Wholly Yours

For about a month now I have been enjoying the music of David Crowder Band. One song has stood out among all the others. The lyrics alone are singular but the intensity of the music really makes this song one in a million.

I am full of earth

You are heaven’s worth

I am stained with dirt, prone to depravity

You are everything that is bright and clean

The antonym of me

You are divinity

But a certain sign of grace is this

From a broken earth flowers come up

Pushing through the dirt

You are holy, holy, holy

All heaven cries “Holy, holy God”

You are holy, holy, holy

I wanna be holy like You are

You are everything that is bright and clean

And You’re covering me with Your majesty

And the truest sign of grace was this

From wounded hands redemption fell down

Liberating man

You are holy, holy, holy

All heaven cries “Holy, holy God”

You are holy, holy, holy

I want to be holy like You are

But the harder I try the more clearly can I feel

The depth of our fall and the weight of it all

And so this might could be the most impossible thing

Your grandness in me making me clean

Glory, hallelujah

Glory, glory, hallelujah

You are holy, holy, holy

All heaven cries “Holy, holy God”

You are holy, holy, holy

I want to be holy, holy God

So here I am, all of me

Finally everything

Wholly, wholly, wholly

I am wholly, wholly, wholly

I am wholly, wholly, wholly Yours

I am wholly Yours

I am full of earth and dirt and You

A Flame of Fire

If you have never read, Shadow of the Almighty by Elisabeth Elliot you really ought to order it now. You may be thinking, "Well, I saw End of the Spear, the movie about it." Trust me, the story of Jim Elliot and his passion for missions and his full-bodied effort for Christ to be glorified in all of his life is worth reading.

Here are a few qoutes:

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose."

"We are so utterly ordinary, so commonplace, while we profess to know a Power the Twentieth Century does not reckon with. But we are "harmless," and therefore unharmed. We are spiritual pacifists, non-militants, conscientious objectors in this battle-to-the-death with principalities and powers in high places. Meekness must be had for contact with men, but brass, outspoken boldness is required to take part in the comradeship of the Cross. We are "sideliners" -- coaching and criticizing the real wrestlers while content to sit by and leave the enemies of God unchallenged. The world cannot hate us, we are too much like its own. Oh that God would make us dangerous!"

"Those whimpering Stateside young people will wake up on the Day of Judgment condemned to worse fates than these demon-fearing Indians, because, having a Bible, they were bored with it - while these never heard of such a thing as writing"

"'He makes His ministers a flame of fire.' Am I ignitible? God deliver me from the dread asbestos of 'other things.' Saturate me with the oil of the Spirit that I may be a flame. But flame is transient, often short-lived. Canst thou bear this, my soul, a short life?"

I know no one like Jim Elliot. Therefore I long to be like him.

The Stats on the Sale at Desiring God

From Abraham Piper at the desiring god blog

"In the 2-and-a-half-day sale last week, we took almost 11,000 orders and moved more than 125,000 books. To give perspective, we usually only process about a hundred web orders a day, and in 2003 we were excited to have distributed 75,000 books in the whole year.

Thanks a lot to those of you who participated! Thanks especially for your patience when the website was slow and the phones were busy.

In case you’re wondering, we were not expecting to turn a profit with this sale—we actually planned on losing money. As it turns out, we broke even—Praise God!

We are excited to see how God will use the books from this sale to glorify himself. And we are even more excited to dream up more ways we can join with you to keep spreading God-centered resources.

Enjoy all the reading and don't forget to give lots of books away!"

I ordered 10 copies of Don't Waste your Life to give away and 1 copy of A Hunger for God.

Piper Books for $5!!!

I keep going back to this post just to make sure I did not dream this up. But it is true. If you buy online you can buy any and all and as many books by John Piper as you want. Sheeeeesh.

My recommendations?

Don't Waste Your Life

No other book has chged me as this one has. I give it away all the time so I plan on buying 10 to 20 copies of this book.

God is the Gospel

This book answers the seminal question of why we should believe the

gospel is "good news." Why? Because we get God, reconciliation with the glorious God of the universe.

Desiring God
A must-have if only because it started it all for the revolution of Christian Hedonism.

