Don't Waste Your Summer #3

(Note to those doing the James Bible study with me: Next Tuesday I will post our first discussion on James 1:1-8. I look forward to hearing your comments!)

Let’s face it. Summer leaves most of us with at least a little extra time. And in some cases it leaves us with gaps in our social schedules if certain activities (Bible studies, school, networking groups, etc…) that we usually participate in are on a seasonal break. While the first two posts in this series focused on two ways we can personally focus on not wasting our summer, today I want to talk about an interpersonal effort we can make that will help us insure that our summer will be good for more than just great family photos and fun and happy memories. The extra time summer provides in our schedules could be put to good use is we decide to disciple or be discipled by someone in our local church.

In 2 Timothy 2:2 Paul encourages young Timothy to entrust the things he’s been taught to faithful men who will be able to teach others. Those of us who have been Christians for any length of time have the great privilege and responsibility of teaching others the things we have learned about Christ so that they can grow, be encouraged and eventually go out and teach those same things to others as well.

My church has a great program called “Partners” for both new and old believers alike. It’s a ten-week curriculum that walks you through some of the foundational principles of the Christian faith and spurs you on in certain spiritual disciplines like prayer. Once you complete the program you are officially qualified to take someone else through it. My friend Kelly has been encouraging me to go through it with her for months now, but I’ve never had the time. Starting in July, I’ve committed to “partnering” with Kelly and completing the course. I’m looking forward to being refreshed in some of the basics of my faith, learning some new and challenging things and also growing in my friendship with Kelly along the way. Going into the fall I will also be equipped to take others through the program in the future.

Summer is a great time to take advantage of programs like this that your own church might offer. Or, if your church doesn’t offer anything like this, it would be a great time to study a book of the Bible with a friend once a week. Proverbs 27:17 says, “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.”

Don’t waste your summer, and look for a way to sharpen or be sharpened by someone else.

Stay tuned for posts 4-5 on the “Don’t Waste Your Summer” series...

Don't Waste Your Summer Part #2

Yesterday, I began a five-part series on not wasting your summer. My main motivation for not wanting to waste my own summer is 2 Corinthians 5:10. Who really wants to stand before God and explain why getting a good suntan was more important than building His kingdom or growing spiritually? Now, I’m not down on getting a good suntan. I have my own fair share of dates penciled in to hit up the beach, the pool and my neighborhood water park this summer. But I plan on taking a tool that will help me not waste my tan (how’s that for stretching this analogy?) with me when I go.

2) Read challenging and engaging books this summer. As an author, I’m sure it goes without saying that I read a lot. But in the past I’ve been guilty of being lazy in my personal reading choices. When you read or write for work for 8-10 hours on an average day, the last thing you want to do sometimes is pick up a challenging and convicting read. There are many days where I would prefer to pick up lighthearted fiction written by one of my novelist friends, or something that is currently selling well so I can research why it happens to be so appealing to such a broad audience. This summer I’ve restructured my reading goals, and my intention wasn’t to impress those lounging near me at the beach with my spiritual and scholarly reading choices. Instead I’m looking for books that will spur me on to growth. I want to expand my mind and be challenged.

This summer I’ve decided that I’m going to conquer two Christian classics that I’ve owned for years but have yet to labor through. Both Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan have been on my theoretical “to read” list for a long time now, and I’ve decided that this year I’m going to actually read them. But those aren’t the only two books on my list. In fact, my goal is to conquer two books a month. So that means I have to read at a pretty regular pace this summer. In addition to those two classics I also have some newer books that will work to challenge and convict me as I work on my tan. The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment by Tim Challies and God is the Gospel by John Piper are both on my nightstand ready to go. And I’m currently, looking for suggestions for the month of August so you can leave your suggestions in the comments section. I’m open to both secular and Christian books, but if the book is secular it has to have redeeming qualities that make it useful to me as I seek to grow in my knowledge of Christ. After all, my goal is to not waste my summer.

