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Preaching the Psalms has been a refreshing summer. I have forgotten how real, how relevant, how raw they can be in describing the reality of our spiritual journey, in all of its beauty and brokenness. They deal with stuff all of us face; guilt, regrets, anger, depression, alienation, and of course the need for grace.

I am reminded that unless we put shoe leather to our doctrine, unless we make the truth of grace practical, we strip it of its beauty and of it’s power. This week I am preaching on an old doctrine, much forgotten – the doctrine of repentance. What a glorious thing it is to be able to repent and be restored by a loving, gracious God!

I am presently re-reading a classic book that helped form my understanding of God when I was a young Christian. It is Knowing God by J.I. Packer, and I am loving it. There are few writers as clear as Packer, whom I found out about from my first theology teacher, Rod Rosenbladt. Rod, no mean writer in his own right, said this of Packer: ‘He is constitutionally incapable of writing an unclear sentence.’

Knowing God will inform you, edify you, stir you to worship, challenge you to think more deeply and biblically about God – in short, it will do a work of sanctification in you. His chapter “God Incarnate” is, by itself, worth the price of the book, and some of the simplest, clearest writing on the incarnation of Jesus in the English speaking literature.

This experience reminds me of an old truth that needs to be dusted off. We need to read, and re-read, great books. Our generation is the poorer for our a-literacy. We miss out on great gold from the giants of the faith, upon whose shoulders we are standing. Great books, like the books of the Bible, have staying power, have fresh power every time you read them. They don’t have the same power, of course, because they don’t have the same Author. Yet He guides the writers of the best books just as surely as He guided the writers of Scripture. And he uses them to guide us into deeper, stronger, more thirst-quenching waters than the wading pools we regularly churn out today.

So put away the books of the week that have caught the culture’s eye, and drink deeply from those whose knowledge of God surpasses our own.

A while ago I was in a blog conversation about the meaning of missional. I salute my friend Bill Kinnon for his insights into this issue, and his continuing to keep the conversation moving in directions that I think Jesus would applaud. I reprise my comments here for your consideration; some of the context I am referring to will be lost to you, but the general flow of thought is clear enough. I am responding to Bill’s insight, along with Darryl Dash’s, that the current crop of people talking about ‘missional’ are not really doing evangelism. They are re-defining the word to omit evangelism, particularly proclamation of the gospel.

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This world lost one of our great ones last week. Rachel Barkey was a wife, mother, friend, and deep deep lover of her King, Jesus. She was 37 when she passed out of this pale shadow into the glorious light of His presence. Her last lecture, called Death is Not Dying, can be seen in video at www.deathisnotdying.com. If you have not seen it, you should take the time. It will stir you, move you, melt you, and inspire you like few other talks.

My wife and I had the privilege of being her friend for over a decade. We miss her deeply, but rejoice with her that she ended well, in faith and hope and love.

While she was here, she lit the world with fierce joy.

She is doing the same with Him.

And we are at peace, though sorrowful.