A Hodgepodge of Timely Resources

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Benjamin Kreps:

Hey everyone and welcome to the Mark Prater podcast where our aim is to connect our global family of Sovereign Grace churches with our executive director. Mark, as you well know, and you actually set an example, in a wise pastor is a man who is a learner and a reader always seeking to grow in our understanding of scripture and then ramifications, implications, entailments of all of that as we navigate through our culture and what's happening in our churches. And you certainly are a reader and have committed yourself to be a lifelong learner. And so as we've done before, you have a couple of resources that you want to share with us. The first is a book by Dave Mathis.

Mark Prater:

Yep. It's a book entitled Humbled: Welcoming the Uncomfortable Work of God by David Mathis, a book I recently finished and I'm actually taking my Faith in Work group through right now. I am reading this book because I know that in my own life, pride is a lifelong battle, the sin of pride. And so I'm always looking for resources to help me grow in humility. I've benefited from, and many of you have benefited from, CJ's book on humility, just an excellent resource on humility. That's a go-to book for me. I got a go-to section for me in Thomas Watson's book, The Godly Man's Picture. He's got a couple of quotes in there that always help me remind myself of my battle with pride.

But I found this book really, really helpful by David Mathis. Some of you may be familiar with David. He wrote Habits of Grace, a wonderful book. One of the basic premises of this book is that humility and our growth in humility is not primarily at human initiative. It's at God's initiative. He loves us and he wants to see us grow in holiness and in particular Christ-like humility. And it's just an interesting way to think about it. But he begins the book sort of making that statement. He then defines humility and I wanted to read that. He said, "Humility acknowledges and obeys the one who is truly God. Humility entails a right view of self as created by and accountable to God. And this requires a right view of God as creator and as authoritative in relation to his creatures. Humility is not then preoccupied with oneself and one's own loneliness, but first mindful and conscious of God and his highness. Humility becomes conscious of self only with respect to God." And that's a very similar definition that CJ uses in his book on humility. It is just your right understanding of who you are before God. I thought that was just a wonderful way to describe it.

But he goes on to say this, and this is kind of the premise of the book in many ways. He said, "Humility is not fundamentally a human initiative, but a proper God-given response in us to God himself and his glory and his purposes in the world and in our lives." And then says this, "Self humbling is in essence gladly receiving God's person, words and acts when doing so is not easy or comfortable." And so we all have these events in our lives that are difficult, that don't make sense at times, that we really just don't fully understand what God's doing. But in those difficult sovereign events, I think one of the purposes that God has for us is he is just wanting to grow us in humility because he loves us that much. He cares more about our holiness, as we've said before, you've heard before, than our happiness. And that is a loving God.

Just two more quotes, one before I give a specific one, but this is, I think, really well said, "Humility is not our doing without God's initiative and empowering, and it's not something he acts exclusively to do for us which we receive passively." So he talks about humility is really at God's initiative, but he makes a case for our response to that and that we're not passive, that we want to grow in humility, that we want to grow in godliness. And it's very much a Philippians 2 understanding of sanctification; work out your salvation with fear and trembling, so his work that you have for God is at work in you. So there's that combination of our effort and God's initiative and grace at work in our lives. So it's kind of that he's capturing.

And one other quote that really affected me, he has a whole chapter devoted to prayer as an expression, obviously, of one who is being humbled and growing in humility. And he has this great sentence, and I'm going to read a little bit past this, but here's the sentence, "Humility in the worst of times grows out of habits of prayerful desperation in the best of times." I read that sentence and it stopped me. I thought, in the best of times, do I have this prayerful desperation? I don't know that I always do, but if I'm going to grow in humility, I must, so that in the worst of times my humility's fostered, is really what he's saying. He goes on to say this, "For those of us who are under the delusion that we are strong, prayer makes little sense, especially as a pattern of life. But when we freshly realize our fragileness and weakness, we find that the New Testament's emphasis on unceasing prayer (1 Thessalonians 5:17) is not a burden but an unparalleled offer." Really well, really well written. So just a few choice quotes that maybe might interest you or whet your taste for getting this book, Humbled. It's one that I would recommend and benefit from, just another good resource on humility that you can have on your shelf and in your heart and maybe help if you're a pastor, just helping other folks with it.

Benjamin Kreps:

Thanks for that recommendation. I'm definitely going to grab that one. And certainly one of our shaping virtues in Sovereign Grace is humility. And humility really is that cardinal virtue that is sort of the key that unlocks all manner of dependence and joy and godliness. And so definitely a topic for us to be studying regularly and I look forward to studying that. One of the things that you mentioned from that book, not an idea new to David Mathis, but that humility begins with a right understanding of ourselves and a right understanding of God, of ourselves in light of who God is.

