Books on Christian life

The Life of Martyn Lloyd-Jones, 1899-1981

Iain H. Murray

True revival and reformation affects not only one generation but a second, third, and fourth. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, born in Wales and trained as a doctor, became an eloquent gospel-preaching pastor in London from 1939 to 1968. He promoted the Reformed wing of British evangelicalism and helped revive interest in Puritan theology and history. Murray has taken his earlier two-volume biography of Lloyd-Jones and condensed it, offering a refreshing perspective 25 years later. The many fans of Lloyd-Jones commentaries will enjoy learning about the man who saw the Holy Spirit animating good preaching, which he called “logic on fire.”

The Power of a Praying Grandparent

Stormie Omartian

Omartian made her name as a television star and musician during a time of spiritual revival in California. Although she had a troubled childhood, she found help in Christ and became a prayer warrior. She started with an easy-reading but profound book, The Power of a Praying Parent. Then she wrote others on praying for adult children, husbands, and marriage. Her books follow a helpful formula—short chapters on key topics, followed with her nonformulaic prayers. Now a grandmother, she offers her latest version on how to pray for grandchildren.

Awakening the Evangelical Mind: An Intellectual History of the Neo-Evangelical Movement

Owen Strachan

Strachan traces a post-WWII awakening of the evangelical mind through the “Cambridge [Mass.] evangelicals,” many of whom attended Harvard. One, Harold Ockenga, became pastor of the prominent Park Street Church in Boston and helped launch two seminaries—Fuller in the West, Gordon-Conwell in the East. Another, Carl Henry, was the first editor of Christianity Today and dreamed of a major Christian university. This informal fellowship of deep thinkers had a passion to bring Christ to the university. Strachan concludes: Ockenga was “the indispensable man of neo-evangelicalism, the one without whom no major enterprise could be projected.”

Pentecostal Outpourings: Revival and the Reformed Tradition

Robert Davis Smart, Michael A.G. Haykin, & Ian Hugh Clary

Pentecostals and charismatics may express more enthusiasm with respect to revival, but this book shows how the Holy Spirit has poured out in the various Reformed traditions. Editors Smart, Haykin, and Clary have pulled together articles by several authors that cover periods of revival in the British Isles (England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland), then in America. Joel Beeke (pastor, Heritage Netherlands Reformed, Grand Rapids) offers a fascinating review of revivals among Dutch Reformed immigrants in America in the early 1700s, and also covers lesser-known Dutch revival preachers in New York City and Albany.

Afterword

Paul David Tripp writes in his introduction to Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family (Crossway, 2016), “In the middle of all the endless parenting activities, many parents get lost.” This book by Tripp and another by Chap Bettis, author of The Disciple-Making Parent (Diamond Hill, 2016), provide Biblical wisdom for staying on course. They don’t offer a checklist—but lay out guidelines and principles to help parents disciple their children.

Tripp says his book is an elaborate discussion of one thing: “God’s call to you to be an essential part of his mission of rescue of the children he has given you.” And Bettis ends on this note: “Duty is ours, results are God’s.” For those raising prodigals (or married to one), Dave Harvey and Paul Gilbert feel your pain and offer gospel hope in Letting Go: Rugged Love for Wayward Souls (Zondervan, 2016). —Susan Olasky