Knowing God Pt. 1

After receiving a plethora of books at the T4G conference I recently attended, I figured I would start reading some of the good books I have already before I start tackling the new ones. I used to be real big on having a huge library and reading. I still am a lover of good books, but not nearly what I once was. I spend the majority of my reading now on books that deal with the subjects I am covering as pastor of VCC.

In Sunday School, I am teaching a Survey of the Old Testament. I use J. Sidlow Baxter's Discover the Book and listen to my brother's lectures on the book as well. That along with studying the book itself is more information that I can comprehend and more than I can 'cram' into Sunday School.

I just finished preaching through the book of Mark and began this last week preaching through the entire book of John. For Mark, I used the following resources: Matthew Henry and John Gill's commentary, Strong and Thayer's Greek dictionaries, Websters' 1828Dictionary, and a few other resources. All of these are found on free Bible software provided by E-Sword which I cannot recommend highly enough.

I also use J.C. Ryles commentaries which can be found online and The NIV Application Commentary by David Garland. I also always check to see if John Piper has preached on the passage before or deals with the subject in other gospel accounts. I look through sermon audio and appreciated Charles Gormley's expositions through the entire book.

Going through John, pastor Josh from Indian River gave me two books, which so far have not been much help (and actually Josh might need to publically confess his coveting of books while we attended T4G) and I have AW Pinks commentary on the whole book.

On Friday night, our church is going through a book study on "What Jesus Demands from the World." If you don't appreciate Piper's ministry, you need to repent.

I actually started this blog post out to talk about a book I already owned that I just picked up and started reading, so I will talk about that in my next post. Knowing God by JI Packer.