Barnabas Piper's Blog, page 41

6 Apps To Help You in 2021

It’s the new year. Which, if you think about it, just means a few hours have passed since the last year. Nothing is fundamentally different in your life or mine or in the world. However, it does provide a good chance to evaluate life, reconsider things that we’d like to change, and set some goals for the next 365 calendar turnovers. I don;t mean the sort of resolutions that set the bar so high as to lead to inevitable disappointment. I mean realistic, measurable, pursuable goals to strengthen areas of life we wish were better. Here are some apps I use (and have used for a few years now) to help me do just that.

Bible Reading – ReadingPlan

This free app offers a variety of Bible reading plans to help you stay on track – chronological, M’Cheyne, straight through, etc. They are designed to help you read through the Bible in a year, but the time is much less important than simply reading through the Bible. Every Christian should read the entire Bible, and plans like these help a ton by dividing scripture into manageable chunks and helping you track progress. I use the plans with numbers instead of dates next to each day’s reading (an option they offer) so that I don’t fall into the trap of feeling like a failure for “falling behind”.

Bible Listening – Dwell

Dwell is a fantastic audio Bible app with a pile of features (listening plans, pause and reflect, background music, sleep timer, etc.) to help you find the most effective way to get into scripture. It is wonderful during your commute, working out, doing chores or yard work, or any other margin of life. I use it especially when I am trying to memorize or study particular passages. It has an annual subscription fee, but if you go through the link you can get a 20% discount which comes to less than $2 per month.

Saving Money – Digit

I found digit a few years ago and it is super helpful. It is a money saving app that can be automated based on the status of whatever bank account you tie it to. So it will save bit by bit as your account can afford it and slow down or stop if you cannot. You can tell it to save more or less aggressively, and you can manually deposit money as well. And you can pause automated withdrawals whenever you like. If you are like me and aren’t the most disciplined saver, this app is super helpful for emergency savings or saving for a specific expense. (AND for signing up through the link they’ll give you and me both $5.)

Reading – Goodreads

Goodreads is like a playground for book lovers. It allows you to set goals, track your progress, interact with other readers, make wish lists, discover new titles or authors, leave ratings and reviews, see how other review books, and it even connects directly with Kindle if you’re into that sort of thing. If you want to read more books, read more from a certain author, read more of a specific genre, or set some other goal Goodreads is the ideal app to help with that. It is both fun and useful and an ideal environment for those who want to be better reader.

Book Listening – Libby

As much as I love to read, I find that life rather too demanding to sit and focus as often as I would like. That doesn’t mean I need to miss out on books (and for FREE too!). Libby connects to any library where you have an account so you can check out audio books on your mobile device. I love this, especially for fiction and history books. It is a great way to get more literature into your life even if you are exceptionally busy.

Nutrition/Health – MyFitnessPal

I’m in my late 30s and I love to eat. That means that several years ago I realized that my desk-sitting, restaurant-eating, coke-drinking lifestyle was really sticking with me. Mostly as love handles. In talking to my over-40 friends it seems this condition doesn’t resolve itself. So I had to figure out how to fix it, or at least fight it to a standstill. MyFitnessPal is an app (and website) that allows users to track all the food they eat, set goals for caloric intake, and track calories burned. It syncs with other fitness apps (Apple, fitbit, etc.) so that you can see the net intake of calories as well. Mostly it is a source of eating accountability as you see shocking numbers attached to donuts and cookies and all your favorite beverages.

New Happy Rant: Christmas Cards, Photo Shoots, and Inspiration

In this episode of The Happy Rant Ted, Ronnie, and Barnabas do what they always do and wander to and fro through a variety of topics:

Ronnie’s Christmas card photo shoot
Christmas card ethoses
CHOOSE YOUR HARD
CHOOSE YOUR HAPPY
Mindsets of “inspiration”

SPONSOR

AND be sure to check out Dwell Bible App. Dwell is a Bible listening app that we love! If you are looking for a convenient, fresh way of spending more time in God’s word Dwell is ideal. Go to https://dwellapp.io/happyrant to get 20% off your subscription.

Get Your Coffee

We’ve joined forces with Redbud Coffee, based out of Auburn IL, to bring you deliciously roasted and beautifully packaged coffee. Check out their variety of roasts and be sure to use the code HappyRant at checkout to get a 10% discount off your purchase.

