All of Keller’s sermons and talks were recently made available free on the Gospel in Life site. His sermons and books will continue to influence people for many years to come.
Below are reviews and favorite quotes from the first six (of twelve) of my favorite books that he wrote:
Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work by Timothy Keller with Katherine Leary Alsdorf. Dutton Adult. 288 pages. 2012.
I read this book for the first time shortly after it was published in 2012. It was the first of now dozens of books that I have read about the integration of our faith and work, and still one of the best and influential I’ve read, perhaps second only to Dan Doriani’s Work: It’s Purpose, Dignity, and Transformation.
Keller tells us that in the beginning, God worked. Work was not a necessary evil that came into the picture later, or something human beings were created to do but that was beneath the great God himself. God worked for the sheer joy of it. Work could not have a more exalted inauguration. The book of Genesis tells us that work was part of paradise, as God commissioned workers to continue his work.
Keller writes that work is as much a basic human need as food, beauty, rest, friendship, prayer, and sexuality; it is not simply medicine but food for our soul. Without meaningful work we sense significant inner loss and emptiness. People who are cut off from work because of physical or other reasons quickly discover how much they need work to thrive emotionally, physically, and spiritually. In fact, he tells us that work is so foundational to our makeup, it is one of the few things we can take in significant doses without harm. The loss of work is deeply disturbing because we were designed for it. According to the Bible, we do not merely need the money from work to survive; we need the work itself to survive and live fully human lives.
Keller tells us that work is not all there is to life. You will not have a meaningful life without work, but you cannot say that your work is the meaning of your life. If you make any work the purpose of your life—even if that work is church ministry—you create an idol that rivals God.
He addresses different common ideas about work – first, that it is a necessary evil. The only good work, in this view, he tells us, is work that helps make us money so that we can support our families and pay others to do menial work. Second, we believe that lower-status or lower-paying work is an assault on our dignity. He contrasts that with the biblical view of these matters, which is utterly different. Work of all kinds, whether with the hands or the mind, evidences our dignity as human beings—because it reflects the image of God the Creator in us.
Work has dignity because it is something that God does and because we do it in God’s place, as his representatives. We learn not only that work has dignity in itself, but also that all kinds of work have dignity. He tells us that no task is too small a vessel to hold the immense dignity of work given by God. We were built for work and the dignity it gives us as human beings, regardless of its status or pay.
Keller tells us that work is our design and our dignity; it is also a way to serve God through creativity, particularly in the creation of culture. If we are to be God’s image-bearers regarding creation, then we will continue his pattern of work. He writes that a biblical understanding of work energizes our desire to create value from the resources available to us.
Keller discusses our calling, indicating that our daily work can be a calling only if it is reconceived as God’s assignment to serve others. He addresses the concept of vocation and how it changed during the Protestant Reformation when Luther taught that God calls every Christian equally to their work.
Keller addresses many helpful topics in this book, such as how the gospel impacts our work: loving our neighbors through our work; making a name for ourselves; Christian worldview implications and idols in fields such as business, journalism, arts, and medicine; wisdom on choosing our work, rest, and many more.
The book concludes with an Epilogue which tells how Redeemer Presbyterian Church has made vocational discipleship—helping people integrate their faith and work—a major focus of its overall ministry. The authors encourage every church to develop something similar that fits its own context.
Throughout the book, Keller uses scripture and stories to helpfully illustrate the points he makes. This would be a good book to read and discuss, especially with co-workers. Below are 20 of my favorite quotes:
• Our work can be a calling only if it is reimagined as a mission of service to something beyond merely our own interests.
• Simple physical labor is God’s work no less than the formulation of theological truth.
• Through our work we bring order out of chaos, create new entities, exploit the patterns of creation, and interweave the human community.
• We are to see work as a way of service to God and our neighbor, and so we should both choose and conduct our work in accordance with that purpose.
• The gospel frees us from the relentless pressure of having to prove ourselves and secure our identity through work, for we are already proven and secure. It also frees us from a condescending attitude toward less sophisticated labor and from envy over more exalted work.
• There may be no better way to love your neighbor, whether you are writing parking tickets, software, or books, than to simply do your work.
• All jobs—not merely so-called helping professions—are fundamentally ways of loving your neighbor.
• Your daily work is ultimately an act of worship to the God who called and equipped you to do it—no matter what kind of work it is.
• There will be work in the paradise of the future just like there was in the paradise of the past, because God himself takes joy in his work.
