Barnabas Piper's Blog, page 45
December 5, 2019
The 5 Best Toys For Boys
Christmas gift buying season is upon us. What should you buy that boy who already has every video game and iPad and app everything else electronic? Why, you should get him one of these! These are the best toys from my childhood. They are timeless. There is minimal assembly required and no batteries either. They require the use of hands and minds and imaginations. The lend themselves to creativity and/or exercise and fresh air. They create memories. And without exception they are awesome for parents to do with kids.
(Note: I say “for boys” because I was a boy and loved them as a boy. I don’t have any experience as a girl, but as a father of daughters I can definitively say that girls will love most of these as well.])
1. The Bucket of Legos
[image error]Want your child to be developmentally stunted? Get them one of those over priced sets with precise instructions to create the Millennium Falcon. Just kidding, that won’t stunt them (at least not as much as a first person shooter game). But the bucket of legos is the absolute best. It is a world of possibilities. It is a Millennium Falcon and a castle and a house and a pirate ship and city and the O.K. Corral.
2. The Rawlings Baseball Glove
[image error]It could be an Easton or a Spalding, but for my money Rawlings is the best glove. I still have my Rawlings baseball glove I used in little league and it still works. In fact it works better now than it did then. That’s because baseball gloves age better than fine wine or Sean Connery. If you want to know just how important a baseball glove is to a boy just remember this:
3. The Sketch Pad
[image error]No not the iPad – the sketch pad. One used with pencils or crayons or ink or pastels or whatever. At first the blank pages look boring, but after some clumsy attempts and a little time they begin to look exciting, like possibilities, blanks for the imagination to fill in. And as an added perk it’s about $490 cheaper than an iPad.
4. Zebco 33 Fishing Fishing Pole
[image error]It’s not the best fishing tackle in the world, but it’s the best fishing starter kit. At least it was for me. It reeled in everything from blue gill the size of my thumb to large mouth bass the size of my thigh (and I was a, um, “husky” kid).
5. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Boxed Set
[image error]There are hundreds of stories worth reading, but why settle for anything less than the best? And no, reading them on a kindle isn’t the same. That boy needs the experience of reading by flashlight until 3 AM on school night because he needs to know whether the fellowship survives the Mines of Moria. And he definitely needs to know that Peter Jackson’s version of The Hobbit (all 33 hours of its bloated self) is less than stellar.
BONUS ITEMS
The Harry Potter Series
I know many of you looked at #5 on the list and sneered just a little because, please, that was a baby shower gift for your perfect family. Well then, perfect parent, give your child the other best set of stories ever written. The witchcraft is no more witchy and the good guys are just as noble and good. Your child will be a better friend and a braver soul for having read them. And they’re heaps of fun.
A Barlow Pocket Knife
“But that’s not safe!” you shriek. Nope. Not really. But it’s a good sort of risk and it’s a rite of passage for every little boy. I bought my first one when I was 10 at the Barnesville hardware store in Barnesville, Georgia. I whittled and carved and chopped. I dropped it in a creek. I broke the tip off throwing it at a tree. And I still have it. Every boy needs a good knife and the requisite risks. And this one is a perfect starter knife.
December 4, 2019
A Happy Rant Gift Buying Guide (Or Just a List of Our Books)
Christmas season is upon us, and that means it’s gift buying time. Or maybe it means it’s treat yourself time because Aunt Martha is going to give you socks and Karen from the office is a lousy Secret Santa. Either way, here are the best ideas from the hosts of the Happy Rant Podcast – me, Ted Kluck, and Ronnie Martin – for what to get that special someone or that obligatory gift recipient.
*Editors Note: Ted Kluck has been so prolific over the years that we could not reasonably include all his books, so we have chosen a selection that we deem representative of his body of work.
