LayGuy

Be sure to grab yourself a free Audio Book download of Mark Driscoll’s, “Religion Saves: + nine other misconceptions” – available now @ www.christianaudio.com.

This book is based on the same titled sermon series held at Mars Hill Church in Seattle.  Check out the sermons here.

Basically Mars Hill Church opened up a web based survey and asked for people to post any questions they would like Mark Driscoll to address.  After receiving thousands of questions and thousands of votes against these questions, the top ten areas were addressed in a sermon series and a book was put together.

Now you can download a copy of the audio book for free thanks to www.christianaudio.com!

Simply log in or create an account and for the month of February, it’s yours for free!  Simple!

John Piper is the Pastor for Preaching at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.  John is the author of more than 30 books and more than 25 years of his preaching and teaching is available free at desiringGod.org

His website includes a vast resource of quality teaching and preaching and he freely makes this available for the Body of Christ.

In today’s age of “celebrity pastors” who make a living on travelling the world pushing their books at inflated places and then travelling on to their next destination in their Lear Jets to talk more about the so called “prosperity gospel”, John is a welcome contrast.

He is perhaps best known by the quote embedded in the following image…

“God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in Him” – what a way to view your life!  What a sharp contradiction to the “live your best life now” or “seven steps to happiness”  so freely peddled into today’s Christian bookstores.

Although John is a Pastor, Speaker and Author – and he writes a tonne of books, what contrasts him from others is that he also makes his books, and all his teaching material, freely available to all!  What an awesome blessing he is to the Church and a glowing example of what it means to be a servant of Jesus.

Below are just 10 examples of books available for free download from his website desiringGod.org.  In fact, if you head over to his website, you will find 54 books available for free download in PDF format.

Feel free to download to your heart’s content – Download Adobe PDF Reader here.

 

Desiring God | Download PDF

The great business of life is to glorify God by enjoying him forever. Discord between duty and delight doesn’t exist: delight is our duty. Piper stuns us again and again with things we saw in the Bible, but never dared to believe. Join him on this dangerous quest for maximum joy in God. But beware, it may cost you your life. Never mind – "the steadfast love of the Lord is better than life" (Psalm 63:3).

Don’t Waste Your Life | Download PDF

God created us to live with a single passion: to joyfully display his supreme excellence in all spheres of life. The wasted life is the life without this passion. God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work, not to be made much of, but to make much of him in every part of our lives.

 

Music Video by Lacrae | Don’t Waste Your Life

 

Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came To Die | Download PDF

The death of Jesus is of foremost importance for the world. And the central issue of Jesus’ death is not the cause, but the meaning—God’s meaning.

 

 

 

Finally Alive | Download PDF

What does the Bible teach about the miracle of rebirth? In this new book, John Piper explores Jesus’ peculiar command, "You must be born again."

 

 

 

History’s Most Spectacular Sin | Download PDF

The most spectacular sin in the history of the world is the murder of the innocent, pure, perfect, and infinitely worthy Son of God. And at the center of that evil is the Satan-empowered betrayal of Jesus by his friend, Judas.

 

 

The Misery Of Job & The Mercy Of God | Download PDF

Job lost everything: his wealth, his health, and his ten children. All swept away in one satanic storm. Reduced to a heap of flesh, ashes, and tears—rebuked by friends and jeered by strangers—righteous Job wrestled over the purpose and presence of God in the midst of unbearable pain.

Video of John Piper’s Poetry on the Book of Job

 

The Power Of Words & The Wonder Of God | Download PDF

John Piper, Sinclair Ferguson, Mark Driscoll, and other leaders from Desiring God’s 2008 national conference examine the life-altering power of our words and their impact in sharing the gospel.

Conference video trailer upon which this book is based…

 

The Prodigals Sister| Download PDF

It has been ten years since the Prodigal Son left everything he knew – his home, his sister, his older brother, and his father. And now the prodigal’s sister intends to fulfil her promise, to find the Prodigal dead and bring him home alive.

 

 

Stand | Download PDF

Many people seek to better their lives by leaving, changing, swapping, or modifying their commitments.  But God’s Word holds up a beautiful value that, while difficult, leads to deep satisfaction and great reward: endurance. Such long, steady, hold-the-course perseverance is especially needed within our vacillating generation.

 

A Sweet & Bitter Providence | Download PDF

The timeless themes of sex, racial tension, and God’s perplexing and perfect plans are as much a part of our human experience today as they were for Ruth and Boaz over three thousand years ago.

 

 

Video trailer for the book…

I’m currently reading my first Ted Dekker novel.  After years of seeing his stuff at the Christian bookstore and wondering how good “Christian fiction” is,  I decided to get over my Tim Lahaye “Left Behind” mentality and dig into this book – albeit after borrowing it from a local library.