Be sure to visit HappyRantPodcast.com where you can:

Order your Redbud coffee
Connect with Ted, Ronnie, or Barnabas to speak for your church, organization, or event
Support the podcast through our Patreon page . This helps us cover production and hosting costs so we can keep this thing rolling

To listen you can:

Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher
Listen via just about any podcast app/streaming service out there
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.

Episode #327

January Book Sale

For the month of January I am offering an additional 20% off all my books and studies through my online store. Just use the code January at checkout. This discount will be applied on top of the current discounted prices and bundle discounts.

Here are a few particular quantity discounts worth highlighting.

The Pastors Kid (1st Edition),  Help My Unbelief (1st Edition), and Help My Unbelief Personal Study Guide

5-15 copies for $5 apiece

16+ copies for $3 apiece 

While supplies last

 

All other trade books

5+ copies for $8 apiece

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Happy Rant: Online Conferences, The Happy Rant Book Awards, and Drisky Business

In this episode of The Happy Rant Ted, Ronnie, and Barnabas do what they always do and wander to and fro through a variety of topics:

Making peace over book lists since one of the hosts made the cut
Life changing speaking offers at online conferences
The Happy Rant Book awards
Drisky business and botox
Handsome. . . Driscoll?

SPONSOR

AND be sure to check out Dwell Bible App. Dwell is a Bible listening app that we love! If you are looking for a convenient, fresh way of spending more time in God’s word Dwell is ideal. Go to https://dwellapp.io/happyrant to get 20% off your subscription.

Get Your Coffee

We’ve joined forces with Redbud Coffee, based out of Auburn IL, to bring you deliciously roasted and beautifully packaged coffee. Check out their variety of roasts and be sure to use the code HappyRant at checkout to get a 10% discount off your purchase.

Be sure to visit HappyRantPodcast.com where you can:

Order your Redbud coffee
Connect with Ted, Ronnie, or Barnabas to speak for your church, organization, or event
Support the podcast through our Patreon page . This helps us cover production and hosting costs so we can keep this thing rolling

To listen you can:

Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher
Listen via just about any podcast app/streaming service out there
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.

Episode #326

The Gospel is Not Subjective

These words are from a sermon D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones preached in 1952. He is addressing the greatness of the gospel as shown in John 17 and “this generation’s” tendency to subectivize and shrink it. It would seem that the generation to whom he spoke these words was not so different from the generation of which we are part. These are powerful words for his day, today, and coming days:

“I am not talking about people outside the church, but about ourselves, who are inside the church. It may well have be that we have all been influenced by the climate of thought and by this morbid interest in psychology and in analyzing ourselves, but whatever it is, we have become self-centered and that is the curse of this generation. We are always looking at ourselves, at how things affect us and at what we want for ourselves. Now there are many possible explanations for that, which need not claim our attention now, but that fact of the matter is that we are slaves to our own habits and states and desires, and to our own likes and dislikes, and the result is that we approach everything from the standpoint of what it means to us. And the tragic thing is that we tend to approach the gospel of Jesus Christ in that particular way, with the result that we fail to realize the truth either about ourselves or about this wonderful salvation which we have, because particularize on points. We look solely on what the gospel has to say ‘to me’, how the gospel can ‘help me’, and we fail, therefore, to hear what the gospel has to say about us, and we fail to realize the scope and the greatness of the vastness of the gospel itself. . . Charles Wesley says ”Tis mercy all, immense and free,’ and yet so often the impressions given that the gospel is something subjective and small, something which just does this or that. . . The tragedy of the subjective approach is that it is essentially so selfish that eventually it fails us.”

– D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones,  The Assurance of Our Salvation

New Happy Rant: Book Lists, Reformed Tribalism, and Minimalist Nativities

In this episode of The Happy Rant Ted Ronnie, and Barnabas do what they always do and wander to and fro through various topics:

Shut out from year-end book lists (again)
Book list tribalism
The borders of the TGC tribe
Minimalist nativities
Ronnie’s Christmas panel

SPONSOR

AND be sure to check out Dwell Bible App. Dwell is a Bible listening app that we love! If you are looking for a convenient, fresh way of spending more time in God’s word Dwell is ideal. Go to https://dwellapp.io/happyrant to get 20% off your subscription.

