How to Get What Money Can’t Buy : Personal Peace and Happiness in a World of Unrest
John Clements’ modern classic, shaped by a 17th century voice for troubled times
When How to Get What Money Can’t Buy : Personal Peace and Happiness in a World of Unrest was first published in 2008, author John Clements offered a clear and compelling reminder that the deepest riches of life — faith, character, courage, and meaningful relationships — lie far beyond the reach of money. Next week, the book reaches its seventh impression, a milestone that reflects both its enduring appeal and its renewed relevance.
What gives the book its unusual depth is the story behind it. John was inspired to write it after reading Lifting Up for the Downcast, a devotional classic published in 1648 by William Bridge. Bridge wrote during the upheaval of the English Civil War, a time marked by fear, division, and national uncertainty. His message was one of hope, resilience, and spiritual steadiness — themes that resonate strongly in John’s own work.
The connection is more than literary. Bridge founded the very chapel where John has served as minister for the past decade. That sense of standing in a long tradition of offering comfort and clarity in troubled times gives the book a unique lineage. It is, in a real sense, a conversation across the centuries.
Today, as war and global instability once again unsettle assumptions about security and the future, readers are returning to Clements’ book with fresh urgency. His writing speaks gently but firmly into the anxieties of the present moment, reminding us that the things which truly sustain us are not vulnerable to economic shocks or political turmoil.
John writes as a pastor who has walked with people through uncertainty, and as a thinker shaped by the wisdom of those who faced their own storms long before us. His voice is warm, steady, and deeply rooted — a modern echo of Bridge’s call to lift up the downcast.
With its seventh impression, How to Get What Money Can’t Buy is poised to reach a new generation of readers who are asking the same timeless question: What truly matters when everything else is shaken?
The book is available to Buy on Amazon now. You can get further details from John via his e-mail address: john@drjohnclements.com
Strangers and Pilgrims on the Earth
As in other histories, the history of Christianity has certain key turning-points after which the flow of historical events is profoundly transformed. Some of these moments of transition—well expressed by the Greek term kairos—are immediately pellucid to the student of church history: the Constantinian Revolution, the rise of the heresy of Islam, the Reformation, the Great Awakening.
While not as immediately obvious as these turning-points, the sailing for America in 1620 of those whom historians have called the Pilgrims needs to be reckoned as a key event in the story of both the American nation and American Christianity. To be sure, there are some today who dispute its central role in the founding of America, yet generations of historians have accorded it a key place in that story, and it is in line with this older interpretation that this book of essays has been written.
The various essays in this anniversary volume remember the manifold details of this historic voyage in an attempt to inform and even inspire the modern Christian as he or she seeks to be a faithful pilgrim to that heavenly country that was ever in the mind of the men and women whom these essays recall.
A Brief History of The Old Meeting House Congregational Church
Our Story So Far
£4.95 + £1.00 post & packing.