• We have to ask whether our work or organization or industry makes people better or appeals to the worst aspects of their characters.
• One of the reasons work is both fruitless and pointless is the powerful inclination of the human heart to make work, and its attendant benefits, the main basis of one’s meaning and identity.
• We either get our name—our defining essence, security, worth, and uniqueness—from what God has done for us and in us, or we make a name through what we can do for ourselves.
• The gospel worldview will have all kinds of influence—profound and mundane, strategic and tactical—on how you actually do your work.
• To be a Christian in business, then, means much more than just being honest or not sleeping with your coworkers. It even means more than personal evangelism or holding a Bible study at the office. Rather, it means thinking out the implications of the gospel worldview and God’s purposes for your whole work life—and for the whole of the organization under your influence.
• Work is a major instrument of God’s providence; it is how he sustains the human world.
• Christians should place a high value on all human work (especially excellent work), done by all people, as a channel of God’s love for his world.
• Christians must remain absolutely committed to an understanding of human rights based on the image of God.
• We all work for an audience, whether we are aware of it or not. Christians look to an Audience of One, our loving heavenly Father, and that gives us both accountability and joy in our work.
• To violate the rhythm of work and rest (in either direction) leads to chaos in our life and in the world around us. Sabbath is therefore a celebration of our design.
• In the Christian view, the way to find your calling is to look at the way you were created. Your gifts have not emerged by accident, but because the Creator gave them to you.
Keller tells us that the book is both for believers who find the Bible a trustworthy guide, and for those who wonder if Christianity is a positive influence in the world. He also wants to challenge those who do not believe in Christianity to see the Bible not as a repressive text, but as the basis for the modern understanding of human rights.
Keller begins each chapter with a call to justice taken directly from the Bible to show how those words can become the foundation of a just, generous human community. His aim is to introduce many to a new way of thinking about the Bible, justice, and grace.
Keller writes that our society is deeply divided over the very definition of justice. It is not only Bible-believing people who care about justice or are willing to sacrifice to bring it about. Nearly everyone thinks they are on justice’s side. He writes that no current political framework can fully convey the comprehensive Biblical vision of justice, and that Christians should never identify too closely with a particular political party or philosophy.
Keller tells us that doing justice is an important part of living the Christian life in the world. No heart that loves Christ can be cold to the vulnerable and the needy. Anyone who has truly been touched by the grace of God will be vigorous in helping the poor. Keller tells us that there is a direct relationship between a person’s grasp and experience of God’s grace, and his or her heart for justice and the poor.
Keller looks at this topic from many perspectives, including the Old Testament and the concept of leaving the gleanings of the harvest for the poor, Jesus, Paul, James, the parable of the Good Samaritan, and more. Among the topics addressed in the book are poverty, pursuing justice as an individual and as a church, partnering with non-believers, meeting the needs of your neighbor, motivations for doing justice, racism, social reform and loving people in word and deed.
You may not agree with everything in this book, and that’s OK. Keller has been accused of being too conservative by liberals and too liberal by conservatives. What is important is to thoughtfully engage in what he has to say on this important topic.
Below are some helpful quotes from the book:
- God loves and defends those with the least economic and social power, and so should we. That is what it means to “do justice.”
- If God’s character includes a zeal for justice that leads him to have the tenderest love and closest involvement with the socially weak, then what should God’s people be like? They must be people who are likewise passionately concerned for the weak and vulnerable.
- We must have a strong concern for the poor, but there is more to the Biblical idea of justice than that.
- We do justice when we give all human beings their due as creations of God. Doing justice includes not only the righting of wrongs, but generosity and social concern, especially toward the poor and vulnerable. This kind of life reflects the character of God. It consists of a broad range of activities, from simple fair and honest dealings with people in daily life, to regular, radically generous giving of your time and resources, to activism that seeks to end particular forms of injustice, violence, and oppression.
- It is clearly God’s will that all societies reflect his concern for justice for the weak and vulnerable.
- One of the main reasons we cannot fit the Bible’s approach into a liberal or conservative economic model is the Scripture’s highly nuanced understanding of the causes of poverty.
- Poverty is seen in the Bible as a very complex phenomenon. Several factors are usually intertwined. The three causes of poverty, according to the Bible, are oppression, calamity, and personal moral failure.
- The churches of America are often more controlled by the surrounding political culture than by the spirit of Jesus and the prophets. Conservative churches tend to concentrate on one set of sins, while liberal ones concentrate on another set.
