Holy Love

Tony Reinke God

The love
that won on the cross
and wins the world
is a love that is
driven,
determined,
and defined by
holiness.
It is a love that flows out of the heart of a God who is
transcendent,
majestic,
infinite in righteousness,
who loves justices as much as He loves goodness;
who blazes with a
fiery,
passionate
love for Himself above all things.
He is Creator,
Sustainer,
Beginning and End.
He is robed in a splendor
and eternal purity
that is blinding.
He rules,
He reigns,
He rages
and roars,
then bends down to whisper loves songs to His creatures.

-Timothy J. Stoner, The God Who Smokes: Scandalous Meditations on Faith (NavPress, 2008 ) p. 30.

Reading Digest #3 (Feb. 2, 2009)

Tony Reinke .Reading Digest

I appreciate all the nice comments on the YouTube video of my home library. I value your feedback.

And you are probably wondering if I have absentmindedly forgotten about the Reading Digests… Nope, I haven’t forgotten.

For each book I attempt to communicate the following information: % read, rating out of 5 stars, and a brief summary.

DEVOTIONS …

Judges. I am currently reading through this OT book very slowly, traversing this period of the Warlords with a trusty handbook (Bruce Waltke’s chapter in An Old Testament Theology).

Psalms. My goal is to read and meditate on a single Psalm each week, reading Derek Kidner’s commentary, gleaning personal edification from each chapter, and writing my meditations into a short essay. Currently meditating on Psalm 3 (essays completed and posted on Psalm 1 and 2).

CURRENTLY READING …

Halls of Fame: Essays by John D’Agata (50%, 4.00 stars). D’Agata is one of the most creative essayists of our generation, blending poetry and prose together until they dissolve into a single artful style. Not written from a Christian worldview.

Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style by Virginia Tufte (30%, 3.40 stars). Collection of over 1,000 sentences from the writings of the modern literary greats, organized topically, with syntactical exegesis to expound the stylistic construction of each sentence. I love the organization, the format, and the depth of explanation. Few books on style are as valuable. Artful Sentences is a rare book that excels at explaining abstract style within concrete examples straight from the pages of modern literature.

The God Who Smokes: Scandalous Meditations on Faith by Timothy J. Stoner (20%, 2.80 stars). Stoner is a very snappy writer, plainly discussing the blunt side of Scripture with a raw honesty I appreciate. Stoner makes no apology about the complexity of God’s character; God is a blazing furnace that singes mountains and a tender and merciful father that welcomes prodigal sons home. This book comprises part of a comparative study I’ve begun to evaluate the different ways God’s holiness is currently being communicated by the church to our culture.

Unpacking Forgiveness: Biblical Answers for Complex Questions and Deep Wounds by Chris Brauns (50%, ^3.50 stars). Good book on how Christians forgive others. Written with immediate application in mind. Explains the fascinating (and I think biblical) concept of forgiving others for their sin only when they ask for forgiveness and not before.

Uprooting Anger: Biblical Help For a Common Problem by Robert D. Jones. (50%, ^3.90 stars). Anger may manifest itself as red-hot or ice-cold. Anger is the manifestation of sin rooted in selfish unmet desires, fears, idols, comforts, passions etc (James 4). Very helpful book.

Getting Things Done by David Allen (60%, 4.30 stars). The classic book on personal planning and time management. I have recently implemented a computer-based system to help organize projects and have seen the fruit (OmniFocus). Allen helps clarify for me the conceptual framework of how best to utilize this and other tools of organization.

RECENTLY COMPLETED …

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath (100%, 4.50 stars). Marketing and communication book. “Sticky” has become a new word in my daily language and a persisting challenge to rethink what I say and how I say it. Writers, preachers, and really anyone else in communications, will benefit from this wonderfully sticky book.

White House Ghosts: Presidents and their Speechwriters by Robert Schlesinger (100%, 2.90 stars). Listening to a gifted president flex his oratorical muscle is an act so riveting that a whole nation will stop to listen. Yet behind most presidential speeches is a team of tireless writers who go unnamed and unnoticed. What they say about making sausage is true of making presidential speeches. Eye-opening.

The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller (100%, 4.00 stars). Excellent book making clear God’s abundant mercy, forgiveness, and the free grace offered to sinners in the gospel. Keller’s book takes the jackhammer to my concrete pedestal of self-righteousness.

Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose (65%, 4.50 stars). Riveting story of Easy Company during WWII. I read this over Christmas vacation and was so captured by the story that I put the book aside to watch the HBO series with my wife (finished part 7 last night).

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin (80%, ^2.80 stars). Leadership. Groups stand around together, tribes communicate and provoke one another. How do leaders harness the potential of these online tribes and lead them via Web 2.0—blogs, Facebook, Twitter. The book improved at about the 30% mark but was not overall impressive.

ON THE DOCKET …

A. Lincoln: A Biography by Ronald C. White, Jr. A spanking new, and highly endorsed, biography of president Lincoln. A hearty 900-page volume that I expect will be worth the time!

Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling by Andy Crouch. Dipped into this book long enough to know this is a book I want to read cover-to-cover.

