Recently in Blog Recommendations Category

Many thanks to the following blogs for linking to my interview with Thabiti Anyabwile over at from hope to reality:

Desiring God Gospel-Centered Pious Musings Hantla.com Spirit of Adoption Like a Tree Planted Place of Grace Practicing Theology A Full House Between Two Worlds The Littleton Family Tim Challies Adoptive Dads Expanding the Albertsons Serve Holly Springs Provocations & Pantings In Light of the Gospel Spirit of Adoption The Wrestling Mat Thoughts from the Teahouse Pensees In All Things...God's Glory Adoption Resource Vapor in the Wind

If I missed anyone, please e-mail me about it and I'll gladly add them to the list (danc[at]CarolinaHopeAdoption[dot]org).

I'm always on the look out for gospel-centered blogs. Here's a new one by Josh Etter called Of First Importance. Josh writes:

The gospel of Jesus Christ is "of first importance" (1 Cor 15:3), but we easily forget.

More than anything, we need to see Jesus. Our souls grow strong only as they feed on Christ.

Each day this blog will provide one quote to help you live in the good of the gospel.

Josh's blog provides several resource pages that have some great recommendations to help deepen gospel-understanding:

The Story of the Gospel The Heart of the Gospel Proclaiming the Gospel Living in the Good of the Gospel Singing About the Gospel

Of First Importance will be a daily visit for me.

I discovered a great new blog called Promises Kept: Exploring the Great Rescue. It's great because it's written by a blogger who is passionate about the gospel. Here's how Tom Rush describes the purpose of his blog:

My heart’s greatest fascination is in the unfolding of redemption and the stunning work of our Great Rescuer. This blog isn’t about me keeping my promises — to my shame, I haven’t done that — it’s about all the promises kept and fulfilled in Him. Jesus Christ is worthy of all our delight and adoration and hope.

So we’ll concentrate on Him, and on the gospel.

I’ll still stammer; so will this blog. Irregular posts. Some ideas not always fully formed. Weakness in abundance. And it’s all cool, because that’s a mirror of my life, and because the Great Hobby is tracing out in Scripture and in experience how God shows his power in weakness and uses infants to defeat his enemies (Psalm 8:1ff).

If you’ve got the gospel all figured out, you won’t enjoy it here. But if every day you’re amazed at mercy, astounded at your own sin, humbled by grace, stupefied by the gospel, and blown away by Jesus… you’ve come to the right place.

About me…

I’m a much loved child, bought in the Great Rescue. I love the Rescuer, but not nearly as much as I should, or shall.

Tim Keller has spoken of learning the truth that “if I live by preaching, I will die.” It has taken me nearly thirty years of preaching and pastoring to begin to learn that. A lot of idolatry lives around that kind of identity-pride, and my Father has shown much of that to me. It’s sweet to learn and then to live in the gospel. Jesus is a hero for the weak and a Saviour of sinners, and his purposes do not fail.

Today, I live in beautiful BC, Canada with my wife and daughter, both of whom are lovely and amazing. My income right now is in editing, our engagement is within a church full of people that love God, and my heart is in the gospel. I don’t know where we’ll live next year, but we’re headed home.

Tom Rush

I had the privilege of teaching a class on the book of Hebrews last semester. Two things struck me as I taught the class: first, the writer's unmatched concentrated focus on the doctrine of Christ's continuing incarnation and, second, the contemporary church's most unfortunate neglect of that doctrine. If the continuing incarnation of Jesus is a doctrine that you have not spent much time thinking about, let me encourage you to do two things. First, consider purchasing Gerrit Scott Dawson's book Jesus Ascended: The Meaning of Christ's Continuing Incarnation. It will take you to that neglected treasure chest, open it up, and begin showing you some of the immense wealth it contains. Second (you should probably do this first), read Justin Buzzard's interview with Gerrit about this subject. It's a must read. Here's an excerpt. Gerrit writes:

Losing the ascension cuts us off from the present work of Christ as our priest and intercessor. It cuts us off from the power of our hope—that one day our feeble bodies will be like his glorious body. It cuts us off from the downward pressure of the imminent return of Jesus—the same Jesus who ascended will return as judge and king. When I forget that, I can lose hope in the future or I can think that my actions have no ultimate consequences, or that what we do in this world or to this earth is not really important.

