Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis.  Mere Christianity is the grand-daddy of the modern introductions to Christianity and still ranks highest on Amazon sales.  Lewis provides both a comprehensive outline of the core of Christianity (part 2) and interacts with the contemporary issues of the day (part 1).  Throughout, he addresses issue of the head and the heart, bringing the faith to bear on all aspects of what it means to be human.  His penetration into the contemporary issues of his day was so deep and far-sighted that his philosophical insights still apply (note that some find this depth of penetration overly strenuous and are bogged down by it).  Of course, many modern thinkers and writers with whom Lewis would relish interacting weren’t around in his day and so he is unable to make his defense to their criticisms.  But this shouldn’t keep anyone from enjoying the most read, most comprehensive introduction to Christianity.  The book is great for anyone interested in grappling with deep things. 1952

Basic Christianity, by John R.W. Stott.  Stott is one of the clearest writers I have encountered.  In this work, he has packed all the essentials into an unbelievably short volume.  It is comprehensive and concise. First written in 1958 and then revised in 1971, this is an ageless presentation of the Christian faith.  The drawback to this approach, however, is that Stott does not find scope here to interact with the contemporary trends of his day (nor ours).  Still, at some point early in your walk with Jesus, you should read this book. 1958, 1971

More than a Carpenter, by Josh McDowell.  McDowell’s book is also focused on the person of Jesus Christ but brings in a broader range of topics than Green’s.  Some of the most famous passages in this book are on the origins and truth of scripture.  It is a simply written book, which is both good and bad.  Millions have found it helpful (10 million in print, they say) but at least some of those have found the arguments to be too simplistic.  It is, after all, only 128 pages long. 1987

Who is this Jesus? by Michael Green.  Green’s scope is more narrow than the others on this list as he focuses  entirely on the person of Jesus Christ.  It is a beautifully argued piece that builds to a crescendo as the various details of the portrait of Jesus come together.  I have often recommended this book to those coming from a Jewish background.  If there is any drawback, it is that it is not as comprehensive as the other works (it is the shortest at 107 pages). 1990

What’s So Great About Christianity, by Dinesh D’Souza.  I almost didn’t include this book as it is more about defending Christianity than introducing it.  Nevertheless, woven throughout the argument is a comprehensive picture of the Christian faith.  For those who like to roll up their sleeves and tussle over the hot-button issues that arise where faith and culture intersect, this is the book.  D’Souza is so refreshingly forthright that it is disarming.  Not all Christians will agree with his conclusions (for example, his perspective on evolution), but the book is certainly worth the read and, very fortifying.   2007

The Reason for God, by Tim Keller.  Of all the books on the list, this one comes closest to being an updated version of C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity and I have a feeling I’ll be recommending to people I’d otherwise be sending to Lewis.  Keller addresses current thought trends in a masterful first part and then presents a comprehensive vision of the faith in the second.  Like Lewis, and absolutely essential to our contemporary context, he considers the rational, emotional and relational implications of both doubt and belief.  In several places, I found it to be truly soul-nourishing, even for someone who already spends a lot of time thinking about these kinds of things.  I recently recommended this book to a friend.  He is a fairly committed atheist, has a PhD in literature and is one of the more skeptical people I know.  He loves it.    2008

Scripture memory is like the flossing of the spiritual life in many people’s eyes.  It is obviously good for you but it feels, well, almost too good.  Flossers and scripture memorizors, they have no rebellion left in them.  They have totally succumbed to goodness in an irritating, Mormon-teenager-on-mission sort of way.  We don’t want to floss and memorize scripture out of fear that we might lose the last idiosyncratic shreds of our individuality.

Last night, I did something I haven’t done in months.  I flossed.  I don’t even know why I did it.  Probably just a glitch in the time/space continuum and I’ll be back to normal soon.  Scripture memory, on the other hand, has been needling its way into my life on and off over the past two years and, in the interest of promoting healthy spirituality (if not healthy teeth), here’s my journey with it.

It started with a group of friends who decided to memorize 100 passages together.  I could never have done it without them.  I needed the fear of being the only one who hadn’t memorized the verse at out monthly meeting to motivate me to get with it.  I think we all needed it.  Soon, however, something started to happen in all of us.  We began to notice that the scriptures, once memorized, were doing something to our souls, something really good.  God would lead us into an area of growth through a particular verse, he would encourage us in a dark time with another, he’d crystallize vision and spawn deeper enthusiasm with yet another.  Suddenly, when our group wasn’t meeting, I began to be aware that something was missing in my life, like a the kind of hunger one feels after a missed meal.  On certain days, a pertinent verse would come to mind and I’d go back and make sure I could still remember it.  It would become the mantra for that day, feeding my soul in the cracks between activities.  Eventually, I figured out a way to get the verses on my blackberry so that they would be always handy.  Now, when I think about memorizing scripture, I don’t feel like some irritating do-gooder, I feel like a guy whose often parched soul has discovered an endless well of heavenly drink.  It is not about memorizing scripture anymore.  It is about communing with my maker.

