The Barnabas Blog

Pay close attention to the words around you. Start listening to what people are saying at the tables next to yours in the restaurants, in the line at department stores, to casual conversations at lunch, and to the words of co-workers, family members, and friends. What are they saying? Are their words clean or has the conversation of America deteriorated toward becoming crass and barbaric? All of the details of the past election having been coming to light in the last two or three months through multiple books that are being written. The John Edwards story has been detailed by Andrew Young. John Heilemann and Mark Halperin teamed up in Game Change. Karl Rove has written about his tenure with George Bush in the White House and other thoughts on the political landscape of the nation. One of the common themes and terribly disappointing factors of all of these books has been the extreme proclivity toward profanity. The Clintons, the Obama’s, the McCain’s, the Edward’s words have all...

School is officially out and summer has begun. One of the highlights for the summer for my younger brother and I was the trips to the library where we got involved in the summer reading programs. This was back in the early to late seventies and most libraries had very structured reading programs. Additionally they would give away awards for those who read the most. They also encouraged readers to move out of their age groups and go above to higher reading categories. I can well remember while I was still riding the bus having a book to read both on the way to school and on the way home. Before you throw me under the bus and put me in the geek (or nerd) category, it was fairly common for boys to read. The sorry substitutes today are video games and other things that will cause your brains to turn into mush. I can remember reading massive amounts of good clean western fiction by Louis L’Amour , Zane Grey , and Elmer Kelton . I read through William Manchester’s book about Douglas...

As always, I am constantly in the hunt for good books that will inspire me toward more spiritual growth. One such book that I have benefited from over the years has been one written by John MacArthur in 1993. He wrote Ashamed of the Gospel as a call to action for biblical preaching, a lifestyle of holiness, and the great need for discernment in our times. More often than not the trends that MacArthur pointed out in our times mirrored what happened during the “Down Grade Controversy” in Charles Spurgeon’s times over 100 years ago. If you are interested in a challenging, thought-provoking book then you need to read it. If you are uncomfortable with a straight-forward and direct approach to the supposed new trends of the modern church era, save your money. The book has been reprinted and there are several new chapters that have been added and some revisions have also taken place in the new edition. Suffice it to say that what was written nearly 20 years ago has almost come to pa...