Three short books: With Him, God Speaks Life & Cross Centered Life

I read these three short books. Due to time, I didn't think they were really worth a post each, but with their powers combined, I might put a little summary of each for my own future reference.

With Him by Ken G. Smith

The subtitle of this book is A Biblical model of Discipleship for Men. Although this book is aimed at men, even the author points out it is pretty transferable to women. I think the author just wanted a bit of a pun with the "him" being either doing something with your fellow mate or Jesus. In fact, I think the author was the guy who took Rosaria Butterfield under his wing and showed her Jesus by doing things together, like having a meal, so I don't think he thinks girls have germs or anything. So why target men in particular in this book? Maybe because men need more help in this area. Disciplining people involve relationships and generally, men don't really work at many relationships.

Pretty much the title of the book is the whole thing. We should be doing ministry with someone under us, like an apprentice, to help equip someone else to do what you are doing. They, in turn, will get themselves an apprentice to train up and the cycle continues. Training apprentices or disciples (a better word) involves sharing God's truth with them, living a faithful example in front of them and building a friendship with them. Specifically when meeting with your (Jesus') disciple it is good to start off with clear goals about the purpose of meeting, then reading the Bible and praying together, teaching or encouraging them to live in obedience of God's word, getting connected to a church and then to send them out to share the good news with others.

This book was only 60 pages and I paid $7 for it. I am not sure it was worth that much, but I did think it was a worthwhile reminder of something simple that needs to be done. I'm hoping to pass this on to someone, who in turn will put it into practice and then pass it on to someone else... For a slightly longer book on this topic that is also just as practical, I would suggest the Building Healthy Churchs book on Discipling.


The God Who Speaks Life by Andrew Errington

I read this little book as our church had about 20 copies lying around for we had Andrew speak at our church this year and also he was our Weekend Away speaker.

This was like an introduction to what Christians believe. The novel thing about this book is that it would alternate between key points of the Christian belief and practice to the character of God.

The main points of belief and practice touch on creation, evil in the world, salvation by grace alone, living the Christian life in hope, the church and the Bible. In the chapters on God, we learn that He is creator, judge, saviour, life-giver and He is the one and only God.

The chapters in this book are short and mostly revolve around a key Bible passage, of which there are discussion questions. This would be a good resource to use in a small group setting. I am not sure if the alternating chapters will help with the flow from one week to another, but it does mix it up a little bit.

This is an introduction to the Christian faith, so I am not sure if this really is an evangelistic book for the sceptic. It is more for someone starting out on the Christian faith and probably a more adult version of Back to Basics.


The Cross Centered Life by C. J. Mahaney

I received this book as a gift earlier this year for speaking at a Cru event, which was very kind of them. Again, the subtitle of the book explains what this is about: Keeping the Gospel the Main Thing.

After spelling out what the Gospel is (hint: it's about Jesus dying and rising again to save sinners to bring them back to God) and how important it is, C. J. looks at three ways we may forget this message in our everyday life (legalism, condemnation and subjectivism) and then goes on to give us tips in how we can keep remembering the Gospel every day.

I found the legalism bit helpful with an analogy about spinning plates. In the Christian life, we say we should read the Bible, pray, tell others about Jesus, attending small groups and church, etc, and all these are good things, but sometimes a shift in our thinking happens. These good things were a means of experiencing God's grace, and we sometimes turn them into a means of earning God's grace. The Christian life then becomes about our performance and not by God's. We need to learn deep down the difference between justification and sanctification.

There is a chapter on how we should stop listening to ourselves and start talking to ourselves. I had heard C. J. give this talk years back from some conference audio, but it is always a good reminder. We should be speaking back to ourselves the promises of the Bible, which will help break our internal monologue that is more focusing on the immediate and subjective. Tips to help us do this were to memorise passages of the Gospel, pray the Gospel, sing the Gospel, reflect on the Gospel in your life and to study the Gospel but reading good books about it.

I appreciated C. J. honesty about this short book. At the end, he said you may not ever pick this up again, but with some perspective, he emplored the reader to never move from what this book is about: the Gospel. May it be so.