Cruciform, living the cross shaped life

Got this some months back on a kindle deal and thought it was about time that I read it.  This is a short book - just 107 pages on my iPad.  There are 8 chapters.
1. Created to be cruciform
2. Redeemed to be cruciform
3. The elements of being cruciform
4. The cruciform life in action
5. Servants of God
6. Sons of God
7. Embracing the gospel
8. Expressing the gospel
Each chapter is a few pages that can easily be digested at the start of a time of daily devotion.
This little gem punches well above its weight.  The writer has one goal - that each reader will live like the Lord Jesus.  This book is informational and transformational.
Well worth a read, even if you didn't pick it up on a kindle deal.
Any of the booklets at Cruciform press are well worth a look.  Some good stuff. Usually at $5 a book.
Here a few bits I highlighted:

God’s people will not dissuade him from partnering with them as a holy community on his holy mission. God would claim, clean, and craft for himself a people who would live the cruciform life of loving God and others as it is required in his Law. He would forgive them for living a me-first life and give them a new heart and the power of his Spirit to live the you-first life they were made to live. Now that’s good news! 

The most important message we need to hear as believers is the gospel. It is not the only message; we do need to hear the requirements of discipleship. But the gospel is the most important, because it alone provides both the proper motive and the only enduring motivation to respond to our Lord’s call to discipleship.[8]

Hospitality opens its head, heart, and hands to others, offering help, healing, and hope.

And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central [part of you] either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. . . . Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other.

[31]   “For every one look at your sin, take ten looks at Christ” has been attributed to Robert Murray M’Cheyne. Richard Sibbes said, “There is more mercy in Christ than there is sin in me.”

Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices

I am not sure who it was that recommended that every other book that a Christian should read is from a dead saint.  With that in mind and Tim Challies encouragement I downloaded Thomas Boston's classic. In case you aren't aware Brooks was a Puritan preacher from the 1600s.

This godly saint new the enemy's tactics and how to fend him off with the Scripture.  Every young Christian and every mature believer should read in inwardly digest.  Every gospel minister should digest and reword in a lifetime of preaching to help the saints guard their hearts and lives. This is a masterly volume beyond words.  
Here are a few of my highlights:

remember this, that your life is short, your duties many, your assistance great, and your reward sure; therefore faint not, hold on and hold up, in ways of well-doing, and heaven shall make amends for all!

It is not he who reads most—but he who meditates most, who will prove the choicest, sweetest, wisest and strongest Christian.

I have known a good man, says Bernard, who, when he heard of any that had committed some notorious sin, he was accustomed to say with himself—he fell today, so may I tomorrow.

Those who do not burn now in zeal against sin must before long burn in hell for sin.

Oh that you were wise, to break off your sins by timely repentance. Repentance is a work that must be timely done, or utterly undone forever.

No man knows either the love or hatred of God—by his outward mercy or misery towards them; for all things come alike to all, to the righteous and to the unrighteous, to the good and to the bad, to the clean and to the unclean.