I’m so stoked! I had a glimpse of an early copy of one of the books we have been translating for years now. I’ll probably have a copy by next week and I can’t wait to share it on the blog along with some favorite quotes. I will share the physical copies to our church and if possible to a reader if I can do a raffle. Keep on praying for it and more updates coming soon.
Anyways, to jumpstart the weekend, here’s a fresh batch of freebies.
FREE webinar Raising a Generation that Hopes in God – This free webinar is made possible by Truth78 and their speaker is John Piper.
Since I got to rediscover Net Galley, I read some books that I don’t usually get through e-mail. It’s evident in this post that you can read my reviews of other books outside of what I usually dive into. I hope you find this review as a guide on what books you will get for your kids.
A Little More Like Jesus (Zach Williams and Lisa Molloy, Zonderkidz) – This book explores the fruit of the Spirit in a fun and cool way. Hop on board the bus and let the Grammy award winning artist Zach Williams take you for a ride to places (representing the fruit of the Spirit) and guide you to become a little more like Jesus. I love the concept of the artist being in his book and taking kids for a road trip. The art is superb and really blends with all the coolness of this book.
There’s another long weekend for us to enjoy after the Holy Week holiday we had. For my family, this is the long weekend that we will unwind after my daughter’s VBS and me catching up with my translation back log. Finally, the break we really need!
Anyways, here’s some quotes from a book I recently finished titled, Heavenly Minded authored by Mary Willson Hannah and was published by 10 Publishing. If you like these quotes, grab the book by clicking here.
“…the Bible teaches us that the most fundamental aspects of Christian identity are firmly fixed. It’s folly to look anywhere other than Christ to discover who we really are.”
Happy Easter everyone! May the message of His resurrection point us that Jesus is victorious over death, and as believers we have that triumph that enables us to live for Christ.
To jumpstart the week, here’s a fresh batch of freebies.
FREE comics The Gospel of Luke: Word for Word Bible Comic– It free again! Get it till April 2 and if you want to help in producing more of these Bible comics, this link will give you a chance to back up the creator’s Kickstarter campaign.
Humorous as it might seem, there are some Baptist groups who seriously believe this teaching :that Jesus Christ is a Baptist. They claim since John the Baptist is “the Baptist” therefore when he baptized Jesus, Jesus is now a Baptist. What was initially a tongue in cheek response to stump another pastor of a different group, turns into a doctrine that some Bible Baptist (or IFB in the Philippines) adhere to. Samples of this kind of preaching are videos like this and this.
This kind of doctrine is problematic and brings lots of questions rather than answers. Here are my five reasons why I don’t affirm this doctrine:
It’s the midweek and I hope everyone are good! I would like to take the opportunity to say Thank you to those who regularly visit this blog, liking and commenting on it. It means so much to me that you’re still there despite, behind the scenes, I have my ever busy day job and multiple side hustle, that I almost forgot to update my blog. May all of you be blessed by God by this gesture.
Anyways, here’s a new batch of quotes published by Crossway, from their wonderful series, Church Questions, titled Am I Called to Ministry? authored by Brad Wheeler. If you like these quotes, you can buy the book by clicking this link.
“Teaching is at the heart of pastoral ministry. A pastor isn’t an activities programmer or a personal motivator but a Bible teacher.”
Happy Friday! Here’s a new collection of quotes from an upcoming book from The Good Book Company, 5 Things To Pray for a Suffering Friend authored by Helen Thorne. If you like what you read, get your copy by following this link.
“Look up! That is the key to perseverance. Not looking in—to our pain. Not looking down—in despair. But up—up to the King, the Lord, the Saviour, the one who has gone before us and who will use hard things to make our faith complete.“
I have to admit, that the theological error that almost duped me in my early days of being a Calvinist, has a specific name, thanks to the title of the book. I was so pumped with the doctrine of grace. However, I stumbled upon Curtis Hudson’s sermon refuting this biblical doctrine. The Sword of the Lord folks (from the IFB group) are debunking Lordship Salvation, by responding with a variant of hyper-grace. By God’s grace and through his faithful teachers like John MacArthur, I found some counter points and didn’t abandoned the doctrine of sovereign grace. Free-grace or hyper grace is the false answer to Lordship Salvation. That happened years ago and it came from the IFB camp. I never knew I would encounter it again through this new book from Pastor Namuco and according to him, it’s alive and well in our place, Batangas City. So I reached out to him and even in his busy schedule, he gave me a very brief interview. If you want more, you can reach him and buy his book, Truth and Grace at the of this article.
Hello Pastor Celso. Kindly tell something about yourself. I was born and raised in Batangas. I am happily married to my better half, Hanny Namuco, and we are blessed to have four children: JC, Eu-La, SJ, and EJ. I am the senior founding pastor and teacher of Christ Stewards Fellowship in Libjo, Batangas City. I also do pioneering church planting work at Taguig City for our Church, CSF.
What is hyper-grace? Like in a movie review, I don’t want to spoil the reader’s desire to study my first published book, Truth and Grace. I can only provide a blurb of the book or a movie teaser so it won’t lose their curiosity about what hyper-grace is. This is the modern term for the old heresy of antinomianism. It simply means anti-law. It lessens the importance of God’s law in a Christian’s life. It is the opposite of its twin heresy, legalism. These two erroneous gospels are two sides of the same coin. They are both enemies of sanctification.
Happy Monday! Glad you stop by to check out some of these freebies that I curated throughout last week. If you benefited to these round-up, consider giving any amount to help me make more of this content. you can find the details at the end of this post.
Anyways, here’s a fresh batch of freebies.
FREE lectures Continuation or Cessation of Miracle Gifts Today (Grace Ministerial Academy) – Everyone is invite to this free 4-part lecture series on Grace Ministerial Academy’s FB livestream featuring Pastor Noel A. Espinosa. Go to this link for more info.
Hello guys! It’s time to dive in to some newly released and upcoming children’s books that matters. It seems that these books (and I hope all books) have the same goal: to point them to Christ. There different approaches done by each books here that(spoiler!) they all deserve a high flying score of 5 (which is the highest). So let’s look at each one and if you like my reviews, please purchase these books. Another reminder is, there are free downloads which serves as extra stuff from the books published by The Good Book Company.
My First ABC Book of Bible Verses (Jonathan Gibson and Mike Mullan, New Growth Press) Make My First ABC Book of Bible Verses first on the list of books that your kids will dive into. The words that represent the A to Z here are not the usual ones. The words here are part of a Bible verse that touches different topics that points to God. The verses are short just enough for the kids to read or memorize and you can say some kudos to the author on how he picked out those passages. So passages are familiar and some are not but you’ll be glad the author included them here.
Delighting Grace 