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This year, The Gospel Coalition National Conference (starting in the US on Monday 8th April) is going to be focusing on Jesus' mission in the Gospel of Luke. It looks as if it's going to be a great conference and if you're interested you can follow events at the conference using #TGC13. To mark the start of the conference The Good Book Company in partnership with The Gospel Coalition are offering a free series of daily devotionals based on Luke for your mobile device.
The Good Book Company's Explore App offers devotionals for your phone or pad so you can study God's word wherever you are and whenever you want. Each study will refresh and encourage your walk with the lord as it points you to His word. Explore doesn't simply tell you about a passage of scripture - it takes you into the passage, through a mixture of questions about the text, short summaries and helpful links to other parts of the Bible. Then it helps you bring the passage into your own life through application and prayer pointers. It's ideal for anyone wanting to continue, add to or re-establish a good habit of reading the Bible every day. Each devotional is suited for new Christians and more mature believers, and comes with the passage and any cross-references attached and is based on the ESV translation. Users can either choose dated material, which works through the whole Bible in around seven years; or to download devotionals on a particular book of the Bible. Contributors include Timothy Keller, Mark Dever, Graham Beynon, Christopher Ash, Mike McKinley and Tim Thornborough.
The Explore series on the Gospel of Luke, written by The Good Book Company's Senior Editor Carl Laferton, comprises 105 studies. Until the end of June you can download the first 35 for free, and be thrilled, for the first or thousandth time, by the Lord Jesus and His life, love, words and deeds. To access your 35 free devotionals. search for "Explore Bible" in the App Store or Google Play, download the app and then in the "Read" section select "TGC Luke 1 - 9"
As a taster, you can access pdfs of the first three studies here.
NEW! THE MODERN LIFESTYLE BIBLE VERSION
Struggling with difficult Old Testament passages? Tired of challenging Bible verses? Finding your conscience inconveniently pricked by Scripture?
Most of us will have felt like this sometimes. But now you can put all that behind you with a stunning new Bible—The Good Book Company's Modern Lifestyle Bible.... continue reading
Taken from Mike McKinley’s Passion: How Christ’s Final Day Changes Your Every Day.
1. ‘Adam said to God: “My will, not yours!” But Jesus said: “Even though it will cost me everything, let your will be done, not mine.”’ (page 21)
2. ‘Judas is a chilling reminder to us that you can’t rely on your past experiences as an indication of your current spiritual condition’ (p 30)
3. ‘The question isn’t whether we’re guilty: it’s how we deal with that guilt. Do we seek to shift it; seek to work it off; carry it till it crushes us; or give it to Jesus?’ (p 38)
4. ‘Finding God guilty of blasphemy is like a group of nine-year-olds in an art class finding Michelangelo guilty of crimes against art, and of producing fake copies of Michelangelo paintings… only infinitely worse.’ (p 50)
5. The reason that Jesus was not after a political kingdom was not because it was too big a thing for Him, but because it was far too small. The entire Roman empire couldn’t contain the kingdom that He did want to establish.’ (p 64)
6. ‘There is a cross beam firmly fixed on the shoulders of every human being on the planet. Simon of Cyrene just had the opportunity to have it made visible to him for a brief time.’ (p 93)
7. ‘God’s Son knew what we would turn out to be like, He knew all of our failures and sins and weaknesses; and He died for us anyway.’ (p 103)
8. ‘God is far more interested in the state of your soul than He is in delivering you from your present circumstances.’ (p 114)
9. “At different times and in different ways we will all have Joseph of Arimathea’s choice presented to us: will we risk standing with Jesus whatever the consequences, or will we play it safe?’ (p 134)
10. ‘For Christians, death may seem untimely, feel painful, appear tragic; but we can die peacefully as people who know we are going to be with the Lord, the Lord who hung in the darkness so that we can live in eternal light with Him.’ (p 135)
To read between these lines, get a copy of Passion for 15% off.
The only right motivation for serving or obeying Christ Jesus is love. It sounds so simple and obvious; but we find it so very easy, and it appears so very natural, to serve for any and every reason other than love. We serve to earn blessing (or even salvation); to pay Jesus back, as though he’s not generous; to be noticed by others or be part of an in-crowd; we serve because we think Jesus needs us to, as though if we don’t serve, His mission will fall apart.
We serve for all kinds of reasons other than the only one which Jesus asks for, looks for, and is pleased by: love.