Death By Love: Letters from the Cross by Mark Driscoll. The cross of Christ, applied to personal sin and trials, and written in the form of letters from a pastor.

My Library

Tony Reinke Books, Reading

Blog readers, you are like one big, happy, functional family to me. And to those of you who quietly lurk, waiting for the next round in the infralapsarianism vs. supralapsarianism debate to erupt, you are part of the family too, making us a bit less functional, but more like a real American family.

Which is why I would love to invite you over to my house to grill burgers and talk books. I can imagine us now—eating, laughing, disagreeing, and reconciling like real blog families do, then stepping into my modest library to peruse titles and talk about books and theology until the wee hours of the night.

But alas; we are separated by distance.

And my library will not fit in a camera frame.

But if I had a dollar for every time you requested a picture of my library I could have easily funded my film project: My Library (2009).

My Library was written, produced, funded, filmed, and acted out by me. It had a total budget of $0mil, was filmed in less than 8 minutes, and was uploaded to YouTube in a torturous span of 3 hours. So I hope you like it.

And please leave nice comments. Nothing like: “Wow. Why are you so disorganized and messy, man? I’m amazed you can find anything!”

Be nice.

Big Mac with Cheese + Incarnational Ministry

Tony Reinke spurgeon

“…so much that passes for spirituality these days is nothing more than middle class, 20something coffee culture. If you like jazz, soul patches, earth tone furniture, and lattes, that’s cool. But this culture is no holier than the McNugget, Hi-C, Value City, football culture that most people live in. Why does incarnational ministry usually mean hanging out at Starbucks instead of McDonalds? Jesus came to save Grimace and Hamburglar too.”

Kevin DeYoung

Psalm 2: Return of the King

Tony Reinke Psalms

psalm2
Christ, the Anointed Son, sits on a throne. His rule stretches to the corners of creation. Every trickle of authority in heaven and on earth is now under his rule. No one–no pharaoh, no king, no president, is outside his reign. The Sovereign authority of the Son encompasses all people—from every racial origin, from all the continents of the globe. All have been created to serve and worship and glorify Him, and to enjoy the rich blessings of an eternal kingdom.

The Anointed has cast his rope of authority over all men.

But man rages against God, thrusting knives at the ropes of authority—as if the chords were an ambush, like a net contracted around a trapped animal, hanging helplessly in the air for its hunter.

Man forms alliances to build strength against the Anointed.

The Lord in heaven laughs at man’s rage.

No less a rebel is the man who ignores God. He refuses to pursue God. The fool says in his heart that God is nothing, a phantom, an impotent and imagined delusion. God is to him an unnecessary distraction from the banquet of selfish desires (Ps. 10:4, 14:1-3, Rom. 3:11). The fool has become His enemy by intentional ignorance.

The Lord in heaven laughs at man’s delusions.

The kings of the world conspire together to murder the Anointed Son. False accusations, slander, violence, spit, lashes, nails–all reveal the hatred. Cold death descends with the darkness. But Christ’s murder breaks a pathway down into the ground that opens upward to enthroned exaltation. The throne is a reward for His death.

The Lord in heaven laughs at man’s wisdom.

The kings of the earth rage against the gospel, persecute believers, threaten violence, destroy families, kill, disband churches, imprison leaders, refuse the distribution of bibles, silence preachers.

The Lord laughs. The church grows. Convictions strengthen. The gospel spreads (Acts 4:19-31).

The Lord laughs because the Anointed is returning. Soon Christ will end the mutiny. He will step down from his throne with an iron scepter in his fist to shatter his enemies like glassware (Rev. 2:27). He will step back into this world to tread his enemies with the sole of His feet, thrusting down on his enemies the winepress of his wrath, crimson blood soaking the bottom of his white robe (Isa. 63:3).

This is the Jesus we never knew—or the Jesus many would like to forget. But this is the real Jesus, the anointed King who will return to fulfill thousands of years of expectations and anticipations of God’s people. He will fix every injustice, dry every tear, and remove the handcuffs of evil from his people and his world.

But before the Son returns with His scepter in his fist, He stretches out mercy in his hand. The Anointed bids sinners to come, to kiss the ring of His Lordship, to find refuge from the wrath.

The King’s heart throbs with love towards sinners. The Anointed takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather hopes that sinners turn and live.

Captured in Psalm 2 are life-shaping realities:

The only refuge from the wrath of the King is to find refuge in the King.

The day of wrath upon His enemies is also the day of deliverance for His people.

His return is meaningless for none.

Perhaps you kick violently against God’s authority, thrusting knives at the bonds of His authority. Perhaps you plug your ears, unwilling to pursue Him. Perhaps you find your heart somewhere in the middle. It matters little. The King’s return is imminent.

Kiss His hand. Bow under His rightful authority. Humbly and joyfully take up His yoke. And find in Him a place of refuge where sinners are given forgiveness in His blood, safety, justice, salvation, spiritual riches and eternal joy. Blessed are all who take refuge in Him.

———-

Illustration by MarkLawrenceGallery.com