Here are 52 hymns for your family to sing during family worship. Our family sings one hymn a week, and then we listen to hymns while we are driving and working around the house to help us and our children learn even more. Chose to sing one or more a week to learn all 52 hymns in one year.

We cannot obey something that we have no knowledge about. We cannot grow in something if we have no devotion to it. First, a person must come to know. Second, a person then lives a life that is in accordance with that knowledge. Third, the more a person lives life in accordance with what they know, the more they grow in that new life. These three steps then become a cyclical pattern:

In general, we need to remember that the Bible should inform our thinking about God's plan more than the news. When we read about tragedies in the world, we need to search the scriptures and seriously consider what the emphasis and messages written in the Bible convey.

This week in preparing to preach on 1 John 3:21-24 I've been led to consider two phrases in the Lord's Prayer: "your kingdom come" and "your will be done". Below are some of the resources and quotes that I've found helpful in considering these two phrases: 

Today I'm sharing some notes about Paul's letter to the Colossian church. You can read a little bit about the Colossian church and how they first came to hear the gospel of Jesus in Colossians 1:7-12. Colossae was a city in what today is Turkey. In writing to this church, the Apostle Paul along with his ministry team, had a great many instructions, and encouragements. Below are some of my notes in studying Colossians for a Bible Overview class I'm honored to teach. 

The first passage details a moment of great cowardice. A moment in time when one of the followers of Jesus refused to be connected in any way to the recently arrested Christ. The second passage details a few months later when the same person who earlier refused any affiliation with Jesus, would not stop proclaiming Jesus even in the face of overwhelming pressure. In these two passages we see an experience of great cowardice and then an experience of great courage.

Homemaking is a term with a lot of weight attached. Depending on who you ask you will receive different answers as to what homemaking is, and whose job it is to do the homemaking. Homemaking is simply taking care of one's home through cooking, cleaning, teaching, etc. There is an uprising of memes in social media embracing the image of a frantic, stressed, mother. These memes embrace moms that are constantly making excuses for a dirty house, being unorganized, stressed, and being a "hot mess mom." 

In Luke 23 and 24 we read of the crucifixion of Jesus. Over the last few weeks since before Christmas we've been reading through the gospel of Luke. Luke's gospel ends with the death of Jesus, and then his resurrection and ascension. Within a few hundred words, Luke reports on the lowest, most dark moments of Jesus, and then the most triumphant, glorious, and overwhelmingly tremendous experiences of Jesus. These passages are like a valley below overshadowing mountains. 

Today we'll examine how John calls special attention to themes via literary cycles. Biblical writers often use descriptions, illustrations, concepts, and statements to introduce an aspect of truth which will then be further narrowly focused on or further expanded up in subsequent statements. John as a biblical writer does this masterfully and repeatedly throughout 1 John. 

1 John is filled with cycles and repetition. Yesterday we talked about what those two terms mean and gave some examples throughout the Old and New Testament of both cycles and repetition. Today we're going to look at some of the eye-catching repeated words throughout 1 John.

While today we have a wide variety of digital methods for conveying importance or grabbing attention, writers in the Bible also employed means of emphasis. Two of the most easily recognizable means for calling a reader's attention to a particular theme or message were cycles and repetition. Cycles are often repetitive thematically, while repetition may be as simple as an author using the same word use again and again.

One of the unique aspects of John as a person is the period of time over which we see his faith lived out. While some New Testament writers only contributed a single letter to the New Testament, like James, Jude, Matthew, and Mark, John contributed multiple writings over multiple decades. While the Apostle Paul was used by God to write the greatest number of New Testament letters, John was used by God to write over the longest period of time.