This summer, I encourage you to forgo the temptation to reach exclusively for lighter faire and to instead grab at least one Christian classic and a few thought provoking reads that will help you grow in your knowledge and understanding of Christ. Even in things as simple as hitting the beach and working on your tan, make sure you don’t waste your summer.

If you want to read an article by John Piper on how he selects his reading material you can click here.


Stay tuned for “Don’t Waste Your Summer” tips 3-5 later this week.

Don't Waste Your Summer # 1

With summer usually comes the temptation to become spiritually lax or lazy. If your schedule is anything like mine, it eases up some in June, July and August. Currently, I'm on a break from my regular Thrive and Women's Bible Study (WBS) commitments and it would be really easy for me to read the Bible less and stop working on spiritual disciplines like prayer and Scripture memory. The part of me that was a student for eighteen years still seems to associate warm weather with carefree fun. But, alas, if I were to indulge my desire for three months of pure relaxation I would find, come September, that I have wasted my summer. And someday, when I stand before the judgement seat of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:10) I would really hate to have to account for a completely wasted summer. Imagine me standing before Christ and saying, "Yes, I know I didn't grow spiritually or build your kingdom in any way that summer, but I sure did have fun hitting up the water park and the beach with my friends." Yeah, not gonna fly.

So, this summer it's important that all of us keep our end game in mind. We will all stand before Christ someday and have to give an account not only for how we lived our lives, but also for how we spent this summer. I'm not sure about you, but that really jolts me to reality quickly. Over the next five days, let me offer you five ways you can invest your time this summer that will help insure that you don't waste it.

1) Study a book of the Bible this summer. During the fall, winter and spring I studied the entire books of 1 Peter and 1 Thessalonians with my WBS and Thrive groups. Each week I had homework assignments that had me pouring through the pages of Scripture, and that left me completely Bible saturated. The spiritual growth that resulted from time spent in the pure, unadulterated Word of God was incredible. Nothing compares to actually being in the Bible itself and studying it verse by verse, in context.

This summer, I've decided to study the book of James. But instead of taking a carefree (or careless) approach to how I was going to accomplish this goal, I decided to create a study guide for myself that is much like the one I used to study 1 Peter this past year. It's not a curriculum, and it's not a Bible study. It's not something that I will ever get published. Instead it's a a series of questions to guide me in my own verse by verse study of James each week. Michael and I happened to own some great commentaries and we recently invested in the Libronix Bible Software, so my study questions will help me to probe pretty deeply into James, and into supporting passages. My mom and her friend Wendy were so encouraged by my enthusiam for James that they asked if I would be willing to share my study guide with them this summer. I happily obliged, and I would be more than willing to share it with you too.

Even if you've never commented on this blog before, don't let that hold you back from studying the book of James with me this summer. If you would like me to send you a study guide each week for the next sixteen weeks simply type your email address (in the following format) in the comments section: shannonATbeingagirlbooks.com. If enough of you sign up, I might even create a weekly discussion post based on each week's passage.

But whether you choose to join me in the book of James this summer or not (I know some of my CBC friends studied James in 2006 before I was around), I would highly encourage you to take the first step toward not wasting your summer by finding your own book of the Bible and breaking it into small sections and diving in to discover the countless treasures burried in God's Word.

Stay tuned for "Don't Waste Your Summer" tips 2-5 later this week!

Unbalanced Christians

For the last eight months Michael and I have been involved with Thrive (the young marrieds group at our church). It’s been absolutely life changing for us in terms of the caliber of teaching we are exposed to each week, and the quality of people we have met. We have made some very close friends in this group, and they serve as the sharpest of iron on which we can file and hone ourselves. Sadly, yet understandably, Thrive breaks for the summer so this week will be our last weekly gathering for four long months. We’ll still have monthly accountability meetings, and other fun activities. But nothing compares to the weekly dinners and Bible study we’ve grown accustomed to. In eight months together, we’ve devoured the entire book of 1 Thessalonians.

