Contentment, Prosperity, and God's Glory, A Review

I was told once that the sharpest knife cuts the cleanest and heals the fastest.  That statement holds true for the new edition of an old Puritan classic, “Contentment, Prosperity, and God’s Glory” by Jeremiah Burroughs.  The publisher, Reformation Heritage Books has taken this classic and did an amazing job of updating it without compromising the content.  Most Christian readers, if they are aware of Burroughs, know him from his more popular work, “The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment”, of which this work is an epilogue of sorts.

Taken from his studies on Philippians 4:11-12, Burroughs is laboring to convey to the Christian that though being poor is difficult, when it comes to the Glory of God and the praise and worship He is due, being ‘full’ or ‘prosperous’ is far more difficult.  Here is a sentence that captures his message: “When a man knows how to enjoy God in his abundance, to be led to Him by his possessions, to acknowledge Him in all things, and to be thankful to Him in all things, he has truly learned how to abound”.  And that is truly what Burroughs is aiming at: teaching the Christian that has been blessed by God with riches and fulness in this life, to be very careful, to learn how to be full, and to use the blessing of riches for the spreading of the Gospel.

I had a season in my life where I made more more than the median income and even much more than I am making now.  All of the money is gone.  Every penny.  So as I read the book, I felt the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit working through the author to shine His light upon my foolishness.  It wasn’t that I was out wasting the money in ways that would shame the church or bring reproach to our Savior, but certainly in my days of prosperity my daily time with Him was less frequent, my prayers were shallow and superficial, and my overall spiritual health was in need of improvement.  In reading this book, I now know why.  I had not learned how to be full.  I needed to learn, as Paul declared in Philippians, ‘to know how to abound.’

If your desire is for wealth or at least material comfort in this world, please read this book.  If you are already blessed by God in such a way that your ‘abound’, please read this book.  If you are of lesser means and you envy the rich, please read this book.  And if you are in fact perfectly content with whatever state God has you, please read this book so as to keep your guard up.

Do not be intimidated by the fact that this was written many centuries ago, as it is fresh and relevant as if it were written today.  I enthusiastically recommend this book, regardless of where you are in your spiritual journey.

A Book Review of Scott Petty's 'Suffering & Evil'

The question of the Christian God’s existence and the role of suffering in the world of the Christian God is inevitable.  Not only is it inevitable, but it is also a good question.  A meaningful question.

Works that address the question simply restated, “How can a good God exists with so much evil and suffering in the world” abound, but too many of them default to the ‘Free-will’ argument or more recently “Open Theism” or “Open Futureism”.

Therefore it pleased me greatly to read ‘Suffering & Evil’ by Scott Petty, an installment from the ‘Little Black Books’ designed to help young adults tackle large-life issues.  Mr. Petty at no point falls back on the ‘Free-will’ argument, choosing instead to use the Scriptures, particularly Job, to help the reader understand how a Sovereign God can in fact exist in a world full of suffering and evil.  He essentially narrows his argument down to the fact that suffering and evil, though present universally among humanity, is painful for two reasons:  1) We haven’t seen God with our eyes, which may help us in knowing that He is taking more than a passing interest in us and 2) Our humanity limits our perspective: we can’t see the whole puzzle.  And though painful, we can trust that God will be sovereign in our suffering, as He was with Job’s and that in the end, when we know more and see more, we will in fact see that the suffering was for our betterment.

Often times, when this question of ‘Theodicy’ comes up, I am inclined to challenge people to read Alexander Pope’s ‘Essay on Man’, as over the years I have gleaned much truth from it.  However, it is a challenging read.  To a lesser degree, William Cowper’s ‘God Moves in a Mysterious Way’ is another great poem dealing this question.  But if prose is needed, and a short work at that, I can easily recommend Petty’s work.

I applaud Mr. Petty’s efforts, to answer a ‘deep-end of the pool’ question, all the while keeping the answer very palatable.  Though specifically intended for a young adult audience, I believe that anyone struggling with this important question can find comfort in the truth of these pages.

