Kingsway has created a new American site at kingswayworship.com. In the past it has been difficult to purchase things from Kingsway because they were only available in the UK, or cost an arm and a leg. But that has changed! Thanks, Kingsway, for doing this.
The new site contains CDs at U.S. prices. If you’re looking for song lyrics and downloads, they’re still only available through Kingswaysongs.com, however.
(HT: Stuart Townend)
Recently I’ve been using A Gospel Primer in my devotions in the mornings. I would highly recommend it to anyone desiring to fix their eyes on the gospel more fully.
Milton Vincent, a pastor in California, wrote it, and says,
This booklet is offered as a handy guide to help Christians experience the gospel more fully by preaching it to themselves each day. It is also offered as a correction to a costly mistake made by Christians who view the gospel as something that has fully served out its purpose the moment they believed in Jesus for salvation. Not knowing what to do with the gospel once they are saved, they lay it aside soon after conversion so they can move on to “bigger and better” things (even Scriptural things). Of course, none of us thinks this is what we are doing at the time, yet after many years of floundering in defeat we can look back and see that this is exactly what we have done. God did not give us His gospel just so we could embrace it and be converted. Actually, He offers it to us every day as a gift that keeps on giving to us everything we need for life and godliness.As for myself, after years of frustration, fits and starts, and exhausted collapses in my Christian walk, I have come back to a focus on the gospel and have found its sufficiency for daily living to be truly overwhelming. After years of church attendance, university and seminary training, and countless hours of Bible study in preparation for preaching many hundreds of sermons, I have found nothing more powerful and life-transforming than the gospel truths affirmed on the following pages. Rehearsing these truths each day has become a pleasurable discipline by which I enjoy God’s love and maintain fresh contact with His provision and power for daily living. Over the course of time, preaching the gospel to myself every day has made more of a difference in my life than any other discipline I have ever practiced. I find myself sinning less, but just as importantly, I find myself recovering my footing more quickly after sinning, due to the immediate comfort found in the gospel. I have also found that when I am absorbed in the gospel, everything else I am supposed to be toward God and others seems to flow out of me more naturally and passionately. Doing right is not always easy, but it is never more easy than when one is breathing deeply the atmosphere of the gospel. I am confident that you will find the same to be true in your life as well.
This booklet is written partly as a result of the influence of Jerry Bridges’ excellent book entitled The Discipline of Grace (NavPress, 1994), for it was through this book that I first heard the challenge to preach the gospel to myself every day.
Vincent offers two different restatements of the gospel (prose and poetic versions), and also gives a list of 20 reasons to rehearse the gospel daily:
1. New Testament Model
2. My Daily Need
3. The Power of God
4. My Daily Protection
5. Transformed by Glory
6. A Cure for Distrust
7. All I Ever Need
8. Freedom from Sin’s Power
9. Resting in Christ’s Righteousness
10. Obedience Borne of Romance
11. Perspective in Trials
12. Stimulated to Love Others
13. Loving My Brothers and Sisters
14. My Inheritance in the Saints
15. A Heart for the Lost
16. Cultivating Humility
17. Liberation from Self-Love
18. Hope of Heaven
19. The Ultimate Prize
20. To Him be the Glory
It is available as a free PDF. I have it as a hard copy, which makes it feel more like a book I can use in the mornings.
These things go around on the internet, but I thought I’d post one that just came through my inbox:
Hymns of the Lukewarm Church
The Lukewarm Church (God’s Frozen People) announces publication of “Church Songs,” whose title, according to the editor, was chosen because “We didn’t want to turn anybody off with threatening words that no one understands anymore like ‘worship’ or ‘hymn.’ People in today’s society get kind of uncomfortable with too much talk about things like commitment and dedication. They’d much rather have a religion that they can turn on or off at will. Our book seeks to meet that need.”
Sample contents:
A Comfy Mattress Is Our God
Joyful, Joyful, We Kinda Like Thee
Above Average is Thy Faithfulness
Lord, Keep Us Loosely Connected to Your Word
All Hail the Influence of Jesus’ Name
My Hope is Built on Nothing Much
Amazing Grace, How Interesting the Sound
My Faith Looks Around for Thee
Be Thou My Hobby
O God, Our Enabler in Ages Past
Blest Be the Tie That Doesn’t Cramp My Style
Oh, for a Couple of Tongues to Sing
He’s Quite a Bit to Me
Oh, How I Like Jesus
I Lay My Inappropriate Behaviors on Jesus
Pillow of Ages, Fluffed for Me
I Surrender Some
Praise God from Whom All Affirmations Flow
I’m Fairly Certain That My Redeemer Lives
Self-Esteem to the World! The Lord is Come
Sit Up, Sit Up for Jesus
Special, Special, Special
Spirit of the Living God, Fall Somewhere Near Me
Stick Nearby, It’s Getting Dark Outside
Take My Life and Let Me Be
There is Scattered Cloudiness in My Soul Today
There Shall be Sprinkles of Blessings
What an Acquaintance We Have in Jesus
When Peace, Like a Trickle…
When the Saints Go Sneaking In
Where He Leads Me, I Will Consider Following
God of Taste, and God of Stories
Lift Every Voice and Intellectualize
Christianity Today has a series titled “Net Results” on how the internet and digital music change the way we think about and interact with music.
Pavarotti has passed away.
A few things I learned from reading about him:
-The CD “Three Tenors in Concert” (with Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras) is the best selling classical album of all time.
-He spent some of his early years as an elementary school teacher and insurance salesman, while studying voice.
-He was inspired and influenced by his father. “I dreamed to become a singer when I was four and hear my father singing in the church with a beautiful tenor voice. And I say to myself, well, let’s try to do something.”
-He sang all his life, with the exception of only a year for his voice changing, and then late in life for cancer. “I think I stop for one year when from a kid I become a man and the voice is changing. I was an alto and become a tenor and that is the only time I think I remember to have stopped singing. Otherwise I have sung all my life.”
News reports on google.