So, a few weeks ago, several of us were chatting about the possibility of continuing to get together weekly or bi-monthly throughout the summer. One person in the group wanted to continue to meet together, but had strong opinions on how it should be structured. Let’s refer to this person as “Bob.”

“We’re a marriage group, so if we get together we need to study the topic of marriage,” Bob said. I found the comment to be rather odd since we’ve spent the last eight months studying 1 Thessalonians, which isn’t a book on marriage. In fact, one of the things that attracted Michael and I to Thrive (and thereby Compass Bible Church) in the first place was that they actually focused on teaching the Bible rather than strictly dealing with the topic of marriage.

Although Bob may have been well-intentioned in wanting to study the topic of marriage, I think that his comments demonstrate just how easy it can be to get off-track in the Christian life. If we open our Bibles and thumb through the concordances looking exclusively for words and topics that are of interest to us—or pertain to our current life stages—we run the risk of becoming very unbalanced people. Trust me, Michael and I tried to plug-in at several young marrieds groups before we found Thrive, and although we may have picked up a good communication skill or two, the experiences left us nothing but frustrated and almost dwarfed. We did not grow spiritually as we learned to repeat catchy phrases like, “My spouse is not my enemy.”

Listen, I’m all about being relevant. I write books to teenage girls, so almost all of the personal stories I use as illustrations come from my own teen years. All of the application in the book is specific to how the lives of teenage girls are structured. But I don’t open up my Bible to a limited number of passages and think those are the only biblical truths that can apply to the lives of teenage girls. The entire Bible applies to their lives, and it’s my job to show them how. So, right now I’m working on a book based on one of the parables of Jesus. The application is still geared to teenage girls, but nothing about the passage itself screams “teenage girl material.” But after teaching the parable at two teen girls’ conferences already, I’ve seen it begin to change the lives of teenage girls. Why? Because the material I am using is the Bible and the Bible has the power to change people’s lives (Hebrews 4:12). My opinions don’t. Sure, I can temporarily sway someone with my opinions if I am lucky, but my opinions certainly aren’t living and active and sharper that a double-edged sword.

The Church is full of many unbalanced Christians today because we are far too topic driven. We’re life stage crazy. It’s almost as if we confuse Christianity with Burger King and think we can "have it our way." Let’s be honest here. Jesus Christ’s earthly ministry ended when He was thirty-three years old. That’s still relatively young (the older I get, the younger that looks). Does that mean there is no salvation for people older than their mid-thirties? Is Christ’s life suddenly irrelevant to them because He never lived to see their life stage? Since Paul, Peter and John were men does that mean I should throw out the majority of my New Testament because men can’t speak truth into my life as a woman? Or what about this—the classic marriage passage in Ephesians 5 was penned by Paul who (most likely) wasn’t married anymore when he wrote that. So, do I throw that out too?

Picking and choosing which parts of the Bible apply to your life isn’t a good practice to adopt. The very nature of arguing that certain passages are more relevant than others is a slippery slope, because natural reasoning can easily whittle away the relevance of any of the Bible’s teachings. Just look at my last paragraph, I completely wiped out the “relevance” of much of the New Testament.

If we truly believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, then we need to know and study the entire book. Knowing what the Bible says about being single doesn’t do you any good once you get married. And knowing the ins and outs of all of the marriage passages doesn’t do you any good in the grief of becoming widowed. Life changes. God’s Word doesn’t. So don’t focus exclusively on what may or may not seem relevant to you today. The Word of the Lord stands forever (1 Peter 1:25), and it would do you good to know your stuff.