A Thought, A Picture, Some Perspective

"Blessed are they that mourn!" It is the glory of the gospel of Jesus that it stoops to the lowliest, bringing the boon of happiness to the hearts that need it most. - FW Boreham

Book Review of J.I. Packer's 'Puritan Portraits'

If your historical understanding of Christianity is anything like mine, than the Puritans were nothing more than some grumpy, English-speaking Calvinists with nothing better to do than invent creative ways to shame the likes of Hester Prynne and others for not living up to their pietistic standards.  And though I have little doubt that some Puritans could actually be described as such, I am sure that description would be more worthy of “Puritanism”, rather than many of the Puritans themselves.  Thanks to J.I. Packer’s new book, “Puritan Portraits”, I certainly possess a more accurate picture of what it meant to be a Puritan, what they contributed to their local churches, and ultimately what their contributions have meant to the entire globe.

Packer focuses this work on the a few of the more well-known Puritans and helps his reader understand that these great thinkers were not in a historical vacuum, but were a significant part of the England’s overall development of late 16th Century through the mid-17th Century.  These men shared the stage with Shakespeare and Milton, Cromwell and Locke, Newton and a host of other men that quite honestly made history wholesale.  But holding down many of the pulpits in England during the same time these great men were changing history were John Owen, John Bunyan, Matthew Henry, Stephen Charnock, John Flavel, Henry Scougal, Thomas Boston (in Scotland), William Perkins, and Richard Baxter.  There were obviously many many others, but Packer has chosen to use his prose for these portraits.

From Packer we learn the historical context that created the need for these Puritan thinkers (a term many of them rejected) and what motivated them to not only leverage their great voices, but their even mightier pens.  It is in fact on the works of these men that Packer devotes his energy, as most of these portraits have previously appeared as the introductions to stand alone works by the aforementioned authors.  But, I appreciate the fact that Packer did not focus on the the more well known works that many of us would easily recognize, such as Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Matthew Henry’s Bible Commentary, Baxter’s Reformed Pastor, or John Owen’s Death of Death.  Instead, the reader is made aware of other contributions these authors made, smaller in scale, but not necessarily in worth to the kingdom.  I happened to be reading Boston’s ‘Crook in the Lot’ before I became aware of this work and feel now that as I finish ‘Crook’, I will have even more appreciation by better understanding where Boston was coming from.

If the word ‘Puritan’ for you has become synonymous with Christian Pharisaism, then I encourage you to pick up this book and get a fresh understanding of what the Puritan’s were about, how ‘pastoral’ they in fact were, and how serious each of them approached their relationship with a living Savior.

Finally, I was expecting much of the history motif of this book, but I was not expecting to be spiritually enriched by this book.  And I must say, spiritually enriched is how would describe myself after concluding ‘Puritan Portraits’.  Of course, Packer warns this should happen in the beginning, but I was shocked to the degree of sensitivity this book brought to the surface.

By way of disclosure, the publisher provided a copy of this book to me in exchange for an honest review, which I have provided.

God Bless You!

From F.W. Boreham’s ‘A Late Lark Singing’

-God bless you! Few of our human propensities are more interesting or attractive than the instinct that impels us to bless one another.

-May God bless you! is the natural expression of all that is best in my heart and it makes an irresistible appeal to all that is best in his.

-Can anybody imagine that the Lord God of Israel would have instructed Aaron so to bless the people (Numbers 6:23-27) unless He Himself intended to bestow upon them all the boons (benefits) and benisons (blessings) of which He spoke? In the verse that follows the stately words, God as good as says that, if Aaron promises, He Himself will perform.

Great Truth, Great Verse, Nice Picture

Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? 
Who is like you, majestic in holiness,
awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders? - Exodus 15:11 ESV

Daily Dose of Truth

The LORD sits enthroned over the flood;
the LORD sits enthroned as king forever.
May the LORD give strength to his people!
May the LORD bless his people with peace! - Psalm 29:10-11 ESV