- The Bible is clear that Christians’ practical love, their generous justice, is not to be confined to only those who believe as we do.
- Do you love God with every fiber of your being every minute of the day? Do you meet the needs of your neighbor with all the joy, energy, and fastidiousness with which you meet your own needs? That is the kind of life you owe your God and your fellow human beings.
- Only if you see that you have been saved graciously by someone who owes you the opposite will you go out into the world looking to help absolutely anyone in need.
- The Bible gives believers two basic motivations—joyful awe before the goodness of God’s creation, and the experience of God’s grace in redemption.
- We must treasure each and every human being as a way of showing due respect for the majesty of their owner and Creator.
- The image of God is the first great motivation for living lives of generous justice, serving the needs and guarding the rights of those around us.
- The most frequently cited Biblical motivation for doing justice is the grace of God in redemption.
- If a person has grasped the meaning of God’s grace in his heart, he will do justice.
- If he (believer) doesn’t care about the poor, it reveals that at best he doesn’t understand the grace he has experienced, and at worst he has not really encountered the saving mercy of God. Grace should make you just.
- If you look down at the poor and stay aloof from their suffering, you have not really understood or experienced God’s grace.
- When Christians who understand the gospel see a poor person, they realize they are looking into a mirror. Their hearts must go out to him or her without an ounce of superiority or indifference.
- God does not want us to merely give the poor perfunctory help, but to ponder long and hard about how to improve their entire situation.
- If you are a Christian, and you refrain from committing adultery or using profanity or missing church, but you don’t do the hard work of thinking through how to do justice in every area of life—you are failing to live justly and righteously.
- Racial prejudice is wrong because it is a denial of the very principle that all human beings are equally sinful and saved by only the grace of God.
- Deeds of mercy and justice should be done out of love, not simply as a means to the end of evangelism. And yet there is no better way for Christians to lay a foundation for evangelism than by doing justice.
- Doing justice necessitates a striking a series of balances. It means ministering in both word and deed, through the local church and as individual agents dispersed throughout the world. It means engaging in relief, and development, and reform.
- When believers seek to do justice in the world, they often find it both necessary and desirable to work with others who do not share their faith.
- In Jesus Christ God identified not only with the poor, but also with those who are denied justice.
This is the best book on prayer that I have read, and I have read several. I have read and discussed it with others on two occasions. Our discussions would move slowly, as there is so much rich material on prayer in the fifteen chapters in this book. This book will challenge you and your prayer life.
Keller writes that prayer is both conversation and encounter with God. He tells us that these two concepts give us definition of prayer and a set of tools for deepening our prayer lives. He tells us that prayer is both awe and intimacy, struggle, and reality. These will not happen every time we pray, but each should be a major component of our prayer over the course of our lives.
He writes of wanting a far better personal prayer life. As a result, he began to read widely and experiment in prayer. In his pursuit of a deeper prayer life, he deliberately avoided reading any new books on prayer. Instead, he went back to the historical texts of Christian theology that had formed him and began asking questions about prayer and the experience of God.
In addition, he made four practical changes to his life of private devotion. First, he took several months to go through the Psalms, summarizing each one. The second thing he did was always to put in a time of meditation as a transitional discipline between his Bible reading and his time of prayer. Third, he did all he could to pray morning and evening rather than only in the morning. Fourth, he began praying with greater expectation.
He tells us that prayer is the only entryway into genuine self-knowledge. It is also the main way we experience deep change—the reordering of our loves. Prayer is simply the key to everything we need to do and be in life. We must learn to pray. To fail to pray, then, is not to merely break some religious rule—it is a failure to treat God as God. It is a sin against his glory. All Christians are expected to have a regular, faithful, devoted, fervent prayer life.
In looking at first what prayer is, he states that prayer is continuing a conversation that God has started through his Word and his grace, which eventually becomes a full encounter with him. Prayer is both an instinct and a spiritual gift.
He writes that the primary theological fact about prayer is that we address a triune God, and our prayers can be heard only through the distinct work of every person in the Godhead. Prayer turns theology into experience. Through it we sense his presence and receive his joy, his love, his peace, and confidence, and thereby we are changed in attitude, behavior, and character.
He looks at what Augustine, Martin Luther, and John Calvin wrote on prayer, Calvin’s “rules for prayer” and “The Lord’s Prayer.” He shares twelve touchstones by which we can judge the relative strength or weakness of our prayers for honoring and connecting us to God.