The Bride(zilla) of Christ: What to Do When God’s People Hurt God’s People
by Ted Kluck and Ronnie Martin
Finding God in the Dark: Faith, Disappointment, and the Struggle to Believe
by Ted Kluck and Ronnie Martin
[image error]
The Best Gift Ever Given: A 25-Day Journey Through Advent from God’s Good Gifts to God’s Great Son
by Ronnie Martin
Stop Your Complaining: From Grumbling to Gratitude
by Ronnie Martin
A Hard Thing on a Beautiful Day: and Other Essays
by Ted Kluck
The Extraordinary Life of a Mediocre Jock: God, I’ll Do Anything – Just Make Me Awesome
by Ted Kluck
Hello, I Love You: Adventures in Adoptive Fatherhood
by Ted Kluck
Household Gods
by Ted & Kristin Kluck
The Christian Gentleman’s Smoking Companion: A Celebration of Smoking to the Glory of God
by Ted Kluck and Zach Bartels
[image error]
Three-Week Professionals: Inside the 1987 NFL Players’ Strike
by Ted Kluck
The Curious Christian: How Discovering Wonder Enriches Every Part of Life
by Barnabas Piper
Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt is Not the Enemy of Faith
by Barnabas Piper (Releasing January 1, 2020)
[image error]
The Pastor’s Kid: What it’s Like and How to Help
by Barnabas Piper (Releasing June 1, 2020)
New Happy Rant: Promoting Books and Church T-Shirts
In this episode of The Happy Rant Ted, Ronnie, and Barnabas suss out the following topics and make a couple announcements:
The Saddleback Leather give away winners
When and how to give away our own books as an author
What we are watching and reading these days
High quality church t-shirts
Sponsors
[image error]Our sponsor this month is Compassion International. We are excited about the opportunity to partner with Compassion because of their dedication to delivering children from poverty and showing them the love of Jesus in partnership with local churches; it is a holistic depiction and declaration of God’s care for people. We are asking that you consider sponsoring a child. What better way to finish the year and launch into 2020 than with a commitment to generosity and caring for a child in need? You can learn more, see a list of available children in need, as well as other ways to donate and support Compassion HERE.
Be sure to visit HappyRantPodcast.com where you can:
Order fresh roasted coffee from Lagares Roasters
Order your Happy Rant swag from Missional Wear (Use code RANT to get discounts on swag and/or shipping)
Please consider supporting the podcast financially as well. We have set up a Patreon page, and your donations help us cover production costs, do live events, and grow the podcast by trying some new things. Oh, and of course there are perks for those who commit to helps us such as free books and coffee!
To listen you can:
Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher.
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.
Episode #275
November 27, 2019
New Happy Rant: The Episode Ted RUINED
In this episode of The Happy Rant Ted, Barnabas, and Ronnie are all very on their respective brands as they discuss the following:
Taking heat for a previous episode
Ted’s apology
The place of humor in disagreement and criticism
The Man, Delorian
The risk of personality
How we each ruin episodes
Sponsors
[image error]MuskOx is our featured sponsor this week. MuskOx is an apparel company offering gear that is rugged and outdoorsy but exceptionally comfortable and sharp looking. The materials they use are the highest quality. They even manage to fit well for guys like Ted and Barnabas who are taller and have larger frames and for scrawny Ronnie too. If you are looking for really nice outdoor rugged and casual clothes you need to check them out. Go HERE to see what they offer, sign up to get a discount, and order some for yourself or as a gift.
Thank you to our sponsor for this week’s episode: 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 33% off your subscription. It comes out to about $20 for the entire year!
Be sure to visit HappyRantPodcast.com where you can:
Order fresh roasted coffee from Lagares Roasters
Order your Happy Rant swag from Missional Wear (Use code RANT to get discounts on swag and/or shipping)
Please consider supporting the podcast financially as well. We have set up a Patreon page, and your donations help us cover production costs, do live events, and grow the podcast by trying some new things. Oh, and of course there are perks for those who commit to helps us such as free books and coffee!
To listen you can:
Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher.
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.
Episode #274
November 20, 2019
New Happy Rant: Recovering the Christian Home
In this episode of The Happy Rant Ted, Ronnie, and Barnabas suss out a potent tweet telling us how to “recover the Christian home.” Topics include:
A different kind of new math
Education choices
Parental involvement in school
Cooking and meal provision
Family worship
Sponsors
[image error]MuskOx is our featured sponsor this week. MuskOx is an apparel company offering gear that is rugged and outdoorsy but exceptionally comfortable and sharp looking. The materials they use are the highest quality. They even manage to fit well for guys like Ted and Barnabas who are taller and have larger frames and for scrawny Ronnie too. If you are looking for really nice outdoor rugged and casual clothes you need to check them out. Go HERE to see what they offer, sign up to get a discount, and order some for yourself or as a gift.