What I meant by the Left Behind comment is that Christians sometimes come across as real losers trying to follow a popular trend. When Lahaye came out with the Left Behind series, you were almost outcast if you didn’t read the books and actually like them.

I read a few but soon got over the “let’s stretch out this shocking theology over X amount of books so we can rake in the money” approach – similar to how shows like “Prison Break” and “Lost.”

And to think that end time understanding of millions of people is influenced by such trash makes me wonder who the bigger culprit is:  Dan Brown or Tim Lahaye?  Scary thought.

So that was my mindset as I picked up Adam at my local library.  Surprised to see a Christian author in the library, I read the blurb and decided to have another crack at Christian fiction.  I’m about a quarter through it and love it!

Dekker is an author I resonate with.  He shy’s away from typical cliché one would expect from a Christian fiction writer and delivers in a way where you can admire the research an author has undertaken in order to generate his work.  It’s real, it’s deep, it flows and it captures you.

Ultimately, Adam is a story about demon possession played out in a scientific “CSI” type environment.   To pull this off, Dekker had to do his research and any “hokey pokey christian cliche” would sink this story.  I’m glad to report that so far, this story aint sinking and is actually getting more intriguing all the time.

Have a listen to Dekker himself describe some of the thinking behind the book and then go do yourself a favour and grab a copy from somewhere.

Want a free audio book with no strings attached?  While there might be a few ways to get your hands on some second rate stuff out there, www.christianaudio.com is a great place to check out if you’re into Christian audio books.

One of the cool features of the site is its “First Chapters” podcast where they release the first chapter of a certain book as a podcast.  You get to hear the first chapter and, if you like it, you can go ahead and purchase the rest of book.

But by far the coolest thing about www.christianaudio.com is the free monthly download.  And instead of being stingy by offering titles no-one has even heard of, www.christianaudio.com make available awesome titles.

This month is no exception.  The free audio book is Leonard Sweet’s “So Beautiful” – released on www.christianaudio.com even before the printed version is released!  What a deal!

Leonard Sweet is currently the E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at Drew Theological School (Madison, NJ), and Visiting Distinguished Professor at George Fox  University (Portland, OR). He the author of more than one hundred articles, 600 published sermons and thirty books, most recently The Gospel According to Starbucks (2007).

The blurb on “So Beautiful” goes along the lines of..

What is commonly known as DNA today was called “…so pretty!” when it was discovered years ago, and over the course of his ministry, author Leonard Sweet has discovered that this divine design also informs God’s blueprint for the church. In this seminal work, he shares the woven strands that form the church: missional, relational, and incarnational. Sweet declares that this secret is So Beautiful!

Using the poignant life of John Newton as a touchstone, Sweet calls for the re-union of these three essential, complementary strands of the Christian life. Far from a novel idea, Sweet shows how this structure is God’s original intent and shares the simply beautiful design for His church.

And to wet your appetite even more, check out the following short promo..

To download this free audio book, head on over to www.christianaudio.com, create a free account and download to your heart’s content.  Hope you enjoy.

In this day and age where “truth” is relative to someones own worldview and “absolute truth” seems like an oxymoron, the claims made in the Bible are often seen as ludicrous by our postmodern (and increasingly post “everything”) society.

Standing up to the onslaught of questions and attacks on what we believe and why we do the things we do, a “tolerant” society is becoming increasingly intolerant to sound Christian doctrine.  Even some in the “church” seemed to have caved in and have allowed humanistic world views determine what’s right and what’s wrong in the Bible – instead of declaring the Bible perfect and having ultimate authority.

So it’s in this climate that I want to introduce to you, if you are a small percentage of the population that don’t already know about him, Tim Keller from Redeemer Presbyterian Church.  Check out Keller on Wikipedia for some background on the guy. In a nut shell, he is passionate about the Bible, has a brilliant mind and is a goldmine resource for church planting.

I’ve started listening to the guy only recently and have enjoyed the way he engages you in his, what I like to call, “philosophically stylised, yet easily accessible sermons.”  And it’s this style that allows him to do a sermon series on “The Problem With Christianity – Why it’s so hard to believe it.” Listen in below via an audio stream or right click on the “download” and save to your PC.

He takes complex issues and hits them head on in a way that almost makes you feel really dumb if you held onto the issues in the first place.  Fascinating stuff!  These are the themes from his latest book “The Reasons For God.”  Click here to purchase from amazon.com. Hope you enjoy the messages…

Exclusivity: How can there be just one true religion? | Download

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Suffering: If God is good, why is there so much evil in the world? | Download

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Absolutism: Don’t we all have to find truth for ourselves? | Download

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Injustice: Hasn’t Christianity been an instrument for oppression? | Download

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Hell: Isn’t the God of Christianity an angry Judge? | Download

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Literalism: Isn’t the Bible historically unreliable and regressive? | Download

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

For more Tim Keller resources – constantly updated, click here and here.