A few TheoForum updates and then we’ll get to the big announcement:
- There’s no TheoForum meeting on Aug 8. We’re postponing that meeting to Aug 15.
- The next week, Aug 22, will bethe Synergy Exam (small groups collaborating then individual team members giving oral responses to essay questions from the chapters). So TheoFellows should get some study/review time in on the week of Aug 15th.
- August 23rd is somewhat tentative but will likely be the PreachIt session.
Alright, so to the book. Here are the teasers from the back cover:
“He suffered imprisonment for twelve years, even when a simple promise to cease preaching would have gained him freedom.. But Bunyan’s steadfast belief that God ordered every trial would not allow him to relent, and moved him to rely even mor upon ‘Him who is invisible’.”
“Even when his own sky was filled with clouds of dread, Cowper’s poetry was a reflection of the sustaining character of God – music for the mind that led him to endure, and to worship more deeply.”
“So great was Brainerd’s desire to honor God that he joyously cried, ‘Oh for holiness! Oh, for more of God in my soul! Oh this pleasing pain.! It makes my soul press after God.” Through the loneliness of wilderness ministry and the agony of tuberculosis, he pressed on, transforming world missions forever.”
The summary statement next to those vignettes reads as follows…
“Great privilege. Great pain. God’s design. This is God’s way: to take the privilege of faith and strengthen it with trials so that we worship and witness with a greater passion for God.”
Ready to read and be stirred by some of that?
The Hidden Smile of God: The Fruit of Affliction in the Lives of John Bunyan, William Cowper, and David Brainerd by John Piper. Coming to a comfortable, coffee scented living room near you.
Strengthen your theology of suffering. Begins September 5.
