Eighteen Books That Have Influenced Me

I came across an Anglican website that listed "The 100 Best Christian Books." It's a great, comprehensive list. It got me thinking about Christian books that have influenced me. Here's eighteen of them, not in any special order.

Celebration of Discipline, by Richard Foster. In 1981 this book kick-started a prayer revolution in me.

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard. I became an Annie Dillard fan after reading this. Can anyone write better than her? My eyes were opened wider to God's presence found in my backyard.

Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis. This book introduced me to Christian apologetics, and I've never looked back.

A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories, by Flannery O’Connor. Maybe Flannery O'Connor can write better than Annie Dillard. I've read everything I can by her, including a few books interpreting her vision of the presence of Christ in the lives of ordinary, flawed humanity.

New Seeds of Contemplation, by Thomas Merton. This book solidified the great truth that, in one's spiritual life, being precedes doing. Through this book Merton became one of my spiritual directors.

The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom, by Henri Nouwen. Through Nouwen's deep, transparent writings I experience the love of God and find healing for my troubled heart. Nouwen is an invaluable guide in my spiritual life.

A Testament of Devotion, by Thomas Kelly. I underlined so much in this book that a friend suggested I use spray paint. Kelly helped me see earth, through heaven.

Caring Enough to Confront: How to Understand and Express Your Deepest Feelings Towards Others, by David Augsburger. I have used this little book countless times in helping to heal broken relationships.

Shame and Grace: Healing the Shame We Don't Deserve, by Lewis Smedes. Smedes helped me understand the grace of God and experience healing from self-hatred and shame. 

Silence, by Shusaku Endo. This story of early missionaries to Japan broke my heart, and helped me understand the cost of following Jesus.

The Cross and the Lynching Tree, by James Cone. It was good and hard to read a book that exposed areas of spiritual blindness in me.

Till We Have Faces, by C.S. Lewis. This book affected me deeply. I can't find words to describe what it's like when a book interprets your heart's deepest longings. I must take a deep breath and go away to a quiet place and read it again.

Thinking in Tongues, by James K. A. Smith. I am Pentecostal, and Smith's book has gifted me with an epistemology to go with it.

The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction, by Eugene Peterson. I have read this book three times, thoroughly. 

Eternal Living: Reflections on Dallas Willard's Teaching on Faith and Formation, by Dallas Willard and Gary Moon. I spoke at an Evangelical Friends' pastor's conference in 2017. Two pastors recommended this book to me. Here is a model of everything I desire to be, in Christ.

Pursuing God's Will Together: A Discernment Practice for Leadership Groups, by Ruth Haley Barton. This might be the best book on presence-driven leadership I have ever read.

The First Epistle to the Corinthians, by Gordon Fee. This is the greatest biblical commentary I have ever read. It is a rare combination of brilliant scholarship and anointed inspiration.

Knowledge and Christian Belief, by Alvin Plantinga. Contains the best chapter on "faith" I have ever read. 

Above All Else, Get Wisdom

 

(Me, climbing the big dune at Warren Dunes State Park, in Michigan)

The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom. 

Though it cost all you have, get understanding.

Proverbs 4:7

I begin this day by opening up the Bible to Proverbs. I slow-cook in it. To acquire wisdom you have to marinate in God's wisdom-sauce..

This is why, in 1970, I changed my college major to philosophy. The word "philosophy" means "the love of wisdom" (philo-sophia). As a philosopher, I read the world's wisdom literature.  This is what philosophers do.  

The love of wisdom is not a claim to be wise. Saying "I have become wise" is could be an indicator of foolishness. But, you won't be wise without having a core desire for wisdom.

Proverbs 4:5-9 says,

Get wisdom, get understanding;

    do not forget my words or turn away from them.

6 

Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you;

    love her, and she will watch over you.

7 

The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom.

    Though it cost all you have, get understanding.

8 

Cherish her, and she will exalt you;

    embrace her, and she will honor you.

9 

She will give you a garland to grace your head

    and present you with a glorious crown.”

"Above all else," I am told, "get wisdom." 

Above everything else? 

