How to Leave Your Family a Treasure

I was given the Bible of a 92 year old woman today. She passed away peacefully in a nursing home recently and I had the honor of preaching her funeral. 

I wasn't 'given' the Bible for keeps mind you! It was just so I could learn a little more about this saint since I did not have the privilege of knowing her very well in this life. 

I can't say how old this bible was but I was scared to flip through it. The pages were barely hanging on, clinging to the binding with all their might after having been turned and turned again through the decades. There were notes and markings on several pages and I'm sure if I could have examined closer I would have found a few tear stains in places. 

I'm actually using the notes she wrote to preach the funeral. This is a precious treasure that her family will have for generations to come. I wonder if we might not strive harder to leave such a treasure for our own families?

You know, financial experts say one of the best ways to keep wealth in your family is to have good life insurance. I honestly don't know about that. But I do know a way you can leave your family a treasure that has the potential to bear eternal fruit. 

Leave them a bible that's falling apart. 

A bible that is falling apart speaks volumes about a person's life. It tells that the owner didn't merely say the Bible was important, but that they actually read it. They spilt their coffee on it. They flipped the pages quickly in search of an answer. They turned the pages slowly meditating on Truth. Some pages are worn more than others as the reader turned to that portion of Scripture over and over. They pressed the pages down as they knelt in prayer with both hands clutching Scripture. A tear drop of joy, or pain, or longing has fallen here or there. Not just a day or two here or there, but throughout a lifetime. Day in and day out they turned the Bible's sacred pages as they caught a glimpse of the glory of God and reveled in what He has accomplished for us in Christ. 

Furthermore, underlining, markings, sermon notes, study thoughts, meditations, and exhortations that are in a bible will live on long after a person is gone. Though dead, you will still speak. Imagine your great great grandson reading some thoughts you had one day about Proverbs 3:5 and the Lord using that to convert him! Imagine being able to speak into the lives of generations to come by the way you handle the Bible tomorrow morning! Imagine leaving your posterity such a treasure. 

I hope I've piqued your interest. The question now is, How? How can you leave your family something so valuable?

First of all, no matter your age, resolve to do this now. I don't care if you're already 80 years old. I don't care if you're 13. Start this today. 

Secondly, find a good bible and stick with it. For this purpose you will need a NON-Study bible. Just something with the text will be sufficient. And binding is important. A nice leather one would be a good investment. Something with wider margins would be helpful. You could always start with a hard back and maybe have it rebound later in life (my current plan). Translation is important too. I prefer a more formal equivalent translation like the ESV. 

Thirdly, get some good pens. Try these.

Good pens are important so they won't bleed through. If you want to leave more than just a worn out bible, pens are a necessity! 

Fourthly, read your bible daily for YOU! Don't think about your posterity so much as thinking about what your soul needs from Holy Writ. Read it. Study it. Meditate on it. Memorize it. Why? To feast on the glory of God in Christ! To mature in the faith. To be convicted, corrected, rebuked, encouraged, challenged, and comforted. Find a reading plan. Read through the Bible in a year or read through a book or two over and over. Or some sort of mixture of both. But, find a plan and do it. Mix it up over the years. But make bible reading a daily habit. 

Fifthly, WRITE in your Bible. You might write a note of prayer. You might write some meditative thoughts. You might jot a note or two of praise, exhortation, challenge, or comfort. You might write a study note or two about historical context or word usage. You may even put a few notes down from the sermon you just heard. Write cross references. Over the years your bible will begin to fill up. Again, it's ok to think about generations to come, but write notes primarily for you. This will be most beneficial for those who come after you. 

Sixthly, circle, box, underline, star, etc. Circle repeated words in a passage. Underline important truths. Draw arrows to make connections. Star key ideas. There's no magic formula here. The important thing is that you engage the text. Mark the text as a way for you to soak it in better. 

Seventhly, repeat steps 1-6 if necessary! What I mean is, if you fill up a Bible, praise the Lord. Set it aside and buy another one and start over. The Word of God is rich. You will not regret spending a lifetime mining its depths. 

