Paul Baloche
Desperation Band
Brian Doerksen
Don Moen
Desiring God
The Practice of the Presence of God 
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What Jesus Demands from the World
by John Piper
Download book | Study guide
Note: The display and/or download of this book is for personal use only and it may not be distributed, duplicated, or used for any commercial purpose.
The verse on the cover of this book says “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me”. Pretty strong words from Jesus, but just what is this authority and how does it impact us and the world? In “What Jesus Demands from the World” John Piper looks at the commands that Jesus gave. However this is not a legalistic list of rules. Rather it is demands that are good for us, demands that will help us drawer closer to Jesus. John Piper says that Jesus’ demands can be summed up as “Trust and treasure me above all.”
Wherever you are in your spiritual walk with Jesus this book is both challenging and thought provoking.
As well as the pdf book, there is also a very useful study guide at the Desiring God website.
To get the free pdf download of “What Jesus Demands from the World” simply go to the Desiring God website at this link and then select the ‘Read this book online (PDF)’ link.
If you would like to hear John Piper’s summary of “What Jesus Demands from the World” then click here or on the media player below:
Here are some quotes about the book:
“This book is a special gift from the pen of John Piper. How long has it been since you carefully reflected upon the authoritative commands of Christ? Through these pages you will encounter the Savior and experience the transforming effects of the gospel. Few endeavors are more worthy of your time.”
C. J. Mahaney, Sovereign Grace Ministries
“This is a peculiar book. It assumes that the four Gospels are true and unified. It assumes that Jesus not only does things for us but also makes demands of us. And it assumes that Jesus has authority over everyone regardless of their religion, gender, race, income, sexuality, nationality, or culture. You will likely not agree with every point. But you will hear from a Jesus who is more than a soft-spoken, effeminate, marginalized, Galilean hippie-peasant in a dress and has the peculiar notion that he alone is Lord.”
Mark Driscoll, Pastor, Mars Hill Church, Seattle
Have you read this book? What do you think about it? Why not vote or leave a comment?
Tags: books, christian, desiring-God, free, John-Piper, resources
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Bible Reader
Main website | Download application
Olive Tree have made a name for themselves by providing bible software on various mobile applications, so it is no surprise that they are branching out onto the iPhone. The early versions (this review is based on version 4.0001) are good and are based around providing offline translations. No doubt further updates and improvements will be coming to software.
More translations would obviously be great, and any further improvements to the applications design would help make this a superb iPhone bible application. I’m not sure what the likelihood of additional translations would be, as they do provide an ESV version for £10 (£15 for an ESV study pack).
Translations available
Olive Tree’s Bible Reader application currently includes the ASV, Darby, French Darby, German Luther Bible, MKJV, NET, SpanishRV, WEY-NT and the YLT.
You can change the translations quickly by tapping on the acronym for the translation you are reading and then selecting your new choice.
Using the bible software
The small icon in the middle of the tab bar pulls up a table of all the books of the bible on on screen. This sounds too much for one iPhone screen but it actually works really well and does not feel to small or cramped. This may be more difficult for those whose eye sight is not 100% but I found it a quick way to select the books. You then simply click on the book and verse and you are taken to the relevant verse.
You can also directly type a verse in the top bar (though this would take longer) or search for a specific word or phrase.
It is very easy to use and takes less than a minute to understand.
How does it look?
The simple design generally fits the iPhone well, and there is full customization available for the font and font size. It doesn’t quite look the part as much as the YouVersion bible. Not that it creates a bad experience when using it but it feels more PC than Mac. Whether that is bad no doubt depends on you preference!
Tags: bible, bible study, christian, free, iphone, resources Related posts on this site:
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YouVersion iPhone Bible
Support | Main website | Download application
The team behind the YouVersion bible have recently improved their free iPhone bible application to allow certain translations to be read offline. This is great news for iPod Touch users and for those times you are unable to connect to the internet. It will be interesting to see the improvements that this iPhone bible application makes over the coming year.
