April 24, 2009

• Napthali News - TGC: the books I got and THE Book

  After having mentioned my excursion to the booksellers' display at The Gospel Coalition 2009 conference (BTW you can now access the Tuesday & Wednesday conference talks from that same site), I wanted to blog about the books I got. (Plus doing this lets me blog without a lot of deep brainpower... )

  The free ESV Study Bible courtesy of Crossway.
  Everyone who attended got one. That's well over 3000 Bibles.
  Thanks to Crossway.

  

  (That's my friend "Barnabas" who's hopped onto the Bible and is checking it out!)

  My friend who recently died of cancer gave him to me a couple years and I ended up naming him Barnabas since like Barnabas in the Bible, my friend was such an encourager to me. Barnabas went with me a couple years ago to Atlanta for a conference, so it was little strange taking him along this time since I can't debrief with my friend about this conference the way I did that last one...

  The last morning I was in Chicago (oh, my, not even jet lag here, that was just yesterday, wasn't it?!), I opened the study Bible up to use after I'd read a bit in my Bible and after a short time, I closed it. I felt I should just be reflecting on and looking at the Word alone...Certainly we can use such study Bibles and commentaries and other books, and they do have their place, but doesn't it all still come down to the one Book, the Bible, and the Holy Spirit and us? That Book of which John Wesley said, "Give me that Book...Let me be a man of one Book"?

  That's what I really appreciated about this conference. All the talks and workshops were all Bible-centered and Bible-saturated. Frankly I've been to conferences, various events, Sunday School classes and so on and often the teaching and/or discussion is not really deeply rooted in the Word of God. At the Gospel Coalition Conference there was no fluff! None. It was all meat.

  Okay now, speaking of our interaction with the Word of God; here are a couple quiz questions for you. (The correct answers are one of the eight conference speakers: Keller, Piper, Ryken, Driscoll, Copeland, Chapell, Fernando, Duncan or Carson.)

  Don Carson said __________ deals with the Word of God like a dog does with a bone...and then he began to do a most entertaining dog imitation!
  
  Tim Keller said ____________ if the person above is like a dog with a bone, then _____________ is like a saber-toothed tiger!

  Here are some other free books I got.
  Thanks to the booksellers.

  

  That "Lost in the Middle" book, that was the only selection left the final day...no surprise since everyone there, well, a very large percentage of the attenders, were younger than I! So I took it. "Lost in the Middle: Midlife and the Grace of God." Yes, I'm in midlife, I guess (well, I know my body was having a hard time sitting without changing position on Wed. night and Thurs. morning and it seemed none of the younger folk had the problem...sitting through 2+ days of teaching can be a bit wearing on the older body)...I'm in midlife and am certainly needing His grace for sure. Don't we need it all time?! Just wondering how long midlife was for Methuselah and Mrs. Methuselah?

  And finally, here are the books I purchased.
  Thanks to my husband.
  Other than the Isaac Watts book, these are all books I've had on my radar screen...

  .

  I read a little of the Watts' book. It's one of those thing you take a little at at time. He has several renditions of many of the Psalms; they are really beautiful. (There's an online version you can check out here.) I've just gotten a few pages into the Owen book and it's good so far.

  I'm also still working my way through "George Whitefield's Journals." I got the "Journals" because I'd read somewhere that if you want to grow a heart for revival you should read Whitefield's journals. I would agree with that assessment. You can read Whitefield's sermons (and I would suggest you do) and there are some where I've had to stop right where I was, even the written word almost 300 years later is so powerful since God is working through it, but there's something different in the "Journals" that doesn't come across in the sermons.

  As I'm writing about books, once again I am thankful to God that I am able to read and that I have access to so many wonderful books and to His Book, the Holy Bible.

  Where are you now reading in your Bible?
  What lessons has God been impressing upon you?
  Besides the Bible, what other book(s) are you currently reading?

  • 4:01 PM
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