I recently discovered a fairly new blog (launched this past August) that I really like. It's the blog of Justin Buzzard. Why do I like it? Just read his most recent post—a book recommendation—and you'll know why.

Wow. This book is good. Everything that Goldsworthy writes is worth reading, but this may turn out to be my favorite by G.G. So far, this is proving to be the best book I've ever read on prayer. It dovetails nicely with the sermon I preached on prayer several weeks back, though I still would've loved to have read this book before preaching that sermon. Here's a few quotes I'm appreciating:

"A wrong perspective on prayer may well come from thinking of it as playing a part in establishing our acceptance with God. Prayer that is not the grateful response of the justified sinner is likely to degenerate into an attempt to gain acceptance

....if the sole motive to pray is, as I have heard it put in sermons, 'Jesus got up early to pray, so how much more do we need to get up early to pray', it is missing the grace of God in the gospel. 'He did it, therefore we ought to' is not the perspective of the gospel unless it's linked with, 'He did it for us because we are unable to do it as we ought.'"

The following links contain pictures of the conference taken by Timmy Brister who organized the Band of Bloggers fellowship. BTW, thanks, Timmy, for bringing this band of bloggers together. I enjoyed the interaction with this group of gospel-loving men.

For those of you who were not able to attend this year's Together for the Gospel conference, let me encourage you to plan on the 2008 conference. You'll not leave it disappointed. I've already listened to all but two of the messages again (12 hour trip home!).

The Pics:

Wednesday Thursday Friday

Tim Challies is live-blogging the conference. You can see his notes on last night's sessions (sermon and panel discussion) here. Mark Dever's exposition of 1 Corinthians 4 was excellent.

Dave Cruver of totellthetruth has gathered a list of gospel-centered blogs. Check it out. Dave writes:

These are blogs that make much about the centrality of the gospel for all of life. Making much of the gospel of Christ is to what I have dedicated my blog.

the mot juste: the exact place you have been looking for – This is the new blog of Joshua Jantz whom I had the pleasure of shepherding as his youth pastor. If you are looking for another blog with gospel-centered content, you’ll want to visit the mot juste often.

paradoxum: a gentle tongue can break bones ~ king Solomon – I really like Frank Hamrick's blog. He’s a youth pastor who reads not only a wide variety of stuff but challenging stuff. There is much profitable material to be found at paradoxum. Check it out.

Living Worship – by Rick Pidcock. Rick is a gospel-centered worship leader at Northfield Church, Denver. Concerning his blog he writes, “My passion is to share the redeeming hope of Christ through the gospel in every facet of life. The gospel is more than just the minimum theological facts that are necessary to believe in order to receive salvation. Rather, it is the transforming motive and power that calls and compels us to become worshipers of God with all that we are.”

Everyone who knows me knows that I am a Tolkien fan. If you come to my blog often, you also know it has been a while since I've posted anything about him or his works. So if you've been waiting for your Tolkien fix, wait no longer. Actually, this post was written by Matt Sims, a former student of mine (a long, long time ago!). So take a read and visit his blog if you have a few minutes.

Fleming Rutledge, The Battle for Middle-earth: Tolkien's Divine Design in The Lord of the Rings

I just finished reading this book and I highly recommend it to any Tolkien lover. The book examines what Rutledge calls the "deep narrative." He writes his book with the flow of Tolkien's narrative.

Rutledge says, "In particular, I believe Tolkien has given us a rare glimpse of what human freedom within God's Divine Plan really means" (The Batatle for Middle-earth p. 5). This statement exemplifies the thrust of this book.

Rutledge focuses on the implicit Providence in Middle-earth. Tolkien did not want Middle-earth to be a Christian world, per se. Think of Shakespeare's King Lear and its distictly pre-Christian setting yet Christian themes.

Tolkien masterfully weaves the hand of God into The Lord of the Rings by his use of the passive tense and by the balance struck between characters realizing that there is a higher purpose at work. Rutledge examines different scenes which focus on this, such as Gandalf speech about Bilbo's pity or the council of Elrond.

For any Tolkien fan who is interested in having the many Biblical allusions revealed and discussed, this book does excellent job of just that.

Soli Deo Gloria