For All It's Worth

NKJV Know the Word Study Bible This concise study Bible is a welcome addition to the ever growing number of study Bibles on the market.  What makes this Bible unique is the free flowing ease of reading that comes with the format of the text.  Further, the study notes aid in bringing out the original meaning of the Hebrew and Greek text while also giving the reader important historical markers for further study.  Overall, the compact nature of the Bible, the excellent study notes and the larger font size of the actual biblical text make this Bible a great book for any student of God’s Word. One of the key features of this text is the red insight portions inserted below the text as a way of gaining more wisdom about particular themes in the text.  In Jeremiah 23:1-8, the editors provide A Glimpse of the Messiah that outlines how the prophet viewed the coming Messiah.  One notes states, “Jeremiah, along with Isaiah and Zechariah, use the word branch to descr...

C.S. Lewis and Mere Christianity by Paul McCusker Author Paul McCusker gets into the crisis that spurned the conversion of C.S. Lews to the Christian faith but also the influences that led him there in his book, C.S. Lewis and Mere Christianity: The Crisis that Created a Classic.  Drawing on the rich resources from Lewis’ youth, the turbulence of the war (WWII) and the influence of friends, McCusker draws out the picture of Lewis in a quite extraordinary way.  The beauty of such a work is that you get Lewis in all his varied array speaking about his own life and McCusker drawing together the details. Lewis grew up in rooms full of books and immersed himself in the affairs of the imagination in a very real and tangible way.  Led to study under some of the notable atheists of his time, it was his imagination that drew him to study those whose work brimmed with religious optimism and hope.  McCusker writes, “The First War nearly clinched Jack’s conv...

Saving the saved by Bryan Loritts Pastor Bryan Loritts in his new book, Saving the Saved , brings to the foreground two twin themes that will help readers in their journey of faith; one, the kingdom of this world is a meritocracy and two, Jesus kicked this meritocracy to the curb and calls us his children, not dependent upon all of our vain efforts.  Bryan speaks to those who have fallen on hard times and those who are smooth smiling, his goal is to “refuse to have our joy tethered to the external events of life or to our personal strivings to measure up.” (22) One short sentence sums up what Bryan is trying to teach us in chapter one.  After looking at God’s loving kindness and mercy, Bryan writes, “God didn’t wait for me to get cleaned up before he loved me…Performance-free, unshakeable love.” (39)  The quote he looks to is from Romans 5:8 and Bryan focuses on the “while we were yet sinners,” the mercy and love of God goes down deep to save us while...

                            Discovering the Septuagint: A Guided Reader, Edited by Karen Jobes This new guide to the Greek Old Testament is a great boon to anyone studying the Scriptures in their original languages.   This new work is aimed at those students who have a good grasp of Greek already but need help in discerning unusual and necessary vocabulary.   Karen Jobes, author of commentaries on 1 Peter, Esther and a book already on the Septuagint has given us a rich work here.   Combining the work of various contributors, Discovering the Septuagint allows the reader to mine the depths of the LXX while seeking aid when words are used 25x or less in the text.   The authors give us the parsing of each word and offer some explanatory definitions when things remain unclear. Jesse Arlen and Kimberly Carlton point out a fascinating feature in their discus...

The Great Spiritual Migration by Brian D McLaren Brian McLaren and his own pithy way brings to the foreground and emphasis on a new kind of Christianity. The kind of faith that Brian envisions is a kind of migration not been set in the bedrock of beliefs that is unmoving but rather shifting with both culture and with faith. His new book the great spiritual migration is exactly that, a pointed work that encapsulates a vision towards the future where Christianity is changing and its peoples lives are changed as well. Brian states in the introduction, "but we also know that for a lot of people Christianity is malfunctioning, seriously so, and it's not pretty. This kind of frustration with conventional Christianity is what McLaren gets gets to at the heart of this message is concerned with a number of different clusters unbelief. One, namely that Christianity has been stuck in a set of propositions or beliefs that has controlled churches in the faith, rather then a spi...

The Beginner’s Bible: Holy Bible (NIRV) My 2 nd grader loves to read and so I thought taking a review of this new NIRV Bible, designed at a 3 rd grade reading level would be just the thing for her.  The Bible is based upon the NIV but does not follow it word for word, rather, it takes some of the longer phrasing and words and brings conciseness and brevity to the page.  This Bible is specifically designed for younger readers and those just jumping into Bible reading at any age.  The updated changes of the newest NIV version are also incorporated into the text of the NIrV.  Some of the wording in the text of the NIrV helps readers get a vision of the importance of the point an author is trying to make.  In Genesis 3, as God gives the curse to Adam, Moses writes, “You will have to work hard and sweat a lot to produce the food you eat (Gen. 3:19).”  The notion of tilling the ground and working the soil for food demands a great amount of...