Books on Godliness (pt. 1)

A few books that have made a huge impact on my spiritual life and growth are When I Don't Desire God, The Enemy Within, Living the Cross Centered Life, The Pursuit of Holiness, and Overcoming the World. Each one of these books takes a strong stance on the Holiness of God and his great mercy and grace. Each author, Piper, Lundgaard, Bridges, and Beeke, all admire the Puritans and adopt their teaching and methods in personal godliness. Piper states as much in his plethora of writings, Lundgaard's work essentially is a modern rewrite of Owen's Mortification of Sin, Bridges accomplishes the same but in regards to Ryle's Holiness, and finally Beeke, but his work is steeped in Calvin's theology of Union with Christ. A gem... just read Romans 8.

Piper noted that,

God defines evil this way when he says, "My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water (Jer. 2:13) God pictures himself as a mountain spring of clean, cool, life-giving water. They way to glorify a fountain like this is to enjoy the water, and praise the water, and keep coming back to the water, and point other people to the water, and get strength for love from the water, and never, never, never prefer any drink in the world over this water. That makes the spring look valuable. That is how we glorify God, the fountain of loving water.... So preferring the pleasures of money or power or fame or sex over the "pleasures.... at God's right hand" is not like preferring caramel to hot fudge. It is a great evil. Indeed it is the ultimate meaning of evil. Esteeming God less than anything is the essence of evil."

Lundgaard wrote on the tactics of sin,

You know the flesh has made a breach in your defenses when your heart is hardened by its deceitfulness (Heb 3:13) so that you are careless about sin. You will look at your life and think about how often you need God's forgiveness, and so think of it as something common, nothing to worry over or take pains about. You'll know you are hardened when you begin to extend the boundaries of Christian freedom to include indulgences that in the past would have shocked you. Your flesh will whisper to you that strictness and anxious care about obedience are legalism -the gospel came to deliver you form such things! And besides, if you really do commit a sin, you cna be forgiven later.

For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21

(I'll come back to Overcoming the World, Living the Cross Centered Life, and the Pursuit of Holiness.)