Ten best books for studying New Testament Greek, excluding his own – Saturday, December 24 6:52 AM at Dave Black Online (scroll down to find it or look in the archives at the bottom of the page in December 2011)

TGC Staff Recommend 2011 Books

2012 Christianity Today Book Awards

My Top Books of 2011 – Tim Challies

Top Ten Books of 2011 by Kevin DeYoung

Top Ten Books of 2011 by Stan McCullars

Sam Storms: Top Ten (!) Books in 2011

Books & Culture‘s Book of the Year

My 5 Favorite Books of 2011 by Marc Cortez

Top 2011 List — No Order, and No Number by Daniel Thompson

Any others to add?

Also see:
A Twisted Crown of Thorns: Top 10 Posts of The Year

My Top 10 Top 10s of ’11 by Tim Challies

Two very simple quotes I like from a book that got more interesting to me near the end.

The term itself speaks of the aligning of human life on earth with the will of the divine government of God.
…
To enter the Kingdom of God means to submit oneself to the rule of God and that means a fundamental reorientation of one’s ethical commitments and values into line with the priorities and character of the God revealed in the scriptures.

–Christopher J. H. Wright, Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament, pg. 247-248

When I first became a Christian, after or while reading through the book of John, I used the little pamphlet put out by The Navigators (NavPress) called 7 Minutes With God. This got me started on having a “quiet time” or what I now call devotional time or spiritual disciplines (what a scary word) which has stayed with me for over 25 years now.

While looking for this online, I found some adaptations and decided to write my own. If you like it, I would be thrilled if you use it for yourself or to give to others.
Nine Minutes With God (PDF File)

If you have any suggestions for ways to improve it, please let me know. This is meant to be printed and I purposely used a rather large typeface for the older folks.

Calvin: Six Purposes of Prayer

One of my favorite topics and I’ve never seen it written better.

HT: NWBingham on Twitter

Sometimes I wonder why I read modern books, since everything has been written about, and very well. No disrespect to current authors. Sometimes there are more current culture, events, politics (yuck) or just new and modern ways of writing things that are beneficial. There are also advances in archeology, linguistics and the church universal learning together.

I also think that since so many modern Christians lack theological training and knowledge, more and more basic books need to be written. But as far as basic theology, I don’t think there’s much new to be written.

I think some people could buy the least expensive e-reader, download a few hundred or thousand out of copyright Puritan (if that’s your thing) ePubs, a few Bible translations and be set for life if they like reading just regular books. Commentaries and other reference works are a different story.

Until today I hadn’t seen this book. It looks very good. The description at Amazon makes me want to read it.
To Those Who Suffer: Understanding God’s Purpose and Pathway Through Pain by Sean Nolan

There is a sample chapter and interview with the author at Living For God (Warning: sound will play on that page).

Augustine had something to say about this but so did Spurgeon. This was found in If God Is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil by Randy Alcorn.

Spurgeon warned against theologies that attempt to reconcile, by means of shortsighted human logic, every apparent biblical inconsistency:

Men who are morbidly anxious to possess a self-consistent creed, a creed which will put together and form a square like a Chinese puzzle, are very apt to narrow their souls. Those who will only believe what they can reconcile will necessarily disbelieve much of divine revelation. Those who receive by faith anything which they find in the Bible will receive two things, twenty things, ay, or twenty thousand things, though they cannot construct a theory which harmonizes them all.

(“Faith,” An All-Round Ministry, 1872)

The system of truth is not one straight line, but two. No man will ever get a right view of the gospel until he knows how to look at the two lines at once.

The first quote can be found in an interesting article on Randy Alcorn’s Ministry site. He writes about Calvinism and election but isn’t really a Calvinist so it’s a bit strange from my point of view:
Spurgeon’s Theology: Embracing Biblical Paradox

The second quote can be found here:
If God Is Good: 99 Quotes and Illustrations

I suppose I can stop posting quotes from that book now. I need to read it again someday. Interestingly, right now the Kindle edition costs more than the paper version. But the prices change often. There is an abridged version of the book too.

Many of you already know about this page. There have been a few books added and if you’re confused about which are PDFs, I thought I’d help.

Resources by D.A. Carson

If you scroll down quite a ways and find Books, it’s hard to tell which are PDFs because they’re not labeled. You need to put your cursor over them and look at your status bar or wherever the URL is shown in your browser, if at all, to see if it says …pdf at the end.

If you go to Andy Naselli’s page, you’ll see seven books he lists. Those are the ones in PDF format. So just find whichever one you want. Like he mentions, you can also use a download plugin for Firefox or Chrome or whatever to download all files in a certain format, but then you’ll download all the articles too unless it let’s you download from a selection. (I don’t use one.)

