Category Archives: Reviews

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Highlighting Two Great E-books

I would like to point your attention to two great e-books that I have read recently.

The first is Epic Jesus, by Frank Viola.  This was originally delivered as a conference message, and was then converted into a short e-book.  This little book brings a stunning revelation of Christ throughout the scriptures, and brings God’s eternal purpose into view.  The book is about 20 pages, and can be purchased here for $3.99.  The original audio message is available for free at this link as well.

Secondly, I would like to point you to an e-book titled Junia is Not Alone, by scholar Scot McKnight.  It’s another short read, but well worth your time.  Here’s the product description from amazon.com:

In this fierce essay, leading Bible scholar Scot McKnight tells the story of Junia, a female apostle honored by Paul in his Letter to the Romans—and then silenced and forgotten for most of church history. But Junia’s tragedy is not hers alone. She’s joined by fellow women in the Bible whose stories of bold leadership have been overlooked. She’s in the company of visionary women of God throughout the centuries whose names we’ve forgotten, whose stories go untold, and whose witness we neglect to celebrate.

Not only does this book highlight the important role women play in the scriptures, it gives some insight into how we have arrived with our english translations of the Bible.

You can order the Kindle version of the book here.  The Nook version is here.  Both are $2.99.

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Christ the Living Water and Book Review of The Temple Within

I awoke in the deep darkness of the early morning.  As my awareness of my surroundings was awakened, I realized that I was parched from the night’s sleep.  Longing for a drink of water, I rose from bed and began to stumble through the dark house to make my way down to the kitchen.  Once in the kitchen, I was able to turn on the light, fill a glass of water, and quench my thirst.  What a refreshing feeling!

In much the same way, we can quench our spiritual thirst when we wake in the morning by drinking from Christ Himself as our Living Water.

A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”  (John 4:7-15)

The life of Jesus Christ indwelling us by the Holy Spirit is our Living Water.  When you wake in the morning, enter your inner temple where this living water dwells to quench your spiritual thirst.  It is our inheritance as Christians to partake of this life.  Just as we cannot live without physical water, we cannot live spiritually without drinking of Christ.  Of course, we need to drink water throughout the day to keep from becoming thirsty again.  In the same way, we can continue to drink throughout the day from the spring of water (Christ’s life) welling up inside of us.

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.  (John 7:37-39)

How do we partake of this Living Water?  I think the method is less important than the focus.  If our focus is on gaining knowledge and understanding, we will very likely miss the Person.  May we not forget that Christ is a living Person whom we can know in an intimate way.  We can fellowship with our Lord.  One of the best guides I know for this is The Temple Within by Milt Rodriguez.  (This is the follow up book review I mentioned in the review of Hearing God.)  Milt not only gives us tools to fellowship with Christ, but he also reveals a picture of our life in Christ, His life in us, and God’s eternal purpose for His church – the bride, family, and house of God.  This book is rich with insight and revelation of our wonderful Savior.  Order it here.

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Book Review: Hearing God by Peter Lord

I read Hearing God, by Peter Lord, several months ago and have wanted to do a review of the book for some time. This book is an extremely practical guide to, well, hearing God.

A question I have asked many times, and have heard many others ask as well is, “How can I hear God?” This brings up other questions, such as “How do I distinguish his voice from others?” In my experience, the ability to be still and listen to the Lord is greatly lacking in Christian circles today. Even for those experienced in this, it can still be difficult to “practice His presence”, to borrow from Brother Lawrence.

Two major hindrances I see to this are:

1. Most of us have been given an incomplete model of prayer. What we typically see from church leaders are public prayers that mostly praise God for who He is and ask God for things. While these are both fine to do, they do not model for us what it looks like to spend time quietly with the Lord, waiting for Him to impress His thoughts upon us. In the Gospels, Jesus is often found spending time privately with the Father in fellowship, yet this practice is rarely modeled in today’s Christianity.

2. In today’s ultra-busy, technology laden world, we are rarely able to unplug and simply spend time with our Lord, quietly sitting in His presence as Mary sat at Jesus’ feet in her sister Martha’s house and gazed upon Him and listened to Him speak. We simply cannot sit still (physically or mentally) long enough to listen.

Hearing God encourages us and gives us tools to learn the art of hearing God’s voice. The book is divided into five parts: 1) Checking Your Equipment, 2) Clearing Away the Clutter, 3) Tuning into God’s Channels, 4) Receiving God’s Signals, and 5) Fellowshipping with God Through Hearing His Voice.

I found parts 3 and 4 to be the most helpful for me. These sections really get practical and also deal with how our thoughts can discourage us against hearing God’s voice and what to do about it.

