Here is a quote by Randy Alcorn via Facebook. (Same this is on his blog.) While I don’t like the ‘head and heart’ terminology, and don’t quite understand it, I can deal with it here.

I encourage those who are suffering to speak with a friend and perhaps a pastor or counselor. But in the process, don’t seek comfort by ignoring truth. When you try to soothe your feelings without bothering to think deeply about ideas, you are asking to be manipulated. Quick-fix feelings won’t sustain you over the long haul. On the other hand, deeply rooted beliefs—specifically a worldview grounded in Scripture—will allow you to persevere and hold on to a faith built on the solid rock of God’s truth.

What ends up in the heart comes in through the head. The current tendency to minimize Bible study and sound theology in the interests of focusing on the heart is badly misguided. The anti-intellect, popular-culture-driven “all that matters is my heart” is wrong, but even if it were right, we would need to be cultivating our minds in order to cultivate our hearts. God help us to renew our minds, set our minds on things above, and love God with all our hearts and minds, never supposing we can do one without the other.

What I liked about the book How Long O Lord by D.A. Carson is he didn’t tell cute stories and give trite little saying to try to comfort us. He wrote about who God is, His sovereignty and our responsibility, and theological truth which is what we really need to even be remotely prepared when suffering comes.

I would like to get Randy Alcorn’s book, If God Is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil. (I asked the publisher for a review copy but haven’t heard from them.) His latest book The Goodness of God: Assurance of Purpose in the Midst of Suffering is a condensed version.

Romans 12:2 HCSB
Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.

Colossians 3:1-4
So if you have been raised with the Messiah, seek what is above, where the Messiah is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on what is above, not on what is on the earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with the Messiah in God. 4 When the Messiah, who is your life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.

Deuteronomy 6:4-5
“Listen, Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is One. 5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”

I won’t be doing a review of this, only commenting on how it looks.

I mentioned a while back how to get a free copy, which is no longer available.

I like the typeface a lot. It’s kind of a modified serif that’s closer to sans-serif than most. This is my second favorite that I’ve seen behind TNIV’s Thinline which is pretty much sans-serif. Most people like serif (like Times New Roman) for some strange reason so I’m in the minority there as I usually seem to be. It’s fairly large, a little large for me which is probably perfect for most people. The typeface is the same as in the PDF files, as mentioned below, as in this edition of the Bible.

This is like a medium sized paperback book with good paper, not thin “Bible paper”, and very black print (no red letter either!).

The text goes way out to the far edges of the page so there really isn’t any room for notes and it may be a little tough to read the inside margins.

I was happy to see it come with a bookmark. I love bookmarks and collect them.

Also, it has two color maps. What would a Bible be without maps?

This edition of the CEB Common English Bible New Testament is $5 and can be found at Amazon.com but I would strongly advise waiting for the whole Bible. There’s too much good stuff on who God is in the other part.

At first I thought they stole my splash image but I guess it’s a little different. Kidding. Besides, mine is coffee, which you can see below.

They have a nice web site where you can look up passages of the Bible, compare editions and translations, read PDF files of Genesis, Matthew and Luke among other things.

Common English Bible Web Site

Click for a larger one

God is a personal God who responds. That is one of the great lessons of the psalms; it is one of the grand assumptions of the prayers of Paul.

…

“The degree of our peace of mind is tied to our prayer life (Philippians 4:6-7). This is not because prayer is psychologically soothing, but because we address a prayer-answering God, a personal God, a responding God, a sovereign God whom we can trust with the outcomes of life’s conclusions. And we learn, with time, that if God in this or that instance does not choose to take away the suffering, or utterly remove the evil, he does send grace and power. The result is praise; and that, of course, is itself enjoyable, in exactly the same way that lovers enjoy giving each other compliments.

–D.A. Carson, How Long O Lord?

Psalm 73:26 HCSB
My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart, my portion forever.

Psalm 119:28
I am weary from grief; strengthen me through Your word.

2 Corinthians 12:7-9
so that I would not exalt myself, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messsenger of Satan to torment me so I would not exalt myself. 8 Concerning this, I pleaded with the Lord three times to take it away from me. 9 But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me.