📖 You can wake the King

I. We often think we need to act better, clean ourselves up, or at the very least promise God that we will be better in the future before we approach him or ask Him for anything.

We might think we should go to church, be a good person, and stop doing that bad thing, and then God will want to hear from us. And yet, that is not the mindset we are taught in Scripture.

Hebrews 4:15-16 says this:

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses… Therefore, let us approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need.”

Therefore, we can, right now, even in our sin, approach God with boldness because all who trust in Christ have been made clean.

Tim Keller puts it this way:

"The only person who dares wake up a king at 3:00 a.m. for a glass of water is a child. We have that kind of access.”

Because of Jesus, you can boldly seek, ask, and beg God to move.

———————-

II. Following Jesus doesn’t make everything better, but he is better than everything.

Remember that the Bible can’t mean something to us today that it didn’t mean to the original readers. Always ask, “Who was this written to first?” and “How would they have understood it?”

Start there, and you’ll be on the right track to understanding what a passage is truly communicating.

I. Luke Simmons on remaining faithful even when others wrongly disparage you:

‘"Blessed are you when others... utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account." (Matthew 5:11)

II. D.L. Moody on how to understand the Bible:

“The Bible was not given for our information but for our transformation. God did not inspire His Word so that we could become smarter sinners, but so that we would become more faithful disciples. Every page points us to trust and obey Him more fully.”

Family Unfriendly by Timothy P. Carney

A book about how our culture today has made raising kids much harder than it needs to be. This book was an excellent read. It put words and data to the difficulties I have felt while parenting today, and it shows why parenting today is harder than it ever has been.

At times, the book made me angry at how our society makes parenting so hard. And how many of the things I wish I could do as a parent would get child protective services called and draw disdain from others, so I can't.

It also made me sad. That my kids have such a restrictive childhood. Even with us giving our kids more freedoms than most these days, we're still limited in the freedoms we can give them because of our cultural environment.

The book shows (with real data) how we have been lied to. Parenting is hard, but the most happy, joyful, and purpose-filled people are married adults with children. I would highly recommend this book to everyone, really. If you're anxious about the thought of having kids, read this book. If you are a parent and feel stress or anxiety about your own parenting ability, read this book. But in general, books like this would do well to be read by everyone.

The book felt a little long to me, but it did not have any fluff. Everything in the book was helpful, and the book was very wide-ranging. A good, challenging, and thought-provoking read.

9/10

P.S. How to scare your doctor…