Two New Children's Books

If you've read my blog for any length of time, you know I love to share with my readers about resources for children. I'm always looking for new books and resources to help my own children grow in their understanding of God and his word. And when I find them, I share them here. Today, I have two new books to tell you about.

God's Very Good Idea: A True Story of God's Delightfully Different Family

Here's a really good idea: let's teach our children that God created each of us in his image, whether we have straight hair or curly hair, light skin or dark skin, or whether we like reading or enjoy riding bikes. That's the premise of Trillia Newbell's new children's book, God's Very Good Idea. 

"We are all different, but we are also all the same. Everyone you see is different than you, and the same as you. They might look different or speak different or play different. But they are all made in God's image, and so they are all valuable."

This picture book is gospel-centered, explaining to children how God made us to love him and love each other. But since the Fall, people ruined God's very good idea. Because of sin, we don't love God or each other as we should. We treat those who are different from us badly. We are hurtful and unkind. The book goes on to explain that God had a plan to rescue us through Jesus. He paid for our sin on the cross and gave us his Spirit to help us love him and love one another. One day, we will all be together in heaven, loving God and one another perfectly. The book ends by talking about the church, filled with people who are all different, who love Jesus. 

God's family is filled with people of every race and nationality, men and women, children and adults, people with every skill and talent imaginable. Let us teach our children about God's great idea. And let us love our brothers and sisters as Jesus has loved us. 

Exploring the Bible: A Bible Reading Plan for Kids

The past couple of years, I've been working with my children on the importance of being in the word—reading, studying, meditating, and memorizing it. I encourage them to read it on their own and we study it together in devotions and during homeschool. They've been learning to go through a passage and unpack it verse by verse. That's why I'm excited about David Murray's new book for children, Exploring the Bible. Exploring the Bible is a Bible study for kids and takes them on a journey through the Bible, highlighting the main parts and giving kids a big picture view of Scripture.

There are 52 lessons in the book, for each week of the year. Every week there is a verse to memorize from the week's readings. Then each day of the week, there is a passage to read and a question to answer about it. On Sundays, they bring their book to church and use it to take notes on the sermon. Exploring the Bible gets kids in God's word on a daily basis and helps them begin the habit of reading and thinking through what they have read. At the end of the year, they will have a good overview of the Bible. 

A parent can sit with younger children and do the study along with them (for younger elementary students) and older elementary through middle school age students can do it on their own. I'm excited about this study for my children and if you've been looking for a way to help your children learn to study the Bible for themselves, this is an excellent introduction and a great way to build a lifelong habit of learning and growing from God's word. 

I highly recommend both of these new books to you and your children.

Note: I received copies of these books for free in exchange for my review. The thoughts and opinions are my own. I am a member of the Amazon Affiliates program and links to books in this post are connected to my affiliates account with Amazon.com. 

Celebrating the Reformation with Your Children

The year marks the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the Wittenberg church door. This action started a series of events which shined the light of the gospel of justification by faith, transforming the church. All Protestant churches can trace their history back to this day and this action by Martin Luther.

Our children need to know our church history and this is great time to teach and talk to them about it. Today I'm sharing about activities and resources you can use over the next month to help them understand the importance of the Reformation to the church today.

Lapbook:

Create a Reformation Lapbook: One year we created a lapbook in homeschool to celebrate the Reformation. I used three file folders, stapling them together to create one big folder. I found various worksheets online which we added to the lapbook. (If you do a search, you can find Martin Luther coloring pages, notebooking pages, and other handouts/worksheets that can be used in a lapbook). We talked about the 5 solas of the Reformation and wrote them down. We did a timeline of events during the Reformation. We also studied Martin Luther's hymn "Almighty Fortress is Our God" and included that.  

Books to Read:

Martin Luther - Christian Biographies for Young Readers:This is a picture book for young readers which not only tells the history of Martin Luther and the Reformation, but the theological reasons behind it. She also has books on John Calvin and John Knox. Martin Luther: A Man Who Changed The World: This is a great picture book for younger elementary kids that tells the story of Martin Luther and the 95 theses. The Barber Who Wanted to Pray: This is another great children's book, by R.C. Sproul. Martin Luther's barber once asked him how to pray and he wrote a little book on prayer for his barber. This picture book tells that story. Rebels Rescued: A Student's Guide to Reformed Theology: This excellent book is great for helping older kids understand the Reformation and the basics of Reformed theology. John Calvin: After Darkness Light (Trailblazers): While the Reformation began with Martin Luther, it didn't end with him. Consider having your older children read the biographies of some of the other Reformers, such as this one we've read about John Calvin. The author also has one on John Knox.

