Frozen, Freedom and the Gospel

If you (like me) have a pre-teen daughter, you have perhaps seen the Disney movie Frozen. Almost certainly you have heard your daughter sing the movie's hit song, Let It Go (performed above by Idina Menzel).

Trevin Wax offered some great thoughts on the movie and the song in a post today at his Kingdom People blog. He points out:

Thousands of little girls across the country are singing this song – a manifesto of sorts, a call to cast off restraint, rebel against unrealistic expectations and instead be true to whatever you feel most deeply inside. What’s ironic is that the movie’s storyline goes against the message of this song. When the princess decides to “let it go,” she brings terrible evil into the world. The fallout from her actions is devastating. “No right, no wrong, no rules for me” is the sin that isolates the princess and freezes her kingdom.

He goes on...

 A popular idea in our culture is that there are only two ways to live:

1. Through authenticity, expressed in rebellion against cultural constraints
2. Through an ordered life, expressed in rule-keeping

Neither of these paths are the way to true fulfillment though.Wax concludes,

Christianity teaches explicitly what Frozen only hints at: salvation comes not through self-discovery or self-restraint, but through self-sacrifice.

All across the country, little girls are singing about self-discovery. Let’s make sure that after they see the film, they are given songs about self-sacrifice.

 Read the whole post here.

Top Books of 2012

The following is a compilation of year-end "best books" lists...

Tim Challies' top books of 2012
Kevin DeYoung's top ten books of 2012
Tony Reinke's top 12 books of 2012
The Gospel Coalition staff's top books of 2012
Andreas Köstenberger's top ten books in biblical studies from 2012
Trevin Wax's 10 Favorite Reads of 2012
Bob Kelleman's 12 most important biblical counseling books of 2012
Christianity Today's 2013 Book Awards

Don't Be Too Quick To Abandon Traditions

While it may be debatable as to whether or not it is a good thing, it is undeniable that we are in the midst of an age when many within the Church have deemed it either wise or expedient to abandon much of the Church's heritage and many of her traditions.  Trevin Wax has some good observations dealing with this fact in a great blog post originally posted in 2007, and re-posted at his blog this morning. Early on, he makes a concession:

Before we go on, we must admit – yes, our Christian traditions can become dry and lifeless. In many churches, they are ritualistic and cold. Most of the time, though, rigor mortis sets in when traditions are not understood or explained. When rituals become dry and empty of significance, the answer is not to throw them out, but to rediscover their purpose.

This extends not only to the shape of our liturgy and the parts that make up a worship service. It includes even the language we use. Wax points out the eschewing within the church of such theological terms as "justification," "redemption" and "propitiation," in an effort to be "seeker-friendly."

Christian leaders cop out by dismissing such terminology because “the lost don’t understand.” The greater danger is “the saved don’t understand.” If our preachers, teachers and writers would reconnect the church with the depth and majesty of the theological terms so many want to throw away, perhaps the cry against hard words would fall silent.

Words are more than just definitions in a lexicon. They remind us who we are – citizens of God’s Kingdom.

Click here to read the whole post.

Best Books of 2011

I enjoy books. And I enjoy "best of the year" lists. So you can imagine how I feel about lists of the year's best books!

Last year I decided to take it a step further and I compiled a list of such lists.  Perhaps some day I will have done this enough times that I could compile a book of lists of lists of books.  One can only dream.

For now though, we'll have to settle for this year's installment of the lists from various sources, each with their own slightly different qualifications for what gets a book on the list.  Here they are:

Tim Challies
Kevin DeYoung
David Murray
Jared Wilson
Sam Storms
Tony Reinke
TGC Staff: Collin Hansen, Kathleen Nielson, John Starke & Andy Naselli
Matthew Robbins
Trevin Wax
Aaron Armstrong
J.J. Sherwood
Zac Hicks

The Gospel, Mission, and the Church

At this year's Gospel Coalition Conference, Moody hosted a discussion between Matt Chandler, Kevin DeYoung, Jonathan Leeman and Trevin Wax on Gospel, Mission, and the Church.  At almost an hour, it is a little longer than most of the things I post here, but it is, in my opinion, a conversation that helps us greatly in the definition of our categories.



(HT: Timmy Brister)

Counterfeit Gospels by Trevin Wax

Recently Harper-Collins released a promotional video for a book that created quite a stir in the Christian blogosphere.  Some people soundly denounced the author while others hurried to his support.  Still others said we should read the book before deciding what we thought.  In the end, one thing is certain:  A lot of books were sold.

Tomorrow, Trevin Wax's Counterfeit Gospels: Rediscovering the Good News in a World of False Hope hits the bookstores.  I look forward to reading this book as I very much appreciate his thoughts and writing at his blog, Kingdom People.  This book's message is extremely timely and important, and I am sure that Trevin does a great job dealing with it.

Below is a brief promotional piece which I'm sure will produce far less controversy than the one to which I earlier referred...though I'm sure Trevin and Moody would be happy to get some of the buzz!

Indeed, God Does Have a Wonderful Plan for Your Life. But...

