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Anita Lustrea and Melinda Schmidt of Moody Radio’s Midday Connection are offering some great ideas for Christmas gifts on the show today. One of the books they’ll be recommending is Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus. The full list of suggested Christmas resources is available here.

You can listen to Midday Connection on your local Moody station live at noon CST or online.

About Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus:

Between purchasing presents and planning travel, enjoying holiday pageants and attending parties, it is all too easy for Christmas to sneak up on us and crowd out a rich anticipation of this sacred season. So when editor Nancy Guthrie decided she wanted a reflective book of Advent readings by writers who held a high view of Scripture, she embarked on what she calls “a sacred adventure,” putting together such a collection herself.

This special volume draws from the works and sermons of classic theologians such as Whitefield, Luther, Spurgeon, and Augustine, and from leading contemporary communicators such as Skip Ryan, John Piper, Ligon Duncan, Randy Alcorn, John MacArthur, Francis Schaeffer, R. C. Sproul, and Joni Eareckson Tada to help readers enter into the wonder of Jesus’ incarnation and birth.

To learn more, you can view the contents or some sample chapters online.

Nathan Busenitz, author of Reasons We Believe, will be featured on Janet Parshall’s America tomorrow. If you haven’t listened to Parshall’s highly-acclaimed show recently, this would be a great time to tune in. You can listen online or use the station finder to find a station in your local area.

In the meantime, you can read a rather provocative review of Busenitz’s book that appeared on Pyromaniacs last month. Dan Phillips begins his review in this way:

Mark Dever, author of The Gospel and Personal Evangelism,  will be speaking at the 2009 Desiring God Pastors Conference.  The theme will be Commending Christ: The Pastor, the Church, and the Perishing.

Below Mark discusses the importance of creating a culture of evangelism:

Hear more about the 2009 DG Pastors Conference from Mark Dever and John Piper.

Lincoln’s 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation

Taken from the collection of Lincoln’s papers in the Library of America series, Vol. II, pp. 520-521.

The year that is drawing towards its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battlefield; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

—Abraham Lincoln

This excerpt was taken from Thanksgiving: A Time to Remember by Barbara Rainey. You can read some sample material online:

• Contents
• Intro and Chapter 1

Cathy Lynn Grossman of USA Today just posted an interesting article about how evangelicals are “adopting — and adapting” traditional Advent rituals. The piece, called “Evangelicals Adopting Advent,” features an interview with Crossway author Nancy Guthrie about Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus, her new book of Advent reflections. Grossman writes:

Bible teacher and writer Nancy Guthrie has a collection of readings for Advent that draws on evangelical writers, with an emphasis on Scripture. In Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus, Guthrie draws on 22 sermons and writings, from Saint Augustine and Martin Luther to theologians such as Jonathan Edwards and contemporary preachers such as John Piper and Tim Keller.

“I so often felt that by the time I got to Christmas morning, after the parties, and planning and shopping and presents and travel, that there was a void, that I hadn’t had time to prepare my heart for the gift, with a capital G, of Jesus,” says Guthrie of Nashville, whose denomination is the Presbyterian Church of America.

“Since I’m not bound by the traditional Advent, I could choose writers for this collection who break out of the familiar talk of Christmas to the shocking wonder of it, that God revealed himself to the humblest among us,” she says.

You can read the full article here. More information about Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus, including the table of contents and sample chapters, is available on our website.

Does it ever seem surprising to you that God made the Israelites wander in the wilderness for forty years because they grumbled? My kids may have spent thirty minutes in their rooms for griping, but forty years? What a severe discipline! Ouch, it seems harsh.

God clearly is not pleased with grumbling. It doesn’t make Him happy to hear His children complain constantly. Sound like any children you know?

Being grateful is a choice. It’s not a feeling dependent on our circumstances, as we clearly see in the Pilgrims’ lives. They believed that God was in control— “Providence”, they called it. They responded to the circumstances of their lives with a perspective that said, “God has allowed this for our good.”

John Piper has written in his book A Godward Life: “Remembering our dependence on past mercies kindles gratitude. Gratitude is past-oriented dependence; faith is future-oriented dependence. Both forms of dependence are humble, self-forgetting and God-exalting. If we do not believe that we are deeply dependent on God for all we have or hope to have, then the very spring of gratitude and faith runs dry.”