The Church History ABCs: Augustine and 25 Other Heroes of the Faith: I read this picture book to my kids when they were young. Each page shares about an important person in church history.

Reformation ABCs: The People, Places, and Things of the Reformation_from A to Z: This is another picture book by the same author of Church History ABC's.

Guarding the Treasure: How God's People Preserve God's Word (Biography): This is one we read in homeschool. Each chapter is about a different person in church history who guarded God's Word, including several people during the Reformation.

God's Story: A Student's Guide to Church History: I recently got this one for my oldest son to read because he has been curious about church history in general.

Movies:

Torchlighers has a cartoon video for children about Martin Luther. 

Luther: The Life and Legacy of the German Reformer is a documentary using live-action storytelling. The film inclues R.C. Sproul, Carl Trueman, Steven J. Lawson, among others. 

Martin Luther: The Idea that Changed the World is an excellent documentary on PBS. It's a typical documentary, including actors portraying moments in Luther's life as well as interviews with theologians and historians. It would probably interest older children, middle to high school. 

Luther (by MGM) is movie suitable for older children (adolescents) which tells the history of Martin Luther nailing his theses and what unfolded afterward. 

Other:

Because Martin Luther was put on trial in Worms, Germany (pronounced Verms), make your kids a snack of crushed cookies, pudding, and gummy worms. We did this one year for homeschool and it was a hit!

Build a medieval church out of Legos with a big front door and have Martin Luther place his 95 theses on the front door. 

Turn a door in your house into a Wittenberg door and have your children pin Martin Luther's theses on it. 

Enjoy traditional German food!

How will you celebrate 500 years since the Reformation?

Note: I am a member of the Amazon Affiliates program and links to books in this post are connected to my affiliates account with Amazon.com. 

Idolatry in Friendship

I still remember my best friend from elementary school. During recess we would climb to the top of the monkey bars and just sit and talk. We would call each other on the phone after school and talk for hours. We even planned what we would wear to school the next day—always in matching colors.

Until the day she invited someone else to join us on the monkey bars.

I struggled to like the new girl. I didn’t like a third person encroaching on our already perfectly even party of two. Before long, I found myself saying mean things to her and wishing she would go away. But the opposite happened— I ended up being the one booted out.

It was only as I got older that I looked back on that friendship and realized the truth: I had made an idol out of friendship.

How Can Friendship Become Idolatry?

Friendship. It’s a good thing and a blessing. We all enjoy having good friends, people we can enjoy favorite hobbies with and share our secrets and longings. But like all good things and like all the blessings God has given us, we can turn friendship into an idol that we worship.

An idol is anything we love, worship, and place in importance above God. It is anything we look to for meaning and significance. It consumes our thoughts and energies— thoughts and energies that should be focused on God. An idol is something we look to believing it will give us something that only God can give us. Though the idols in the Bible were often constructed of stone or wood, the idols we bow down to can be anything, including money, possessions, status, people, and power. An idol can be anything we think we need to make our lives better, happier, and give our life meaning. This includes friendship.

To read the rest of this post, visit iBelieve.

Encouraging Others with Biblical Encouragement

“How are you doing? Really doing? How are you handling your hard week?” she asked. Then she followed those questions up with, “Can I pray for you right now?”

Encouragement--we would recognize it anywhere. It’s like a gentle push forward when we’ve run out of energy. It’s like seeing the familiar shape of home when we’ve been gone far too long. It’s like sitting down to a nourishing meal after a hard day’s work. It’s like seeing the sun after hours of pouring rain.

When someone encourages us, we stand straighter. We feel reinvigorated. We move with purpose and meaning. We are strengthened and ready for what lies ahead.

In our world, encouragement often looks like fans in the stands watching a sports game. They cheer and shout. They might say, “You’ve got this!” “You can do it!” “Go, go, go!” And while such statements are invigorating, they are different than the encouragement we see in the Bible. Biblical encouragement is more than just saying nice things to someone. Its purpose is deeper than boosting someone’s self-esteem by telling them, “You can do it!” And it’s not like an inspiring message from the coach to rally the team before the big game.

The Greek word for encourage is parakaleo. It is used in the New Testament to describe not only giving comfort to someone, but it also involves exhortation, urging, strengthening, and even appealing... 

To read the rest of this post, visit Christward Collective. 