A couple weeks ago, Trevin Wax posted this picture as part of a blog post which included an excerpt from his book, Holy Subversion: Allegiance to Christ in an Age of Rivals.  In it he pointed out that God's "wonderful plan" for us is not always the same "wonderful plan" we would have for ourselves.  Whereas we would often desire health, wealth and happiness, along with physical and emotional security, what God desires is that we would be conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29).

Often this occurs through pain and suffering, trials and persecution.  And sometimes it happens that we experience these not just for our benefit, but for the benefit of others.  After all, we are not individually (as we so often functionally suppose) the center of God's world.  Rather he is to be uniquely the center of ours.

As my seminary professor Dr. Jack Collins liked to put, "Don't hear what I'm not saying."  Indeed, we should remember (and be encouraged by!) the fact "that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose," (Romans 8:28, ESV).  But we need to remember that the good toward which all things work is not always an earthly good.  As Wax put it:

"Our lives do not always seem wonderful. But rather than trying to see what wonderful plan God has for giving us our best life now, Christians trust that the picture God is painting will be beautiful, so we look to experiencing our best life later. God has a wonderful plan, and because of his grace, we are part of that plan."

Click here to read his whole post.

The Weight of 1000 Sermons

If you are a pastor, no doubt you have been frustrated by the fact that people rarely seem to remember the main points you offered in last week's sermon.  Well, I saw a great post for pastors today from Trevin Wax in which he offers this exhortation:

Pastors, don’t underestimate the cumulative effect of your preaching. You are not dumping information into brains. You are forming the habits of your people, teaching them how to read and understand and apply the Bible for themselves. How you preach week after week matters just as much as what you preach.

Click here to read the whole post.

Best Books of 2010

One of my favorite things about this time of year is the proliferation of "Best of" lists.  And one of my favorite types of "Best of" lists is "Best Books of the Year."  Different people use different criteria for determining such things, but it's fun to see what others have to say about the books they read this year...and get a jump on creating a reading list for 2011!

Here are a few folks whose opinions I respect:

Kevin DeYoung
Trevin Wax
Keith Mathison
Matthew Robbins
Sam Storms
Collin Hansen, Andy Naselli, and John Starke of The Gospel Coalition
Tony Reinke
Doug Wolters
Jared Wilson

Steak on a Paper Plate

Trevin Wax has some interesting thoughts on worship today. He argues that form does matter, but suggests that in determining our church's "worship style," the primary question ought not be about contemporary vs. traditional. Rather, it should be about casual vs. serious.

Christians need to sense the weight of God’s glory, the truths of God’s Word, the reality of coming judgment, and the gloriousness of God’s grace. Trying to package the bigness of this God into most casual worship services is like trying to eat steak on a paper plate. You can do it for awhile, but at some point, people will start saying, "I want a dish."

You can read the whole post here.

Glorifying God

I saw this post last week and meant to share it, but never got around to passing it along. In it, Trevin Wax considers John 17:4, where Jesus, on the night he would be betrayed, prays, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.” He points out,

Jesus could boldly say that God the Father had been glorified, because – as the Son – he had finished the master plan that had been set out for him from the beginning of time. We, in turn, must not relegate our worship to a passive, once-a-week event that makes us feel good.

Instead, we must exemplify the lifestyle of worship that has at its center, the will and purposes of Almighty God, who has loved, saved, and regenerated us “according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.”

You can read the whole post here.

Books to Read

In 2 Timothy 4:13, Paul instructs Timothy, "When you come, bring the cloak I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments."

In commenting on this verse, Charles Spurgeon famously noted about Paul, "He is inspired, and yet he wants books! He has been preaching at least for thirty years, and yet he wants books! He had seen the Lord, and yet he wants books! He had had a wider experience than most men, and yet he wants books! He had been caught up into the third heaven, and had heard things which it was unlawful for a men to utter, yet he wants books! He had written the major part of the New Testament, and yet he wants books!"

I have a confession to make. Though I got decent grades, I was not a great student and certainly not a big reader back in my high school and college days. It drove me crazy in college that each semester I’d buy a bunch of books, hardly ever look at them, and at the end of the semester sell them back to the bookstore for about 20% of what I paid for them. I was a little slow, so it wasn’t until my final semester that I finally figured things out, skipped the whole process and didn’t actually buy any books.

I say this not because I am proud of it; exactly the opposite is true. I wish that I had been a more serious reader in my earlier years, because if I had, I’d be a better and more well-read reader today.

When I went to seminary after a decade-long hiatus from schooling, I found that reading was all of the sudden far more appealing than it had ever been. This was probably due in large part to the fact that I hungered to learn what was in these books, as opposed to the books I had to read in college. Perhaps it was due to my increased maturity (less likely). Maybe it was a combination of these and other reasons.

Whatever it was though, I do enjoy reading now, especially those books of a theological nature. That being said, I still do not read anywhere near as much as I’d like, and as I look forward to 2010, I hope to read more than I ever have.

I thought it might be helpful to both others and myself to have some suggestions as to what we should read. To that end, I’ve pulled together the following list from people who have blogged on their top books of 2009. While I might not agree with everything each of these people say, I do respect their opinions and plan on using them as a guide in my reading over the upcoming months.

Kevin DeYoung

Tim Challies

Zach Nielsen

Russell Moore

Trevin Wax

Keith Mathison

John Samson

Sam Storms