Challenging our Thinking..

Ever since I read that Puritans loved beer and I began reading John Bunyan I've thought that maybe I have shades of being one in my life.

Justin Taylor10:44 am CT - Read the whole post here:
The Difference Between Puritans and Evangelicals on Communion with God

A convicting quote I return to again and again:

Whereas to the Puritans communion with God was a great thing, to evangelicals
today it is a comparatively small thing.

The Puritans were concerned about communion with God in a way that we are not.

The measure of our unconcern is the little that we say about it.

When Christians meet, they talk to each other about their Christian work and Christian interests, their Christian acquaintances, the state of the churches, and the problems of theology—but rarely of their daily experience of God.

I particularly like the Packer chapter 12 which you can read in PDF:

—J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness (Crossway, 1994), p. 215 (chapter 12).

On another post Kevin De Young's he raises Cautions for Mere Christianity these are worth reading since in an earlier post on his site readers listed Mere Christianity as the 4th most influential book for Reformed Evangelicals. See if you agree or even understand his points. Reading the comments to that post are interesting also.

Most of all the "classic" teachers I've held high in my early christian days have had some form of challenge these last couple of years....these include Lewis, Palmer, Wright, Campolo, Foster amoung others.

I see these slowly being reformed by the deeper classics dating from the early reformation or before....like the early creeds, confessions and catechisms, to Luther, Calvin, Bunyan and Edwards. But also coming in the form of the new reformers writing today.

It's challenging to sort through all of this.