Gratitude is what we express when we take time every Thanksgiving Day to remember God’s past mercies and provisions and then pause to thank Him for them.

The stories of those who have gone before us inspire our faith. When we consider those great saints listed in the “Hall of Faith” in Hebrews 11 or our Pilgrim forefathers or those men and women we know in recent times who have modeled great dependence on God, our faith is stretched and increased. Their example of placing all hope in Jesus Christ encourages us to do the same.

Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Those who sailed on the Mayflower knew their Bible well. They were convinced that God existed and could only be pleased through faith (Hebrews 11:6).

Someone has said, “Faith is a firm conviction, a personal surrender, and a conduct inspired by your surrender.” The Pilgrims were totally surrendered to God, and they believed that He was leading them to the New World. So they went, confident that He would guide and provide.

The Bible is full of verses on giving thanks. Our problem in America is not that we don’t know we are to be thankful, but often we choose to complain instead. The Psalms contain a number of verses that call thanksgiving a sacrifice:

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving. (Psalm 50:14)

He who offers a sacrifice of thanksgiving honors Me. (Psalm 50:23)

Let them also offer sacrifices of thanksgiving. (Psalm 107:22)

To You I shall offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and call upon the name of the LORD. (Psalm 116:17)

Why is it a sacrifice to give thanks to the Lord? Because being thankful forces us to take our eyes off ourselves and put them on the Lord. Giving up our self-focus is the kind of denial that pleases God.

As a nation, we have inherited a remarkable gift in our freedom to worship, but we have strayed far from our roots and heritage. We must return to the faith of our fathers. Developing a heart of gratitude is the beginning step in growing a stronger faith. Remember what God has done and believe that He will take care of us in the future.

This excerpt was taken from Thanksgiving: A Time to Remember by Barbara Rainey. You can read some sample material online:

• Contents
• Intro and Chapter 1

Tim Challies, author of The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment, gives ten tips for reading more and reading better:

1. Read
2. Read Widely
3. Read Deliberately
4. Read Interactively
5. Read with Discernment
6. Read Heavy Books
7. Read Light Books
8. Read New Books
9. Read Old Books
10. Read What Your Heroes Read

Visit Challies.com for Tim’s explanation on these ten tips.

On November 19, Dr. Bruce Ware was named president of the Evangelical Theological Society at the annual meeting in Providence, Rhode Island. According to the CBMW (Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood) blog:

Ware was elected vice president of ETS by a unanimous vote of fellow scholars at the 58^th annual ETS meeting in Washington, D.C. in 2006. After one year of serving as vice president and one year as president-elect, Ware began his term as president during the 60^th annual meeting of ETS this week at the Rhode Island Convention Center. Ware serves as professor of Christian theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

“It is a tremendous honor and privilege to serve in a role of leadership in such a wonderful organization as ETS,” said Ware, who has served as professor of Christian Theology at Southern Seminary since 1998. “The Lord has blessed the organization and I believe continues to do so.”

For more information, visit the CBMW blog at www.cbmw.org/blog.

BRUCE A. WARE (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is professor of Christian theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has written numerous journal articles, book chapters, book reviews, and books including God’s Lesser Glory, God’s Greater Glory, and Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. His latest book, Big Truths for Young Hearts: Teaching and Learning the Greatness of God, will release in April ‘09.

Earlier this year, Crossway released D. A. Carson’s Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor: The Life and Reflections of Tom Carson. In this book, Carson tells the largely unknown story of religious persecution in French Canada in the 1940’s and 50’s—persecution that ultimately set the stage for growth and revival in the 1970s.

Supplementing his father’s journals and written prayers with his own narrative and historical background, Carson provides a firsthand account of one pastor’s life and times, dreams and disappointments.

But the story of Tom Carson is, in many ways, a realistic look at the day-to-day life of ministry.  Ben Westerveld, who recently reviewed the book for New Horizons in the OPC, calls upon ordinary pastors to read the book:

I would encourage all pastors to read this book. The testimony of an ordinary, faithful servant of God will humble our souls, add a good dose of reality to our dreams, and realign our definition of a successful ministry. Tom Carson’s testimony reminds each of us to persevere in the everyday ministry of feeding the Good Shepherd’s flock, no matter how small their numbers.