Translations available
If your iPhone or iPod Touch is connected to the internet then there are lots of transaltions available including:
- NIV
- ESV
- KJV
- NKJV
- NET
- WEB
- the Messsage
- Chinese, Italian French, Spanish, German, Korean and Swedish translations
- and more!
Less of these translations are available offline, but they are working on getting more available. To access the offline transaltions you need to have access to a wifi or edge network to download the initial bible text, but then it will work wherever you are. Simply go to the settings menu and choose from the following bible translations: ASV, KJV, WEB, NET RVES, ELB, DELUT, LSG, GUVS, CUV, BG1940, SV1750, FINPR, KAR, IDBAR, NORSK, AA, RMNN, KRVB 1R1927 and RURSV.
A big advantage of having translations available offline is that searching the text is much quicker. It will be great when more translations are added.
Using the bible software
You can find verses in a couple of ways with this application. Firstly you can search for a specific word (or words) and the matching verses will be shown. This feature works well and is fast.
Secondly you can search by selecting a book and then chapter. This is probably the only flaw in the layout. It doesn’t feel particularly intuitively implemented. Firstly, this option is not on the tab bar so you have to press at least two buttons to get it (sometimes more). The layout of then selecting the book just doesn’t quite work. It is not bad, but I think there must be a quicker way of navigating. I’m not sure what that layout is, maybe something like the verse selector on Bible Reader. This is far from a deal breaker, but if YouVersion could crack this they would have a very user friendly iPhone bible.
There are no more powerful options such as bookmarking or note-taking available yet. Based on the online version of YouVersion this feature may be coming in a future release. If this could be synchronized with the online YouVersion you would suddenly have a very powerful multi-platform bible study package.
How does it look?
The presentation is very good and the text is easy to read. The images shown in this review are with small text but there are options for larger text or for a screen display which is easier to read in the dark.
There is nothing ground breaking in the design, but it fits the iPhone layout perfectly, and the simple design makes it easy to focus on the text you are reading. This is a good example of “less is more” in design.
Read the bible in one year!
A superb addition is the option of a daily bible reading plan (based on Robert Roberts daily reading plan). 3 sections of the bible are included each day, and you simply click on the verses shown to read them. This is a very well implemented feature which fits well with the way many people may read the bible on an iPhone.
Other features…
Other features include the ability to email verses by double clicking or holding down on a verse. This could be useful either to send yourself a note about what you are reading, or send an email to friend (which is its main intended use). This function does work when you are offline, as it saves any unsent messages and sends them when you are back in range. The verse itself is not shown - but it includes a link to the normal YouVersion website.
There is also a contributions tab, where recent contributions from YouVersion users are included. I did not find this amazingly useful as the contributions are very random and you can’t search for notes on a verse. I expect this functionality will be added in future versions.
Tags: bible, bible study, christian, ESV, free, iphone, NIV, resources, youversion Related posts on this site:
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For Your Joy
by John Piper
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Note: The display and/or download of this book is for personal use only and may not be distributed, duplicated, or used for any commercial purpose.
At 39 pages this pocket sized book (or pamphlet) may be quick to read, but it could have a life changing affect on its recipient. John Piper wrote “For Your Joy” as an evangelistic tool to help share Jesus with unbelievers. It aims to remove the image many people have of a boring church, with one of Jesus who is calling them to come to him with joy.
For Your Joy covers many of the key foundations and questions that people have of Christianity and God such as:
- Why did Jesus have to die?
- How can I love a God who allows so much evil?
The writing is concise, biblically based and has the gospel shouting out of any page. If you want a short but rich book to give to a non-Christian this could be just the thing.
To get the free pdf download simply go to the Desiring God website at this link and then select the ‘Read this book online (PDF)’ link. You can also currently purchase the book at reduced prices ($1 for 1, $0.30 each for 50 or more, $0.25 each for 300 or more) by visiting the same page.
Have you read this book? What do you think about it? Why not vote or leave a comment?