There are also many excellent articles, all in PDF format and some parts of books, like the one on the Sermon on the Mount. I’m reading that one for sure.

If you have an ereader, you can then use Calibre to convert them to ePub or Kindle or whatever format. I use my ancient $39 Nokia device I got on eBay which has a convenient 4″ screen and a great eBook reader.

If you need short stuff to read in a waiting room, this has about anything you’d want because of his prolificness.

The general site also has many book excerpts, although it doesn’t say they’re excerpts. Certainly enough to know if you want to buy them or not. If you click on the book title as opposed to just the PDF button, it will tell you what the PDF contains. It’s not always chapter 1.

I’m very thankful for this resource and I hope this helps anyone who may have been confused. If there’s anything I missed or got wrong, let me know. I figured this stuff out myself.

After reading four introductions to the Psalms I think I’m ready to actually start reading them. I used the first volume of Goldingay’s Psalms commentary (given to me by a very generous pastor), the NLT Study Bible, the ESV Study Bible and The Essential Bible Companion to the Psalms. I’d like to read one Psalm a day and read the latter mentioned book along with it and the commentary for any questions I have for the first 49 psalms.

For some reason I’ve never been a big fan and I want to be. I seem to be a big fan of nearly everything else. I pray this time around I’ll get to like them better. I think it’s strange that I can’t get enough of Proverbs and I’ve never really been into most of the Psalms, which seems to be many people’s favorite. If anyone has been in my position and it changed, I’d like to read about it.

I may do a post every now and then. I have one coming up on David’s possible authorship of many of the Psalms “of David”.

I’m in the middle of If God Is Good right now, which is very comprehensive, and then plan on reading a commentary on Genesis. Then I have some other ‘regular’ books on OT topics which I look forward to.

I know that some of you out there are probably tired of seeing the lists of reviews of Rob Bell’s Love Wins written by Reformed reviewers.

Louis has a great balanced list of reviews:
Love Wins Discussion – Reflections & Resources
and so does Patheos:
Patheos Book Club – Rob Bell: Love Wins

I will not comment on this subject.

I had been searching for quite some time for some help in spending less time on the internet. For others with more gadgets than me, this means spending less time using technology in general. I finally found it and it’s a free document.

focus : a simplicity manifesto in the age of distraction

Download the free version here (PDF document).

This will not only help you to come up with strategies, but he tells you why you do certain things, like why receiving email is gratifying–so that we check it more and more, why we let ourselves get constantly interrupted, or even initiate the interruption etc. These are helpful things to know.

There are also many more materials that cost, which may very well be worth it if time is money for you and you need more help with focusing on writing or other creative tasks. (I have no affiliation. I just happened to find this resource.)

This is something that’s important to me, because although I learn a lot from things found on the internet, have developed valuable relationships and read a few helpful blogs etc., it’s better for me to spend more of my time reading the Bible and especially books written by excellent authors. Spending time with the Bible isn’t as difficult. It’s too important. But spending time more reading and less time piddling around on the internet is very important. It affects how well I get to know God and how well I get to know the Bible. The internet can only take me so far and there are too many roads that lead to nowhere.

The problem isn’t just what we are doing with our time; it’s what we are NOT doing with it. Where does all the time spent on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube and television and radio actually come from? Try keeping track of the time spent on all of these for a week. (See a blog I posted last year for some ideas and a PDF sheet you can print and use.) You may be stunned at the time you are spending on them. If you simply cut the time in half and asked God what He wants you to do with the other half it could have a revolutionary impact on your life.

My point isn’t that it’s wrong to tweet or Facebook or use the internet. I do, and I think it’s time well spent (partly because it’s really not much time and partly because of the opportunity to have some Christ-centered influence). All the time-users I’ve mentioned can have their place, but they can also become time-wasters, and often downright addictions.

–Randy Alcorn

HT: Take Your Vitamin Z

I’ve taken a day off from the internet and other technology to see what would happen and I had no epiphany. I’ve read the same from others. What’s more important and much more difficult for many of us is to cut ourselves off from these things for a significant amount of time each day, whenever that time is, if we’re serious about reading or writing or whatever other non-technology activity we want to do. If we’re using an iPad to read or to write, obviously this would take even more discipline. There are free computer programs for writing that will just show you a blank screen and the text. Some even have a typewriter sound.

I don’t want to let this post go much farther and keep you from what you were doing, so here are some things I personally found helpful.