So, I don’t really care if you floss.  “Go ahead and rot your mouth with gum disease,” says the hygeinist.   But, I can say that memorizing scripture has changed my life.

Some Resources
List of 100 verses to memorize
Revised list in excel spreadsheet
Printable flashcards (side 1) (side 2)
Link to free gflash software for iphone and blackberry flashcards (you’ll need excel spreadsheet too)

Jesus mission is simple (make disciples), but the outworking of it is infinitely varied.  As many  as there are human beings, there are ways to carry out Jesus’ mission.  God delights in taking our unique personality, experiences, gifts, passions, social context, etc. and melding us into his mission agency, the body of Christ, the church.  But figuring out how we fit in is the easy part.  The more critical step is the decision to get on mission in the first place.

I recently passed ten years in full-time ministry and still find “mission creep” (the tendency to get off mission) to be a daily enticement.  During a celebratory personal retreat last month God focused my attention on a word that continues to minister to me: stewardship.  It is super biblical and it carries a host of associations that empower a person to stay on mission.  Here’s how the thinking goes.  Everything that is “me” belongs to Jesus.  I’m just a steward, which means I’m taking care of something (me) that belongs to someone else (Jesus).  My job is to answer the question, “what would Jesus have me do with me (warts and all)?”  Answering that question keeps me on Jesus’ mission.

So, are you on mission today?  Do you own “you” or are you a steward of “you?” What does Jesus want you to do with this resource he’s entrusted to you?

Guarding my heart has become one of my life’s greatest and most challenging callings.  I take comfort in the fact that King David found this challenging work too, as evidenced in the Psalms.  A stray bitterness, an unspoken fear, a cunning yearning unsuspectingly creeps into a heart already predisposed to embrace such things (Jer. 17:9!). I have to use every tool God has given for this important work: scripture, reason, community and prayer.  I work at it but God has the final say.  There is a lot of waiting.  Some days don’t end with resolution.  I’m not the super hero “Heart Man.”  I count it a victory if I notice that something is wrong and just take that to him: “Lord, show me what it is.”  The writer of the Proverbs says, “The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, but the Lord tests the heart.”  He is keenly interested in helping me guard my heart.  It is not an easy process but it is always worth it.

Some of my best memories are of times when my heart was in the right place.  I walked with an easy confidence in the Lord, I made some good decisions, I was truly loving towards the person in front of me.  The longer I follow Christ, the more often I find myself in that sweet place.  I’m learning that I’d rather be there than almost anywhere else.

For more thoughts on the process of guarding the heart, explore these links: scripture, prayer and community.

FIT Inventory

We all know what it feels like to be tailgated. You are not in a particular hurry, you’re minding your own business, enjoying the process of going from one place to the next when, all the sudden, someone is on your tail and driving hard. You can see him right there in the rear view mirror. You can see the bugs on his windshield, even the plaque on the teeth of his grimacing smile. Now your drive has completely changed. What was a joyful journey of discovery has suddenly become a tense and defensive competition.

The same thing happens in the spiritual realm. People need space, time and a process to develop their beliefs. In the end, the beliefs we discuss have to become theirs for there to be anything of substance taking place. Hearing about what someone else believes is an important part of the process but it is not the end goal. When people substitute other’s beliefs for theirs without personalizing them, the result is a fragile faith and inevitable problems down the road.

If you feel like someone is tailgating, a simple phrase will suffice. “Hey, I’m really enjoying our discussion but I’m not ready to tackle that issue yet. Can we come back to it another time?” If you are tailgating, back off! Remember how long it has taken you to put together the pieces of your belief system (and how far you still have to go!).

Some tailgater will object, “shouldn’t we just boldly declare what we believe?” Absolutely. There are moments when “the thing” needs to be said. In my latest conversation with this particular friend, we tackled one of the toughest issues around. I didn’t hold back. But in God’s orchestration, the timing was right. Helping each other find and follow Jesus requires that we remain sensitive to the space, time and process that each person needs.

Her family members were of course most grateful for the Lord’s salvation as He called them to Himself, and as He showed Himself in power among them. But they were also grateful that a Christian brother in a distant land– a man they had never even met, and who had no other connection with them– had been praying faithfully for them. Their gratitude expressed itself in a most natural way: they began praying for me, and for my own church. Isn’t this marvelous?

