Thomas K. Ascol

Coverage of different topics is very broad and is written in a very interesting and inviting style. Well recommended for new / young ministers like me.

I just finished reading Dear Timothy Monday night. It was taking me a long time to read, so I decided to just stay up a bit and finish it! I enjoyed it very much as the faux character Timothy these letters are being written to is in a similar situation as mine. New first ministry, young guy, somewhat newly married. I would recommend it to all in a similar position as mine, or even if you’re not! It contains much good advice and teaching, as well as an interesting writing style.

It challenged me to be a more faithful and more heartful preacher. To counsel and direct people’s lives according to the heart and the glorious grace of the Lord Jesus, remembering we live by grace and not law. I learned a lot about the Puritans and read many quotes of many good things they had to say. I now set the book down seeing how much more still I have to grow and how much more active I should be and how much more diligent with my time I need to be. I need to take advantage of every minute!

I desire to, as Richard Baxter said, preach “as never sure to preach again and as a dying man to dying men.” (Quoted in Dear Timothy, 282)

My current life leaves much to be desired.

O to see our true condition we came from, to see God’s true holiness, and to see the glory of heaven that awaits us, and thus to see and be captivated by God’s amazing grace, and to keep our sights fixed on it always and the blood that purchased it, and to preach this gospel to dying men as a dying man, and to live to the praise of the glory of that grace.

[http://matthauck.typepad.com/blog/2007/02/a-dying-man-among-dying-men.html]… (mer)