For over a month I’ve been looking forward to “August Sabbath,” as my wife is calling it, a break from a lot of things. For the family it’s a break from a very busy season we’ve moved through. It feels like we’re finally able to breathe again. We’ll be traveling together a little and be hanging out more together and spending more time with friends. Personally, I’ll be taking a month-long break from online media consumption, personal email, and personal social media — an intensive media detox.

At the same time, I’ve had a lingering idea for a book that keeps percolating and coming back to me in the quiet moments of my days. It’s the kind of thing I want to just sit down and write, which I’m planning to do in August, with the aim of writing a draft of the first 10,000 words to see what emerges. Generally, it will again center on the inherent tensions we feel when we’re walking out our life in Christ and our nerve endings rub against the digital age and the technological advancements proliferating around us. It’s an amazing time to be alive, and it poses innumerable challenges to our souls. I was hoping by this point we would be inundated by authors capable of connecting biblical priorities into the challenges of the tech age, but I’m honestly not seeing them. So, I guess I’ll press into what I’m seeing myself. It may be the first book I write and scrap. Who knows? The Lord knows. What I DO know is that this type of writing is always therapeutic to me as I work out perplexing questions in my own life. I write to get things off my mind, and that will be the immediate fruit of the labor in August.

Speaking of books, the cover for my next book is done and again it looks great (hat-tip to Josh Dennis at Crossway!). The new cover will tie in with iPhone Guy on the previous book. I think the pre-order page at Amazon will be up in September. This next book is specifically about the tensions we feel in our call to live Christ-centered lives in a very loud media-centered age. It’s my most heavily researched book, page-for-page, a 120-page essay that communicates a heavy burden I didn’t have time to address in 12Ways. The book is due out in April 2019. I’ll share more when I return.

Also, the second edition of The Joy Project is now out, too, a joint effort from DG and Cruciform. It’s now titled: The Joy Project: An Introduction to Calvinism (with Study Guide). The content and the narrative arc are identical to the original 2015 version, but the language has been sharpened from beginning to end. John Piper kindly put his foreword on it. New endorsements from J.I. Packer and others have been added. The subtitle has been made clearer, and the new study guide makes the whole thing more useful for personal meditation and also in Bible study groups, which is where the book has found a happy home. Key to this revision were the many pastors who purchased the book in bulk, and who reached out to help shape this new manifestation of the book to better fit how they were using it in their local churches, namely in getting started classes and information tables, church bookstores, and really anywhere were a short introduction to reformed soteriology was useful. For individual paperbacks, check Amazon. For single and bulk purchases, check Cruciform.

As always, I appreciate your prayers and support. I get to do what I do because so many of you support me, and I’m deeply grateful to God for each of you. Thank you!

Tony