He writes of prayer as conversation, stating that if prayer is to be a true conversation with God, it must be regularly preceded by listening to God’s voice through meditation on the Scripture.
He tells us that there are three basic kinds of prayer to God. There is “upward” prayer—praise and thanksgiving that focuses on God himself. He calls this the “prayer of awe.” Then there is “inward” prayer—self-examination and confession that bring a deeper sense of sin and, in return, a higher experience of grace and assurance of love. He calls this the prayer of intimacy. Finally, there is “outward” prayer—supplication and intercession that focuses on our needs and the needs of others in the world. He tells us that this prayer requires perseverance and often entails struggle.
He discusses the discipline of regular, daily prayer, stating that prayer should be more often than the classic once-daily “quiet time.” He believes that daily prayer should be more biblical, that is, more grounded in systematic Bible reading and study and in disciplined meditation on passages.
This is a book that you will read slowly, as there is so much to consider about our prayer lives.
Click on the link for a chapter by chapter listing of quotes from the book.
This offers many insights that I never considered about the small (four chapter) book of Jonah and makes helpful applications to our current culture. Depending on your political persuasion, and stance on the current immigration debate, chances are you may not agree with everything he writes.
Keller tells us “The book of Jonah yields many insights about God’s love for societies and people beyond the community of believers; about his opposition to toxic nationalism and disdain for other races; and about how to be “in mission” in the world despite the subtle and unavoidable power of idolatry in our own lives and hearts. Grasping these insights can make us bridge builders, peacemakers, and agents of reconciliation in the world. Such people are the need of the hour.”
An insight that I appreciated early in the book was the author’s comparison of Jonah’s story with Jesus’ Parable of the Prodigal Son. He tells us that the parallel between the two stories, which Jesus himself may have had in mind, is the reason that he chose The Prodigal Prophet as the title. Interestingly, both the Parable of the Prodigal Son and the Book of Jonah each have a cliffhanger ending. Keller offers his speculation on Jonah, which I found to be helpful.
Keller tells us “Jonah takes turns acting as both the “younger brother” and the “older brother.” In the first two chapters of the book, Jonah disobeys and runs away from the Lord and yet ultimately repents and asks for God’s grace, just as the younger brother leaves home but returns repentant. In the last two chapters, however, Jonah obeys God’s command to go and preach to Nineveh. In both cases, however, he is trying to get control of the agenda.”
The book of Jonah is divided into two parts – the records of Jonah’s flight from God and then of his mission to Nineveh. Each part has three sections—God’s word to Jonah, then his encounter with the Gentile pagans, and finally Jonah talking to God. One of the main messages of the book is that God cares how believers relate to and treat people who are deeply different from us. God wants us to treat people of different races and faiths in a way that is respectful, loving, generous, and just. Grace is another key theme of the book.
Keller takes us through the well-known story of Jonah and then applies it for us.
Here are twenty helpful quotes from the book:
- When the real God—not Jonah’s counterfeit—keeps showing up, Jonah is thrown into fury or despair. Jonah finds the real God to be an enigma because he cannot reconcile the mercy of God with his justice.
- Jonah concluded that because he could not see any good reasons for God’s command, there couldn’t be any. Jonah doubted the goodness, wisdom, and justice of God.
- And that is the problem facing Jonah, namely, the mystery of God’s mercy. It is a theological problem, but it is at the same time a heart problem. Unless Jonah can see his own sin, and see himself as living wholly by the mercy of God, he will never understand how God can be merciful to evil people and still be just and faithful.
- The dismaying news is that every act of disobedience to God has a storm attached to it.
- The Bible does not say that every difficulty is the result of sin—but it does teach that every sin will bring you into difficulty.
- If we build our lives and meaning on anything more than God, we are acting against the grain of the universe and of our own design and therefore of our own being.
- Sin is a suicidal action of the will upon itself. It is like taking an addicting drug. At first it may feel wonderful, but every time it gets harder to not do it again.
- When storms come into our lives, whether as a consequence of our wrongdoing or not, Christians have the promise that God will use them for their good (Romans 8:28).
- You may sincerely believe that Jesus died for your sins, and yet your significance and security can be far more grounded in your career and financial worth than in the love of God through Christ.
- Shallow Christian identities explain why professing Christians can be racists and greedy materialists, addicted to beauty and pleasure, or filled with anxiety and prone to overwork. All this comes because it is not Christ’s love but the world’s power, approval, comfort, and control that are the real roots of our self-identity.