Get Your Coffee

We’ve joined forces with Redbud Coffee, based out of Auburn IL, to bring you deliciously roasted and beautifully packaged coffee. Check out their variety of roasts and be sure to use the code HappyRant at checkout to get a 10% discount off your purchase.

Be sure to visit HappyRantPodcast.com where you can:

Order your Redbud coffee
Connect with Ted, Ronnie, or Barnabas to speak for your church, organization, or event
Support the podcast through our Patreon page . This helps us cover production and hosting costs so we can keep this thing rolling

To listen you can:

Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher
Listen via just about any podcast app/streaming service out there
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.

Episode #325

New Happy Rant – The Happy Rant Book

In this episode Ted, Ronnie, and Barnabas do something a little different and make a BIG announcement: THEY ARE WRITING A HAPPY RANT BOOK!

They also discuss:

The excitement of our loved ones
Writing retreats
Lunch and launch
What we want this book to be

SPONSOR

AND be sure to check out Dwell Bible App. Dwell is a Bible listening app that we love! If you are looking for a convenient, fresh way of spending more time in God’s word Dwell is ideal. Go to https://dwellapp.io/happyrant to get 20% off your subscription.

Get Your Coffee

We’ve joined forces with Redbud Coffee, based out of Auburn IL, to bring you deliciously roasted and beautifully packaged coffee. Check out their variety of roasts and be sure to use the code HappyRant at checkout to get a 10% discount off your purchase.

Be sure to visit HappyRantPodcast.com where you can:

Order your Redbud coffee
Connect with Ted, Ronnie, or Barnabas to speak for your church, organization, or event
Support the podcast through our Patreon page . This helps us cover production and hosting costs so we can keep this thing rolling

To listen you can:

Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher
Listen via just about any podcast app/streaming service out there
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.

Episode #324

New Online Bookstore

This week I opened up an online bookstore to sell my books and studies. With so many bookstores closed and relatively limited online shopping options, I hope this makes it a little easier and a little more affordable for people to purchase them.

Here are a few particular quantity discounts worth highlighting.

The Pa stors Kid (1st Edition) &  Help My Unbelief (1st Edition)

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5-15 copies for $5 apiece

16+ copies for $3 apiece 

While supplies last

 

 

All other trade books

5+ copies for $10 apiece

[image error] [image error]

 

 

 

 

 

 

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New Happy Rant: 3 Burning Questions

In this episode of The Happy Rant podcast Ted, Ronnie, and Barnabas do what they always do. Well, sort of. They actually share three of the bonus Patreon episodes they’ve been releasing in which they answer the following questions.

What are you proud of?
Who was your first celebrity crush?
Who are the best TV or movie villains?

SPONSOR

AND be sure to check out Dwell Bible App. Dwell is a Bible listening app that we love! If you are looking for a convenient, fresh way of spending more time in God’s word Dwell is ideal. Go to https://dwellapp.io/happyrant to get 20% off your subscription.

Get Your Coffee

[image error]We’ve joined forces with Redbud Coffee, based out of Auburn IL, to bring you deliciously roasted and beautifully packaged coffee. Check out their variety of roasts and be sure to use the code HappyRant at checkout to get a 10% discount off your purchase.

Be sure to visit HappyRantPodcast.com where you can:

Order your Redbud coffee
Connect with Ted, Ronnie, or Barnabas to speak for your church, organization, or event
Support the podcast through our Patreon page . This helps us cover production and hosting costs so we can keep this thing rolling

To listen you can:

Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher
Listen via just about any podcast app/streaming service out there
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.

Episode #323

Reading the Bible to Meet God

In my book Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt is Not the Enemy of Faith I wrote about how important it is to read the Bible to meet God, to read it relationally and as sustenance for the soul. Often we simply read it for information, to follow a rule, or as an academic pursuit. Reading to meet God sounds like a great idea and the ideal for a Christian, but how do we actually do it? How can we change our mind-sets to view Scripture as a living, rich revelation instead of a religious tome of instructions and history? Here are seven ways.

Read the whole story.

Many of us learned to read God’s Word from children’s Bible storybooks made up of individual stories—Adam and Eve, David and Goliath, Jonah and the big fish (of course it was Jonah and the whale back then), the boy’s five loaves and two fish, and so on. We learned to look for stories, snippets of Scripture. And usually these came with a moral lesson about trusting God, making the right decisions, being honest, serving others, or something else.

