Every so often, I will let you know what I'm reading and why...
1) The Bible (Ps. 42)--this is the passage that I'm currently working to hide in my heart. I'll be working to memorize about ten Psalms over my deployment, knowing that they carry profound thoughts and span the emotional spectrum. They sound the deepest notes of those broken by sin and clinging to the promised Savior, by grace through faith.
2) Lectures to My Students (Spurgeon)--a pastoral classic addressed from the one of the greatest preachers of the modern era to those who would eventually serve in the pastoral ministry. The wisdom and biblical insight is withering to those who normally acquit themselves of their sin or feel that they have a right to the pulpit. It is a must read (and multiple read) for the pastor/chaplain.
3) Escape From Sobibor (Rashke)--the true story of the largest Jewish escape from a death camp during the time of the Holocaust. Some 250,000 men, women, and children were murdered at this site. Knowing that as the allies closed in, the Nazis planned to liquidize the survivors, a band of Jews decided to fight back.
I love to read stories like this last one for several reasons. First, I long ago had to make friends with the darkness. I cannot escape pain and suffering, nor am I able to look away. I read stories of babies like my own being unknowingly led to the slaughter and want to weep and fight. That leads to the second reason, I read of genocides and the most ugly manifestations of this world's brokenness and want to fight. I want to protect life, beauty, truth, and love. I know my enemy and know that the days of sin, death, and the devil's tyranny are numbered. And that leads to my third reason--I have hope. Not hopeful thinking, but the assured hope spoken of in Scripture. The hope bound to the person and work of Jesus Christ, who will one day put sin, death, and Satan himself under His feet.
With all of this in mind, please continue to pray for me. Sin not only afflicts me from without, but from within as well. Paraphrasing Luther, we can't enter a monastery (even of our own minds) to escape from the devil--we merely bring him with us wherever we go. Pray that I'd continue to engage my own heart, as well as the hearts of my soldiers, unabashed toward sin and all of its manifestations and ready to fight it, with hope that the Savior who has freed me from its guilt is gradually releasing me from its power by His Spirit. To Him be the glory!
