1. Grace Transforming - half price ebook!
Get the ebook version of Grace Transforming for just ÂŁ4!
2. Own Your Desperation (New eBook from Piper)
A new, free ebook from John Piper.
3. (English) Relief Project: Titus For You
Support The Gospel Coalitionâs new relief project of Titus For You.
4. Keswick Convention 2014 Talks
Listen to the talks from this yearâs recent convention (Registration required).
5. And finally...
Our video of the week, âFollowing Jesusâ from Live Grow Know Session 1:
Found something that you think should make it on to the On to a Good Thing round-up? Send it to: ontoagoodthing@thegoodbook.co.uk
This week we're thrilled to welcome a new member of staff into the UK office. Here's a little about him ...
What are you going to be doing at TGBC?
You tell me! I’m coming here to be the print buyer. [Blank Look] Oh you don’t know what that is? Well me neith… I mean, I will be finding the best deals to get our books printed with different printers, and helping advise the team here about what can be realistically and cost effectively printed when they are considering design questions. Then I think I’ll also be helping out with some IT stuff, so I have something cooler to talk about at dinner parties.
What were you doing before TGBC?
Before starting here I was working as the centre manager of a local charity in Basingstoke, that worked with mainly young people in the community to help grow confidence and boost social interaction, primarily through the performing arts. Despite this I’m still as wooden and uncoordinated as they come, and worked behind the scenes, specialising as a jack of all trades, managing their IT, Website, Policies and the staff & volunteer team, while dabbling in the finances, fund raising, event planning and general admin sides, all with a major in crisis control.
What do you enjoy doing when you're not at work?
In my spare time I’m a theoretical fiction writer (which is to say I think about writing more than I actually write). I enjoy watching high quality TV Drama, and can wax lyrical about Breaking Bad for hours on end. I enjoy playing football and other sports, and am a big New England Patriots fan, and love watching all and any American Football as the ultimate sporting fusion of brains and brawn. I also enjoy any excuse to cook or eat good food, especially if there is some nice wine and half decent company involved.
What can we be praying for you this week?
If you could please pray for me as I adjust to starting my new job and all that it involves. For a smooth process of finding somewhere to move to and commuting in until I do. And for good gospel opportunities with friends and ex-colleagues before I leave Basingstoke.
Over the 25 years since I've become a Christian I've heard quite a few talks on the cross. I've read a few books too. And, as I've worked my way through the pages of Scripture, I've noticed it's a subject that pops up time and time again! In broad brush-strokes, at least, I get what Jesus has done for me. So why, oh why, would I spend 2 hours of my holiday reading a book about the cross from the publishing company that employs me?
The answer is simple. Our Lord's work on the cross isn't something to understand and then move on from - it's the core of our salvation, the foundation of our daily living and our hope for the future. It never gets old, it never gets dull. And that's something, Marcus Nodder author of Why did Jesus have to die? knows very well.
In his eminently readable book - part of the Questions Christians Ask series - Marcus dispels some of the myths around the cross. It's not just a logo or a great sacrifice that inspires us to try harder to live a loving and sacrificial life. Nor is it yet another dying and rising myth circulating in the ancient world. It's the best news imaginable for a lost and hurting world.... continue reading
See, I will create
new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered,
nor will they come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice for ever
in what I will create,
for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight
and its people a joy.
I will rejoice over Jerusalem
and take delight in my people;
the sound of weeping and of crying
will be heard in it no more.'
Isaiah 65:17-19
See, I will create
new heavens and a new earth.
The former things will not be remembered,
nor will they come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice for ever
in what I will create,
for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight
and its people a joy.
I will rejoice over Jerusalem
and take delight in my people;
the sound of weeping and of crying
will be heard in it no more.
Isaiah 65:17-19
Find more videos like Ben's on the Live DVD.
Christians: The world's most persecuted people
Victoria bans religious groups from running prayer groups, handing out Bibles in state schools
Christian activists lose gay bus advert challenge
The Left blind to slaughter of Christians
China Removes Crosses From Two More Churches in Crackdown
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“You’re 9 years old,” I say to my younger self. “What do you have to be sad about?”
The charcoal portrait, sketched in the shadow of the Sacré-Coeur, now hangs in my father’s front room. And I look heroically gloomy. Presumably the artist did his best to capture the merriment of a family vacation, but the face is so sodden with regret it near drags the paper from its frame.
This was no isolated moment of childhood melancholy. "Cheer up," complete strangers would routinely say to me, "it might never happen." ("Too late," I would say under my breath, "it already has.")
I suppose some of us tend that way naturally. We’re always trying to swim back upstream to the moment just before we think it all went wrong. Our minds, sadly, aren’t well-behaved libraries shelved with orderly memoirs. They’re gothic charnel houses piled high with gaudy carousels, furiously spinning out past moments, past conversations, past relationships. What if I had done things differently? What if I had said something else? What if I had been someone else? The linoleum is worn through with pacing. We rehearse and re-rehearse dialogue as if we’re preparing for opening night on Broadway, except there is no play, these conversations ended long ago, and many of the people who shared them with us are long gone. Regret, the barbed wire hula-hoop, loping heavily around the brow, lacerating the skull with each revolve. Regret, the malevolent halo.
“What’s done is done.” “That tree has fallen.” “Why regret things you can’t change?”
Miserable comforters all. They may as well tell someone to ignore an itch they can’t scratch. The unreachability is what makes it so impossible to disregard.... continue reading
