is brewing, but I haven’t had much time to develop it. So in short, keep waiting….

Thank you for your patience.

For Sale: The Gospel

Christian Diversity

Dan — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 20:55:57 +0000

A new multi-author blog has been formed: Christian Diversity. I have been invited to be an author, and all of my more theological and philosophical writings will now most likely find their way to that blog.

The blog currently features eight authors who each consider themselves to be either nondenominational, Reformed, Baptist, Lutheran, Catholic, or refuse to be labeled.

As regular readers are aware, there are only a few more days remaining to help prayeramedic.com choose a new name! We’ve had some good ideas submitted in the contest and are looking forward to beginning a new blogging chapter. For those of you that aren’t aware, Tiffany and I (Dan) intend to begin a new blog where both of us will contribute more. Enter the contest!

The Shack: Love it or Hate it?

Dan — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 21:55:38 +0000

I recently read The Shack by William Paul Young, a Christian fiction bestseller that everyone has been talking about for a few years now. A discussion about the book began in the comments on one of my posts, and I wanted to continue the discussion here. What do you think?

Have you read The Shack?
What did you think about it?
Do you think the book is theologically dangerous or is it just fiction?
Do you recommend the book to others?

Let’s chat….

Luther not welcome in Lutheran churches

Dan — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 03:56:28 +0000

This was a neat read, I had to link to it. I don’t care if you hate Lutherans or denominations in general, the whole article was worth it for these quotes:

I once was blessed to meet the greatest Luther scholar of the 20th century, in person, Roland Bainton, in the early 80′s after a lecture. I asked him why he never joined a Lutheran Church. His witty response was: “I’ve never seen one. Luther himself, ironically, would not be welcomed in most Lutheran churches today….”

Asked whether there is pre-destination, Luther answered “yes and no.” Asked if we can lose our salvation, Luther answered “yes and no.” Asked if we are basically sinners or totally justified, he answered “yes.” Luther was a Bible teacher, and not a systematic theologian. He loved the (obvious) dramatic tensions in scripture and was OK with just leaving them be. His counterpart, Calvin, seemed to have a high need to cram the Bible into a neat system….

And finally, a direct quote from Martin Luther himself:

“People should not call themselves ‘Lutherans’. ‘What is Luther? After all, the teaching is not mine. Neither was I crucified for anyone . . . How then should I — poor stinking maggot-fodder that I am — come to have men call the children of Christ by my wretched name?’ Not so, my dear friends; let us abolish all party names and call ourselves Christians, after him whose teachings we hold.”

The bottom line: Luther isn’t Lutheran.

H/T: jWinters

Are Christians Supposed To Feel Guilty All The Time?

Dan — Wed, 19 May 2010 08:30:00 +0000

Kevin DeYoung wrote a great post about this issue that I highly recommend.

Do you ever feel guilty that:

You could pray more.
You aren’t bold enough in evangelism.
You like sports too much.
You watch movies and television too often.
Your quiet times are too short or too sporadic.
You don’t give enough.
You bought a new couch.
You don’t read to your kids enough.
Your kids eat Cheetos and french fries.
You don’t recycle enough.
You need to lost 20 pounds.
You could use your time better.
You could live some place harder or in something smaller.

If you answered yes to any one of these, I recommend that you read this post.

The only good Christian is a dead Christian

Dan — Tue, 04 May 2010 08:30:54 +0000

This post is great, I wish I had written it. But I didn’t. From Charles Lehmann’s blog, Drowning Myself Whenever I Can:

… The only good Christian is a dead one. We have to die to ourselves. We have to take up our cross daily and follow Him. We must daily be drowned in the waters of our baptism so that the sinner may die.

Of course, this is where the witty saying that I put forward in the title of this post falls apart. It’s not the Christian we’re killing. It’s the sinner. It’s the old Adam that is put to death in the waters of baptism so that new life can be given to us through the promises of Christ.

You cannot heal a sinner. You cannot make them less sinful. You cannot make them do more good and less evil. They only thing that can be done with a sinner is to kill them. They have to die. Then they can be raised to new life in Christ. That’s what baptism does. But even after we are baptized, our old necrotic sinful self claws its way out of the grave and goes on sinning. That’s why in this life we are simultaneously sinner and saint. In order for the saint to live, the sinner has to keep on dying….

Wow, great thoughts – and so true. Too often we set resolutions to change and end up right back where we started. We constantly vow to do this or that, and somehow nothing seems to get accomplished. The problem is that we are trying to reform our sinful nature (flesh), when scripture makes it clear to us that “the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so” (Romans 8:7). The solution is that we must die to sin. Everybody dies, it’s just a matter of whether you die to sin or if you die in sin.

I’d highly encourage you to read the entire article.

Spirituality of the Cross

Dan — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:42:16 +0000

I recently found out that Spirituality of the Cross, a book that has been profoundly helpful to my spiritual walk, is going to be revised. I commented about how the book has impacted me and the author of the book, Gene Veith, reprinted my comment here. I’m deeply thankful for this book and highly recommend it to all prayeramedic.com readers:

You’ll probably hear more about this book in posts to come, I’ve written about it before.