Thank you to our sponsor for this week’s episode: 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 33% off your subscription. It comes out to about $20 for the entire year!
Be sure to visit HappyRantPodcast.com where you can:
Order fresh roasted coffee from Lagares Roasters
Order your Happy Rant swag from Missional Wear (Use code RANT to get discounts on swag and/or shipping)
Please consider supporting the podcast financially as well. We have set up a Patreon page, and your donations help us cover production costs, do live events, and grow the podcast by trying some new things. Oh, and of course there are perks for those who commit to helps us such as free books and coffee!
To listen you can:
Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher.
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.
Episode #273
November 19, 2019
The 20 Most Important Quotes from “Help My Unbelief”
The following quotes are the ones I see as most indicative of the message and tone of my book, Help My Unbelief: Why Doubt is not The Enemy of Faith (releasing January 1 from The Good Book Company). I hope some of them pique your interest, strike a nerve, or rattle your brain and heart a bit.
“I believe; help my unbelief. That simple sentence is the key to the struggles, the ups and downs, the winding road of belief. In a breath he expressed the highest of heights, the strength of virtue, the emptiness of doubt, and the yearning for something on to which he could hold.”
“Christians who don’t know the tension of “I believe; help my unbelief” might not be Christians at all, or at the least they might be very infantile ones. Our faith is one of brutal tensions. Not everyone can express this, but every Christian knows it. We feel it in our guts.”
“God does not fit the world as Western thinkers have shaped it. He does not fit the processes and grids of theory, evidence, and proof. So, under the influence of Enlightenment to those second-tier statuses of religious tradition, personal values, and vague spirituality. The God of the Bible, though, will not be relegated to anything. He is the omnipotent creator of all, including all those who are doing the relegating.”
“What the Bible reveals of God is precisely what God wanted revealed of Himself, no more and no less. But it isn’t everything about Him. Scripture raises as many questions as it answers.”
“God is infinite, beyond our understanding, and He chose to reveal Himself to us in a way that sparks questions rather than settles all of them. God did not want us to have easy instructions and simple answers. He didn’t want us to be able to understand Him so well that we could package Him, wrap Him up, and put a bow on Him.”
“Much of belief is asking.”[image error]
“Questions indicate belief only if you actually want an answer.”
“Asking well also means knowing when to lay our questions down.”
“Jesus, more than anyone in history, knew God’s character and power and goodness. Yet still He asked. And Jesus, more than you, more than me, more than everyone, felt the weight of suffering and pain and doubt because He actually felt the weight of everyone’s suffering and pain and doubt. Yet still He believed. He is the perfect example of questioning in faith.”
“When our questions begin to undermine commitment to God, that is unbelief.”
“Often the intellectual obstacle to belief is a convenient excuse for rebellion.”
“If a demon can ‘believe’ in God, what does that mean for my belief?”
“I wasn’t trying to be hypocritical; I was blinded by the truth I knew. I had fooled myself into thinking I was living by faith in God, when instead I was living a life shaped by knowledge of Him. And those are very different things.”
“By all means, study God’s Word. But don’t do so to collect knowledge. Do so to know Him.”
“When we are in relationship with God, His Word becomes more than a book; it becomes alive. It becomes personal.”
“Like a bucket being filled by a dripping faucet, I found myself getting filled up with a real Jesus, one I hadn’t known before. I read the Word and met the Word. When something like this happens, no longer is the Bible just a lengthy book of many words; it is alive. It speaks. And it reads us as we read it.”
“The finite lives within the infinite and cannot grasp the extent of it because the infinite has no extent at all. We can grasp only those things that have limits. Trying to understand the infinite is like trying to reach the end of a road that has no end; it isn’t even logically feasible.”
“We forget God until we are at wit’s end, then we cry out for help. We don’t need Him at work. We don’t need Him at school. We don’t need Him anywhere. Until we do. Then we seek to summon Him from on high or wherever it is that He waits until we beckon.”
“Simply put, the church is not comfortable presenting an answer of ‘We don’t know.'”
“We cannot drive God’s love away with our badness. In fact, the greatest sign of His steadfast love is the very means of paying for our badness and doing away with it—Jesus Christ.”