Above money? 

Above fame? 

Above beauty? 

Above possessions? 

Yes! To understand this is to be wise. To think otherwise is to be an ordinary fool. 

This morning I'm after some more wisdom. I collect it like diamonds, and mount them in my journal. I polish them by reading, and re-reading them. 

I am reading Proverbs in Eugene Peterson's The Message. Peterson writes a beautiful introduction to Proverbs on its core theme.

Wisdom is different from knowledge. Wisdom may contain knowledge; knowledge may have no wisdom.

"“Wisdom” is the biblical term for this on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven everyday living. Wisdom is the art of living skillfully in whatever actual conditions we find ourselves. It has virtually nothing to do with information as such, with knowledge as such." (Peterson, The Message Remix 2.0: The Bible In Contemporary Language, p. 870)

Peterson writes:

• Wisdom has to do with becoming skillful in honoring our parents and raising our children,
• and handling our money,
• skillful in conducting our sexual lives,
• and going to work,
• skillful in exercising leadership,
• and using words well,
• skillful in treating friends kindly,
• and eating and drinking healthily,
• and cultivating emotions within ourselves and attitudes toward others that make for peace,
• Skillful in living well, and in robust sanity.
• Threaded through all these items is the insistence that the way we think of and respond to God is the most practical thing we do. In matters of everyday practicality, nothing, absolutely nothing, takes precedence over God. (Ib.)

"These are the wise sayings of Solomon, David's son, Israel's king -

written down so we'll know how to live well and right,

to understand what life means and where it's going."

Proverbs 1:1

Spiritual Formation & Transformation: My Method

(Michigan beach, on Lake Michigan shoreline)

(I am now in the midst of teaching my Spiritual Formation class to ten M. Div. students, at Payne Theological Seminary.)

When I teach spiritual formation and transformation to seminary students, pastors, and churches, this is my method.

1. Assumption: God is the agent of personal/spiritual transformation.

2. Point People to God's Presence: Lecturing to people or assigning books to read won't transform the human heart. But God can. Therefore: I assign people to pray. I can point people to the presence of the One who does the transforming. 

3. Share With Others What God Is Doing In You: Transformation has a corporate dimension. This is realized as we return from our solitary prayer times with God and share with others what God has spoken to us. Here we arrive at the center of biblical koinonia ("fellowship") which is, literally, sharing what we have in common; viz., Christ in me, the hope of glory.

The method God has given me to do this is:

Give people Psalm 23 and send them out to pray for an hour. Or sometimes I send them out to pray for 30 minutes. For pastors, I use 60 minutes; for non-pastors, I use 30 minutes.

Here's the paper I give them (see below). I read the instructions to the students.  

I use this document when teaching seminary classes and doing spiritual formation retreats for churches.

WARNING: If you are a pastor who wants to do this kind of thing with your people,  you must be engaging in it yourself. You cannot impart what you do not possess.

PRAYER EXERCISE – SPIRITUAL FORMATION

Dr. John Piippo

1. The purpose of this exercise is to enter into the presence of God for the sake of deepening your relationship with God alone. My assumption is that you need God. You need to spend much time in God’s presence. And that time is to be spent in a certain way.
2. Find a “lonely place apart.” When you get to that place, spend 60 minutes with God.
3. Take with you only Psalm 23 and your journal. You may also take a Bible with you. But I want you to use Psalm 23 as your focus of meditation.
4. Leave any cell phones, computers, books, shopping lists, and xerox machines behind. They will be waiting for you when you return from this time.
5. Use Psalm 23 for meditation.
6. Your purpose is not to exegete Psalm 23, but to be yourself exegeted by the Holy Spirit.
7. When God speaks to you, write it down in your spiritual journal. A spiritual journal is a record of the voice of God to you.
8. If your mind wanders, you may wish to write down where it wanders to. Your wandering mind is a barometer of your true spiritual condition. Your mind will never wander arbitrarily, but always to something like a burden or a hope.

Psalm 23

A psalm of David.

 ¹ The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.

