Dear refuge of my weary soul,
On Thee, when sorrows rise
On Thee, when waves of trouble roll,
My fainting hope relies
To Thee I tell each rising grief,
For Thou alone canst heal
Thy Word can bring a sweet relief,
For every pain I feel

But oh! When gloomy doubts prevail,
I fear to call Thee mine
The springs of comfort seem to fail,
And all my hopes decline
Yet gracious God, where shall I flee?
Thou art my only trust
And still my soul would cleave to Thee
Though prostrate in the dust

Hast Thou not bid me seek Thy face,
And shall I seek in vain?
And can the ear of sovereign grace,
Be deaf when I complain?
No still the ear of sovereign grace,
Attends the mourner’s prayer
Oh may I ever find access,
To breathe my sorrows there

Thy mercy seat is open still,
Here let my soul retreat
With humble hope attend Thy will,
And wait beneath Thy feet,
Thy mercy seat is open still,
Here let my soul retreat
With humble hope attend Thy will,
And wait beneath Thy feet.

I saw the cross of Jesus,
When burdened with my sin;
I sought the cross of Jesus,
To give me peace within;
I brought my soul to Jesus,
He cleansed it in His blood;
And in the cross of Jesus
I found my peace with God.

I love the cross of Jesus,
It tells me what I am–
A vile and guilty creature,
Saved only through the Lamb;
No righteousness nor merit,
No beauty can I plead;
Yet in the cross I glory,
My title there I read.

I trust the cross of Jesus,
In every trying hour,
My sure and certain refuge,
My never-failing power
In ev’ry fear and conflict,
I more than conqueror am;
Living, I’m safe, or dying,
Through Christ, the risen Lamb.

Safe in the cross of Jesus!
There let my weary heart
Still rest in peace unshaken,
Till with Him, never to part;
And then in strains of glory
I’ll sing His wondrous power,
Where sin can never enter,
And death is known no more.

I hear the words of love,
I gaze upon the blood,
I see the mighty sacrifice,
And I have peace with God.

‘Tis everlasting peace,
Sure as Jehovah’s name;
‘Tis stable as His steadfast throne,
Forevermore the same.

The clouds may come and go,
And storms may sweep my sky—
This blood-sealed friendship changes not:
The cross is ever nigh.

My love is ofttimes low,
My joy still ebbs and flows;
But peace with Him remains the same—
No change Jehovah knows.

I change, He changes not,
The Christ can never die;
His love, not mine, the resting-place,
His truth, not mine, the tie.

–Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Prayerbook of the Bible in Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works Vol. 5 (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2005), 175.

–Charles Bridges, The Christian Ministry (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2005), 1.

1. Unbroken / Laura Hillenbrand
This biography of Louie Zamperini was the best book I read in 2011. (Thank you, Russ Andrews, for recommending it to me!) As I read Unbroken I kept asking myself, “Why in the world have I not heard of Zamperini’s story before now?” Unbroken is unforgettable.

2. The Deep Things of God / Fred Sanders
This book helped me see more clearly how deeply Trinitarian the gospel truly is. I’m grateful to Sanders for writing this book and I’m grateful to God for being who He is: one God, three persons, blessed Trinity.

3. The Acts of the Risen Lord Jesus (NSBT) / Alan Thompson
The majority of the volumes that I’ve read in the New Studies in Biblical Theology Series have been mildly disappointing. Don’t get me wrong. There are some golden books in this series (like this one and this one and this one). But when I picked up this book by an author from Australia that I’d never heard of, I have to admit that my expectations weren’t sky-high. What I discovered, though, was the best book I’ve ever read on the book of Acts. Thompson’s explanation of the kingdom of God in Luke-Acts is glorious.

4. Chosen For Life / Sam Storms
Most books on divine election are fuzzy and argumentative. Chosen For Life is clear and courteous. Storms provides a model for pastors who are seeking to faithfully understand, explain and apply this crucial doctrine.

5. Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices / Thomas Brooks
This was my first time reading a book by the Puritan Thomas Brooks. It won’t be my last. Here is a taste of what you will find in Precious Remedies: “Never let go out of your minds the thoughts of a crucified Christ. Let these be meat and drink unto you; let them be your sweetness and consolation, your honey and your desire, your reading and your meditation, your life, death, and resurrection.”

6. The Christian Faith / Michael Horton
I enjoyed Horton’s new systematic theology. You may not agree with all of his conclusions (I certainly don’t) but you won’t be bored or puzzled because Horton pens delightfully lucid sentences like this one: “What a wondrous thing it is that even though Jesus Christ has been exalted to the throne of God, absent from us in the flesh, we may nevertheless only now be united to Him in a manner far more intimate than the fellowship enjoyed by the disciples with Jesus during His earthly ministry.” (587) Wow.

7. Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian / John Piper
Vintage Piper. I read this book to learn more about race and racism. You get that in Bloodlines. But what you get most of all is the good news of God’s manifold grace in Jesus Christ.

8. A Year With George Herbert / Jim Scott Orrick
Every Sunday evening, after preaching to thousands of people in the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Charles Haddon Spurgeon would ask his wife to read to him from the poet George Herbert. This Anglican poet refreshed the weary Spurgeon, who once said “I love George Herbert from my very soul.” You just can’t go wrong with 52 Christ-centered poems by Herbert with Professor Orrick as your guide.