• Don’t check your email very frequently, unless it’s vital to stay in contact with clients in that way.
• When writing/replying to friends via email, try to pick certain times of the day, if not once a day, and not every time you receive a message if you often have access to email.
• When checking your RSS feed for blog posts, don’t look at any that have less than 2 or 3 posts, unless it’s a major blog that has a major post every once in a while. If a blog only has one post, let it go until there are more. You will spend your time more efficiently. Check them once or maybe twice a day and then close your RSS program or browser tab that has your feed. If you’re not into blogs, that may be a good thing.
• Don’t reply to blogs, Facebook statuses, etc. unless you think it’s of value to you or them to spend the time, and that you know you want to spend the time looking through email messages of replies from others. Ask yourself before you reply if this is really that important. That’s not to say you should be ruthless and cut yourself off from your online friends or let a friend’s blog post go without any replies.

This quest and this post have been a long time in coming. I’ve improved but have a lot of room for more. I hope it helps someone.

Also see:

• How Analog Rituals Can Amp Your Productivity
• Keith Jarrett: Save Your soul. Turn Off Your Gadget
• A 90-Minute Plan for Personal Effectiveness
• It’s Time To Kill Multi-Tasking
• Twitter Lists: The Secret to Finding Order Amongst The Chaos
• Googling Ourselves to Death – see the articles listed at the bottom
• Tim Challies discusses his new book “The Next Story”
• Why Successful People Leave Work Early
• The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains by Nicholas Carr

You know how a lot of men are? Needing to check stuff off the list? Maybe not enjoying the ride?

You know how when they’re on vacation they like to have an agenda and get everything done and seen in record time?

I seem to be the same way with books. I keep talking about how I’m going to write a post on spending less time on the internet (and I will). Part of the reason is so I can read more. Which really is a good thing. But I have these plans and goals and things like surgery and bouts of certain kinds of stuff keep coming up and messin’ with my plans. Then I want to get back at it and read as much as I can.

I need to learn to relax and just let things happen. I’m not too over the edge. I know I have the rest of my life, however long that is. But I still get a little anxious (like wanting to get things done fast) about checking things off the list.

Right now I’m reading If God Is Good. And it’s really Good. It’s a quote machine. I need to take my time, take notes, highlight, let things sink in.

You know what I’m saying? Are you women like this?

(This was my fastest post ever. I’m not even going to edit it. Need to get back to reading and checking things off the list.)

Since people have suggested I write about more mundane things because people like to read it, I thought I’d tell you what I plan on reading for a while, and keeps with the purpose of the blog.

Last year, as part of my “three year plan” which will end up lasting more than four years, was “the year of the Old Testament”. But with surgery right in the middle, it really slowed me down. So this year continues concentrating on the Old Testament.

I just got done with a commentary on Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. At some point a review is coming. I loved it.

I’m going back to Genesis now. I plan to read it through, then read Creation and Blessing by Ross, then read it again. Then read Handbook on the Pentateuch.

A very generous pastor who’s name starts with an M and blogs near somewhere gave me the first volume of a commentary set on Psalms by Goldingay. I’m going to read the introduction, which I’m sure will be very helpful overview, and then read the commentary on just the first two Psalms. Then I plan on reading one Psalm a day along with The Essential Bible Companion to the Psalms and use the commentary when I have a big question, until the first volume runs out. Then I can use Spurgeon’s Treasury of David. I’m not looking so much to study at this point, just get to know them better, pray better and worship God through them. I have to admit I haven’t been as big of a fan of the Psalms as many people are and I hope this will help.

While reading Psalms I plan on reading Is God a Monster? and Knowing Jesus through the Old Testament.

All along I will continue to work on my Greek at a snail’s pace.

Why do Christians tend to be enamored by very popular but very vacuous books? We have centuries of great teachers, preachers, scholars, and theologians that people don’t take advantage of. (The latter of which we all are. It’s just a matter of how well we know God.) There are thousands of great books out there. With an electronic eReader you could even get so many good ones for free.

But many of the sheeple just notice what’s popular and read them on occasion. Books on prophecy and the economy have gotten popular, or maybe I’m just noticing it. I didn’t realize that prophecy can predict things like what’s going to happen to the economy. (I’m not referring to my FB friend Kathy on this.) I’m leaving names out on the negative side but I think many reading this know who and what I’m talking about. I’m not going to give him any more publicity. I suppose one of the reasons could be this:

2 Timothy 4:3 NLT
For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear.

Now there’s some prophecy. I think that “itching ears” can also be gossip-like and/or people addicted to drama.