Book Review: Don't Waste Your Life by John Piper

Over the years I’ve really come to respect John Piper for his bold passion for demonstrating the supremacy of God in all things. His book Don’t Waste Your Life is definitely at the top of my all-time favorite reads. If I were to comment on everything that challenged, convicted or encouraged me in this book, my review would be as long as the book itself. So, let me comment exclusively on three points Piper raised in this book that left me thinking long after the book was closed:

1) Piper thoroughly explores many avenues which a person can pursue and still come out knowing he or she has wasted her life. Instead of stopping at the surface and stating that a non-Christian life is a wasted life, Piper probes deeper and begins to raise questions about those of us who wrap ourselves in comfortable Christianity. For example, Piper surmises that those of us who work hard all day, come home at night and plop ourselves in front of the TV for “family time” and spend our weekends on fun and church activities waste our lives just as much as the slothful non-Christian because we aren’t risking anything for the cause of the kingdom, we aren’t actively sharing Christ with others and we aren’t prizing and treasuring God above all else.

Somewhere along the line we’ve cloned the American dream and Christianized it and think that when we get to heaven God will be pleased with us although nothing about our lives screams of His renown. For me, this was very convicting. I’ve always thought a good family life, and fellowship with church friends were pretty good things. And Piper doesn’t argue that they aren’t. Instead, he points out that they are merely a starting point for the lives we were meant to live. As he writes, “We were meant for so much more.” Our Christianity must breach the walls of our own homes and churches or when our lives are over, we will find we have done very little for the kingdom of God.

2) Piper also raises a magnificent point about forgiveness. He writes that those of us who seek forgiveness from God specifically to free ourselves from guilt, or in order to see a dead loved one again in eternity, or to simply escape the fiery flames of hell, or to receive glorified bodies, miss out on what forgiveness really is. Forgiveness gives us God. As Piper so beautifully states: “[Christ] is the only window through which a sinner may see the face of God and not be incinerated” (40). If we can come to a place in our own understanding where we realize that forgiveness gives us God, then we will become forgiving people because our desire to give God—the treasure of our lives—to other people will overpower any offense we may have received along the way.

The forgiveness Piper talks about isn’t “wimpy grace,” and he stresses the importance of accountability and correction, but he also says that those of us who understand what forgiveness really is will error on the side of mercy. I’ve never thought about it in those exact terms before, so this was a powerful concept for me. Forgiveness did give me God, and who am I to withhold God from someone else?

3) Piper also writes very frankly about the concept of risk in this book. On page 81 he says, “One of my aims is to explode the myth of safety and to somehow deliver you from the enchantment of security. Because it’s a mirage. It doesn’t exist. Every direction you turn there are unknowns and things beyond your control.” He goes on to state that we take risks every day of our lives—with car accidents and diseases and other things interrupting our lives and ruining our plans we aren’t free from risk or pain just because we don’t take great risks for God. Instead, we take risks for things that are of little or no value while we choose not to take risks for the one thing that matters most. And we waste our lives.

We are, by nature, a people who like security. We like answers. We want to know how things will turn out in the end. But God, in His infinite wisdom, has decided to prevent us from having the ability to know how things will work out on this earth. Will we die young? Maybe. But at least we have the security of knowing that those of us who know Christ will go from this earth to spend eternity with Him. That much He let us know, and that is grace enough. We don’t need to fear death just because we don’t know when it will come. Piper, himself, writes: “It is the will of God that we be uncertain about how life on this earth will turn out for us. And therefore it is the will of the Lord that we take risks for the cause of God” (86). This portion of the book really shattered my image of safety, and opened up new opportunities to me in terms of how I can serve God. If death isn’t meant to be feared, and safety is never to be had this side of heaven, then there is nothing I cannot do for the kingdom of God.

This review is getting long as it is, and I hope I’ve given you enough content to persuade you to buy this book. But I will offer this wholehearted endorsement with a word of caution: If you don’t want to be confronted with the hard sayings of Christ, and you don’t want to be challenged to live a life that stands in contrast to the comfortable Christianity that most of the Western world has embraced, then don’t buy this book. You’ll quickly grow frustrated with it, you’ll yell at Piper and you will want to put it down. This book isn’t easy reading, nor does it encourage easy living. But it does help map out a course for a life well-lived and un-wasted. So, if that’s what you are truly after, this book is for you.