Visit the OPC website to read the full review.

Many Crossway authors and staff members are attending the ETS meeting mentioned in the previous post. We always look forward to this annual opportunity to gather with and learn from evangelicalism’s best scholars, and we can’t help but thank God for the contributions that Crossway authors are making in this forum. Here’s a sampling of the authors and titles that we are blessed to offer to ETS members:
The Erosion of Inerrancy in Evangelicalism: Responding to New Challenges to Biblical Authority

G. K. Beale

Greg Beale’s sturdy, convincing, and courageous defense of the accuracy and inerrancy of Scripture bolsters our assurance that God’s Word is true. Praise God for this scholarly and spirited defense of the truth of Scripture.”
Thomas R. Schreiner, James Buchanan Professor of New Testament Interpretation, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

“At last, a leading biblical scholar has produced a full-blown defense of biblical inerrancy in a user-friendly style. This is just what is needed in the current debate, and Beale has provided it magnificently.”
Gerald Bray, Research Professor, Beeson Divinity School

Jesus and the Feminists: Who Do They Say That He Is?

Margaret Elizabeth Köstenberger

“Dr. Köstenberger gives us a here a solid, sad, scrupulously fair case study of ideology deflecting exegesis over an entire generation. She shows conclusively that the attempts of a long series of scholars to find Jesus affirming women’s leadership in some way have entirely failed. Surely this is an important cautionary tale for our times.”
J. I. Packer, Professor of Theology, Regent College

“Margaret Köstenberger succeeds at bringing historical perspective to bear on feminist understanding of Scripture and Christ. Her analyses of radical, reformist, and evangelical wings of this movement are methodical, clear, thorough, and mature. Her findings are highly significant. They force the question: Is Jesus Lord over Western culture’s ideologies or their servant? Today a new generation stands poised to replace the aging leaders who ushered feminism into our churches. Köstenberger points the way to honor their concerns while avoiding their unjustified concessions.”
Robert W. Yarbrough, Associate Professor of New Testament and New Testament Department Chair, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Is Rome the True Church? A Consideration of the Roman Catholic Claim

Norman L. Geisler and Joshua M. Betancourt

“While not declaring the Roman Catholic Church apostate, Norman Geisler and Joshua Betancourt address the doctrines that evangelicals find problematic in Catholicism. The work is irenic in tone, meticulous in examination, and extensive in sourcing and foot noting. Highly recommended.”
Ralph E. MacKenzie, co-author, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences; Director, San Diego Christian Forum

Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (3rd Edition)

William Lane Craig

“It is hard to overstate the impact that William Lane Craig has had for the cause of Christ. He is simply the finest Christian apologist of the last half century and his academic work justifies ranking him among the top 1 percent of practicing philosophers in the Western world. Besides that, he is a winsome ambassador for Christ, an exceptional debater, and a man with the heart of an evangelist. I know him well and can say that he lives a life of integrity and lives out what he believes. I do not know of a single thinker who has done more to raise the bar of Christian scholarship in our generation than Craig. He is one of a kind and I thank God for his life and work.”
J. P. Moreland, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Talbot School of Theology

“Craig’s work is philosophically and theologically first rate, though accessible to the educated layman. All Christians—Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox—can gain so much from reading and mastering Craig’s 3rd edition of Reasonable Faith.”
Francis J. Beckwith, Professor of Philosophy & Church-State Studies, Baylor University; Mary Ann Remick Senior Visiting Fellow (2008-2009), University of Notre Dame

Suffering and the Goodness of God

Christopher W. Morgan and Robert A. Peterson, editors

“The skeptic chides: ‘If God is good, he is not God; if God is God, he is not good.’ With Scripture to answer the pain of real life questions, and with real life pain to question Scripture, these theologians address the hardest questions with honesty, tenderness, and deep truth.”
Bryan Chapell, President, Covenant Seminary

“Those who read this book will thank the gifted team of authors for their careful biblical, theological, philosophical, and ethical engagement with the problem of suffering and evil. This timely book addresses these crucial and challenging issues with clarity, conviction, and pastoral sensitivity. Readers will be strengthened, edified, and encouraged. I highly recommend this most important book.”
David S. Dockery, President, Union University

For more information on these titles, visit Crossway’s booth at ETS or www.crossway.org.