The Explicit Gospel by Matt Chandler

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The Explicit GospelTakeaway: The Gospel needs to be understood and Explicit.

I want to affirm Chandler’s desire that people really understand the Gospel. (Although we have a different definition of what is actually the meaning of the word gospel.)  He was struck one day by the number of people that his church was baptizing that said the equivalent of “I grew up in a Christian home and going to church but I never heard the gospel until…”  I heard and have thought the same thing.  Was it that the gospel was not preached or was it that you did not understand?

But like many, his path toward defining and pushing the importance of the gospel takes a pretty standard line.  God is great, God owes you nothing, we are saved by God’s grace alone, our desire for this world is really a mis-placed desire intended for God. So we must emphasize our sin, the reality of hell, and our lost-ness without Christ.

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Fields of Gold (Generous Giving) by Andy Stanley

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Fields of Gold (Generous Giving)Takeaway: In spite of the fact that some Christians misuse scripture about giving, those portions of scripture are still there and we need to focus on the right meaning, not avoid them.

As I have said before, my wife and I lead a small group of newly married couples.  Our next topic is finances.  So when I was offered this book to review I read it with that in mind.

This book was written by my pastor.  So I am not completely unbiased and I have heard much of this content before in sermons or other teaching.

But the thing that most struck me here is that in spite of the fact that Health and Wealth gospel preachers misuse scripture on giving, God still is interested in how we think about and use our money.

Andy Stanley starts with the fact that we often think about giving wrong.  It is not ‘God gets this amount and everything else is ours’.  It is God have given all of it to you and you are merely a steward of it all.  So God wants us to invest it.  That investment should be in God’s kingdom.  This does not mean that we can’t use money on things we need, but that if we have the right attitude toward the money, those things that we really need are far less.

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Now You’re Speaking My Language: Honest Communication and Deeper Intimacy for a Stronger Marriage by Gary Chapman

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Now You're Speaking My Language: Honest Communication and Deeper Intimacy for a Stronger MarriageSummary: A wide ranging book on communication in marriage.

Last night we finished discussing this book in my small group.  My wife and I lead a small group through our church for newly married couples.

This is the first time we have used this book for discussion, although I read it last year.

As we evaluated the newly married curriculum last year most of the group leaders thought that the biggest weakness of the curriculum was that we did not have anything on communication.  So this book was added (and it replaced a couple other books) as the center of the curriculum.

It is not a long book only 268 pages, but it feels really long because it has 23 chapters.  Most weeks we covered 2 or 3 chapters and we took a break in the middle.

At the end my evaluation as a discussion book for a group is a little mixed.  I still think that for most newly married (and long term married for that matter) couple, communication is one of the biggest issues that we face.  And this book gives entry to many other areas because it discusses communication around them (communication around sex, spiritual intimacy, defensiveness, etc.).

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The Diety Formerly Known As God by Jarrett Stevens

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The Deity Formerly Known as GodTakeaway: A reminder that we are not God.  We need to submit to God and not try to get our idea of God to submit to us.

Books that help us correct our false ideas about God are everywhere.  There are so many because we have a sinful nature that tries to recreate God in our image.

Imaginary Jesus uses humor and a fictional memoir filled with false Jesus characters and the main character has to find the right one.

The Good and Beautiful God: Falling in Love With the God Jesus Knows by James Bryan Smith uses our understanding of the relationship between the Son and the Father to correct our understanding of God.

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And Both Were Young by Madeline L’Engle

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And Both Were YoungSummary: A post-World War II boarding school is the setting of a classic coming of age story.

I have read a number of Madeleine L’Engle books over the last year or so.  Originally I wanted to re-read the Wrinkle in Time series.  Which led me to the last two books in the quintet that I had not read previously.

I also ran across Camilla, which along with And Both Were Young, are her two best known books writing in the late 1940s.  They are both classic coming of age books.  More about what it means to grow up and become and adult than about sexual discovery (which is what coming of age books have come to mean recently.)

Both books dealt with very serious issues and I was surprised that young adult literature of the time allowed.  Camilla included issues of divorce, suicide, affairs and more.

And Both Were Young is set in the last 1940s in Switzerland.  Philippa (Flip) is sent to boarding school there.  Her mother recently died in a car accident and her father is an artist that is going around the world to document children that have been affected by war.

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The Road by Cormac McCarthy

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Takeaway: Subject matter and writing style and content do not always match.  Odd to hear tragic, violent and heart rending action in such beautiful prose.

I am clearly following popularity when I read Cormac McCarthy. I had not read him before I watched No Country for Old Men. I then listen to the book as an Audiobook.

The Road has the same narrator, but the southwestern rural drawl did not seem to fit the character quite as well. But it grew on me.

What I like so much about McCarthy’s writing is the lyric (almost poetic) descriptions of the narrative.

He is beautiful to listen to, even as the incredibly tragic or violent actions are happening.

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Shadows in Flight by Orson Scott Card

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Shadows in Flight (The Shadow Series)Summary: Bean and his three gifted children are flying through space searching for a cure and a home.

I am a pretty big Orson Scott Card fan.  I have read almost everything he has written, and he has written a lot over the last 35 or so years.

Any author that has written as much as Card has, has some uneven work.

The Shadow series, which is a complete series that is ancillary to the Ender series, has been particularly uneven.  I love the characters of Bean and Petra.  But the series as a whole has been far less satisfying than I would have liked.  There have been plenty of  books but they haven’t moved as much as I would have liked them too.

Shadows in Flight feels like a re-start to the series.  Bean has left earth with his children.  The story line that Card had to interact with because it covered ground that was mentioned in the Ender series is now over.  Bean is in his early 20s, his children are 6.  And Bean is near death.  He has grown to about 25 ft tall and can only live in the cargo hold.  His body is shutting down, but living at near zero G has helped him live a couple years past his life expectancy. He has tried, to the best of his ability, to raise his children well.  Preparing them for life without them.

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Kindle Books Updates, Now With Your Notes and Highlights

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A Picture of a eBook Español: Foto de eBook Бе...
A Picture of a eBook (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of the biggest promises of digital books is the ability to continuously update, correct and improve the text.  The author catches a typo after the book is published, they can correct it without waiting for a new edition of the book to be published.  A fact is discovered to be wrong (or changes after the book is published), it can be changed.

Unfortunately, the way Amazon structured it book updates means that up until now, when a book was updated the reader lost all notes and highlights from the old edition of the book.  Amazon learned that they need to ask for permission to update a book because of that.  So this is what the email used to look like from Amazon

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