Ajith Fernando

The church needs The Call to Joy and Pain by Ajith Fernando.

Fernando, a Sri Lankan director for Youth for Christ, has seen suffering throughout his ministry. Serving in spiritually confused nation that has endured multiple civil wars is not an easy task. He has firsthand knowledge of the struggles that Christians in developing countries face. Thankfully, he channels that experience into this 30-chapter devotional.

If Fernando's book were read and his hermeneutic employed, much of the show more prosperity gospel gibberish that clogs the airwaves would suffocate on its own pompous claims. The Call to Joy and Pain demonstrates the necessity of suffering in the Christian call, the way that suffering is used in the sanctification of believers, and the benefits that suffering brings to individuals as well as the church. Not only does Fernando address oft-overlooked passages of Scripture, but he introduces the reader to probably-unknown heroes of the faith like Billy Bray and E. Stanley Jones.

So this book ticks all of my marks: biblical fidelity, faithful church history, and a willingness to address heresy. I highly recommend this book to you! show less

Fernando does an excellent job of bridging the world of the author and today's church. This is one of the finest volumes I have read in this series and his application points are almost always helpful. It is also nice to read his Sri Lankan insights into the capital C Church. I have read through this commentary as I preached through the book of Acts and highly recommend it to you.

First sentence: The book of Deuteronomy consists primarily of speeches that Moses gave to the Israelites shortly before he handed over the leadership to Joshua.

This book is part of Crossway's commentary series, Preaching the Word. I have read and reviewed a handful of books in this series.

This commentary doesn't cover every single verse in every single chapter. It doesn't go through the book line by line, phrase by phrase. It is more a thematic overview with focus on relevance and show more application. I do think the book is intended for preachers, but, I don't think it is exclusively focused on preaching or teaching. I think theology can be for everyone. This one definitely has a more global feel to it; the author lives abroad in Sri Lanka. So his takes are perhaps more unique than typical. He doesn't approach Christianity from an American or "Western" viewpoint.

The book is by necessity LONG. There are over sixty book chapters covering thirty-four chapters of Deuteronomy. I tried to read about eight to ten chapters per week. Because this is a book that I read for almost two months, my memories on the contents isn't the best. On the one hand, I don't remember frustration, disappointment, aggravation, irritation. I don't remember disagreeing with his theology. On the other hand, I don't remember specific chapters or passages that I loved. I did make a few highlights.

I bought this book eleven years ago and am just now getting to it. There's always hope, I suppose, that I will get to all the books.

Quotes:
How can we remain faithful to God? How can we avoid compromise when the lure of the society around us is so powerful? And how can we help our children and the people we lead to be faithful? Deuteronomy tells us how Moses tackled these challenges.

When will we learn that our great responsibility as leaders is to get our people into the Word? That is what will help them successfully tackle the challenges they face. I think one reason for the woeful statistics, showing that Christians are not behaving very differently from non-Christians today, is that the church has focused much on keeping the people entertained and much less on making them strong through the Word. In this marketing-oriented era we have concentrated on providing people a program they will like and have neglected our responsibility to give them “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27).

The promises of God are to a righteous nation. I think this should influence the way we look at modern Israel. I am convinced from passages like Romans 9—11 that even though the church is now the representative of the kingdom of God, God has a plan for Israel, especially for a large number of its people turning to Christ.

We need to develop the habit of reading the Bible with a view to learning more about obedience. Bible knowledge is worthless without obedience. Someone has said, “The only part of the Bible you truly believe is the part you obey.”

One way to develop this habit is to keep a devotional journal where you record what God taught you from your reading of the Bible.

Let me reiterate here that the Bible presents an awesome approach to God’s revelation that is missing in the attitude of present-day Christians toward the Bible. We would do well to ask ourselves what this awesomeness should do to the way we handle God’s Word. Thoughts that come to me are: care in studying it, so that we can understand what it truly means; care in obeying what it says; conscientious preparation before communicating its truth to others, so that it will be accurately and effectively communicated; not claiming Scriptural authority for ideas if we are not certain they are clearly taught in the Scriptures; care in not using Scripture to make wild conjectures that may not be implied by what the text says; not rejecting things in the Bible that we find difficult to accept. show less

A Sri Lankan leader gives challenges and cautions to North American givers. All Christians are rich, and have something to offer to the world, even though they may be economically extremely poor. Our challenge is to convince our people of this.