Daily Prayer

Dan — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 07:24:01 +0000

Daily prayer is and always has been a struggle for me. I don’t prioritize it like I should. I often neglect His Word and prayer. Lately I’ve taken somewhat of a hiatus from blogging to get in the Word more and to pray (plus many other areas of my life have been busy). If I don’t feed on God’s Word, the content on this blog can get pretty bad. I got a Christmas present that is helping me though, a book called the Treasury of Daily Prayer.

Essentially it’s a book that has daily readings from the bible and orders of prayer, and the entire Psalter (all the Psalms). Every day has an Old and New Testament reading, a psalm (or portion of one), and some general guides for prayer. I like it because everything is contained in one book, I don’t have to switch between my bible, a format, and a devotional (although I do enjoy using Eckardt’s Meditations for the Daily Office in conjunction with it sometimes). It’s all in one place. I’ve never been one to really get into any kind of formal prayer material, preferring spontaneous prayer and scripture over any prescribed format. But the bottom line is that when left to my own devices, I simply don’t pray or read the bible that often. If I do, I’ll most likely read a couple of bible verses then pray a 4-5 minute half-hearted prayer, during which I’ll succumb to my short attention span and begin thinking of something entirely non-related.

Understand that I’m not saying there is anything wrong with short prayers or scripture readings. I’m simply saying that I often resort to this approach out of laziness and a failure to prioritize God and His Word in my life. Perhaps you can relate. I’m not trying to push the Treasury of Daily Prayer or anything, I am just stating that it is really helping me get into the Word and prayer more (plus it was a fun project making my own ribbon bookmark for it).

What helps you pray? How do you make His Word a priority in your daily life?

Home-Made Ribbon Bookmark

Dan — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 07:21:54 +0000

I posted this in tandem with Daily Prayer in order to give instructions for how I created my ribbon bookmark. I recently received the Treasury of Daily Prayer as a Christmas present and discovered that it was supposed to come with a ribbon bookmark to help me navigate the various sections and psalms. It didn’t. So what was I to do? Purchase one? Nahh….

I googled “make a ribbon bookmark” and ran across a well-illustrated set of instructions. But I decided to make a slight modification to the design and customize it. I also came across a blog post that mentioned a design flaw in the ribbon bookmark that comes with the Treasury of Daily Prayer, so I decided to correct it in mine by reversing the order of two of the ribbons. I decided to take some pictures of the process and give some instructions how I did it so that you can do the same if you’d like – for any book.

I went out and bought some ribbon first, using the colors specified in my book (with one change to fix the glitch mentioned earlier). The correct color sequence for the Treasury of Daily Prayer is:

Dark Green = marks the Church Year calendar section.
Gold = marks the current day in the Church Year
Red = marks the order of prayer currently in use
Purple = marks the additional prayers you may choose to use daily
Blue = marks “Prayers for the Baptized Life”
Light Green = marks your place in the Psalms

All you need is the ribbons, an index card, a glue stick, tape, and scissors.

First measure the ribbons to ensure proper length. Do this by placing them about an inch above the book and extending them diagonally across the page (so it’s long enough for you to flip the page with the ribbon). Longer is better, you can always cut them shorter later.

Next fold the index card in half lengthwise as shown to the right. I forgot to take an image after gluing the ribbons to the card, but you’ll get the idea once you see the finished product. I had to overlap the ribbons somewhat to fit them all, but I glued them onto the inside edge of my index card (in the proper order). I then glued the entire folded index card together, thus the ribbons are adhered to the card on both sides. I stuck it under some heavy books to make sure it stuck together well. I then reinforced the index card with tape to ensure it did not open. Here’s the final product:

All that remains is to insert it into the spine of the book, in the space between the binding and the cover. Be sure to place it in the right direction so that the colors are in the right order!

Once you’ve inserted it into the binding and made it flush with the cover, voila! You’re all done. I cut the ribbons again to make them more even (I had a lot of excess).

Enjoy!

P.S. For those who are keenly observant, the gold ribbon comes after the red only because we are currently in the 12 days of Christmas, so they are crossed for this part of the year because today’s date in the Church year falls after the orders of prayer. Most of the year will be in the proper order, during the time of Easter, thus the gold will come before the red.

Preach Christ or shut up

Dan — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:33:08 +0000

Tony Reinke over at Miscellanies shared a series of Charles Spurgeon quotes today about Christless preaching. I recommend you go read all six quotes, but here’s two to whet your whistle:

The motto of all true servants of God must be, “We preach Christ; and him crucified.” A sermon without Christ in it is like a loaf of bread without any flour in it. No Christ in your sermon, sir? Then go home, and never preach again until you have something worth preaching. [Exposition of Acts 13:13-49 published in 1904]

Leave Christ out of the preaching and you shall do nothing. Only advertize it all over London, Mr. Baker, that you are making bread without flour; put it in every paper, “Bread without flour” and you may soon shut up your shop, for your customers will hurry off to other tradesmen. … A sermon without Christ as its beginning, middle, and end is a mistake in conception and a crime in execution. However grand the language it will be merely much-ado-about-nothing if Christ be not there. And I mean by Christ not merely his example and the ethical precepts of his teaching, but his atoning blood, his wondrous satisfaction made for human sin, and the grand doctrine of “believe and live.” [sermon: “Christ the Glory of His People” (3/22/1868)]