{"id":7723,"date":"2012-04-22T03:01:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-22T03:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=7723"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:35:57","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:35:57","slug":"christian-authors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=7723","title":{"rendered":"Christian Authors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I just heard on the radio about the passing today of Chuck Colson, a man who built his first reputation on politics and his second (and more lasting) on the Gospel.\u00a0 If the name doesn’t ring a bell, Colson was one of President Richard Nixon’s staff who did some jail time for the Watergate scandal.\u00a0 While in prison, Colson was born again and went on eventually to found Prison Fellowship.\u00a0 Colson was an astute observer of culture and human nature.\u00a0 When I was a young Christian, around college age, I was deeply influenced by many of the books Colson authored.\u00a0 He was the one who introduced me to the concept of “worldview” – the way each individual sees the world, whether he can articulate it in words or not.\u00a0 Colson taught me how much of my own worldview was shaped by American culture and he challenged me to allow Scripture to more fully mold my views.\u00a0 I am grateful for his impact on my life and faith.When I read Colson’s books, I always found myself nodding and saying “Yes!”\u00a0 Well, last week at the\u00a0pastors’ conference I attended in Louisville, I found a new (to me!) author who has me excited and saying, “Yes!” all over again:\u00a0 John Piper.\u00a0 Piper spoke at the conference.\u00a0 He is a pastor and preacher at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He’s written dozens of books and my friend Travis bought me one for my birthday called “Let the Nations be Glad!”\u00a0 The subtitle is “The Supremacy of God in Missions.”\u00a0 It’s one of those books where I didn’t even get through the Preface before I started underlining various sentences.\u00a0 For now, I just want to record here some of the passages I have underlined:When Jesus said, “Sell your possessions, and give to the needy” (Luke 12:33), he seemed to imply not that the disciples were wealthy and could give from their overflow.\u00a0 It seems they had so few liquid assets that they had to sell something in order to have something to give. (Page 23)<\/strong><\/em>God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.\u00a0 This is perhaps the most important sentence in my theology. (Page 50)<\/strong><\/em>“The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).\u00a0 Missions is not a recruitment project for God’s labor force.\u00a0 It is a liberation project from the heavy burdens and hard yokes of other gods (Matt. 11:28-30). (Page 55)<\/strong><\/em>We cannot know what prayer is for until we know that life is war.\u00a0 Life is war.\u00a0 That’s not all it is.\u00a0 But it is always that.\u00a0 Our weakness in prayer is owing largely to our neglect of this truth.\u00a0 Prayer is primarily a wartime walkie-talkie for the mission of the church as it advances against the powers of darkness and unbelief.\u00a0 It is not surprising that prayer malfunctions when we try to make it a domestic intercom to call upstairs for more comforts in the den.”\u00a0 (Page 65)<\/strong><\/em>THAT is a powerful analogy: prayer as a walkie-talkie, not a domestic intercom!\u00a0 That gave me something to chew on for several days.\u00a0 Could that really be why we find prayer (if we are honest) so often ineffective?\u00a0 I think Piper has a point here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just heard on the radio about the passing today of Chuck Colson, a man who built his first reputation on politics and his second (and more lasting) on the Gospel.\u00a0 If the name doesn’t ring a bell, Colson was one of President Richard Nixon’s staff who did some jail time for the Watergate scandal.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7723"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7724,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7723\/revisions\/7724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}