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Wedding in a Church Building

How do you date effectively (from a Christian perspective)?

How do you parent teenage kids who are dating, without going insane or worrying excessively?

How do you build a healthy marriage that fulfills your needs and fills your life with joy?

What are the keys to strengthening your marriage so that it can withstand life's storms and stand the test of time?

If you want to answer these questions and more, listen to the audio messages linked below.

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How does someone become a great Bible student?

How does a person grow to the point that they genuinely enjoy studying the Scriptures?

If you've ever wanted to become a good Bible student but have struggled to make it happen, then this lesson is for you!

In this video, I explain how you can develop a habit of regular Bible study and a hunger to want to study more. You can reach a point where you deeply enjoy studying the Scriptures. It isn't difficult.

This video covers:

  • Why Bible study matters—what the end goal should be
  • The 3 biggest challenges people have to Bible study
  • Six ways to make Bible study a priority in your life
  • An overview of The Bible Study Cycle and how it relates to spiritual growth
  • Where to start when you don't know how to begin studying the Bible
  • How to maximize the 2 general study approaches
  • I demo how to use 3 of my favorite tools for Bible study
  • Ten tips to becoming a great Bible student

Check out the video here.

youtube video preview htbgbs

 

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Before we can figure out what a specific Scripture means for us today, we must figure out what it meant to the first people to read or hear its message.

But how do we figure out what the intended meaning was for the original recipients? After all, we weren't there.

In this video, I outline the process I use and recommend for determining the likely intended meaning for Scripture's primary audiences.

Then, below the video is a free downloadable PDF outline of the steps I cover in the video. So be sure to grab that resource!

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Philip Schaff's History of the Christian Church series

When you search for history of the church, it won't be long before you read of a man named Philip Schaff.

source: wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Schaff_P.jpg

Schaff was an 19th century church historian and professor. His contributions, without the advantages of modern technology such as the Internet and air travel, are astonishing.

Perhaps his greatest work was an eight-volume series entitled History of the Christian Church. The series covers the time period from the life of Jesus through the life of John Calvin. Though initially published about 150 years ago, the series is still in print, a testament to its quality and usefulness, given our age of ever-increasing information.

It took me four years to read through this series. I highly recommend it. But the problem is, it's so long that most people are unable or unwilling to devote the time to it.

I read it on Kindle, which allowed me to digitally highlight and make notes.

The information is so vast that I concluded a modern, easily-searchable index was needed. So I built one! And I want to give you access to it.

Get free access to my "cliff notes" of Philip Schaff's History of the Christian Church series, including a topically hyperlinked index.

  • Links to read Schaff's series online
  • Key quotes from each volume
  • My personal notes (I don't always agree with Schaff)
  • An introductory video explaining how to use the tools

 

*** Note: Volume 1 is available as of this post. Subsequent volumes will be published and indexed at the links provided. ***

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sun peeking through a forest path

Have you ever had a message burning within you that you had to share but didn’t know where to begin?

Yeah, that’s me right now.

I have wrestled so hard with where to begin that I’ve fallen into analysis paralysis and the message is just sitting there percolating.

Frustrated at myself, I decided to just start writing.

Get some thoughts down. Fix the broken pieces later. Who knows, perhaps if I just let go, maybe GOD will answer my longtime prayers in this regard by making the words simply fall into place.

Exhale. Here goes.

...

In mid-2013, I began a journey. At the time, I thought I had a good grasp of what the journey would entail:

  • Where I was headed.
  • What steps were involved.
  • About how long it would take to get there.
  • What the general outcome was likely to be.

I was wrong.

I’ve told part of this story before, but I’ll give a quick recap here.

Our church was studying through the entire New Testament in chronological order using The Daily Bible. As we were inching closer to the book of Revelation, I became increasingly nervous because I had not conducted a recent personal study of the letter and didn’t have firm convictions about eschatology (i.e., matters pertaining to death, the judgment, Jesus' second coming, the resurrection, etc.).

I thought:

“How can I help teach the church about 'the end times' and the book of Revelation if I haven’t fully studied and reached my own conclusions?”

So I began to study Revelation.