A Place for Weakness

I hope you guys are having a productive week. I’m busy as usual, but not too busy to take in another book. This week I took a timeout and dived into Michael Horton’s book A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering. First of all, if you guys don’t know Michael Horton, he’s an excellent Reformed theologian who runs Modern Reformation Magazine, as well as the White Horse Inn Podcast. Dr. Horton is also a Professor at Westminster Seminary California. The guy has some serious credentials in theology, and it shows in his writings. He has a new campaign called Core Christianity, which has the goal to teach the essentials of the Christian faith (I will have more posts on the Core Christianity in the future). Dr. Horton has a way of being able to put the faith in terms the average layman can understand. I’ve appreciated him for many years since my conversion to Christianity.

In his book A Place for Weakness, he tackles a subject that affects all of us at some point in our life – suffering. This book doesn’t hide anything from you. He doesn’t seek to tell you that you can and will live the victorious life. He doesn’t promise that your life will be all roses and sunshine. In fact, quite the opposite is true. He brings up some raw examples in his own personal life with his father’s illness, as well as the miscarriages that he and his wife suffered early in their marriage. Life, even for the Christian, is filled with suffering. Instead of trying to deny the obvious, Dr. Horton makes a push to show that “What we need is not therapy, but news – good news, the kind of news that lifts up the downcast, binds up the broken, saves the lost, and brings hope to those who are at the end of their rope…The message we are given to proclaim is not that God has come to make our lives better, more interesting, more influential, more victorious, or more successful, but to bury us and make us truly alive.” This quote sums up the Christian faith in a nutshell. Many modern televangelists and preachers try to deny suffering. If they could just focus on the positive everything will be okay, everything in life will work out. But to deny that suffering exists also denies the very medicine that can heal the brokenhearted – Christ. I highly recommend any of Horton’s books, especially this one. It’s a quick but powerful read. For more on Michael Horton, I have a page dedicated to him on the site.

– Matt