daddy4ms

Below you will find a book review for Saving the Saved by Bryan Loritts.  I received a free advance electronic copy of the book for an honest review.  This book releases today.  As the title suggests, this book is about moving from trying harder and performance in the Christian life into living from who God says we are.  The book is comprised of 3 parts: What Goodness Isn't, Authentic Goodness and Living In and Reflecting God's Performance-Free Love based on the gospel of Matthew. Loritts does an excellent job of presenting the reason this book is needed through examples from Scripture, his own life and the church. It reminds us that our relationship with Christ is not based on our performance for Him or what he calls "meritocracy".  Instead, Bryan helps us refocus on Christ and what it means to abide or be in relationship with Him. I would recommend this book for anyone especially those who are striving to earn God's love or who question their i...

Last week, I finished reading Jack Klumpenhower's book, Show Them Jesus. I will be writing a review of the book in the next few days.  Here are some quotes from the final chapters: Jesus calls his people to love-based life together. Moral reform is not the same as Christian growth...But performing for God and ignoring God are both ways of bypassing Jesus. Alex needed to fight sin but to do it with God, instead of performing for God. He needed to hate sin but not keep a scorecard. He needed the good news. Being close to your Father brings true sorrow for sin and helps you fight sin better next time. . .So don't think you have to fight sin first so you can come to God. Instead, come to God so you can fight sin.  If we want believing kids to change how they act, we must teach them--perhaps counterintuitively--to focus less on how they act. We must first remind them who they are. They're joined to Jesus. It's the Holy Spirit who changes kids. He brings rebirth a...

Last week, I began reading Transforming Grace: Living Confidently in God's Unfailing Love by Jerry Bridges. Here are some powerful quotes from the preface and Chapter 1: As Bridges says, many Christians believe: "We are saved by grace, but we are living by the "sweat" of our own performance." We recognize that even our best efforts cannot get us to heaven, but we do think they earn God's blessings in our daily lives. Not only are we legalistic by nature, our Christian culture reinforces this attitude in us. God answered (a specific prayer of Bridges) on the basis of His grace alone, not because of my merits or demerits. One of the best kept secrets among Christians today is this: Jesus paid it all. I mean all. He not only purchased your forgiveness of sins and your ticket to heaven, He purchased every blessing and every answer to prayer you will ever receive. Every one of them--no exceptions. That is, the entire Christian life from start to comp...

I began reading the introduction of One Way Love  by Tullian Tchividjian on October 10th.  There are some amazing quotes in just the few pages of the book.  Here are a few: Performancism is the mindset that equates our identity and value directly to our performance and accomplishments. . .Sadly, the Christian church has not proven to be immune to  performancism. The unintended consequence of this push (a robust, radical, and sacrificial expression of Christian faith), however, is that if we're not careful, we can give people the impression that Christianity is first and foremost about the sacrifice we make for Jesus rather than the sacrifice Jesus made for us; our performance for him rather than his performance for us; our obedience for him rather than his obedience to us. The hub of Christianity is not "do something for Jesus." The hub of Christianity is "Jesus has done everything for you." And my fear is that too many people, both inside and outside the ch...

Because we are, right now, under the completely sufficient imputed righteousness of Christ, Christians already have an "A." My friend Steve Brown tells a story about a time his daughter Robin found herself in a very difficult English Literature course that she desperately wanted to get out of. She sat there on her first day and thought, “If I don’t transfer out of this class, I’m going to fail. The other people in this class are much smarter than me. I can’t do this.” She came home and with tears in her eyes begged her dad to help her get out of the class so she could take a regular English course. Steve said, “Of course.” So the next day he took her down to  the school and went to the head of the English department, who was a Jewish woman and a great teacher. Steve remembers the event in these words: She (the head of the English department) looked up and saw me standing there by my daughter and could tell that Robin was about to cry....