- Any identity based on your own achievement and performance is an insecure one. You are never sure you have done enough. That means, on the one hand, that you cannot be honest with yourself about your own flaws. But it also means that you always need to reinforce it by contrasting yourself with—and being hostile to—those who are different.
- Often the first step in coming to one’s senses spiritually is when we finally start thinking of somebody—anybody—other than ourselves.
- True love meets the needs of the loved one no matter the cost to oneself. All life-changing love is some kind of substitutionary sacrifice.
- To deny God’s wrath upon sin not only robs us of a full view of God’s holiness and justice but also can diminish our wonder, love, and praise at what it was that Jesus bore for us.
- A God who substitutes himself for us and suffers so that we may go free is a God you can trust.
- With 20/20 hindsight, we can see that the most important lessons we have learned in life are the result of God’s severe mercies. They are events that were difficult or even excruciating at the time but later came to yield more good in our lives than we could have foreseen.
- It is only when you reach the very bottom, when everything falls apart, when all your schemes and resources are broken and exhausted, that you are finally open to learning how to completely depend on God.
- God’s grace becomes wondrous, endlessly consoling, beautiful, and humbling only when we fully believe, grasp, and remind ourselves of all three of these background truths—that we deserve nothing but condemnation, that we are utterly incapable of saving ourselves, and that God has saved us, despite our sin, at infinite cost to himself.
- No human heart will learn its sinfulness and impotence by being told it is sinful. It will have to be shown—often in brutal experience. No human heart will dare to believe in such free, costly grace unless it is the only hope.
- Salvation belongs to God alone, to no one else. If someone is saved, it is wholly God’s doing. It is not a matter of God saving you partly and you saving yourself partly. No. God saves us. We do not and cannot save ourselves. That’s the gospel.
Tim Keller states that the ideas expressed in this short book were forged not in writing but in preaching. Each chapter represents at least 10 or so meditations and sermons on each biblical text that he delivered in Christmas services across the decades.
He tells us writes that Christmas is the only Christian holy day that is also a major secular holiday, resulting in two different celebrations, each observed by millions of people, which brings some discomfort on both sides. His fear is that the true roots of Christmas will become more and more hidden to most of the population. In this book he aims to make the truths of Christmas less hidden. He looks at some passages of the Bible that are popular because they are read each Christmas.
In the first chapters of the book, looking at the Gospel of Matthew, we learn about the gifts God gave us at Christmas. In the following chapters, looking at the Gospel of Luke, he considers how we can welcome and receive those gifts.
Through the Christmas story, Keller tells us about the Gospel. This is a book that I recommend you read and discuss with others, which I did with friends in a book club at work. Keller says many things about Christmas and the Gospel that I appreciated. A few of them are:
• To accept the true Christmas gift, you have to admit you’re a sinner. You need to be saved by grace.
• Christmas is not simply about a birth but about a coming.
• Christmas shows us that Christianity is not good advice. It is good news.
• Christmas means that God is working out his purposes. He will fulfill his promises.
• Christmas tells us that despite appearances to the contrary, God is in control of history, and that someday he will put everything right.
• Christmas means that for those that are believers in Christ, there is all the hope in the world.
• The doctrine of Christmas, of the incarnation, is that Jesus was truly and fully God and truly and fully human.
• No one is really neutral about whether Christmas is true. If the Son of God was really born in a manger, then we have lost the right to be in charge of our lives.
• Christmas means that the King has come into the world. But the Bible tells us that Jesus comes as King twice, not once.
• Christmas means that race, pedigree, wealth, and status do not ultimately matter.
• Christmas means illumination and spiritual light from God; it means reconciliation and peace with God by grace; it means God taking on a human nature.
• Christmas means the increase of peace, both with God and between people.
• The manger at Christmas means that, if you live like Jesus, there won’t be room for you in a lot of inns.
• Christmas means that salvation is by grace.
• Christmas means you can have fellowship with God.
• Christmas and the incarnation mean that God went to infinite lengths to make himself one whom we can know personally.
• The incarnation, Christmas, means that God is not content to be a concept or just someone you know from a distance.
• The joy that Christmas brings, the assurance of God’s love and care will always reinvigorate you no matter the circumstances of your life.