November 13, 2019
New Happy Rant: Personas, Platforms, and Vulnerability Voice
In this episode of The Happy Rant Ted, Ronnie, and Barnabas discuss the following:
Piper’s issues with Kanye’s album
Consumer goods as planks in your platform
Enjoyment vs. persona
Smugness as the currency of the day
Vulnerability Voice
Sponsors
Thank you to our sponsor for this week’s episode: 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 33% off your subscription. It comes out to about $20 for the entire year!
Be sure to visit HappyRantPodcast.com where you can:
Order fresh roasted coffee from Lagares Roasters
Order your Happy Rant swag from Missional Wear (Use code RANT to get discounts on swag and/or shipping)
Please consider supporting the podcast financially as well. We have set up a Patreon page, and your donations help us cover production costs, do live events, and grow the podcast by trying some new things. Oh, and of course there are perks for those who commit to helps us such as free books and coffee!
To listen you can:
Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher.
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.
Episode #272
November 6, 2019
New Happy Rant: The Mac, Moore, and Kanye Extravaganza
In this episode of The Happy Rant podcast Ted, Ronnie, and Barnabas discuss John Macarthur, Beth Moore, and Kanye . . . because of course they did and of course you wanted them to.
Sponsors
Thank you to our sponsor for this week’s episode: 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 33% off your subscription. It comes out to about $20 for the entire year!
Be sure to visit HappyRantPodcast.com where you can:
Order fresh roasted coffee from Lagares Roasters
Order your Happy Rant swag from Missional Wear (Use code RANT to get discounts on swag and/or shipping)
Please consider supporting the podcast financially as well. We have set up a Patreon page, and your donations help us cover production costs, do live events, and grow the podcast by trying some new things. Oh, and of course there are perks for those who commit to helps us such as free books and coffee!
To listen you can:
Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher.
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.
Episode #271
October 30, 2019
New Happy Rant: The future of the Enneagram, Counseling, and Wokeness
In this episode Ted and Barnabas, sans Ronnie, suss out the following topics:
What is the future of the enneagram?
What is the future of counseling as a cottage industry?
How the ennegram has already become dehumanized and dehumanizing
When global politics merge with entertainment and everyone acts “woke”
Sponsors
Thank you to our sponsor for this week’s episode: 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 33% off your subscription. It comes out to about $20 for the entire year!
Be sure to visit HappyRantPodcast.com where you can:
Order fresh roasted coffee from Lagares Roasters
Order your Happy Rant swag from Missional Wear (Use code RANT to get discounts on swag and/or shipping)
Please consider supporting the podcast financially as well. We have set up a Patreon page, and your donations help us cover production costs, do live events, and grow the podcast by trying some new things. Oh, and of course there are perks for those who commit to helps us such as free books and coffee!
To listen you can:
Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher.
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.
Episode #270
October 24, 2019
New Happy Rant: Conference Attending Tips and Guilt-Free Relaxation
In this episode of The Happy Rant Ted, Ronnie, and Barnabas suss out the following topics:
Tips for conference attenders (especially so you can plan for the next LIVE HAPPY RANT EVENT IN APRIL)
Conferences as summer camp and class reunion
Pastors and relaxation
Side hustles and getting paid for your work
Sponsors
In partnership with Saddleback Leather we are giving away 5 DIFFERENT HIGH END LEATHER PRODUCTS! The drawing is open through the end of October
1 – Baby Beast
1 – Messenger Backpack
1 – Bear Trap Leather Pen Case
1 – Little Big Mouth Toiletry Bag
1 –
Front Pocket Leather ID Wallet
Thank you to our sponsor for this week’s episode: 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 33% off your subscription. It comes out to about $20 for the entire year!
Be sure to visit HappyRantPodcast.com where you can:
Order fresh roasted coffee from Lagares Roasters
Order your Happy Rant swag from Missional Wear (Use code RANT to get discounts on swag and/or shipping)
Please consider supporting the podcast financially as well. We have set up a Patreon page, and your donations help us cover production costs, do live events, and grow the podcast by trying some new things. Oh, and of course there are perks for those who commit to helps us such as free books and coffee!
To listen you can:
Subscribe in iTunes.
Listen on Google Play
Listen on Stitcher.
Leave us a rating in iTunes (it only takes 1 click and it really helps us).
Listen using the player below.
Episode #269