A Prayer for When You Don't Know What to Do

If you read my post last week on seeking God's will in making decisions, you may remember that one of the steps to making a decision is to seek God in prayer. 

Perhaps you are in the midst of a difficult decision right now. If so, this prayer is for you.

Father in Heaven,

I come before you today with my mind swirling with different thoughts and feelings. I have a hard decision make and I just don't know what to do. I feel helpless and confused. I'm worried about the consequences to my decision. I worry about the impact my decision will have not only on myself but on others as well. To be honest, I fear making the wrong decision.

Your word tells me that if I seek after wisdom you will provide it. So I am seeking you, the source and fountain of wisdom. You've written everything you want me to know if the pages of your book, The Bible. I pray that as I read your word, it would shape my wants and desires and longings. I pray that it would impress on me what matters most to you. I pray that as I consider the decision before me, that I would remember what your word teaches about your sovereignty and control over all things. 

You know this problem before me. You know how it turns out. That's because you are the Alpha and the Omega. You know the end from the beginning. Nothing happens apart from your will and plan. Not only are you sovereign, but you are good. All your plans are holy, righteous, and good. I can trust that you know what is best for me. When I move forward with this decision, I know that it is your will and that you will use it for my good and your glory. 

Forgive me for getting caught up in wanting to know the future and how everything turns out. Forgive me for treating you like a "magic 8 ball." Forgive me for fearing the future and for waiting around in the hopes that the answer will be written on the wall. Help me to rest and trust in who you are. Help me to look to Jesus, knowing that if you gave of your own Son to save me from sin, how will you not also be with me in all the challenges and decisions of my life? There is nothing and no one that can separate me from you; I have nothing to fear.

You are my Rock, my Savior, and my Deliverer. Be with me as I move forward in this time of confusion and difficulty. Above all, may your will be done on earth, and in my life, as it is in heaven.

In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.

God's Wisdom and Decision Making

Have you ever had to make an important decision and felt stuck as to what to do? Perhaps you stood at a crossroads with two paths before you and you didn't know which one to take. 

You may have asked yourself questions like: Do I take this job or that job? Sell the house or stay? Trust the doctor or get a second opinion? Serve in this ministry or another? Send our children to this or that school? Have our parent move in or find them alternative living arrangements? 

When my thyroid biopsy came back as inconclusive, the doctor recommended surgery. (You may remember me writing about that here). He said it was the only way to know for certain whether the growth was cancerous or not. He gave me numbers and statistics (none of which I understood) and said we could remove the growth or wait and see. But he recommended surgery. I had a decision to make. Do I have the surgery? Or do I test and retest and wait and see? Do I trust the numbers and statistics? Do I trust the doctor? 

I don't know about you, but when I have a decision to make, my mind is consumed with it. It vacillates back and forth between the options. It's all I can think about. I worry and fret and mull over it. I lie awake at night unable to sleep. I consider all the potential consequences to the choices. What I want most of all is for a clear answer to step up and knock me on the head. Because what I really fear is making the wrong choice. 

And so I wondered, what is God's will in this? What does he want me to do?

God's Will and Making Decisions

Theologians often refer to God's will in terms of his sovereign will and his preceptive (or revealed) will. God's sovereign will refers to the fact that he ordains all things. Everything is under his control, including every detail of our lives. Nothing can or will happen outside of his will. He is never surprised or taken off guard by what happens. Whatever choice we make, we can be sure it is God's will. "The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD" (Proverbs 16:33). We don't know God's sovereign will. "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law" (Deuteronomy 29:29). We don't know his plan for us for tomorrow, next week, or next year. His secret will is not for us to know. But, as believers, we can take great comfort in the doctrine of God's sovereignty. That's because not only is God sovereign, but he is also our good Father who loves us. He always does what is right and good for us. Whatever decisions we make, we can be assured that God will use it for our good and his glory (Romans 8:28-29). 

God's preceptive will is his revealed will in the Bible. This is the will that God wants us to know. Everything we need to know for living in this world is written in those pages. There's no missing information we have to seek out in mysterious unknown places. It's not hidden somewhere, like in a scavenger hunt, and we just have to find it. It's all there.

The Bible teaches us what is sinful and what is not. It tells us the purpose for our life: to glorify God. It tells us how to treat others, how to steward what he has provided, how to love our family, how to live and work and rest. Most of all, it shows us our greatest need—redemption from sin—and reveals our great Savior, whose life, death, and resurrection is sufficient to free us from sin and enable us to live in righteousness. God's Word also teaches us about the Spirit, who lives within us, producing fruit of holiness and helping us to daily put sin to death. Ultimately, God's will for our life is that we grow in holiness, that we become more like Christ. 