They were aware that there was no way they could repay the Lord Jesus for His grace revealed in and among them, and they were also aware that they couldn’t (and possibly even shouldn’t) try to repay me in any tangible way. But their gratitude had to be expressed, and so they expressed it in a way that they had come to learn was real and was effective: they lifted up my church before the throne of grace, in prayer for us. And, by the design of the Holy Spirit in building His Church, this was now an instance of the Body of Christ causing ‘the growth of the Body for the building up of itself in love’ (Eph. 4:16).

Have you ever thought about prayer as an expression of love? Have you thought of intercessory prayer for friends and family who are distant as a means of asking the Lord to watch over them and shield them with His love, because you yourself are prevented from doing so because of geography or other complications? If you are prone to episodes of unrequited love (or even just ‘unrequited like’), have you considered that one way to show your love for that person who is at an emotional distance is to pray for them, for their well-being, and for the Lord’s blessing upon them? And in fact, if it is indeed love that you have for this person, there is absolutely no better way to love them truly and biblically than to pray for them. (For those reading this who are perhaps curious, yes, I do have a lot of experience in this!– more’s the pity.)

Prayer is an absolutely marvelous way to express your love, because you are seeking the Lord’s best for that person. As you grow in your own prayer-life and in your understanding of intercessory prayer, in fact you will find yourself increasingly praying not just for temporal things for them but eternal things. As a result, because our God is alive and answers prayer, you will be a factor in changing Eternity. Wow!!

One of my closest friends has said that he attributes the spiritual health of his three children to the fact that, as I was significantly involved in their upbringing when they were young, I was praying for them frequently and fervently. They are now all adults (the youngest turned 21 just days ago), and they are marvelous, marvelous human beings, with real and deepening relationships with the Lord and with His people.

Is there someone for whom you care but are prevented from showing them love? Pray for them, and allow yourself to be a channel of true love for them.

The Apostle Paul says something very commendable and laudatory about his protégé and fellow-worker Timothy, where he describes Timothy as seeking after the interests of Christ. Think about that phrase: can there be a higher compliment? Can this be said truly of you? Of me? (And isn’t this reminiscent of another young man of God, King David, a man after God’s own heart?)

What would it look like to see a person seeking after the interests of Christ? Well, chief among Christ’s interests is the salvation of men, women, and children — “so that whoever believes in Him may not perish, but have eternal life” — and so a person seeking Christ’s interests will be doing what he or she can to bring this about, whether it’s praying earnestly, or sharing with friends and family the Good News about forgiveness of sins, or supporting missionaries whether financially or by laboring in prayer for them. In fact, a Christian may be so taken up with Christ’s interests that, like the Apostle Paul, he or she may grieve deeply over the state of those who are outside of Christ (Rom. 9:1–5; also Matt. 5:4, Ps. 126:5–6).

Further, a person seeking after the interests of Christ will be diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit within the Church (Eph. 4:3). They will not expect this unity simply just to happen, but instead they will be actively promoting unity, by caring for one another, praying for one another, and being humble and forbearing towards one another (Phil. 2:7, Col. 3:12–14).

And of course one seeking after the interests of Christ will truly love His people, knowing that not only is this one of His deepest desires (Jn. 13:34–35), but it is also one of the most powerful testimonies to who He is (Jn. 13:35, 17:20–23).

There are any number of other such interests we could name, but for us to develop a heart such as Timothy had, a heart which seeks after the interests of Christ, we must spend much time with Him, learning of Him, listening to His Word, and praying earnestly.

But Carson does not begin with this. Instead, he scrutinizes many activities and fundamental perspectives offered up as being the most urgent need in the church of the Western world— things such as personal holiness and purity, sound thinking on human dignity, encroaching materialism, or more intentional evangelism— and finds them each a very good thing, and yet not at the core. At the core, he says, at the root, “The one thing we most urgently need in Western Christendom is a deeper knowledge of God. We need to know God better.” (This is indeed the same point made in J.I. Packer’s Knowing God, another recommended book.)

The thrust of Carson’s book is to address “one small but vital part of that challenge. One of the foundational steps in knowing God, and one of the basic demonstrations that we do know God, is prayer— spiritual, persistent, biblically minded prayer. Writing a century and a half ago, Robert Murray M’Cheyne declared, ‘What a man is alone on his knees before God, that he is, and no more.’ We have learned to organize, build institutions, publish books, insert ourselves into the media, develop evangelistic strategies, and administer discipleship programs, but we have forgotten how to pray.”

