Why You Should Attend Church (in Person) This Sunday

The Bible expects you to gather with a healthy church for worship. And it’s for your good—don’t miss out.

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/attend-church-sunday/

Each year a flurry of top ten book lists appears. Here’s my top ten reads from 2023 with an added list of top resources used for sermon prep. Enjoy!

One of the segments in our Quadracore of Discipleship is One-to-One Discipleship. Reading the Bible together is a great start.

Recommended reading -- Why gather? Click to read Jonathan Leeman's article.

Have you seen the book stall in the foyer? As Pastor Josh moves through this series on Charting Our Course, you will find books to support it! This week, we highlight Mark Dever's "What is a Healthy Church?"

Happy New Year CBC Family! One benefit of God-created time markers—like days, months, and years—is that they provide hope and an opportunity to renew one’s resolve.  

Each new day comes with a promise of hope for God’s people. Lamentations 3:22-33 reminds us that each day promises new mercies from God, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Each new day gives birth to new hope of new mercies for the God who always sees and cares for his people. A new year similarly invites us to look freshly and dependently upon Christ for new mercy.

A new year also invites us to reassess our resolve. Gyms are already packed with people getting a head start on their new year’s resolutions, because there is something in us that sees a new year as an opportunity for a fresh start and fresh resolve. Moses similarly prays to God asking him to help Israel consider how they are using the time God has given them in Psalm 90:12, asking, “So teach us to number our days, that we may present a heart of wisdom.” As the new covenant people of Christ, we can harness this opportunity to reassess our resolve spiritually.

Jonathan Edwards, famed theologian of the First Great Awakening, wrote out a list of 70 spiritually framed resolutions when he was just 18 or 19 years old. His resolution #43 says, "Resolved to ask myself at the end of every day, week, month and year, wherein I could possible in any respect have done better." Let me encourage you to consider, perhaps with a friend or spouse, how you can live more intentionally this year.

First, a caution. As you consider what needs to change, you might become overwhelmed. Your list seems to grow out of control: 

• I need to share Christ with more people. 
• I’m not discipling anyone or being discipled by anyone. 
• My family needs to spend more time in family worship. 
• I need to get in shape physically because it has spiritual implications.  
• I should read more books to help me spiritually.
• I want to be more generous with my money, or, I know I should want to be more generous.  
• My marriage needs help.

And as the list grows you can feel like a failure. Remember that God doesn’t love you because of the strength of your resolve. We are all in process of being transformed from one degree of glory to the next by the power of the Holy Spirit. So let me encourage you to make your list, check it twice, and then ask yourself what is the one next thing I can change that will make the biggest difference. Pray and ask for God’s grace in that thing.

• Personal Devotional. If you are looking for a good personal devotion, let me recommend New Morning Mercies by Paul David Tripp. Gia and I have been through this devotion, and I found the depth, brevity, and Scripture readings to provide a great resource for a ten minute devotion in the morning before spending time in prayer.  
• Family Devotion. Gia recently purchased a number of the 31-Day Devotionals for Life. The topics of these studies could help you double down on your resolve. For instance, you can work on family devotions and issues of the heart like anger. Just before advent we went through, Anger: Calming Your Heart by Robert D. Jones. These devotions can last 10-30 minutes depending on how talkative your family is.
• Daily Bible Reading Plan. My mom and dad are on their second year of reading straight through the Bible and it has been a massive encouragement to see the difference it has made in their lives. Check out our list of Bible Reading Plans. Use the Scripture you read to guide your prayers each day.  
• Commit to serve sacrificially and specifically. I have found that you not only serve what you love, but you grow to increasingly love those you serve. Christ has given you gifts to build up your local church (1 Corinthians 12-14), and using those gifts grows your love not only for Christ’s body, but Christ himself. We need help with our children, which would be a great opportunity to help evangelize the lost and make disciples. Contact Danielle Whitley if you would like to help in this area. Jeff Thorpe could also use help with Safety and Security. If you are interested in leadership in the church, you could join Pastor Josh on Tuesday nights this Spring for his class on leadership. You could also reach out to Arthur Keeley about hosting a connect group in your home during the week. https://centrevillebaptist.org/serve
• Give Faithfully. Perhaps you have gotten out of the habit of giving faithfully. You can set up recurring giving through your bank or you can set it up through our online portal at https://centrevillebaptist.org/give.

