book recommendations

Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers (Crossway, 2020), by Dane Ortlund, has been very well received in the broader Reformed and evangelical world. I was asked to review this book years ago, but it seemed that any form of engagement other than full appreciation was going...

Everyone desires to live the “good life.” Most people want a productive and successful life, with happy relationships, pleasures, financial security, peace, and comfort. Some strive for a life of notoriety or fame on a grand scale and desire a platform and a ‘following.’ Productivity, good...

Truth Changes Everything: How People of Faith Can Transform the World in Times of Crisis by Jeff Myers Baker, 2022 256 pages, paper, $17.99 We have all heard or read the alarming statistics. Children from Christian homes, it seems, are just as likely as their secular peers to believe that...

Expository Outlines & Observations on Romans: Hints and Helps for Preachers and Teachers. Ross-shire: Mentor, 2023 Rob Ventura If you walked into any pastor’s study and started looking through his library, you would find that his section on Paul’s letter to the Romans takes up more bookshelf...

Crossway’s newly published Volume 7 of Owen’s Complete Works is made up of two treatises: The Reason of Faith (p.71-208) and The Causes, Ways, and Means of Understanding the Mind of God (p. 209-349). It features an excellent Editor’s Introduction, situating John Owen and this particular volume in...

The Scandal of Undisciplined Disciples: Making Church Discipline Edifying. James Durham. Reformation Heritage Books, 2022. 165 pp. Softcover. $14. The dying words of Rev. James Durham (1622-1658) [1] was his major writing on the vital need for proper ecclesiastical disciplinary procedures in, A...

You are a pastor in a small city. You’ve known your barber for almost twenty years. One day while he trims he asks for help in prayer. He, like many others, struggles in that area. So, you decide to go home and write a brief thirty-four page guide for him. You even incorporate your friend in the...

“In the Last Days of Narnia, far up to the west.” This is how C.S. Lewis begins the end of The Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle . I reread this book last year, right in the middle of the pandemic lock-downs, and since doing so I’ve found myself more and more referring to the book to help find...

Our intrepid (and never tepid) co-hosts welcome good friend Linda Finlayson to the mix. She’s a well-known writer of children’s books, who—for the second time—risks her reputation by sitting down with Carl and Todd to talk about her latest release. God’s Bible Timeline: The Big Book of Biblical...

As far as I know none of the books on my list have much to say about global pandemics. But they do have much to say about the goodness and sovereignty of God, anxiety, and our eternal hope. Knowing God by J.I. Packer A contemporary classic that can be read and benefitted from in every season of...