And so to connect that, there was recently at the conference, you guys, the leadership team wanted to make sure it was on our radar, a book by John Mark Comer Practicing the Way, I believe it's called, and some concerns that you have with that book. Now I know you guys are not in the business of just naming names and taking down ministries. That's not what we're about. But this is very popular book, very popular author on Amazon, just looked it up this morning in the top five books on discipleship that are being sold on Amazon right now. Also has another book though that came out; God Has a Name, back in October and there's a resource that you want to recommend to help us think about this book as well as we seek to care for the folks in our church that at the rate these books are selling, we shouldn't be surprised if some of our folks are dipping in and checking out his books. So what is the resource that you want to recommend to us?

Mark Prater:

Yeah, I want to recommend this resource because as you just said, I do wonder if we have more younger people reading, Practicing the Way. And again, this is not Red Alert status or anything like that, but it's especially for pastors, being aware of what your people are reading. And I just had a pastor last week in Sovereign Grace contact me say, Hey, you mentioned that book, Practicing the Way at the conference. I just talked to someone who's reading the book. Can you help me with some resources on that, how to reply, which I did. So it's just another reminder, maybe more people are reading it. It's actually an article that you sent me, Ben, that you found and was grateful that you sent; by a man by the name of Wyatt Graham, has more of a theological review of that book that Comer's written and also he references a sermon Comer gave entitled Why?.

And he gives a very thoughtful yet gracious critique, ends by saying because of Comer's view of God, he can't recommend Practicing the Way because obviously his view of God affects and you clearly see it in Practicing the Way how he wrote that book. So the name of the article that you sent me, and I'm hoping that we can get this link into the transcript so that guys can just click on the link and reference it. But here's the title in case we can't do that. How John Mark Comer's View of God Shapes his Spiritual Formation. And again, the author is Wyatt Graham. And it's a very thoughtful review of his view of God. And I think a couple of things just to point out, he certainly presents Comer, I think it's clear, he is as an open theist for example, which will affect how you not only view God, but how you interpret all the events in your life and in the world. And he also, Comer, seems to reject God's impassibility; sort of a doctrine that has historically been held clearly, certainly by reform folks, in the theological world as a right view of God. And it's just a good article to read and be aware of because Practicing the Way is shaped by Comer's view of God. And I don't know, what did you find helpful from the article? Anything you would add?

Benjamin Kreps:

Not a lot I would add. I did find it helpful because I'm not, wasn't very familiar, actually, with Comer until the conference. I'm reading a lot of old books most of the time, so I try to keep up with new stuff that's coming out. But the issue at hand really is one that is so important for the folks in our church because what's being addressed here is where is God, one of the primary things, where is God in my suffering? Which is one of the most fundamental questions that people have struggled with well for time immemorial. And so for us helping the folks in our church to understand, to see God as sovereign over all things, and good, is essential. I mean, we need our best theology when we're navigating through suffering. And so the concern is a book like that or teaching about God, which leans more towards an open theism view, for instance, is going to leave folks that are influenced by that ill-prepared for suffering. Because in suffering that temptation to think hard thoughts about God and begin to make false assumptions about God's faithfulness and goodness, those are all in play when we're talking about this perspective, false perspective, I believe about God. And so I'm grateful for you guys pointing us to some resources and helping us think through what folks in our church very well could be reading. And so we're not policing that, but we want to be prepared to be able to serve the folks in our church that may potentially have questions about something as fundamental as who God is in relation to evil and suffering.

Mark Prater:

Right? Yeah. The other thing that I said at the conference, just a reminder that sort of misunderstanding or false view of God or wrong understanding of God does affect what you see in the book. Riley Spring wrote a wonderful critique for me just saying the book basically it lacks gospel connections. And that's important to us, first of all, as believers, because I know my own heart, we can all have this tendency to try to smuggle our works into the gospel, the true gospel. And as a pastor we have to be mindful of helping people help them not to do that. And so a book on spiritual formation, it's a wonderful topic. We all want to grow and be more like Christ, but how we go about that and remaining connected to the grace of God found in the gospel is vital not only to our understanding and amazement of the gospel, but even of how we understand God himself. So just another thought in terms of just guys being aware of this potential resource being read by folks in your church.

Benjamin Kreps:

Yeah, I mean the reality is there can certainly be a temptation in our more reformed family of churches to believe God is sovereign. But bare sovereignty apart from God's goodness can lead one to despair. Actually, it can be a terrifying thing to consider a sovereign God apart from his goodness, but his sovereign goodness most visibly displayed in the gospel is just essential, can never be divorced from the gospel so that no matter what we're navigating through, what we're experiencing, the north star that orients us toward the goodness and kindness and faithfulness of God, even in the face of the dark clouds of suffering is the cross. And so divorcing any theology that we have, any theological position we have from the gospel or separating it in some way from the gospel is to our peril.

So appreciate the thoughtful way that you guys on the leadership team think about this stuff and seek to serve us, inform us, who may not be as in the loop on some of the resources that are coming out. So thanks for the recommendations, Mark. We'll be checking out that book, especially, I haven't gotten the David Mathis book, but I'm eager to order it. I'll be ordering it after I get off this podcast. Alright, so thanks for thinking of us and for the recommendations. Thank you all for checking out the podcast. We'll see you here next week. Lord willing. Bye for now.