9. In the Garden of Beasts / Erik Larson
Imagine what it would be like if you were the United States ambassador to Germany, living in Berlin during the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi regime. Or you could just read this book and let Larson tell you this chilling true story.

10. Churchill / Paul Johnson
If you want a wonderful and brief biography then look no further than Johnson’s life of Winston Churchill. The book is brimming with excerpts from Churchill’s speeches. I really liked this one: “We shall not flag or fail. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.” But my favorite Churchill line in the whole book is one he delivered while paying tribute to Royal Air Force fighter pilots: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” Read that sentence again. Slowly. The epilogue alone is worth the price of the book.

11. Decision Points / George W. Bush
Few presidential memoirs are page-turners but this one is. I simply couldn’t put this book down. Everyone seems to have a strong opinion about what this President did during his two terms in office. This book details why he did what he did and how he arrived at his major decisions. Interesting stuff.

12. All the Pretty Horses / Cormac McCarthy
This was the best novel I read all year. McCarthy is certainly not for everyone but I happen to enjoy his craft. No other author could write a paragraph quite like this one: ”Dark and cold and no wind and a thin gray reef beginning along the eastern rim of the world. He walked out on the prairie and stood holding his hat like some supplicant to the darkness over them all and he stood there for a long time. As he turned to go he heard the train. He stopped and waited for it. He could feel it under his feet. It came boring out of the east like some ribald satellite of the coming sun howling and bellowing in the distance and the long light of the headlamp running through the tangled mesquite brakes and creating out of the night the endless fenceline down the dead straight right of way and sucking it back again wire and post mile on mile into the darkness after where the boilersmoke disbanded slowly along the faint new horizon and the sound came lagging and he stood still holding his hat in his hands in the passing groundshudder watching it till it was gone. Then he turned and went back to the house.” That run-on sentence is as long as a train. But it works, doesn’t it?

13. Writing Tools / Roy Peter Clark
I enjoy reading books on writing. Clark gives you 50 short chapters of writing tools instead of writing rules. Thanks to Clark, I will always remember to get the name of the dog.

With the Roark family moving to Washington, D.C. tomorrow, my blogging will probably be more erratic than usual for the next few weeks until we get settled on Capitol Hill.

As always, happy reading and Happy New Year!

–Nick Roark

The way to be justified before God is by grace alone through faith alone in His Son Jesus Christ, who already acted in history once for all to pay for sin and provide righteousness. If you believe in Christ, you will be ‘justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus’ (Rom. 3:24).

He will take away your guilt. He will give you eternal life. If you do not turn to Him by faith alone for grace alone on the basis of Christ alone, you remain under His wrath (John 3:36).

Some will say that this universal demand for repentance and faith in Jesus Christ is arrogance and presumption. But a better name for it is love.

Yes, it undermines religious pluralism and ethnic pride. Christianity does not come to other religious systems and try to replace one way to work for God with another way to work for God. It comes with a declaration of amnesty.

The one true God has made a truce at the cost of His Son’s life. He offers pardon to every person freely and offers everlasting joy to those who will trust His Son.”

–John Piper, Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011), 151.

All praise to Thee, eternal God,
Who, clothed in garb of flesh and blood,
Dost take a manger for Thy throne,
While worlds on worlds are Thine alone.
Hallelujah!

Once did the skies before Thee bow;
A virgin’s arms contain Thee now,
While angels, who in Thee rejoice,
Now listen for Thine infant voice.
Hallelujah!

A little Child, Thou art our Guest
That weary ones in Thee may rest;
Forlorn and lowly is Thy birth
That we may rise to heaven from earth.
Hallelujah!

Thou comest in the darksome night
To make us children of the light,
To make us in the realms divine,
Like Thine own angels, round Thee shine.
Hallelujah!

All this for us Thy love hath done;
By This to Thee our love is won;
For this our joyful songs we raise
And shout our thanks in ceaseless praise.
Hallelujah!

Lewis: That’s a question which I cannot answer. My own experience is that when I first became a Christian, about fourteen years ago, I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology, and I wouldn’t go to the churches and Gospel Halls.

And then later I found that it was the only way of flying your flag. And, of course, I found that this meant being a target. It is extraordinary how inconvenient to your family it becomes for you to get up early to go to Church.

It doesn’t matter so much if you get up early for anything else, but if you get up early to go to Church it’s very selfish of you and you upset the house.

If there is anything in the teaching of the New Testament which is in the nature of a command, it is you are obliged to take the Sacrament, and you can’t do it without going to Church.

I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the great merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off.

I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit.

But it is not for me to lay down laws, as I am only a layman, and I don’t know much.”

–C.S. Lewis, “Answers to Questions on Christianity,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, Ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), 61-62.

We want to continue throughout the day expressing gratefulness for the innumerable manifestations of God’s grace. It’s as if God is placing sticky-notes in our lives everywhere. How alert and perceptive of them are you?

Are you a thankful observer of the countless indications of His provision, His presence, His kindness, and His grace? An ungrateful person is a proud person. If I’m ungrateful, I’m arrogant.

And if I’m arrogant, I need to remember God doesn’t sympathize with me in that arrogance; He is opposed to the proud. Let each of us recognize every day that whatever grace we receive from God is so much more than we’re worthy of, and indescribably better than the hell we all deserve.”

–C.J. Mahaney, Humility: True Greatness (New York: Multnomah, 2005), 71.