 ² He makes me lie down in green pastures,
       he leads me beside quiet waters,
 ³ he restores my soul.
       He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
 ⁴ Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
       I will fear no evil, for you are with me;
       your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
 ⁵ You prepare a table before me
       in the presence of my enemies.
       You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.

 ⁶ Surely goodness and love will follow me
       all the days of my life,
       and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Trust As the Cure for Anxiety & Fear

(Downstairs office in our home)

(I'm re-posting this for someone.)

I bought a new chair for my home office. I had the previous chair for twenty years. I trusted it. I knew it would hold me. Therefore, I felt no anxiety when I thought about sitting on it. 

Trust and anxiety do not live together. The more trust, the less anxiety. To purely and perfectly trust would be to be anxious for nothing. It would be contradictory to say, "I trust the chair I'm sitting in, but am afraid it won't hold me." Where there is trust, there is no fear.

There are objects of significant trust, and objects of insignificant trust. Objects of significant trust affect us; objects of insignificant trust have no effect. I may not trust the motives of the present King of France (nonexistent anyway), but my mistrust does not cause me anxiety or fear, because I am unaffected by his actions. I place no trust in the present King of France. But, my mistrust of our economy can cause me to wonder whether or not I will have sufficient funds to meet my needs in retirement. 

This can breed anxiety and fear. To not have control over an object of significant trust causes fear. The more a person needs to be in control the less their capacity to trust. The person who is mostly filled with anxiety and fear may be a person who does not *trust, or whose trust is misplaced. 

There is a cumulative effect that results from a lifetime of trusting in God. A psychological confidence, a certitude, emerges. It is like the confidence one gains as a result of sitting in the same chair for twenty years, and finding that, through it all, it still holds. This is not illusory. I have met people who experience this. I have been at the bedside of these God-trusters as they lay dying. You have to be there to see the reality of this. 

The one who places their trust in God experiences less anxiety. Therefore...

Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Don't lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge God. And God will make straight your paths.
- Proverbs 3:5-6


 
*I recognize there are clinical, neurophysiological conditions that cause anxiety and fear. The antidote for such conditions may be medications. But even when medications stabilize a person's moods, issues of trust may remain. Medication will not help a person when the only chair they have keeps breaking.

Pride: A Checklist

 

(Linda and me, with Payne Theological Seminary students)

God is opposed to the proud,

but gives grace to the humble.

James 4:6

Those are strong words! In areas of pride, God is against us. Pride in us hinders others from experiencing God's love, mercy, and grace.

C.S. Lewis once wrote that the true Christian's nostrils must be constantly attuned to the inner cesspool. That cesspool includes pride. 

Do I, do you, have ungodly pride in your heart? In my praying time yesterday I was bringing, before the Lord, some areas of pride that are within my heart, and asking God to remove them.

Michael Brown, in Revolution in the Church: Challenging the Religious System with a Call for Radical Change, provides a checklist of potential evidences of pride. If you have a pointy finger, aim it at yourself as you read these. If the shoe fits, confess and turn from the prideful attitude.

• You are accountable to no one. 
• You think you are “the one”—that your church, your ministry, your anointing or your teaching is the necessary ingredient for true revival or evangelism or growth. 
• Your opinion is always more important than the opinion of others. 
• You are able to find sin in the lives of others but not in your own. 
• You are quarrelsome. 
• You find it difficult to be a team player. 
• You are always right about everything. 
• You are slow to repent. 
• You find it difficult to say, “I’m sorry,” without defending yourself or blaming others. 
• You refuse to take help. 
• You are unteachable. 
• You are unable to recognize others’ accomplishments or rejoice in their successes. 
• You are unable to say, “I’m hurting; I’m in trouble.” 
• You never reverse your path when wrong, but make only minor adjustments. 
• You always think, “This message is for someone else, not me.” 
• You fail to realize when God is trying to get your attention, when He is correcting you, when He is judging you.

How I Abide in Christ

(April 17, 2020 - my front yard - SNOW!)

Jesus told his disciples that, if they abide in him, their lives will bear much fruit. "Abide" can be translated "to dwell."