The other main way we heard the Bible taught was character centric, like a series of mini-bios. We studied the lives of Abraham, Joseph, Ruth, Saul, Solomon, Esther, Peter, and Paul. We were taught about their shortcomings and their faithfulness. We learned that they were examples for us to follow, just not perfect ones.

While we gleaned a lot of truth from these lessons, the teaching method actually misguided us. We learned to read the Scripture similar to how we skim through a magazine: a story here, skip the boring bits, a profile there, and some good info throughout if you know where to look. But the Bible is not like that at all. It is a narrative made up of different parts. It must be read in full.

We must learn to read the whole story of Scripture from beginning to end. The Bible is God’s story of redemption, the revelation of Himself and His plan for the world. All those stories and all those characters are parts of the whole, characters in the drama, but none of them are the point. They all point to the point: Jesus Christ came, lived a perfect life, died an innocent death to save sinners and kill death and sin, and will one day return to right all the wrongs. Sure, some parts of the Bible are confusing and dry, but they fit in the whole too. And when we understand that there is a whole narrative, even those parts start to make sense in their context.

Reading the Bible this way may seem like a tall task, especially if you haven’t been in the habit of reading it much at all. If so, start small, bit by bit. Take notes. Ask questions. In the next appendix, I recommend several books, some of which can help explain how it all fits together. Piece by piece, little by little, you’ll begin to see the big story of the Bible and it will become so much greater than you thought possible in Sunday school.

Look for Jesus.

It was the advice that helped change my perspective on Scripture and the advice I would suggest to any Christian who finds the Bible to be stale and lifeless: look for Jesus. So much of what we miss in Scripture is because we look for characters and themes and lessons other than Jesus. But He is both the primary character and the primary plotline of Scripture. To look for anything else first is to rip out the heart of God’s Word. Because Jesus, as John 1 tells us, is the Word made flesh.

Every page of Scripture points to Jesus. It all fits together to point to Him and to glorify Him and depict Him and reveal Him. In the first point I said to read the whole story. Well, that’s because the whole story is the story of the need for Jesus, the promise of Jesus, the life of Jesus, the work of Jesus, the death and resurrection of Jesus, and ultimately the victory of Jesus.

When we read the whole story and see Jesus throughout the pages, we see Him afresh, not as whatever preconceived notions we had. We see Him as more than a teacher, more than a healer, more than a model character. We see the breadth of Jesus from the man who sat with children and loved widows to the sword-wielding King of justice and glory.

When you see Jesus, get to know Him.

Observations about Jesus are the stuff of sermons and Sunday school lessons and Christian books like this one. But in the Bible we have the means to get to know Jesus. We have the means to move past observation and awareness and fact finding to a real, personal connection with Him. How? Like we do in any relationship.

Make it a regular thing. Go back to those Gospels over and over again. God’s word is inexhaustible and can always deepen your understanding and belief. We don’t limit ourselves in conversation with our loved ones because we “talked to them already” and neither should we limit ourselves in the reading of the Bible because we “read it already.” It is as dynamic and deep, in fact even deeper, than any person we seek to know.

Ask questions of Jesus in Scripture. Ask about His character. Ask about His values. Ask about His life. Ask about His priorities. Ask about His weaknesses. And let Scripture respond to you. The answers you find will lead you to want to know more, to be closer, to be with Jesus. And the more we are with Him, the more we will find ourselves wanting to and learning to be like Him.

Don’t shy away from the hard stuff.

One of the most significant weaknesses of most Bible teaching in the traditional church is the void where all the hard stuff in the Bible happens. Not until I got to college did I ever hear mention of the rape of Dinah or God commanding the destruction of entire people groups. Nobody talked about the flood except as a means to a rainbow. Nobody answered questions about where Cain found his wife if his parents were the first people ever. Nobody explained what it meant for an omnipotent, omniscient God to relent and change His mind or how He could harden Pharaoh’s heart, then judge him for rebellion. What in the world are we supposed to do with that stuff?

Well, I can tell you what we’re not supposed to do: ignore it. Pretending it doesn’t exist doesn’t delete it from the Bible. If God hadn’t wanted us to see it, know it, and think on it, He wouldn’t have filled up His self-revelation with it.

We must read it and consider it. We must be willing to wrestle with it. We have to look at it not as a bunch of isolated incidents and texts that might be problematic but as part of the whole. If we are going to read the whole story and look for how it all points to Jesus, then we need to see how the hard stuff fits in. It likely isn’t a straight-line connection, but each difficult passage connects to something else that connects to something that points to Jesus. It is all there on purpose because it all paints a picture of God.

