Two Great Books (Part One)

I have been  a delinquent blogger this month. The first week of the month I was heads down on four talks for a women's retreat up in Glenwood Springs. It was my first time teaching four lessons in 48 hours. To say I was exhausted when it was over is the understatement. Then I proceeded to get sick for two weeks which also included an emergency CT scan to rule out appendicitus. Oh, it's been a fun month!

But I've done some reading that I haven't told you about. One book I read as research for the retreat teaching and the other is one I received from a publisher to review. So here you go.

Sit, Walk, Stand by Watchman Nee is a treasure I can't believe I haven't read before. I picked it up since I was teaching on running away. Before I read the book a mere week before the retreat I had formed a conclusion based on study that the way to stop running away from God, problems, people, was to learn to walk by faith and then to stand (Ephesian 6). But Watchman Nee's brilliant little (only 67 pages) book on Ephesians had me adding in sitting as the critical foundation of it all.

For those of you not familiar with Nee (1903-1972), he is one of the leaders of the indigenous church in China independent of foreign misionary organizations. He was also a prolific writer. He was arrested in 1952 and imprisoned for his faith until his death in 1972.

Two excerpts to whet your appetite:

"Only those who can sit can stand. Our power for standing, as for walking, lies first in our having first been made to sit together with Christ. The Christian's  walk and warfare alike derive their strength from his position there. If he is not sitting  before God he cannot hope to stand before teh enemy." (pg. 44)

"God never asks us to do anything we can do. He asks us to live a life which we can never live and to do a work which we can never do. Yet, by his grace, we are living it and doing it. The life we life is the life of Christ lived in  the power of God, and the work we do isteh work of Christ carried on  through us by his Spirit whom we obey." (pg. 58)

You'll be able top read this book in one sitting...but you'll want to savor it.