Imagine Linda and I knock on your door. "We've come for a visit," I say. Presumably, you will let us in and put on the coffee. 

But if we knock on the door, and I say, "We've come to dwell with you," you are wondering if we are homeless.

To visit is a microwave, to abide is a slow cooker.

To abide in Jesus is to connect. Like a branch is attached to a vine. Jesus is the vine; I am the branch.

As I am a branch, the resources of the vine flow into me. I begin to produce the life of the vine. I produce VineLife.

To produce VineLife I must choose to do something. I cannot just sleep in my recliner while half-watching Netflix and expect to do what Jesus did. I must connect!

Here are ways I connect. And remember, when you connect to Jesus the Vine, your life will be fruit-bearing. It just will. You cannot be connected to Jesus and not be fruit-bearing. 

1. I meditate on Scripture. I read Scripture. When I read something that speaks to me, I assume this God, trying to tell me something. This makes me a slow reader! If you could see me reading Scripture you would see moments where I've got my eyes closed, my hand on my chin, and my body is still. 
When God speaks to me through a passage or verse in the Bible, I stop reading, and start meditating. I may write the verse in my journal. I often write it on a 3X5 card, place it in my pocket, and carry it with me.
For example, weeks ago, while reading through part of Proverbs, I came to this.

2. I keep a record of what God is saying to me. This is a spiritual journal. I often take time to re-read what God has been saying to me. I have gone through a lot of journals in the past fifty years! I recently bought a new one, which I like. Here it is.

3. I practice spiritual disciplines. The apostle Paul spoke of exercising in the spiritual gymnasium (going into "strict training"). Paul told me that, if I want to compete in the game of life, I must "exercise unto godliness." 
In 1981 a friend of ours, Dr. John Powell, gave me a copy of Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline. John has been one of the most influential persons in my life (Linda's, too!). As I began to read this book, God was speaking to me. I read many books. But only a few have transformed my heart. This was one. My abiding life in Christ took a quantum leap forward! The connection-disciplines in this book became my spiritual DNA.   
The spiritual disciplines themselves don't produce the fruit. They provide the attachment. The Holy Spirit produces the fruit.

4. I pray. I have a praying life. I have done this for so many years Foster's book helped me here, too. He also wrote a beautiful book on prayer. (Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home) 
In praying I speak to, and I listen to God. I have conversations with God. The discipline of choosing to pray has moved from my head ("I need to pray!") to my heart ("I pray to live!").
An excellent book on listening to God is Hearing God Through the Year: A 365-Day Devotional, by Dallas Willard.

In this season of my life I continue to read, slowly, Proverbs. And Psalms. I am also reading Ezekiel, slowly, from the Old Testament. And I am re-reading, slowly, the four Gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

One more suggestion. My book on prayer can be read devotionally. Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God.

I hope this helps - blessings!

God Loves Working with People Who Are Failures

 

Sioux Falls, SD

Someone shared with me that they wanted to follow Jesus, but were afraid they would fail. Their fear of failure was leading them to stay distant from God. Here are some thoughts I have about this.

1. Anyone who follows Jesus will, at times, fail. Follow anything and you will, at times, fail. Mistakes will be made.

2. What's needed is a community of Jesus-followers who are non-judgmental about failure. What's needed are Jesus-followers who are learning to love as Jesus loves.

Paul wrote, "there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1).

Sadly, the amount of in-fighting and slandering within "churches," and towards outsiders, makes church the last place where you'd want to fail. Avoid these churches.

Churches that are successful in the Jesus Way are honest and real about failure, without condemnation and judgmentalism. We all need this kind of more perfect love. "Perfect love casts out fear; there is no fear in love" (1 John 4:18).

3. Unless you get real about your failure, you will never succeed. "Success" is: growing into greater Christlikeness. Not one of us is there yet. All of us are failing in some ways. Avoid people who do not understand this (love them anyway, but don't fellowship with them).

People who act as if they never fail but you do fail are spiritually toxic. They are failure-producing people who want to bring you down to the level of their failure.