 
I’m praying with you and for you that this is the most fruitful year yet spiritually.  
 
Grace and Peace,
Josh Vincent   

Strange New World
by Carl R. Trueman
Trueman wrote this work as an abbreviated and accessible version of his larger work, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, which is critical for Christians to understand the chaotic world of “expressive individualism” in which we live. Truman achieved his goal here and I would encourage everyone to read especially parents and young adults. He masterfully connects the historical dots the have resulted in the “social imaginary” we experience each day.

Finally Free
by Heath Lambert
Pornography is one of the great enemies of spiritual vitality in the church today. Lambert’s book provides a litany of wise counsel for helping Christians break free from its clutches. I also found that he provides helpful counsel for those looking to help shepherd others out of this addiction. I would recommend this as a top resource in this area.

The Death of Porn
by Ray Ortlund
Ortlund’s short, accessible book aims at helping fight pornography addiction in a unique way. He begins with a vision of manhood and womanhood as God intended each to function in Christ. He then attempts, to give Christians a vision not only of not giving in to sexual addiction, but positively of proactively seeking to invest oneself in fighting the pornography industry. I found his work to cause Christians to ask themselves, what does it look like not only to not be enslaved to pornography, but also to fight it like a valiant dragon slayer in a way only Ortlund can.

Conversion
by Michael Lawrence
I’m embarrassed to say I just read this book after years of encouragement from other pastors. This work is extremely accessible and offers a clear explanation of what biblical conversion looks like. Additionally, Lawrence provides helpful insight as to the implications of this critical doctrine that is often overlooked.

No Shortcut to Success: a Manifesto for Modern Missions
by Matt Rhodes
Rhodes unpacks some of the underlying philosophies driving some of the more influential movements of our day. His work shows that a significant amount of missions giving and efforts misunderstand two important realities: conversion and the church. I would encourage everyone to take a look at this critical work for understanding modern missions.

Providence
by John Piper
I have read much by Piper in the past and he had a profound influence on me as a younger Christian. This is one of the first books I have read by him in more recent history, but it did not disappoint. Here, he unpacks providence defining it as “the act of purposefully providing for or sustaining and governing the world” (30). Though it’s long, 751 pages, it’s also easy to read and caused me to worship afresh the God who not only sees but “sees to it.”

Retrieving Eternal Generation
by Fred Sanders and Scott Swain
Many translators have moved away from the language of “only begotten” for monogenes in verses like John 3:16 in the New Testament opting for “only” or “one of a kind.” This book gives an accessible explanation for why, while also arguing for the importance of keeping “only begotten” as language that reflects Nicene Orthodoxy and connects with the eternal generation of the Son.

Communion with God
by John Owen
Owen’s writing can be dense, but it’s worth reading and rereading for the depths explored by him. Here, he explores the unique roles each of the persons of the Trinity play in communing with God’s people.

Romans 7 and Christian Identity
by Will Timmins
I normally would not recommend a monograph like this, but Timmins work offers what I found to be a unique and critical treatment of one of the most difficult texts in all of the Bible—Romans 7. I found his arguments of the lingering effects of living in an already-not-yet reality of possessing the Spirit of God while awaiting a new body free from sin convincing.

God’s Unfaithful Wife: A Biblical Theology of Spiritual Adultery
by Ray Ortlund
Ortlund does a masterful job of unfolding how the Bible develops the theme of idolatry as adultery, while also showing why adultery is an apt metaphor for idolatry. This book is a little more academic but also profoundly helpful in understanding how to do biblical theology in a responsible way that leads to rich, practical application.