Free Audiobook Copies of Enduring Grace

Last year my friend Stephen Morefield and I published a devotional book titled Enduring Grace: 21 Days with The Apostle Peter. We’ve been encouraged by the positive feedback the book has received.

The audiobook was recently completed by David K. Martin, who also narrated my books, Struggle Against Porn and Don’t Just Send a Resume. The sample on Audible comes from a section in chapter 16, the famous scene where Peter meets Jesus on the shore of Galilee after the resurrection. I’ve pasted it below.

If you’d like to listen to our audiobook, you don’t have to buy one! I have a dozen to give away. The only thing you have to do is send me a message (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or email: benjamin@fanandflame.com) so I can give you the download code. Please don’t hesitate to ask. We really do want people to have them.

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From Enduring Grace, Chapter 16, “Hope by a Charcoal Fire”

When Peter gets to shore, the first thing he notices is the fire—and not just any fire. The Gospel of John is particular here. It was a charcoal fire, a kind of fire only mentioned one other place in the Bible. In John 13, Jesus asked Peter, “Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times” (13:38). To this Peter says something along the lines of, “I’m all in. I’m a rock. I won’t fail you.” But as you know, he wasn’t a rock. After the arrest of Jesus, Peter followed until he reached the courtyard where his denials took place. Then John gives us this detail: “Now the servants and officers had made a charcoal fire because it was cold, and they were standing and warming themselves. Peter also was with them, standing and warming himself” (John 18:18).

It’s funny how smells bring back memories. Peter jumps out of the boat, swims to shore to see his Lord, and when the wet sand under his toes becomes dry, he smells his own denial. Jesus, at first, simply says, “Come and have breakfast” (21:12). This wasn’t the first time Peter and Jesus had seen each other after the resurrection, but you can imagine that if the last time you saw Jesus alive before his death you had denied him, then you’d also know that when Jesus comes back from the grave, eventually he’ll want to talk to you about your sin.

But here’s the thing with Jesus: he doesn’t poke a wound to make it worse. If the risen Lord pokes your wounds, he does it so they will heal. Three times Jesus asks Peter if he loves him. Notice the way Jesus puts it the first time: “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” (21:15).

More than these? Does Jesus question whether Peter loves Jesus more than the other disciples love Jesus? Perhaps. If we only had the video footage we could see how Jesus gestured and know for sure.

But I don’t think we need the footage. When Peter gets to shore, Jesus told them all to get more fish to eat. They had, after all, just netted 153 of them. Peter was the one who leaped up and grabbed the huge net and dragged it to shore, so happy about his catch. Fish are great . . . if you’re a fisherman of fish.

Jesus looks at this huge catch of fish and says, “Do you love me more than these?” (emphasis added). It’s as though Jesus is asking, “Do you love me more than stuff? Is the calling that I’ve placed on your life to follow me, to fish for men and shepherd my sheep, enough for you?”

Jesus asks one time for each denial—three denials, three questions. The wound is poked, but the risen Lord is reinstating Peter. No longer must Peter pretend that everything is okay around Jesus because now it is okay. No, it’s more than okay. Peter is on mission again. He’s following Jesus. And not only will Peter spend his life as a shepherd of God’s sheep, but he’ll die a death that glorifies God. Jesus tells Peter, “Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go” (21:18). Then the narrator John adds, “This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God” (21:19). There’s certainly a heaviness to that. But there’s also gospel to it. After failing the Lord, Peter might have thought, I’ll never do anything again that brings glory to my savior. I love Jesus, I love Jesus, I love Jesus, but now how will I bring glory to him? But he will. In his life and in his death, Peter will glorify God.

In popular culture the story of Easter is about new beginnings: yellow tulips poking through the ground in the springtime sun, bunnies scampering across green grass, and the penitent turning over new leaves. But Easter is only generally about new beginnings because it is first about a particular new beginning—the dawn of a new age, the true spring. Easter is the story of how our sin dies with Jesus and he raises us to life with him. The roller coaster of transitions in our lives can cause us to drift from this, our core identity. But the good work Jesus begins in you, he promises to bring to completion (Philippians 2:6). If you are drifting, as Peter was, come home to Jesus.

* Photo by Frances Gunn on Unsplash

Enduring Grace: Praise for Tom Reidy

My friend Stephen Morefield and I recently published a devotional book, which we titled Enduring Grace: 21 Days with The Apostle Peter. It’s a self-published book mostly for local distribution at our churches. Stephen pastors in Kansas, and I’m in Pennsylvania. But we tried to write the devotional in such a way that it could bless a wider audience. We’ve been praying it does.

I’ll tell you more about the book next week. This week I want to tell you about Tom Reidy. I dedicated the book to him, writing on the dedication page,

To Tom Reidy,
your prayers and encouragement buoy
my ministry in more ways than I’ll ever know.

We Need More Eulogies

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Recently at our church here in Harrisburg, my copastor Jason felt called to another church. As we celebrated the many ways the Lord used him and his family over seven years of ministry, one of our leaders used the phrase “eulogize.” Of course a few jokes ensued that Jason was not dead yet, so the eulogies were premature. . . unless, so the joke went, we knew something Jason did not.

But our leader who did the eulogizing pointed out that to eulogize someone is simply to say in public something nice about another person, and it’s unfortunate in our culture that nearly the only time we do this is after a person has died. So we spent some time praising God for Jason’s ministry.