4. Remember the Original Twelve, Jesus' inner circle of disciples. They misunderstood Jesus, stumbled spiritually, misjudged things, betrayed Jesus, and eventually left his side at the point of his greatest suffering. Yet out of the rubbish of their failure came the first real Jesus-followers. You and I can likewise be transformed as we go after Jesus.

In the spiritual journal I have now kept for fifty years I have recorded many instances of my own failures. Some of these have been seen by other people. A number of them are known only by my wife Linda, and my sons. And some are only known by God, and I am ignorant of them.

As I have journaled about these failures of action and attitude, I have always encountered a God of love and grace who forgives me, and continues to mold and shape me. God will not give up on me, or you, if we come to him with a heart that says, "God, I love you, and want to learn how to love you more."

God loves working with  people who are failures. After all, in his Church, it's all he has to work with.

Habitual Praying

 Dear Praying People, 

 Your praying times should be what you do, as usual. 

 This morning I received two e-mails from friends who have been desperately praying for answers from God. Today, they received those answers, and were blown away by this. One person wrote, “Why do I not expect this to happen?” Now, for the moment at least, they are motivated to pray more. 

 In a few minutes I will walk to the back of our property, by the river, where there is an old table, and my praying chair. I’ll bring my journal, Bible, and a cup of coffee. I will meet with my God and pray. I will pray for others. I will listen to God speak to me. And it shall be good. 

At this point in my life, I rarely leave these praying times without feeling encouraged and strengthened. I pray. A lot. I do this because “Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him.” (Luke 22:29) What Jesus did there was: 1) instruct his disciples to watch and pray. 2) pray, himself. 

 “As usual,” Jesus went to the Mount of Olives, and prayed. “As was his habit.” Praying was Jesus’s customary way of doing life. Praying was a way of life for Jesus. If Jesus habitually did this, who am I, one of his followers, not to? 

 I heard of a sign, supposedly on the Alaskan Highway, where the road turned from pavement to dirt. It read: “Choose your rut carefully. You’ll be in it for the next hundred miles.” Choose a praying life. Over time, it will become your habit, something you engage in, as usual. 

 Love, 

 PJ 

 COUNSEL 

 Identify one day, during the week, to pray for an hour. 

 Identify a place of least distraction, where you will do this. 

 Do it weekly.

From my book 31 Letters to the Church on Praying.

When Does a Human Life Begin?

 

 

(Frost on car window)

"An amicus curiae (literally, "friend of the court"; plural: amici curiae) often referred to as amicus brief is defined as the legal brief where someone who is not a party to a case assists a court by offering information, expertise, or insight that has a bearing on the issues in the case. The decision on whether to consider an amicus brief lies within the discretion of the court. The phrase amicus curiae is legal Latin and its origin of the term has been dated back to 1605-1615. The scope of amicus curiae is generally found in the cases where broad public interests are involved and concerns regarding civil rights are in question." (From Wikipedia)

One of the legal briefs accepted by the Supreme Court in the Dobbs case regarding abortion rights concerned the following.

(From the brief.) 

"Amici curiae are biologists who work at colleges, universities, and other institutions in 15 countries around the world.

The fertilization view is widely recognized—in the literature and by biologists—as the leading biological view on when a human’s life begins... An international survey of academic biologists’ views on when a human’s life begins reported 96% of 5,577 participants affirmed the fertilization view. 

Fertilization, generally, marks the beginning of a sexually reproducing organism’s life and, specifically, marks the beginning of a human’s life, as it is the point at which a human first comes into physical existence as an organism that is biologically classified as a member of the Homo sapiens species."

When someone asks me why I am against abortion, my response is: 

Because I am against killing an innocent, defenseless human being.

Pastors - Want to Read a Book with Me?

Next Sunday at Redeemer we begin preaching through the book of Exodus. We'll finish in mid-January. 

In addition to looking at commentaries on the text, I just purchased Israel In and Out of Egypt: The Archaeological and Historical Background to the Exodus.

If there is a pastor or two (or more) who wants to join me in reading this book, let me know. Perhaps we could meet to discuss on a Zoom call, in January.

johnpiippo@msn.com