Can you imagine at your funeral, a preacher holding your worn out bible, and preaching the gospel to your family in your own words? Can you imagine your family rebinding the Bible and having it in the home for years to come? Can you imagine the legacy you could leave in the lives of your great grandchildren just by loving the Bible today? This gets me excited! With just a little effort you could leave your family an invaluable treasure. 

What are you waiting for? Make it happen today. It's worth the investment, I promise. 

Come to Christ

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Sin is breaking God's holy law. It is doing the things God says not to do and not doing the things God says to do. All sin deserves justice.

Jesus has endured that justice on our behalf. He has lived an obedient life to the Law, died on the cross for our sins, and rose again in victory. 

Our only hope is Christ. Come to Him.

Listen to the end of a recent sermon at Perryville Second Baptist Church (full sermon here):

Solus Christus

When Bad Stuff Happens

I've been reading through A Little Book on the Christian Life by John Calvin recently I think he has some excellent words for us to consider. His words below:

We are continually harassed by one illness or another: the plague advances; we are cruelly vexed by the calamities of war; frost and hail render the land barren and leave us with little, devouring our expectation for the year's crop. Wife, parents, children, and close relatives are snatched away by death: homes are consumed by fire. These are events which make men curse their lives, despise the day they were born, hold in contempt heaven and its light, rage against God, and being fluent in blapshmeies, accuse God of unfariness and cruelty.

But the believer must in these same circumstances consider the mercy and the fatherly kindness of God. If the believer, then, should see his house made lonely by the loss of those nearest to him, even then he must not stop praising the Lord. Rather, he must turn himself to this thought: "The Lord's grace continues to dwell in my home and will not leave it desolate." If the believer should see his crop consumed by drought, disease, or frost, or trampled down by hail and famine threaten him, even then he must not despair within his soul, nor should he become angry toward God. Rather, he must persist with confidence in this truth: "But we your people, the sheep of your pasture, will give thanks to you forever" (Ps. 79:13).

God, then, will provide for us, however barren the land. If the believer should be afflicted by illness, he must not be so stung by the severity of his hardship that he erupts in impatience and demands from God an explanation. Rather, he must, considering the justice and gentleness of God's discipline, recall himself to patience.

Indeed, the believer should accept whatever comes with a gentle and thankful heart, because he knows that it is ordained by the Lord. Moreover, he must not stubbornly resist the rule of God into whose power he has placed himself and all his affairs. So let the Christian make it his priority to drive from his breast that foolish and unfortunate comfort of pagans, who, in order to bolster their spirits against all adverse events, credit those events to fortune. They think it's silly to be angry at fortune, since she is reckless, aimless, and blind - inflicting her wounds equally on the deserving and the undesdrving. In contrast, the rule of godliness is to recognize that God's hand is the sole judge and governor of every fortune, and because His hand is not recklessly driven to fury, it distributes to us both good and ill according to His orderly righteousness.

New Fish, New Bait?

I wanted to post a quick response to a blog I read today (here) on Catching a New Kind of Fish.

I'm hesitant on posting because #1, we live in a society where any sort of push back is seen as judgmental. That's not my goal. I don't want to be contentious. I want to help. This isn't a bashing post. It is a desire to help us think through this from all sides. And 2ndly, I'm running short on time this afternoon, so I know this won't be as long as would do it justice.

So, read the first post, and then see the reply below:

Let me start by saying I am thankful for Arkansas Baptist church planters! I am thankful for their zeal for the lost and their desire to see the kingdom of God grow. If you are a church planter, I want to tell you thank you! To the brother who wrote the original post, thank you for your heart of wanting to see sinners come to Christ. Thank you for the time and effort you put into seeing people experience the life-changing encounter with the gospel. This post is not an attack on you. However, there are some things I'd like for all of us to think through from a different perspective.