How can we encourage others to read books with sound doctrine? Many just get a 45 minute sermon–that they’re too tired at that point in time to listen to anyway–and that’s all the teaching they get. Or maybe reading a one page devotional each day in addition to praying, which is much better than nothing even if it’s a snail’s pace. This is pretty much what I did for many years in addition to reviewing memorized Scripture. So I can’t leave myself out of this.

I’m so thankful  for these authors and the desire to read them, along with more of the Bible, when because of other chronic difficulties, I’ve lost interest for many things in my  life.

Maybe I should write a post on how to recognize and find good books.

Book Review: Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith

I didn’t say which book in the subject line. Aren’t I provocative? We’ll see if there’s anything different in his new book.

I feel horrible today/yesterday and want to get out a post of some things I previously read and plan on reading.

Proverbs 1:5-6 NLT
Let the wise listen to these proverbs and become even wiser.
Let those with understanding receive guidance
by exploring the meaning in these proverbs and parables,
the words of the wise and their riddles.

I’m finally pretty much done working on Proverbs. I went ahead and finished the whole study guide for our group even though we’re only about a third of the way through. I think I’m done with all the things I wanted to do with it for now, but I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface.

Contrary to popular belief, or at least what I used to believe, the non-narrative parts of Proverbs aren’t all individual proverbs that stand completely on their own. There are some proverbs that balance each other out. The problem with this is that many of these are spread out over the whole book. So we need to learn the whole thing very well to even begin to understand it. I now can see why some people read a chapter of Proverbs a day all the time. So before I set out working on our study guide and reading Waltke’s commentary, I read through Proverbs about six or seven times in two or three translations, then again once when I was done with those things. I know a little more now than I did before, but this could be a lifetime pursuit even if concentrating on that one book. I can’t tell you how valuable this was and I don’t feel like stopping. I may read a little more on it.

There is a ‘reading program’ where you read through a book of the Bible 20 times. Some may make it a lifelong pursuit and some may just read some smaller books and get to know them really well. I decided to tack on James to Proverbs since it’s so similar (there will be a post on that) and James is relatively short. So I’d like to read it in my secondary and primary translations and then maybe read it in nearly every Bible in the house.

The Psalms: Good News That Never Goes Out of Fashion:

What do we learn about the Psalms by studying how Jesus and the NT writers interpreted and applied them?

It’s incredibly instructive to go through and look at every citation in the NT.

I can imagine how valuable this would be, similar to looking through Paul’s prayers and seeing what we find. I’m not committing to that one yet, since I’ll be reading the Psalms along with The Essential Bible Companion to the Psalms.

That took me two days to write. I’m done for now and I hope that made sense. Please pray for me.

I become aware of their Free Audiobook Download of the Month like this month’s Adopted for Life by Russell D. Moore from Facebook or Twitter posts.

I didn’t realize they have a lot of other free downloads.

I’m not into audio books but I download them for if I’m in the hospital (which unfortunately may be a possibility in a year again with my back) or just can’t read for some reason. You never know. I know many people like to listen to them in the car (usually while driving).

This is free in February. I don’t know if it will be longer than that. I’m not familiar with the book–just passing it along.

Imaginary Jesus [Kindle Edition] by Matt Mikalatos, Tyndale House Publishers (January 4, 2010)

Recently I let people know about a free online commentary on Proverbs by Charles Bridges (not to be confused with Jerry Bridges) in HTML (web page) format. A couple of days ago I found a post on Pyromaniacs titled Proverbs for nothing, and your Bridges for free! I was glad to learn that this commentary is also in PDF format, which makes it easier to look up the chapters.

While reading Waltke’s commentary I’ve been referring to Bridges fairly often and like it enough to buy it in book form. In fact if I were to do it again, I might read the Bridges and refer to the Waltke. On the Pyro site, a commenter mentioned that the Banner of Truth edition is the best. This is a healthy 656 page book which is more expositional or even devotional in nature but still goes verse by verse. Some of the editions look like they are scans of the original book (I can’t say for sure if this is or not). There is an edition in the The Crossway Classic Commentary Series edited by Alister McGrath, and J. I. Packer which I’m sure is ‘regular’ text, but keep in mind this is an abridged (condensed) edition.

Then to my surprise I found out he wrote a commentary on Ecclesiastes (I love that book) and Psalm 119, one of my favorite Psalms. It just keeps getting better. I wish I would have known that when I was studying Ecclesiastes. I already have a book on Psalm 119 that I haven’t read so I won’t be getting that anytime soon but would like to in the future.

