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I finished Keith Green’s biography last week, and then I decided to read “Through Gates of Splendor” by Elisabeth Elliot. It is her account of five missionaries martyred in Ecuador: Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Jim Elliot, Peter Fleming, and Roger Youderian. Two of them, Ed McCully and Jim Elliot, attended Wheaton College, where I studied this past year.
After reading those two books, I read the first chapter of “Pleasures Evermore,” which was interesting and piqued my curiosity so that I’ll hopefully read the rest of it. But, instead of delving into that one right away, I read “Taking Our Cities for God” by John Dawson, the director of Youth With A Mission (YWAM) Los Angeles. I am so very glad that I read this book! It has been the best of these so far. Dawson packed his plea for urban missions with Scripture verses, and his teaching is passionate and Spirit-led as far as I can tell. Now that I finished “Taking Our Cities for God,” I am reviewing its message and the Scripture passages cited.

Also, since my church college group is studying Colossians this summer, I have decided that I want to try to memorize the whole book! This week, I have been working on chapter one, verses one through eight.

No Compromise: The Life Story of Keith Green, by Melody Green
I started it today and I could hardly put it down.
When the guitarist Phil Keaggy performed at Wheaton College this past fall, he covered Keith Green’s song “Your Love Broke Through.” I’m not sure if I had heard that song before, but Phil’s performance really resonated with me–in fact, I jotted down a line of the lyrics during the concert so that I could look up the song afterwards. Later, I read a little bit about “Your Love Broke Through” and Keith Green’s ministry, and watched a documentary biography about it on Youtube that someone had actually recommended to me a few months earlier. During winter break, between the fall and spring semesters, I came across an easy solo piano arrangement of “Oh Lord, You’re Beautiful” in my music collection. The melody and words resonated with me again, so I looked up more of Keith Green’s music on Youtube and listened to “Asleep in the Light,” “There is a Redeemer,” “Create in me a Clean Heart,” and some other songs.

Paul exhorted the Philippians to “take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you.” Learning about the grace that God gave to Keith and Melody Green has been a great blessing to me, and God has used some of Keith’s music to draw near to me and to move my spirit to worship. I expect that this book will be inspirational to me as well.

Another book that was recommended to me by a youth leader and one that I’d also like to read this summer is Pleasures Evermore: The Life-Changing Power of Enjoying God, by Sam Storms. I’m not sure what all’s in it yet, but I respect the guy who recommended it to me, and I respect the three leaders promoting the book on its back cover: J.I. Packer, John Piper, and Jerry Bridges.

I have been reading through many of the Psalms lately.

I finished reading through Nehemiah. It was an interesting book.

This part from the last chapter was surprising to me:

23 Moreover, in those days I saw men of Judah who had married women from Ashdod, Ammon and Moab. 24 Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod or the language of one of the other peoples, and did not know how to speak the language of Judah. 25 I rebuked them and called curses down on them. I beat some of the men and pulled out their hair. I made them take an oath in God’s name and said: “You are not to give your daughters in marriage to their sons, nor are you to take their daughters in marriage for your sons or for yourselves. (NIV)

Matthew Henry’s Commentary explained, “Nehemiah showed the evil of these marriages. Some, more obstinate than the rest, he smote, that is, ordered them to be beaten by the officers according to the law, De 25:2, 3.”

So Nehemiah wasn’t sinning when he punished these men, he was obeying the law. (Any more commentary on these verses is welcome.)

Before this incident, Nehemiah did some other things in the chapter to obey God: he kicked Tobiah, an Ammonite official who opposed Nehemiah’s effort to build the wall around Jerusalem (4:7, 6:19), out of a room in the temple (13:8); he “rebuked the officials” for neglecting to pay the Levites and the singers; he “rebuked the nobles of Judah” for working on the Sabbath, and even went so far as to shut up the gates of Jerusalem “so that no load could be brought in on the Sabbath day.”

I was thinking about some application from this chapter. Now Christians are not under the rules of the law, but we are commanded to “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.” (Colossians 3:16 (NIV)) We are to admonish or warn each other when we detect sin. But we are also to obey Paul’s advice to Timothy: “And the Lord’s servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will.” (II Timothy 2:24-26)

These are some of my thoughts that I had while reading Nehemiah. Any comments are welcome.