God Running is a place for anyone who wants to (or even anyone who wants to want to) love Jesus more deeply, follow Jesus more closely, and love people the way Jesus wants us to.
I want to take a break from the book of Acts for a moment and share about something that’s been on my heart for awhile now.
I’m a reader. And most of my life I’ve read and studied people from the last 400 years. And that’s great. There’s nothing wrong with that. (I included a bibliography in the notes section at the bottom of this blog post and you can check that out if you’re interested.)
But the last few years I’ve been thinking. As good as C. S. Lewis and Hudson Taylor and Bob Goff and Craig Keener are, they really don’t compare to another group of people. And those people are the Church Fathers. I realized, yes, I’ve done a little studying from the last 400 years, but I’ve studied almost no one from the first 400 years since Jesus walked the earth.
So here’s the problem with the way I’ve been choosing what to focus on. Jesus–the Son of God, the Alpha and Omega, the Light of the world and co-creator of the universe and all that’s in it–he prayed all night about who to include as his twelve. And Jesus said of these twelve they would sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And these twelve disciples of Jesus who sat directly under Jesus’ teaching and traveled with Jesus and lived with Jesus and ministered alongside of Jesus shoulder to shoulder as it were, these twelve, they also had disciples of their own. And their disciples had disciples and so on. And we have writings from some of these people. And we have other early documents too, some of which were under consideration to be included in the canon of scripture. (Luke 6:12-13, Matthew 19:28)
So yes, C. S. Lewis and Goff and Keener and Keller and Chan and Hansen and all the rest: they’re all great, but I’m pretty sure nothing any of them wrote was ever under consideration to be included in the canon of scripture. So I started reading some of these early documents from the first 400 years and it’s been amazing. I started with Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho and I was blown away by how much influence Justin Martyr has had on what I’ve heard from the pulpit Sunday mornings.
Presently I’m nearly finished reading The Apostolic Fathers in English (Michael W. Holmes put it together). I’ve been struck by how similar some of these writings are to the epistles in the New Testament. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised but it often feels like I’m reading the Bible. I’m not of course. But the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles are readily apparent in the Church Fathers writings.
And I’ve been so blessed.
I want to encourage you to not take my word for it and try it for yourself.
I’ve found reading the Church Fathers to be very helpful with my efforts to follow Jesus closely.
You might find the same.
Notes:
My bibliography isn’t exhaustive by any means. And also, I want to add I’ve read most of the books on this list but there are some I use as a reference.
The First 400 Years
The Apostolic Fathers in English
Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho
The Last 400 Years
C. S. Lewis:
- The Great Divorce
- Mere Christianity
- A Grief Observed (I read that one after losing my father.)
- The Problem of Pain
- Surprised by Joy
- The Screwtape Letters (Glad I read it, not anxious to pick it up again. Lewis himself said it was difficult to write it.)
- The Four Loves
- The Space Trilogy
- The Narnia Chronicles (I think I’ve read the series at least five times.)
Bob Goff
- Love Does
- Everybody Always
Craig Keener:
- The IVP Bible Background Commentary
- Miracles Today (Written on a popular level)
- Miracles (2 volume set written on a scholarly level)
Timothy Keller:
- Prodigal God
- The Reason for God
- The Meaning of Marriage
Francis Chan:
- Crazy Love
- You and Me Forever
- Forgotten God
Brant Hansen:
- Unoffendable
- Blessed are the Misfits
The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence
Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret by Dr. Howard Taylor and Geraldine Taylor
Autobiography of Charles G. Finney
Living Water by Chuck Smith
Almost all of what Jon Courson has written
Daisies in the Junkyard by Michael Enright
Awakening by Matt Brown
The Meaning of Jesus by Marcus J. Borg and N.T. Wright
Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham
The Master Plan of Evangelism by Robert E. Coleman
Unlikely by Kevin Palau
The Secret Life of a Fool by Andrew Palau
Imitating God in Christ by Jason B. Hood
The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert by Rosaria Champagne Butterfield
The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman
Love Walked Among Us by Paul E. Miller
Now available on Amazon!
Love Like Jesus: How Jesus Loved People (and how you can love like Jesus)
Love Like Jesus begins with the story of how after a life of regular church attendance and Bible study, Bennett was challenged by a pastor to study Jesus. That led to an obsessive seven year deep dive. After pouring over Jesus’ every interaction with another human being, he realized he was doing a much better job of studying Jesus’ words than he was following Jesus’ words and example. The honest and fearless revelations of Bennett’s own moral failures affirm he wrote this book for himself as much as for others.
Love Like Jesus examines a variety of stories, examples, and research, including:
- Specific examples of how Jesus communicated God’s love to others.
- How Jesus demonstrated all five of Gary Chapman’s love languages (and how you can too).
- The story of how Billy Graham extended Christ’s extraordinary love and grace toward a man who misrepresented Jesus to millions.
- How to respond to critics the way Jesus did.
- How to love unlovable people the way Jesus did.
- How to survive a life of loving like Jesus (or how not to become a Christian doormat).
- How Jesus didn’t love everyone the same (and why you shouldn’t either).
- How Jesus guarded his heart by taking care of himself–he even napped–and why you should do the same.
- How Jesus loved his betrayer Judas, even to the very end.
With genuine unfiltered honesty, Love Like Jesus, shows you how to live a life according to God’s definition of success: A life of loving God well, and loving the people around you well too.
A life of loving like Jesus.
