Go Forward in Love: A Year of Daily Readings from Timothy Keller. Zondervan. 384 pages. 2024
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Tim Keller was the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, co-founder of The Gospel Coalition and Redeemer City to City, and the author of twenty-four books. He died at the age of 72 in May 2023 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. This book is comprised of short daily readings from his books. I used it as a part of my devotional readings for the past year and would recommend it to you.
Here are 20 helpful quotes from the book:
- Sin is not simply doing bad things; it is putting good things in the place of God.
- Remember this—if you don’t live for Jesus you will live for something else.
- Religion operates on the principle “I obey—therefore I am accepted by God.” But the operating principle of the gospel is “I am accepted by God through what Christ has done—therefore I obey.”
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BOOK REVIEWS ~ More of this review and a review of The Westminster Shorter Catechism
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BOOK CLUB ~What Is Wrong with the World? The Surprising, Hopeful Answer to the Question We Cannot Avoid by Tim Keller
I’M CURRENTLY READING….
- God’s love and forgiveness can pardon and restore any and every kind of sin or wrongdoing. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done.
- If you marry someone expecting them to be like a god, it is only inevitable that they will disappoint you. It’s not that you should try to love your spouse less, but rather that you should know and love God more.
- The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.
- If we look to some created thing to give us the meaning, hope, and happiness that only God himself can give, it will eventually fail to deliver and break our hearts.
- One of the main ways we move from abstract knowledge about God to a personal encounter with him as a living reality is through the furnace of affliction.
- Someday, when Jesus returns and ushers in a renewed creation, love will totally triumph over hate and life will totally triumph over death.
- If anything matters more to you than God, you are placing yourself and your heart into something external. Only if you make God matter the most—which means only if you glorify him and give him the glory—will you have a safe life.
- On the cross Jesus got what we deserved: The sin, guilt, and brokenness of the world fell upon him. He loved us so much he took divine justice on himself so that we could be passed over, forever.
- Not everyone is your brother or sister in the faith, but everyone is your neighbor, and you must love your neighbor.
- 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.
- As ascended Lord he is spreading the gospel and building up his church by working in the hearts of people while he guides all the events of history toward a glorious end.
- God’s salvation does not come in response to a changed life. A changed life comes in response to the salvation, offered as a free gift.
- A servant puts someone else’s needs ahead of his or her own. That is how all believers should live with each other.
- Prayer is the way to experience a powerful confidence that God is handling our lives well, that our bad things will turn out for good, our good things cannot be taken from us, and the best things are yet to come.
- 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.
- 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.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism. Ligonier. 107 pages. 2025
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For centuries, the Westminster Shorter Catechism has served as a trusted guide to Christian doctrine. Through a series of carefully crafted 107 questions and answers, the Shorter Catechism presents the essential truths of Scripture in a memorable and systematic way.
This is a helpful resource for every generation. Whether you use it to catechize your children, disciple new believers in Reformed theology, or just read it yourself, it is a resource that can help you and others grow.
Although we did not memorize the answers, my wife and I used and benefitted from this new edition, with scripture references, from Ligonier as a part of our devotional reading.
- Three Marks of a Good Christian Book. Tim Challies writes “The best Christian books are those that combine truth, love, and beauty, and do so in equal measure.”
- Tim Challies’ Book Reviews. Check out more than 1,000 book reviews from Tim Challies.
- Study, Savor and Share Scripture: Becoming What We Behold. My wife Tammy has published a book about HOW to study the Bible. The book is available on Amazon in both a Kindle and paperback edition. She writes “Maybe you have read the Bible but want to dig deeper and know God and know yourself better. Throughout the book I use the analogy of making a quilt to show how the Bible is telling one big story about what God is doing in the world through Christ. Quilting takes much patience and precision, just like studying the Bible, but the end result is well worth it.”
- My Book Reviews. Enjoy more than 570 of my book reviews on Goodreads. Read my recent reviews of Hints of Hope by Steven Garber and Church Planting for Wimps by Mike McKinley.
Won’t you read along with us?
What Is Wrong with the World? The Surprising, Hopeful Answer to the Question We Cannot Avoid by Tim Keller. Please join us in reading the first book of Tim Keller’s that has been released since his death in 2023.
From the Amazon description:
“During his tenure as founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, Timothy Keller explained on a weekly basis how the Bible provides the most comprehensive and sophisticated response to the fundamental questions of life. In What Is Wrong with the World?, based on a series of teachings given at Redeemer, Keller answers the title’s pressing question by revealing that the only thing that can account for the world’s pain and chaos is what the Bible calls sin. This clear-eyed and ultimately hopeful book reveals how sin is not simply a “bad” thing we do but something much more subtle and complex, affecting our relationships, our thinking, and every aspect of our existence. And only when we recognize sin for what it is can we find the profound, life-transforming answer our souls long for.”
This week, we look at the Preface by Kathy Keller. Here are a few quotes from the chapter that I found helpful:
- Tim preached the sermons on which this book is based in the 1990s as a series under the title “The Faces of Sin.”
- In the years since Tim died, I have tried to bring some kind of order to all the books, papers, talks, sermons, lectures, classes, notes, journals, and jottings he left behind.
- I did, however, manage to extract the folder titled “The Faces of Sin” and, after consulting with a number of knowledgeable people, decided it would be a good start for a book about sin.
- Each chapter ends with a prayer because Tim was aware, as all mature Christians are, that we deceive ourselves most concerning our own sinfulness.
- So as you read, allow God to probe you for your hidden sins and to give you a contrite and broken heart over the ways you have broken both his law and his heart. Grace is there for the asking.