Let the Nations Be Glad!

The definitive work on Missions. "Missions exists because

worship does not."

The Pleasures of God

Nothing like it in any bookstore anywhere. A book to make you

exult in the God-centeredness of God.

Brothers, We Are Not Professionals

No other book on the ministry is more valuable to me than this book.

The Supremacy of God in Preaching

All preaching should be judged by the standard of the message in the God-centered, Christ-exalting work.

A Godward Life

My favorite devotional work.

Reading About Church and Sex

So I have been growing more and more fond of Josh Harris. He is a great preacher and makes more since than most people twice his age. I had already read his first two books, I Kissed Dating Goodbye and Boy Meets Girl. The first is the definitive book on dating for Christians. I have given away about a dozen of these. The second was born out of the courtship with his wife and the kessons learned.

This week I read two other books by him; Stop Dating the Church and Sex is not the Problem (Lust Is).

Both are short powerful reads. Both are full of common sense and more biblical wisdom than is found in the majority of books twice their size. Gospel centered and Christ-exalting neither falls into the trap of legalism or license on these two issues. They will lay open your life before you in all its horror and and the gospel in all its beauty.

Therefore I commend then to you all his books and sermons

God is for Us: Christ Obeyed and Died

This is an excerpt from Piper's upcoming book, which is a response to N.T. Wrights work on Justification. the title of Piper's book will be The Future of Justification and will out this fall, God willing.

The Prophetic Voice of Steve Camp

I have been listening to Steve Camp since High School. Doing My Best was a staple for youth group. Justice was a kick in the teeth. And My best friend, Head and I must have listened to Consider the Cost a thousand times. His prophetic message in CCM was rivaled only by Keith Green. I did not know this but the big difference between Steve and Keith besides the former being alove and later being in glory was their theology.

Steve is an impassioned teacher of Reformed Theology.

Steve Camp has 2 sites. Audience One is his main site full of articles by him and theologians both alive and dead...mostly dead ones though. You can also download or just listen to his music. He has a whatever you can afford donation policy for his music. CAMPONTHIS is his venture into the blogoshere. Again, there are lots of good resources, links and thought provoking, gut-wrenching, soul-satisfying words there.

America's Ugly Exported Gospel

(HT: Desiring God Blog)

Discernment from Na

The theme for this year's New Attitude conference in Louisville Kentucky was "Discernment." Of course this blog is interested in such discussions and how to hone the art thereof. The speakers were some bighitters; Piper, Dever, Mohler, Mahaney and Josh Harris (I Kissed Dating Goodbye). Of course, I have already listened to Piper's. But let me recommend highly the introductory talk by Harris. It was phenomenal.

You can download all the talks for for by going here.

Why Fred Thompson?

Robert Novak asks, "Why Fred Thompson?"

Preaching the Cross from T4G

Preaching the Cross is now available from the guys who spoke at Together for the Gospel last year. Each of the seven chapters is from the seven men who spoke at T4G: Mark Dever, Ligon Duncan, C.J. Mahaney, Al Mohler, John Piper, John MacArthur and R.C. Sproul.

Each chapter is a goldmine of wisdom from today's most notable and faithful preachers of the gospel. I got it on Monday and finished on Wednesday.

My Favorite Book Goes Gold

Here is the story about Don't Waste Your Life selling over 500,000 copies. If you have not read it, get it. You can start by reading it here. To call this book revolutionary is an understatement. The Lord has used it mightily to move in the hearts of the young and old throughout this country and beyond.

Convert or Die

Here is a story about the plight of Pakistani Christians.

"Christians in a Pakistani town beset by pro-Taliban militants sought government protection Wednesday, the eve of a deadline for them to convert to Islam or face violence. "

All while we suffer from only rich, western problems like worship styles, etc.

12 Ways to Love Your Wayward Child

Here is a great article from Abraham Piper, the once wayward son of John Piper

Religious Fanaticism

Just when you thought the religious fervor could not get any higher than a fevered pitch. Here is a fanaticism which proves it is not the forcing of religion on people which so many find abhorent. Being offensive is never really the problem. The content of the offense is the issue.