This fall we had the opportunity to send a team from Calvary to the Brazil Gospel Fellowship Mission annual field conference. Members from our team spoke during the main sessions, led music during the conference, led a VBS, led classes and activities for the teens and did childcare for the nursery age children. We also had the chance to serve at a local church plant, Igreja Batista Redenção in Florianópolis, Santa Catarina. It is in this church that Jon & Denielle Johnson and James & Christen Taylor serve. Here is a brief video of our time…
Journal
March Suggested Book of the Month
SUGGESTED BOOK OF THE MONTH
Lord, Teach Me to Pray
by John MacArthur
This book is “an invitation to intimate prayer” and sidesteps much of the unnecessary mysticism that some writers would ascribe to prayer.
Many Christians across our nation view prayer as simply an option and something that is not really necessary except during times of trouble.
In easy-to-understand English, John MacArthur shows Christians from The Word of God how it is God’s will for all His children to pray and that He wants us all to pray consistently.
The book also covers aspects of prayer including confession, praise, petition, hindrances to prayer and motivation to prayer.
Finally, throughout the book are sample prayers by John Macarthur and Charles Spurgeon.
We found this book Here.
Reviewed by Tom Scheimo
The Biggest Story
Book Review
by Kevin DeYoung
With vibrant illustrations, and storytelling that will keep the attention of children (and I dare say, adults), The Biggest Story tells, well, the biggest story of the Bible.
Following the theme of the promised Snake Crusher in Genesis, Kevin DeYoung pulls out the over-riding theme of the Bible shown in God’s faithfulness to his promises despite man’s failure to live in obedience to God —over and over again. As he re-tells major stories from the Old and New Testaments, DeYoung points out types of Christ in Adam, in prophets, in priests, in kings and in judges, to name a few. This book is not your average children’s Bible storybook. It is a valuable tool for any one to use to tie together the familiar smaller stories of the Bible into the big picture. That is, mankind fails and sins with alarming consistency, but God is our ever-faithful Savior. And as we see that he kept his promises to his chosen people, we know that we can trust him to keep his promises not yet fulfilled.
Reviewed by Liz Tramp
A Peculiar Glory
Book Review
A Peculiar Glory, by John Piper
“The glory of God is the ground of faith. It is solid ground.” – John Piper
A Peculiar Glory by John Piper is an argument for the reliability of Scripture. But it is an argument with unusually compelling and powerful evidence – the testimony of Scripture itself and the revealing power of the Holy Spirit to open the eyes of men so that they can see with an undeniable impact the glory of Jesus Christ by means of the Scripture.
The book begins by discussing the existence of the biblical text itself. What books are legitimate for the Old Testament? What about the New Testament? Are the words that we have now actually what the apostles and prophets wrote? Piper argues that the surest way to answer these questions is not through scholarship (although that is valuable) but through the testimony of Scripture itself.
A following section evaluates what Jesus and the Apostles believed and said about the Bible. Scripture indicates that the apostles and prophets and especially Jesus Himself loved and trusted the same books and words that we have today.
The final two chapters are the meat of Piper’s message in this book. His concern is that we too often think that Scripture is reliable because there is such a preponderance of evidence from outside the Bible when in fact the most compelling and foundational reason that we believe the Bible is that God has done something tremendous in believers. Grounded in 2 Corinthians 4, Piper argues that Christians believe the Bible because God has sovereignly opened once-blinded eyes and exposed the “peculiar glory” of Jesus Christ to our hearts. There is no arguing with or explaining away of such an experience and nothing makes the Word of God more delightful than the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
A Peculiar Glory makes the case for the authority of Scripture in a way that is clearly Biblical but often overlooked by Christians. It does so by looking away from man-centered views that appeal to reason and by looking toward a God-centered view that appeals to His sovereign grace. Every true believer has experientially undergone the blindness removing the power of Scripture, but our sinful minds still want to claim credit for our faith. This book is a valuable asset.
Review by Isaac Stanley