I’d like to spend some time praising God for Tom Reidy’s ministry. I even wanted to subtitle this post, “A Eulogy for Tom Reidy” rather than “Praise for Tom Reidy” but feared what would happen as people shared this post online. I didn’t want Tom to have to say what Mark Twain once purportedly had to say: The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

I also hope that in the process of eulogizing my not-dead friend, I might encourage others of the truth in a verse such as 1 Corinthians 15:58, which says that because Jesus has risen, no labor in the Lord is done in vain. At times you might feel as though resurrection, gospel ministry done for God’s glory was a waste, but it’s never a waste. Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, for he has risen—he has risen indeed.

Breakfast Burritos at the Golden Arches

I met Tom twelve years ago at Salem Evangelical Free Church in St. Louis. My wife and I and our young family attended Salem while I studied at Covenant Theological Seminary and worked as an engineer for a construction company.

Tom retired a few years ago, but he spent his whole career working for a large aerospace and defense contractor. I mention this because our first meaningful interaction was related to this. I can’t be certain how the topic came up, but somehow warfare and bombs were discussed in a men’s Bible study. Tom and I seemed to connect well, and we set up a breakfast date at McDonald’s to talk about the ethics of weapons of mass destruction. Tom had “top secret” clearance, so I never really knew much about the specifics of his work. He could have told me, but then he would have had to kill me.

We had dozens and dozens of breakfast burritos over the years, sometimes discussing what it meant to be a Christian employee, sometimes discussing how we might better love our wives and children, sometimes how to better love our church, sometimes what we were learning in the Bible, sometimes a tricky aspect of theology like election and God’s sovereignty, and sometimes—perhaps often—the struggles in our lives. Then we’d pray for each other and head off to work. I can’t know how many days and weeks were altered for the better because of those discussions and prayers, but without any cliché, if we had the eyes of God to see everything, I’m sure those meetings could rightly be called life-changing.

Affirming the Call of God

My first sizable writing project was called, A Short Study of The Bible, Homosexuality, and Culture: Helping Christians Navigate the Issues. The booklet was a 6-week Sunday school for local churches that swelled to 30k words. Tom constantly encouraged me as I wrote. Today, I’d never show the booklet to anyone because the writing is so poor. But yet, Tom encouraged me. He told me to keep working on it. He prayed for me. He didn’t even complain when I taught the study at our church and made seventy-year-old church ladies discuss Lady Gaga’s hit “Born This Way.”

And this highlights a significant theme in Tom’s ministry to me and many others: seeing potential in seedlings.

Enduring Grace

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For the last eight years of full-time pastoral ministry, I’m not sure if Tom has skipped listening to a single sermon of mine. I don’t know anyone else who could say that. My wife even occasionally misses my sermons when volunteering in the nursery or when one of our children is sick. But not Tom.

A short email arrives in my inbox every Monday or Tuesday morning the week after I preach telling me what moved him in the sermon. And it’s not just that. Though he lives in St. Louis, he keeps up with our church preaching calendar and knows when I’m up to preach, often sending a text in the middle of the week asking how goes the sermon and what ways he can pray for me. It’s Wednesday morning as I’m editing this paragraph, and he literally just texted me “How’s the sermon coming along?” And my bookshelf at church has at least a dozen books he’s sent me from my favorite authors. It’s fair to say that I know no one like Tom.

I’ve gushed thanksgiving before about Salem Church (here). We even named our youngest child Salem because of the love of Christ we experienced there, which were formative years for my marriage and ministry. But a large part of what made Salem Salem, was Tom. God’s grace to me through Tom has endured in ways I could not have imagined, which is why this book is for him. His labor has not been in vain.

It’s true I need to write more books so I can dedicate them to more people. So many have done so much for me. My parents, wife, and children are yet to have a book dedicated to them. Lord willing, I’ll remedy these oversights in the coming years. But today is about Tom.

Thank you, Tom, for your prayerful, encouragement to me. You and I will never know all the ways you’ve made a difference.

The True Spring

Thomas Kidd is a history professor at the University of Baylor and thoughtful Christian author. He writes a weekly newsletter where he gives something of a backstage pass to the writing process. If you write, you should subscribe.

In one newsletter this summer, he counseled writers to always work on two major writing projects during the same season. He thinks this is wise because, as you juggle the various stages of the publication process (writing, editing, proofing layouts, gathering endorsements, printing, and promotion), you always have something to work on, even if, for example, one of the projects is with an editor for a few months.

I’m an idiot. I’m juggling three projects (not two) and feel like one is always about to go splat. I won’t do this again.

But in fairness, some aspects of my personal schedule and the publication schedules shifted in ways I hadn’t anticipated. The current ball in hand is a rough draft of a new project. I teamed up with my friend Stephen Morefield, a pastor and author, to write Enduring Grace, a devotional on the life and teaching of the Apostle Peter.

Below is a tiny excerpt I hope to include in our book. The excerpt comes from the final paragraph of my entry on John 21, the passage where Jesus reinstates Peter with his “do you love me” questions.

In popular culture the story of Easter is about new beginnings: yellow tulips poking through the ground in the springtime sun, bunnies scampering across green grass, the penitent turning over new leaves. But Easter is only generally about new beginnings because it is first about a particular new beginning—the dawn of a new age, the true spring. Easter is the story of how our sin dies with Jesus, and he raises us to life with him.

The roller coaster of transitions in our lives can cause us to drift from this, our core identity. But the good work Jesus begins in you, he sees to completion (Philippians 2:6). If you are drifting, as Peter was, come home to Jesus.

Today outside my window, gray clouds cover the sky, and dead leaves scatter the ground. Winter is coming.

But the true spring blooms. He has risen.

* Photo by Anthony DeLanoix on Unsplash