Complete New Book List
October, 2019
Safe and Sound: Standing Firm in Spiritual Battles, by David Powlison. David Powlison was a well-known counselor, author, teacher and executive director of the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation. Before he passed away in June 2019 from a terminal illness, he finished writing this–his final book. Nancy Guthrie calls it a “short Scripture-saturated book” which provides clear teaching on what spiritual warfare really is and strategies for helping people in the midst of spiritual battles against evil. Paul David Tripp said he doesn’t believe there is a better book on spiritual warfare, while Ed Welch said it connects the dots between Ephesians 6 and Satan’s present strategies.
Something Needs to Change: A Call to Make Your Life Count in a World of Urgent Need, by David Platt. On a week-long trek in the Himalayas, pastor and author David Platt was rocked to his core by the extent of human need he witnessed firsthand. And he was forever changed. This highly challenging book contains his reflections after that trip, as he calls us to risk more and take action where God has placed us.
HISTORICAL NON-FICTION: The Train to Crystal City: FDR’s Secret Prisoner Exchange Program and America’s Only Family Internment Camp During World War II, by Jan Jarboe Russell. A little known event in American history that reveals the war-time hysteria against the Japanese and Germans in America. Thousands of families were rounded up and incarcerated in Crystal City, TX, and hundreds of them were exchanged for high-profile POWs held in Germany and Japan, under a secret FDR-approved prisoner exchange program.
You Can Trust God to Write Your Story: Embracing the Mysteries of Providence, by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and Robert Wolgemuth, with Foreword by Jone Eareckson Tada. The authors share their story, friends’ stories, and the stories of people in the Bible such as Esther, Naomi and Ruth, and Joseph, who faced life-altering challenges, but in the end found God to be faithful. Randy Alcorn calls this “a unique book, integrating stories of God’s providence from His people and His Word”.
On the Road with Saint Augustine: A Real-World Spirituality for Restless Hearts, by James K.A. Smith. The author has spent a lot of time with Augustine and seeks to make this ancient thinker’s guidance accessible to a new generation.
Carpe Diem: Seizing the Day, Discerning the Times, by Os Guinness. How do we make the most of the time we have? Guinness calls us to reorient our notion of history not as cyclical or meaningless, but as purposeful, as we “read the times” and seek to serve God’s purposes for our generation. Justin Taylor calls this a “splendid reflection on the nature and conception of time” and its importance to the Christian seeking to be faithful in the present era.
Matthew, Disciple and Scribe: The First Gospel and Its Portrait of Jesus, by Patrick Schreiner. A fresh look at the Gospel of Matthew, which highlights the unique contribution that Matthew’s rich and multilayered portrait of Jesus makes to understanding the connection between the OT and the NT. Schreiner says Matthew is best understood with one eye looking back to the old story and the other attuned to shifts in the new story. In this way we see how the stories of Jesus both echo and complete Israel’s story, and also moves it forward.
Remembering the Covenants in Song: An Intertextual Study of the Abrahamic and Mosaic Covenants in Psalm 105, Young-Sam Won. This is an academic study which reconsiders the relationship of these two biblical covenants through the lens of Psalm 105, a postexilic song. The author has ThM and PhD degrees from DTS and is the son of CBC members Hosik and Shiok Won. The Wons donated this book to the CBC library.
ADULT FICTION: Mind Games and Fire Storm, by Nancy Mehl (Kaely Quinn Profiler #1 and #2); Strands of Truth, by Colleen Coble.
CHILDREN’S DVDs: 10 Bible Stories for the Whole Family, from Nest Entertainment.