Just because we don’t understand doesn’t mean we can reject it. As we looked at throughout the book, thinking that way is to determine who God is based on our own intellectual abilities. We don’t get to do that. We must see what Scripture says, look at it in context, see it as part of the whole, and recognize that it is all part of a portrait of God that expands far beyond our minds and hearts.

Start small, perhaps with children’s books, and mix in other resources too.

Sola Scriptura: by Scripture alone—one of the foundational doctrines of Protestant Christianity. It means that our only holy book is the Bible, our only word of God is the Bible, our only doctrine is found in the Bible. The Bible is the foundation on which our faith is built. But it does not mean we read only the Bible. In fact, other books by godly writers can serve to open up our minds and hearts to Scripture.

Some of the best materials are those written for children. (I know, I know; I pointed out the weaknesses in children’s Bibles earlier.) In appendix 2, I recommend two children’s Bible storybooks in particular, The Big Picture Story Bible and The Jesus Storybook Bible. After graduating from college and gaining a theology degree, after working in Christian publishing for several years and reading mountains of biblical teaching books, I still find these the freshest, best entry points into the message of the Bible. They make it fun by bringing out the story, and they make their points with clarity and gentleness. I am sure other similar resources are out there as well. They make an ideal starting point to begin enjoying Scripture and piecing together its message.

Additional resources and books will be helpful too. Some will prefer commentaries; others will gravitate to Bible study curriculum. Each serves a great purpose in helping us dig in and understand more. Don’t shy away from them. Find the ones that fit your learning style and take full advantage of them. The thing to always remember is to not let the study of the Bible become the end. Knowledge of Scripture can be an idol all by itself, but it must always be a means to closeness to God.

Don’t read the Bible as a set of rules but rather as a book.

So many Christians lose touch with the heart of Scripture because for so long they have approached it under the rule of law. “You must read your Bible every day.” Reading your Bible every day is a great thing, but within its very pages it describes how the law introduces us to sin. When we make rules out of things, we tend to take the life out of them, no matter how good they are.

We need to approach the Bible as a book. After all, that is the form in which God gave it to us. For those who love to read, this means conscientiously moving it to the category of great literature in our minds, a great story, deep philosophy, a rich biography. When we think of it that way, we will see different things in its pages, yes, but more importantly we will practically be able to overcome the greatest mental block to reading it at all.

For those who do not enjoy reading, I wonder how you made it all the way to this point in a book! More seriously, though, think of the Bible the same way but find a different format in which to consume it. Reading is not for everyone, but the Bible is. So find a way to eat up this wonderful story, teaching, and biography. Audio Bibles are great tools. They may be the perfect answer for you or they may be the gateway you need to get into the written text. Either way, avail yourself of them!

Regardless of how you do it, though, no matter the medium, distance yourself from the legalistic guilt of reading the Bible as law. That robs it of its wonder and steals the joy from your heart. It is so rich and deep; read it to discover and wonder!

Pray for the Spirit’s help.

We have a helper and a teacher. Jesus even said we would be better off if He left because this helper is so amazing. Really? We’re better off without Jesus on earth with us? Yes! Because the Holy Spirit dwells in every Christian, moving us toward being more like Jesus, teaching our minds, and softening and convicting our hearts.

Only by the Spirit will anything I just wrote about reading the Bible matter at all. If you seek to do any of this in your own power, you will dry up, run out of motivation, get bored, become arrogant, lose faith, get confused, and turn from God. It is inevitable. The Bible is not a normal book. It is a book spoken out by God to be interpreted to our hearts by God the Spirit. It is a supernatural book.

To connect with God through His Word is a miracle of the Spirit and not something that can be formulated. All the suggestions I just made are not the equation that adds up to relationship with God. They are ingredients that must be present, but only the Spirit can mix and prepare them in such a way that we see God in His glory and are moved to follow and honor Him. So beg the Spirit to open your eyes when you read. Plead with the Spirit to give you the inspiration to read. And He will. Maybe not in a flash, but He will. And as you delve deeper into God’s Word, you will find that the Spirit and God’s message in the Bible will change you.

[image error]This post is a modified excerpt from my book Help My Unbelief.