Last Sunday, Ryan preached on “Understanding the Kingdom of God” from Luke 13.  This is a really important theme to grasp in order to understand how the flow of the Bible relates to Jesus’ message.  Make sure to listen to it if you missed it.

Along the same lines, Graeme Goldsworthy has written a short article that maps out how the kingdom of God theme runs throughout the whole Old Testament.  If you’re like me and you sometimes struggle to understand how all the various events and writings in the Old Testament fit together, this is a very helpful article.

For a slightly more in-depth treatment of this theme, see God’s Big Picture: Tracing the Storyline of the Bible, by Vaughn Roberts.  This book examines the whole Bible and explains how Jesus’ promise of salvation and bringing the kingdom of God is one story with one purpose and not just a collection of unrelated narratives.

As a follow-up to Ryan’s sermon on money, here are four great books about money and giving.

• The Treasure Principle, by Randy Alcorn, is a short book that we have available for free at the resource center.  This book is about seeking joy through giving; it is a challenging, but exciting, devotional-type book.  If you read only one book from this list, this is the one I would recommend.
• Another short and easy read is In God We Trust, by Michael Haykin, also available at the resource center.  This book was written as an evaluation of the current financial crisis, specifically answering the questions, “What is God trying to tell us in the midst of this crisis?” and “How should we respond in a financial crisis?”
• Slightly longer is Randy Alcorn’s, Money, Possessions, and Eternity.  This book provides a more comprehensive view of money and possessions than either of the previous books, and calls Christians to rethink their perspectives in a biblical light.  This is a great reference book to have around when you’re wondering what the bible teaches about anything from tithing and helping the poor to gambling, debt, and investing.
• One further resource, which Ryan mentioned during the sermon, is Juliet Schor’s, The Overspent American.  Although this isn’t a Christian book, it still provides a helpful evaluation of consumerism and the mechanics of desire in our marketing-driven culture.

In last Sunday’s message — “Worldly Worry vs. Kingdom Confidence” (Luke 12:1-34) — I mentioned a couple of very helpful books on fear and worry by Ed Welch:

• Running Scared: Fear, Worry & the God of Rest
• When People Are Big and God Is Small: Overcoming Peer Pressure, Codependency, and the Fear of Man

Red Mountain Church has an excellent recording of this hymn, which can be downloaded here for free. I’d highly recommend any or all of the modern hymns on their six albums.

In the second service on Sunday, I mentioned that I would post some book recommendations on prayer for those wanting to dig deeper in the direction of what we learned from Luke 11:1-13. Although the below is more than just a few books, I have been particularly influenced and helped by each of these to me, and so I recommend them all highly. Martin Luther’s A Simple Way to Pray is a classic work on prayer. He initially wrote it for his barber, who had asked Luther for guidance on how to pray. Luther encourages reading Scripture and then praying along the same lines as the Scripture. This is a very short book, but well worth the read. Slightly longer, but still a quick read, is J.I. Packer’s Praying the Lord’s Prayer. Packer explains the Lord’s Prayer from a more historical perspective, taking into account the teaching of many of the older theologians. However, the book never drags and Packer, as usual, does a great job of updating the best of the Reformers and Puritans. The Soul of Prayer, by P.T. Forsyth, is another relatively short work. Although the language can be a bit complicated, the book is still very helpful because it deals with common questions about prayer and retains a devotional feel.

Slightly longer is the study of evangelical spirituality by Donald Bloesch, called The Struggle of Prayer. This book compares the theology and practice of Martin Luther, Richard Sibbes (Puritan), and P.T. Forsyth. This book includes a study of the more mystical tradition within Christianity and distinguishes what is biblical from what should be avoided.

D.A. Carson’s book, A Call to Spiritual Reformation, is an incredibly helpful study of the prayers in Paul’s epistles (Romans – Philemon). This is a book that we’ve “pushed” many times before at DSC, and many in the church could testify to how this book helped — even changed — the way they pray and think about prayer. In addition the several chapters on Paul’s prayers, it also has a whole chapter on practical advice on how we can become more genuine and pursue more growth in our prayer life.

Three other books can be mentioned more quickly, in no particular order: Praying, by J.I. Packer and Carolyn Nystrom; a new book, A Praying Life, by Paul Miller; and, the book that I mentioned specifically at the end of the service, The Heart of Prayer, by Jerram Barrs.  Remember, Jerram Barrs will be coming to DSC to do a seminar on prayer and evangelism on November 14-15, so we’ll have copies of this book at the DSC Resource Center for the near future.

A couple of Sundays ago, in a message on Mary on Martha in Luke 10, I noted how one of the most remarkable things in the story — not to us today, but to its first-century readers — is the way Jesus commended Mary’s choice to sit in the living room and learn…like only a male disciple would have done. I said, that might have been no small part of Martha’s objection, in fact: her sister was acting more like a man (learning) than a women (cooking). But Jesus’ blessing of Mary’s “better” choice was a bold corrective to the first-century Jewish conceptions of gender roles. He was intent to show, not only the priority of “sitting at his feet,” but also the equal place for men and women in redemption, discipleship, worship, etc. Men and woman have different designs for the home and the church, but they do not have different degrees of access to Jesus.

John Piper recently noted the same thing from a different passage: “they marveled that He was talking to a woman” (John 4:27). Here’s the link to a seven minute video of him explaining the verse. Good stuff!