Tags: books, christian, desiring-God, free, John-Piper, resources Related posts on this site:Your votes(0):
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Hymn books in window
Photo by Camra Art
Cyber Hymnal is a useful website with over 7,000 hymns from various denominations included. It is very easy to navigate around the thousands of hymns, and it is also continually being updated.
You can search for a hymn in several ways:
- by the title (selecting the first letter and then choosing from a list)
- by the topic (e.g. salvation, hope, faith)
- by the scripture (pick the book and then the verse in the bible)
Alternatively you can search the whole website simply by using the standard search function.
When you find the hymn you are looking you are presented with the words, links to the author bio, related pictures and also details about the music. By default the song will play in midi format when you open the page, although this option can be turned off. There is also a link to the score of the song.
You can also search for the music separately (as many hymns utilize the same tunes)
There are pages for many composers and authors, although a little bit of work sill needs to be done to complete all of these. However, Cyber Hymnal is adding more and more content all of the time, last month about 50 new hymns were added.
There is also a really good bibliography page for additional resources on hymns.
Tags: christian, free, hymn, music, resources Related posts on this site:
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Jonathan Nelson
Already Mine
Download* | Jonathan Nelson’s myspace | Integrity Music
* To download register with Integrity Direct and select the downloads menu
Tags: christian, free, integrity music, jonathan nelson, music, resources, songs Related posts on this site:
Wordle is more of a diverting website than one you will visit again and again. It allows you to put in a website url or a list of words (say from a book in the bible) and it creates an image of the words. The more a word appears, the larger it is in the picture. The image above was based on recent posts at free Christian resources so as you can see Christian, God, books, prayer and website were the most popular words.
You can play around with the settings to create different variations. I’m not 100% sure where this could be used, maybe for an outreach leaflet or something?
Tags: free, fun Related posts on this site:Your votes(0):
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In Our Joy
by John Piper
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>Note: The display and/or download of this book is for personal use only and may not be distributed, duplicated, or used for any commercial purpose.
In Our Joy is a pocket book that is a selection of chapters from John Piper’s book What Jesus Demands from the World. It is written as a discipleship book to encourage and challenge Christians to fully follow Jesus. In Our Joy clearly spells out the costs of becoming a Christian, and the hard road we face. However it counteracts this by reminding that it is our joy in Jesus that sustains us, and that without Jesus all of our striving would be wasted. Many books and distorted Christian theologies can assume that with faith, we can have everything. With faith we can have money, health and not have a hard life. But our joy is not supposed to be derived from our circumstances but from Jesus and our relationship with God.
To get the free pdf download simply go to the Desiring God website at this link and then select the ‘Read this book online (PDF)’ link. You can also currently purchase the book at reduced prices ($1 for 1, $0.30 each for 50 or more, $0.25 each for 300 or more) by visiting the same page.
Have you read this book? What do you think about it? Why not vote or leave a comment?
Tags: books, christian, desiring-God, free, John-Piper, resources Related posts on this site:
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Jared Anderson
Glorified
Download* | Jared Anderson’s website | Integrity Music
* To download register with Integrity Direct and select the downloads menu
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Bible Gateway Search Google Gadget
Main Website
Trey Meier at the TWKM blog has written a great gadget/widget to add the ability to directly search bible verses from Bible Gateway from either iGoogle or you own website or blog.
It works by presenting you with a search box where you tap in the verse you want to read, and the widget then automatically opens us Bible Gateway with the verse that you have requested. You can choose from a multitude of translations (including NIV, ESV, KJV, and many more) and the widget has alos been translated into French and Spanish. You can see an example of the Bible Gateway Search Google Gadget at the bottom of this post…
For those not aware, iGoogle is the personalized home page that you can get with google. It is a great base for a home page and includes widgets for various things from emails to the weather. You can add it to iGoogle by clicking on the “+ Google” button that is on the widget at the end of this review.
If you are adding it to your own website there a lots of options for adjusting the colors, size and some of the text of the widget to ensure it looks professional. The version below is just the default version, which is similar in style to the iGoogle version also.
Tags: bible, bible study, bible-gateway, christian, free, resources, website Related posts on this site:
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