What really got my attention about this book by Tim Keller was the review of the book by Joni Eareckson Tada. As a result of a diving accident in 1967 Joni has been a quadriplegic. She has also suffered from breast cancer and chronic pain. I have seen her speak at conferences, read her books, and very much respect her. When she reviews a book on suffering it gets my attention.
Joni writes: “The book is incredibly well researched, weaving timeless scriptures between salient observations of everyone from Camus to New York Times columnists. Yet it is impossibly personal – you can tell he’s a pastor. Keller has a way of taking the walking wounded by the hand and gently placing it in the Savior’s.” She writes that the book may be the most comprehensive book about pain and suffering. She states: “Tim Keller does a righteous job of showcasing to us, and to the world, that Jesus is worth trusting. Period. End of argument. When they hang you on a cross like meat on a hook, you have the final word on suffering.”
Keller uses the image of a fiery furnace throughout the book. He sees suffering as something we all experience and something that refines us. We suffer because Jesus suffered. He writes: “In Jesus Christ we see that God actually experiences the pain of the fire as we do. He truly is God with us, in love and understanding, in our anguish.”
The book is in three major parts. The first is more theoretical and philosophical as it looks at pain, suffering and the problem of evil. In this part Keller looks at how other worldviews look at these concepts. He states that if you are currently suffering, or the wounds of suffering are still raw, you may want to skip the first part (for now) and go directly to the second and third parts.
The second part focuses on the Bible and suffering as he moves from the philosophical to the personal. Among other passages, he spends time in the book of Job. The third part of the book features six chapters on how to walk with God in the valley of suffering. He looks at six elements – weeping, praying, thanking, hoping, loving, and trusting – that combine into one single action. The Epilogue offers a helpful ten-point summary of the book. Throughout, Keller uses Scripture (the stories of Job, Joseph for example), and stories of those who have suffered (Joni Eareckson Tada, Elizabeth Elliott, for example).
Throughout the book there are ten “Life Stories” – personal accounts of people who have gone through incredible suffering, and trusted God. The accounts were researched and edited by Keller’s wife Kathy and add a very personal touch to the book.
This is an important book on a subject that will impact all of us, because we will all go through seasons of suffering.
Below are helpful quotes from the book:
• You don’t really know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.
• In the secular view, suffering is never seen as a meaningful part of life but only as an interruption.
• Christianity teaches that, contra fatalism, suffering is overwhelming; contra Buddhism, suffering is real; contra karma, suffering is often unfair; but contra secularism, suffering is meaningful. There is a purpose to it, and if faced rightly, it can drive us like a nail deep into the love of God and into more stability and spiritual power than you can imagine.
• While other worldviews lead us to sit in the midst of life’s joys, foreseeing the coming sorrows, Christianity empowers its people to sit in the midst of this world’s sorrows, tasting the coming joy.
• Some suffering is given in order to chastise and correct a person for wrongful patterns of life (as in the case of Jonah imperiled by the storm), some suffering is given not to correct past wrongs but to prevent future ones (as in the case of Joseph sold into slavery), and some suffering has no purpose other than to lead a person to love God more ardently for himself alone and so discover the ultimate peace and freedom.
• Suffering is unbearable if you aren’t certain that God is for you and with you.
• Suffering is actually at the heart of the Christian story.
• Christianity offers not merely a consolation but a restoration — not just of the life we had but of the life we always wanted but never achieved. And because the joy will be even greater for all that evil, this means the final defeat of all those forces that would have destroyed the purpose of God in creation, namely, to live with his people in glory and delight forever.
• It fits to glorify God — it not only fits reality, because God is infinitely and supremely praiseworthy, but it fits us as nothing else does. All the beauty we have looked for in art or faces or places — and all the love we have looked for in the arms of other people — is only fully present in God himself. And so, in every action by which we treat him as glorious as he is, whether through prayer, singing, trusting, obeying, or hoping, we are at once giving God his due and fulfilling our own design.
• Jesus lost all his glory so that we could be clothed in it. He was shut out so we could get access. He was bound, nailed, so that we could be free. He was cast out so we could approach. And Jesus took away the only kind of suffering that can really destroy you: that is being cast away from God. He took so that now all suffering that comes into your life will only make you great. A lump of coal under pressure becomes a diamond. And
you into somebody gorgeous.
*Jesus is the ultimate Job, the only truly innocent sufferer.
These are the first six (or twelve) of my favorite books that Tim Keller wrote. I will share the other six books soon.
What are your favorite books that Tim Keller wrote?