And when we serve in love, everything changes.
Think about an act of service for a moment, maybe something you do in church, at home or at work. Choose something repetitive—a way you serve others every day or each week. Now ask: If I do that act of service as a way to earn God’s love or blessing, or to impress others or be needed by others, what will it do to my heart? One of two things. It will fill your heart with pride, if you’re noticed or needed, or if you consider that now you have deserved God’s blessing. Or it will fill it with despondency or bitterness, if you feel you haven’t had the praise you deserve, or if God doesn’t do for you what you think He should.... continue reading
If you've got a smartphone, you'll have seen the game. Even if you haven't, you may well have helped a friend. So we thought we'd do one with a biblical twist ...
If you can guess the word (hinted at by the pictures, and made up of 8 of the letters listed below), type it in the comments field. We'll delay posting the comments for a few hours so others get to play along ...
You never know, there might even be a prize for the first person to answer!
How do you serve Jesus? And (more importantly) why do you serve Jesus… and how do you feel about serving Jesus?
If you’re anything like me, serving can be a bit of a burden—just one more job in an already busy life. I often feel weary or discouraged about it. Or, when it’s going well, I feel proud and self-reliant about it.
Most of the time, it’s just the price that has to be paid to get eternity.
John Hindley, whose new book Serving Without Sinking has just launched, puts it this way:
“We Christians often seem to be a burdened, joyless bunch. It should not be like this, and it doesn’t need to be—for me or for you.”... continue reading
Here are ten helpful lines from Tim Keller’s new expository guide, Galatians For You:
1. “If you say people are saved by being good, then only ‘the good’ can come into God’s feast. The gospel offer becomes exclusive, not inclusive.”
2. “The gospel gives us a pair of spectacles through which we can review our own lives and see God preparing us and shaping us, even through our own failures and sins, to become vessels of His grace in the world.”
3. “God does not love us because we are serviceable; He loves us simply because He loves us. This is the only kind of love we can ever be secure in, of course, since it is the only kind of love we cannot possibly lose.”
4. “Christ will do everything for you, or nothing. You cannot combine merit and grace. If justification is by the law in any way, Christ’s death is meaningless in history and meaningless to you personally.”
5. “Salvation means much more than forgiveness. We do not simply have our slate wiped clean; we also become perfect in God’s sight. And we stay perfect in God’s sight. We go on as we began, having our hearts melted and molded by knowing and trusting Christ crucified.”
6. “’God sent the Spirit’ as well as ‘God sent his Son’. The Son’s purpose was to secure for us the legal status of our sonship. The Spirit’s purpose is to secure the actual experience of it.”
7. “For a child of God, there is confidence and boldness every day. We don’t walk in fear of anyone or anything; our Father owns the place! We live with heads held high.”
8. “The gospel devours the very motivation you have for sin. It completely saps your very need and reason to live any way you want. Anyone who insists that the gospel encourages us to sin has simply not understood it yet, nor begun to feel its power.”
9. “The main problem in our heart is not so much desires for bad things, but our over-desires for good things. When a good thing becomes our ‘god’, it creates ‘over-desires’ that drive and control us.”
10. “We are saved by faith, not by growing fruit; but we are not saved by fruitless faith. A person saved by faith will be a person in whom the fruit of the Spirit grows.”
Until the end of next month, if you buy a copy of Galatians For You, we’ll give you a free copy of the accompanying group Bible-study Guide, Gospel Matters: The Good Book Guide to Galatians. You can also download Dr Keller’s personal study notes on Galatians through the Explore app.
How do we change and grow as Christians? In the same way we became Christians. That's why in Galatians 3 v 1-3, Paul reminds the Galatian Christians how it was that they came to Christ. And in essence, “Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified” (v 1). This portrayal was achieved through preaching, through “what you heard” (v 2, 5). Paul isn’t referring to a literal picture, but a metaphorical one.
There was a message communicated—“Jesus Christ … crucified” (see 1 Corinthians 2 v 1-5). Notice that the essence of this message is not how to live, but what Jesus has done for us on the cross. The gospel is an announcement of historical events before it is instructions on how to live. It is the proclamation of what has been done for us before it is a direction of what we must do.... continue reading
Timothy Keller talks about his new resource, Galatians For You and why the book of Galatians is a wonderful book to read reflectively, feed from, and lead others through.