If you are serious about hearing the Lord’s voice, I highly recommend this book. However, I would consider this book only an introduction into the art of fellowshipping with our Lord and sitting in His presence. I’ll post another review soon that goes deeper into this practice.

Hearing God is also listed in Frank Viola’s 100 Best Christian Books here.

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Book Review: Revise Us Again by Frank Viola

The following is the review I posted on Amazon.com for Frank Viola’s new book, Revise Us Again: Living from a Renewed Christian Script:

Order the book on amazon.com or from the author (bulk discounts available).

If you have read any of Viola’s previous works, you will not be surprised that he is again calling Christians to rethink some things. While his previous works delve into church history, church practices, and the church’s ultimate purpose, this lighter book encourages and challenges us to revise how we personally and corporately express Christ.

The book’s ten chapters and afterward address:

*Revising the Lord’s Voice
Viola begins with a humorous look at how different streams of Christians would react to a stop sign as an illustration of how varied and selective our responses to God’s voice are. He then looks at the three divisions of the Old Testament: Torah, Prophets, and Wisdoms, as three examples of how God speaks to us today, and that we should weigh and receive each voice equally as the expression of the mind of Christ.

*Revising Christianeze
This chapter looks at a personal pet peeve of mine: using the “God told me to do xyz” line to justify our personal decisions. Viola sheds light on this Christian habit and shares some personal confessions from people who have done this.

*Revising Christian Code Language
Have you ever asked a Christian for something and heard “Let me pray about it” as the reply, just to never get any answer at all? According to Viola, you’re not alone. While he certainly does not reject praying for others or over decisions, he does reject using prayer as a code-phrase for saying “no”.

*Revising Our Semantics
Here, Viola looks at three Spiritual Conversation Styles (Charasmatics, Quoters, and Pragmatics) and how they interact (or fail to). He emphasizes how these styles cause difficulty in relating to our brothers and sisters who might move in a different Christian circles. Viola encourages us to learn from each other despite varying semantics.

*Revising Our Message
This chapter looks at what Viola sees as five missing elements in the gospel message most Christians are preaching today. They are: the reality of an indwelling Lord, the greatness of Christ, the eternal purpose of God, that it takes God to be human, and that everything wears out except for Christ.

*Revising Our Awareness of the Divine
This section tackles the tricky issue of the “felt presence of God”. Viola reveals four distinctions of God’s presence, which expands our divine encounters beyond “feeling” God’s presence.

*Revising Our Attitudes
Viola observes here that Christians often become self-fulfilling prophecies and become the very thing that they oppose (elitism, jealousy, etc). Five common results of this condition are given, as well as how each one causes division in Christ’s body.

*Revising Our Spiritual Expectations
This chapter touches on the Lord’s way of defying our limited expectations with His unlimited means of providing for us. Viola shows a biblical pattern in which God takes things away and then replaces them with something better. Despite when, how, or if God meets your particular expectation, He is always in control.

*Revising the Holy Spirit’s Ministry
This chapter calls Christians to be revised in their understanding of how the Spirit expresses Christ. While many hold to narrow, selective ways in which the Spirit works, Viola says, “I believe in the supernatural operation of the Holy Spirit but without the classic Charasmatic and Pentacostal trappings and wrappings. A great deal of those wrappings are artificial, learned by imitation, and detract from the reality and primacy of Jesus Christ.” Viola asserts that the role of the Holy Spirit is to reveal to us the Lord Jesus Christ.

*Revising Our Chief Pursuit
Viola says, “I’ll be blunt: Either you and I can know God intimately, or the gospel is a sham.” Not only that, but he believes that we know Him by seeing and hearing Him through our brothers and sisters in Christ. Viola gives a high view of Christian community in this chapter and calls us to love each other and to love and know Christ through each other.

*Revising The Gospel We Live
In the afterward of the book, Viola describes two gospels that many Christians today live: the legalist gospel and the libertine gospel. He then calls us to a third way. “In Paul’s gospel, the standards of God are neither ignored nor rationalized into oblivion (as in the gospel of the libertine). On the other hand, the standards of God are never presented as demands by which our acceptance by God is tied (as in the gospel of the legalist).” Viola ends with a stirring reminder of who we are in Christ, and that our lives should flow from our life in Him.

I was personally challenged in many ways through this relatively short book. Viola brings many personal stories and experiences to these areas that he is calling us to revise. I believe that if Christians took these matters to their Lord with an open, honest, and meek heart, the Lord will not only revise us individually, but He will begin to revise us all together so that we may stand with each other in Christ.