God Knows How to Humble Us

A few months ago, I attended a conference held by a church where I had filled the pulpit a few times a while back. An elder at the church recognized me, and we chatted briefly.

During the conversation, he laughed and said, "I hope you aren't offended by this, but I remember the car you drive better than I remember your sermons."

I laughed. I wasn't offended, but internally it hurt a bit.

Then, he said, "You drove a Porsche, right?"

No, I have never owned a Porsche.

Of course, by now I am feeling rather awful. He remembered my car better than my sermons, but it turns out he didn't remember my car.

God has a way of showing us that we are less than we thought we were.

Books Read 2018

 

This is what I read in 2018. Every year I plan to read more fiction. Perhaps 2019 will be the year.

Fiction

1.       Thomas Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge
2.     Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
3.       Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

4.       Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, In the First Circle

5.       Scott Turow, Testimony

6.       Scott Turow, Reversible Errors

7.       Alexander Solzhenitsyn, August 1914

8.       Scott Turow, Identical 

Non-Fiction 

9.       Rosaria Butterfield, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert

10.   Committee on Christian Education of the OPC, The Book of Church Order of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church

11.   Sam Quinones, Dreamland: the True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic

12.   Fred Sanders and Scott R. Swain, Retrieving Eternal Generation

13.   David van Drunnen, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms

14.   Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology

15.   Candice Millard, The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey

16.   Ben Sasse, The Vanishing American Adult

17.   David Murray, Jesus on Every Page

18.   Athanasius, On the Incarnation

19.   David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: the Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies

20.   Richard A. Muller, Calvin and the Reformed Tradition

21.   Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments

22.   John H. Walton and J. Harvey Walton, The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest: Covenant, Retribution, and the Fate of the Canaanites

23.   Erik Rifkin and Andrew Lazris, Interpreting Health Benefits and Risks

24.   Cornelius van Til, Christian Apologetics

25.   Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue

26.   G. Hart and John R. Muether, With Reverence and Awe: Returning to the Basics of Reformed Worship

27.   Ron Chernow, Grant

28.   James Bannerman, The Church of Christ, Vol. 1

29.   Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., Resurrection and Redemption

30.   Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible

31.   A. P. Martinich, The Two Gods of Leviathan: Thomas Hobbes on Religion and Politics

32.   James Bannerman, The Church of Christ, Vol. 2

33.   Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand: a Life of Martin Luther

34.   Stuart Robinson, The Church of God as an Essential Element of the Gospel

35.   Rosaria Butterfield, The Gospel Comes with a House Key

36.   James K.A. Smith, You Are What you Love

37.   Carl Trueman, The Creedal Imperative

38.   Thomas Bergler, The Juvenilization of American Christianity

39.   Todd Bordow, What Did Jesus Really Say about Divorce?

40.   Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

41.   James E. Dolezal, All that Is in God

42.   David Vandrunen, God’s Glory Alone

43.   Joel R. Beeke, Overcoming the World

44.   Wallace W. Marshall, Puritanism and Natural Theology

45.   H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture

46.   Corey Miller, Lynn K. Wilder, Vince Eccles, and Latayne C. Scott, Leaving Mormonism

47.   David VanDrunen, ed., The Pattern of Sound Doctrine: Systematic Theology at the Westminster Seminaries

48.   Walter Isaacson, Leonardo Da Vinci

49.   E.J. Young, Thy Word Is Truth

50.   Anthony M. Coniaris, Introducing the Orthodox Church

51.   James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: the Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World

52.   Bob Woodward, Fear

53.   Edmund P. Clowney, The Unfolding Mystery: Discovering Christ in the Old Testament

54.   W. Robert Godfrey, Reformation Sketches

55.   Laurence J. Kotlikoff, Philip Moeller, Paul Solman, Get What’s Yours: the Secrets to Maxing out your Social Security

56.   Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology: Volume 1, Theology

57.   Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

58.   Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology: Volume II, Anthropology and Soteriology