When we struggle with making a decision and ask, "What is God's will in this?" often we want to know what pleases him. What he desires from us. We want his direction. We want to know if he desires us to choose A over B or B over A. This is an area where we often get stuck when we have to make a decision. What we want is to know the future before it happens. This is an area of God's will we can't know and don't need to know. The Bible is concerned with the moral decisions we make. It teaches us the way of holiness. The decisions we make that are not about moral decisions—such as, should we move to this or that city—are ones we simply need to make using the wisdom God has produced in us. We need to trust his sovereign will and obey his preceptive will. And the specific plans he has for our lives, we need to leave in his hands.  

"Obsessing over the future is not how God wants us to live, because showing us the future is not God's way. His way is to speak to us in the Scriptures and transform us by the renewing of our minds. His way is not a crystal ball. His way is wisdom. We should stop looking for God to reveal the future to us and remove all risk from our lives. We should start looking to God—His character and His promises—and thereby have confidence to take risks for His name's sake." —Kevin DeYoung in Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will, p. 39.

Seeking God's Wisdom

So what should we do when we have to make a difficult decision? First, we need to know where wisdom is found. God's Word tells us that wisdom originates in him. He is the source and fountain of wisdom. John 1:14 tells us that God's Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Jesus is wisdom incarnate. Isaiah prophesied about him, "And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD." (Isaiah 11:2). Paul tells us that Christ is our wisdom, "And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption" (1 Corinthians 1:30). He says something similar in Colossians 3:2 "Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." When we don't know what to do, when we fail to do the right thing, when we freeze in fear over making a decision, Christ intercedes for us through his perfect life lived for us and sacrificial death on our behalf. He also gave us his Spirit who is at work in us, helping us to desire wisdom, teaching us the way of wisdom through the Word, and enabling us to walk in it. 

So when we have a decision to make, we need to turn to God's Word. As we read and study, we can ask ourselves: Is this choice sinful? By choosing this, am I doing something God has told me not to do or failing to do something God has told me to do? Does it conflict with God's calling on my life? Another question to ask is, will this choice bring God glory? Will it honor him? We can also ask ourselves, what does the Bible tell me about Christ, who he is and what he has done? How can I apply these gospel truths to my decision making? We can be assured that as we study the Word, and as our minds are conformed to it, we will discern what God's will is, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect" (Romans 12:2).

Secondly, we should always seek God in prayer about our decisions. We should ask for wisdom and discernment. We should ask that our choices and actions bring him glory. As Paul prayed for the Ephesians, we can pray for spiritual wisdom, seeking to know and understand the hope we have in the gospel, "the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 1:17-20). And, as Jesus taught us, we should pray that God's will would be done.  

Thirdly, we should ask others who are wise in the Word to advise us in making decisions. God has not left us alone, he's given us brothers and sisters in the Body of Christ who can give us the wisdom they have gleaned from Scripture. Many older and wiser believers have had to make difficult decisions in their lives and there is much we can learn from them (see also Titus 2). "Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed." (Proverbs 15:22).

I remember a college professor once talking to our class about choosing between A and B. In the example he gave, it was the choice between attending two colleges. He said that if a choice is not sinful, if we have prayed and sought God's Word for wisdom, as well as the wisdom of others, then we just make a choice. We simply move forward. Such a choice is not a moral one. (Unless of course, one choice is sinful or would keep us from glorifying God.) We make our decision and trust that God will use the decision for his glory and our good. We rest in his sovereign control over all things because we know that he is good and loves us. We remember the gospel and who we are in Christ, and know that nothing can separate us from God's love. 

In the end, I chose to have surgery. And I'm thankful to report that the growth was not cancerous. Though it wasn't an easy decision to make, the process of thinking and praying through the decision reminded me of my need for Christ, my dependence upon him, and his daily provision of grace for me. I rested in the truth of his sovereignty and that nothing would happen apart from his will for me.

I am certain that more difficult decisions loom on the horizon for me, as they do for all of us. But God has provided all we need for the journey and we can move forward in confidence, not in ourselves and our own wisdom, but in the wisdom of Christ, revealed to us in the Word.  

Note: I am a member of the Amazon Affiliates program and links to books in this post are connected to my affiliates account with Amazon.com.