Treasures of Encouragement Women Helping Women in the Church (9780875520971) Sharon W. Betters |PaperBackSwap.com

Treasures of Encouragement Women Helping Women in the Church (9780875520971) Sharon W. Betters PaperBackSwap.com


Any lady who wishes to grow her intimacy with women in her church body needs to purchase and read this book! I have enjoyed every minutes of reading it.

What Will You Say?

On the way home from a quick supermarket run after dropping my first kindergartener off at his first day of school (man did I cry! Such a wusse!), I was listening to Bott Radio. The speaker for the program was Woodrow Kroll and he asked a great question! What are you going to say to the Lord God Almighty when you appear before His judgement seat and He asks:

Have you read the only book I ever wrote?

Or are you going to say this or something like it?:

Well, you know, God, I don't read.
I have a bible, but it's so hard to get into.
You wrote a really boring book!
God, it's just SO LONG!
You know I learned to read in kindergarten and am now above 80 but I still didn't have the time. (that was an option Mr. Kroll offered) I mean if I have just lived a little bit longer...

Now you and I both know how lame this sounds, but I know that in our culture today it is totally "uncool" to be well read. Bible illiteracy is at an all time high, and we aren't one of the thousands of people groups without a Bible in our own language. What are we doing? We have the bible or have had the bible since 1610 or thereabouts and still we fail to read the only written account of the faith we claim to hold? SHAMEFULL!! And I am not trying to be harsh, it's TRUE and You know it!! But my intention isn't to guilt you into it, I am not the holy spirit, but I wanted to give you a little perspective on what we have and absolutely distain the importance of.

We have a Bible in our own language.

Here are some statistics from Wycliff Bible Translators.
6,909 ...the number of languages spoken in the world today

2,393 ...the number of languages without any of the Bible, but with a possible need of a Bible translation to begin.

According to WBT that means over 200,000,000 people still DON'T have a bible they can read in their own language. I hope that makes you look at the bible you own in a different light.

What others gave for you to have a bible.

Wycliff had the first hand written copy of the bible. Imagine hand writing the bible for the express reason of letting you and me read it. Or William Tyndale who spent his entire career translating and printing the bible into english "so every plow man would have the benfit of reading the bible in their own language." Aren't we the target audience and he was burned alive for you to read what you have. Here is the Link to a great timeline that documents the entire history of the Bible in English. Just imagine what it meant to those men and women who went through so much to read and learn their bibles.

In the face of a sad bible knowledge can't we decided that no matter how long it takes (and trust me leviticus is very hard to get through!) or how hard it is, we MUST read our WHOLE bibles! We are without excuse! Those of you who are parents know what happens to the child who is without excuse. I plead with you to read your bibles! Read them and profit thereby!

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Move it, Move it!

Quiz Time!!

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Larissa's Reading List!

Books I wanna read in the next year ......

Starting Now:
Classics:
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle*
A Tale of Two Cities
Alice in Wonderland
Rebecca

Fiction:
Moonspinners*
The Neverending Story

History:
Killer Angels*
Bonhoeffer
Troy*
Schindler's List*
The Pianist*
All but My Life

Children's fiction:
Savage Sam*
Silver on the Tree*
The Mysterious Benedict Society*
Dealing With Dragons *
the forgotten beasts of eld*
A Wrinkle in Time*
The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey*

Christian Living:
Cost of Discipleship(again)*
Mortification of Sin
Treasures of Encouragement*
On Christian Liberty*
Saved From What*


Even though we all know I am a chronic list maker, this really helps me to do my reading more intentionally! I hope you are motivated to do the same thing! (even if yours is much shorter--I have a lot to read!) Reading is such a great thing we can do with our extra time! This also means that these are books I want to finish this year between August 2009-August 2010, it isn't exhaustive. Seriously I doubt you would be interested in each and every book I read. :)

Note: The * means finished.

Need Help Pointing A Child To Christ?

The Gospel never has been rocket science. The Trinity's work of bringing life to the lifeless has been and always will be something that is as understandable to a child as it is to an adult. So why is it a challenge sometimes to cogently explain something so easy to comprehend?

Well, such a question would form a nice backbone to another post. My hope at this moment is simply to provide some help if you are someone who has found it a struggle to tell young people about Christ.

Some of you may be familiar with the Matthias Media's gospel presentation entitled "Two Ways To Live". In fact, the online version of this presentation is the one Larissa and I have had linked from this blog since we started blogging. It is an excellent Gospel presentation to memorize and the tracts by the same name are handy to keep in a purse or back pocket to share with others. Even if you are familiar with "Two Ways To Live", you may not be aware that Matthias Media has a children's version of "Two Ways To Live" in tract form entitled "Who Will Be King". On their website, the good people at Matthias Media state that this tract is for children ages 7-11. I have used this tract before and intend to use it long into the future. I highly recommend you order as many as you can and give them to your young family members and neighbors. Here is the link to this tremendous resource.

You and I Must Have Our Heads Pounded!

"Here I must take counsel of the gospel. I must hearken to the gospel, which teacheth me, not what I ought to do, (for that is the proper office of the law), but what Jesus Christ the Son of God hath done for me: to wit, that He suffered and died to deliver me from sin and death. The gospel willeth me to receive this, and to believe it. And this is the truth of the gospel. It is also the principal article of all Christian doctrine, wherein the knowledge of all godliness consisteth. Most necessary it is, therefore, that we should know this article well, teach it unto others, and beat it into their heads continually.”



--Martin Luther, from his commentary on the book of Galatians.

Get In The Middle Of This "Mess."

After completing a sermon series on Philippians earlier this summer I decided to spend the rest of June, July, and August preaching on some of God's attributes. This week's sermon is entitled "God is Relational". Despite many biblical texts that beautifully solidify the reality of this precious attribute, I have been somewhat surprised by the relative lack of literature on this character trait. However, there is a book on God's relationality and its implications for our existence as relational beings that is nothing short of phenonmenal. There are no doubt other good books on this topic but this one in particular is a must-read! I wanted to mention it on the blog simply because it is a book you should purchase, read, and then share with your friends. In fact, I was going to write a lengthy review on the book but then decided you would be better served to read it instead of my review. So here is a link to the book (just click on the link, immediately purchase the book, read it, and then drop me a comment when you finish.) Enjoy!!

Who's Your Homeboy?

For those of you who name your kids after crazy dead guys like we do. Here is an awesome website where you can purchase t-shirts for your kiddos in honor of their name-sakes....well kinda! But it is worth a good ole laugh!! HAHAHA!!

Here's the Link.


Make sure you have a good time while contemplating ways to waste your mula! Just kidding, because I am seriously thinking about shelling mine out!!