He goes on, “Shall we not agree with J.I. Packer when he writes, ‘I believe that prayer is the measure of the man, spiritually, in a way that nothing else is, so that how we pray is as important a question as we can ever face’? Can we profitably meet the other challenges that confront the Western church if prayer is ignored as much as it has been?”

Well, then! His purpose is to help us think through Paul’s prayers, to evaluate them, and thus to bring our own intercessory prayers in line with the emphases displayed in Scripture, but not just as a means to be praying ‘more biblically’; instead, the purpose is to show us the Lord’s heart and ambitions for His people, and to show us how our own prayers can help bring that about— to get us to pray.

He then devotes a chapter each to eight prayers of Paul for those in his care, such as 2 Thess. 1:3-12, Col. 1:9-14, Eph. 3:14-21 (how magnificent!), and Eph. 1:15-23. The writing is in depth, but not so deep as to suffocate the reader, instead he is deepening our understanding of the Apostle’s heart and thus the Lord’s heart. If I may interject a personal note: many years ago I memorized a significant portion of the book of the Ephesians, and years later I was put in a position of pastoral care for an adult Sunday School group. Not knowing how to care well for them yet feeling a huge desire for their spiritual growth, I went back frequently to Eph. 1, drew upon Paul’s prayer in vv. 15-19, and made it my own, knowing that, even though it didn’t cover everything they needed, there was much in there that I wanted them to have in their spiritual lives.

I recommend this book by Carson quite highly. It is useful either to read alone or to use in a small study group, because Carson has provided questions at the end of each chapter for that purpose. I have bought several copies and given them to people that I think will be aided by the content and the encouragement to pray.

Intercessory prayer is not easy; on the contrary it is hard, sometimes lonely work. But if you wish to pray in such a way that Time and Eternity will be changed, if you wish to seek the Lord’s face and His heart and His will on matters of eternal significance, this book can be a useful tool to challenge and encourage you.

Most people comfort themselves by the thought that they are seeking “God” and that, therefore, all should work out well. The issue becomes more sensitive, however, when we begin to reflect on how Jesus taught that he himself is God. If we grant the truth of this claim, than for anyone truly to seek God, he or she must recognize God in Christ. To choose away from Christ is to choose away from God. This is why Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” The alternative is to deny that Jesus is God, but to do so is to say he must have been deluded or a liar. Neither of these options are consistent with the soundness of his teaching nor the impact he’s had on human history. So we are confronted with this unique circumstance: he claims to be God (usually an indication of craziness) but in every way appears anything but deluded or false. No one in the history of the world combines such a radical claim with so much sanity. As one person put it, “No one has ever thought of the word Jesus should have said.” To pursue God is to pursue Christ.

Given this background, how should a thoughtful, loving Christian go about sharing his or her faith with others? We often make this more complicated than it needs to be. At bottom, it is no different than telling someone about some aspect of who we are. There are all kinds of ways to do this, depending on personality. Most people just need to find their voice. The “Faith Story” worksheet and the book recommendations below will help you to do just that (see especially, “Becoming a Contagious Christian.”)

There are some important principles to remember. 1) Sharing our faith, contrary to how it can feel sometimes, is actually the loving thing to do. Not sharing is an act of selfishness. 2) Avoid slipping into a “you are my project” mentality. God brings non-believers into our lives for myriad reasons (for friendship, to teach us something, so that we might share our faith, etc) and being open to developing a full orbed relationships where there is both give and take is what is expected of us. 3) Be open to all kinds of opportunities. Sometimes we obsess about one person (usually a family member) and close our eyes to other opportunities around us. It is all about God’s timing and it is a shame to waste good opportunities while we focus all our effort on that one person who might not be ready yet. 4) Learn to pray and pay attention to God’s promptings. One of the greatest aspects of sharing our faith is the way it helps us to develop a richer, more urgent relationship with the Lord. 5) Finally, sharing your faith is easier in community. Talk to your friends about what is going on and ask them to pray.

Scriptures
Matthew 9:36
Proverbs 24:11-12
Matthew 28:19-20
John 14:6

Gospel Presentation Pathways
Two Ways to Live
The Bridge to Life
Do versus Done
The Roman Road

Resources
My Faith Story (worksheet)
Out of the Saltshaker, by Becky Pippert
Becoming Contagious Christian, by Bill Hybels and Mark Mittleberg
Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, by J.I. Packer
The Master Plan of Evangelism, by Robert Coleman
Just Walk Across the Room, by Bill Hybels

Projects
1. Work out your faith story and practice sharing it with the people in your Home Group
2. Choose a Gospel presentation pathway and have someone in your home group pretend to be a non-believing friend while you share the Gospel with him or her.
3. Along with your Home Group members, commit to share the Gospel at least once this week. At the next meeting, share your stories.