Although it looks like he wasn’t a prolific writer, these resources are very helpful and I wanted to let you know about them if you’re interested.

After reading and writing about the 20x Bible reading method, I’ve decided–I think with a nudge from the Holy Spirit while reviewing memorized verses from it–to read James multiple times. I’m not going to commit to a certain number of times, but knowing me I’ll probably feel like a wimp if I don’t do 20. Plus I’ll probably miss out on God speaking more from it.

Since I’m studying Proverbs, I’ve been making parallels to James, the ‘wisdom book of the New Testament’. (I plan on posting that.) It makes a perfect book to read in this way because of the subject matter for me right now and its length.

I think I’d like to read it multiple times in my primary and secondary translations and then use all the Bibles I have for the last 6-7 times. Or is it 8-9? I’ve lost count. Maybe I’ll put the ISV on my eBook reader too. (David Black bait.) The Lattimore NT, with its lack of headings, verse and chapter numbers, might be good for this type of thing too.

Now that I’m writing about it, I’m really looking forward to it.

It will also make me feel superior and make God like me better. The real reason for writing this post is to see if anyone else has done this and to report back with anything I may have learned that might encourage others to try it, like so many older and wiser people who have gone before and encouraged me. God showing His love for what He did on the cross is what’s indicative, not how many times we read the Bible or anything we do.

Romans 9:16 HCSB
So then it does not depend on human will or effort, but on God who shows mercy.

2 Timothy 4:13
When you come, bring the cloak I left in Troas with Carpus, as well as the scrolls, especially the parchments.

This is a more personal type post that I’m uncomfortable with because I don’t presume that a lot of people should care about these things. But I like to read updates of what’s going on in my blogging friends’ lives and people have asked me to keep them updated on the things mentioned here.

Mental health stuff has been very difficult but steady, other than the ups and mainly downs that Bipolar depression (more of a description than an official diagnosis) presents. Sometimes pretty bad, but that’s part of the program.

I had my second back surgery over six months ago and the recovery isn’t going well. There is no improvement in pain. An extra MRI was negative and I’ll be having an extra CT scan.

I had a difficult time spiritually after surgery and my faith was really tested for the first time in a long time. God has pretty much brought me through that but I still need to learn to “suffer better” and be more prepared for things like the nightmarish hospital stay where they made a lot of mistakes. Progress on worrying less has been slow but positive. It’s a rough road though. I’m accumulating even more good books on suffering to read between other things.

I read through Proverbs several times and read it once in The Message, since it’s supposed to be decent with poetry. It was very good, although I often looked verses up in ‘regular’ translations to see what it ‘really says’. Not much to say about that. I’m still studying Proverbs in our small group Bible study and reading through Waltke’s two volume commentary which has been great. Proverbs is such an important book and now I can’t get enough of it. It helps us to learn how to learn and understand.

I’m still working on Greek. I was supposed to be done with Black’s beginning book in 2010 but I didn’t know I’d be having surgery, which really set me back. I had to go back and reread the whole book and I’m almost back to where I was.

Same thing goes for 2010 being ‘the year of the Old Testament’ for me. In addition to getting slowed down, I’ve acquired more books about the OT that I want to read, so that may take another year.

Along with that, my ‘three year plan’ will stretch out to over four years. I carefully read each book of the New Testament and also a healthy commentary for each, which I love doing, and need to go back and read a couple of whoppers on Luke and Acts. Then I’ll be done with that. Obviously no real exegesis (in-depth study) on my part but just to get any gross misinterpretations out of the way and becoming more familiar with the NT which is part of my three year plan. I intend to study Colossians as in-depth as I can at some point. I’m contemplating on whether I should take the time to read a big commentary on Genesis. There don’t seem to be as many gross misinterpretations to sift through but it’s so foundational for creation, original sin, covenants, God’s sovereignty etc.

I plan on reading most of the OT again this year (all of it last year) and try reading a book of the Bible 20x. I’ve already read Proverbs 6-7 times so I may keep going with that and a short book of the NT. Next year or before I want to start a custom plan that I’m making or one of the other plans. I don’t feel a need to do one of these plans every year. But I now make sure I read the Bible everyday.

I’ve now decided to switch my main translation from the HCSB (I call it the NIV, tailored to me) to the REB. It’s just too good, and it’s not the same old. Secondary, which is a dynamic equivalent or what used to be called thought for thought is the NLT but I’m toying with God’s Word (for the Nations). The NLT will always be special, especially the Mosaic edition.

I’m so thankful for all of my blogging friends. If I didn’t have any, this wouldn’t be worth it.

I better stop there.