Let me specifically respond to this paragraph:

So what do we do to get people through the door? Well, to catch a new kind of fish, we need a new kind of bait!I would say New Faith has moved away from a lot of traditions. We don’t have a pulpit where the preachers sit up front on the stage. We don’t ask people to turn around and look at the congregation after they’ve made a decision.On the fourth Sunday of the month, we wear jeans and t-shirts on Sunday morning! 

What if the new bait is simply the old bait packaged differently?

You see, we've been on a kick the last couple of decades of doing away with 'traditional' and all we've really done is create the same problem on the other side of the pendulum so to speak. Moving away from traditional doesn't actually move away from traditions - it only creates new traditions that someone else will try to 'move away from' in 50 years (or less).

In other words, when we make 'church' about 'traditional' or 'anti-traditional' we have the same problem. The paradigm of ministry is not as much the issue in our day as is the substance. Not to be too cliché here but the answer really is the gospel. The pure, unadulterated, life-changing gospel of Jesus Christ is our only hope. We must put all the effort we can into preaching this gospel to the masses, into helping churches keep their focus on Christ as their greatest joy and treasure, and into showing others what the power of the gospel really can do in the local church. 

What I mean is, do we want churches where people say "I go here because they don't have a pulpit"? Or "I go here because they sing heavenly highway hymns"? Or "I go here because they have deer heads on the wall", or "we can wear cowboy boots"? Is not the bait for winning souls to Christ the free and full forgiveness offered in the completed work of Christ? Nay, it's not the bait! It's the true food! 

So, it is my plea to have us eschew any attractional methods we are tempted to employ and simply proclaim Christ and Him crucified. May He be the center! May He be the draw! 

Brother pastors, and brother church planters, please do not have something other than Christ and your commitment to Him and His Word as the 'draw' for uniting with your local body. I maintain that if we truly want to catch new fish, we have to listen to the chief Fisherman. Let us be less concerned about creating the right 'atmosphere of worship' and more concerned about being faithful to what the Head of the Church would have us do. 

I know the brother who wrote the original post deserves a more detailed response, but I've got to sign off for the day. I've written more about this sort of stuff. Here are a few examples below:

Please Stop Supporting Affinity Churches: A Call to Behold the Glory of Biblically Healthy Churches

10 Reasons to Reconsider the 'Affinity Based' Model of Church Planting

Church for the Unchurched

Unhealthy Evangelism

Another Reason to Go to Church

Why the Way Forward is Backward

Time to Put Baptist Back in Your ChurchTop Ten Reasons Why People Don't Go to Church

Why I Need A Church that Judges Me

The Rare Jewel of Biblical Observation

Today's post is from my friend Adam Willett. Adam is a husband and father who loves Christ and has a desire to see the gospel advance in our state (Arkansas) and the nation. I am blessed to call Adam a close friend and I know you will be edified by what he has to say. Read and heed! His words below: 

​One of the biggest benefits I’ve ever experienced in my Christian life is that of biblical repetition. What I mean is simply reading the Bible over and over again, specifically reading the same passage over and over again. I once heard John MacArthur tell his church of the importance of staying in a specific text and reading it repeatedly. He suggested taking a group of about 5 chapters and reading those everyday for a month. For instance, read the book of Galatians every day for the entire month of May. I was immediately drawn to the idea because of the simplicity of it. I am no biblical scholar and I am certainly no Greek or Hebrew scholar, so I need every help I can get. I started in the book of First John. I read the same five chapters every day for a month. Honestly, I was more engaged with the text that month than I ever had been. The way the Spirit worked through the word was incredible. I continually learned the text and continually found myself asking questions and wanting to know more. There were days when light would shine bright on a text, and I would see things on day 17 that I had not in the previous 16. Repetition helps my weak mind remember and pay attention to the word.

​Since I started reading the Bible this way, the Lord has been gracious to reveal more and more of who He is in His word. I’ve since modified how I read the text. Instead of simply reading through a set of chapters daily, now I read through a set of chapters and every day pick one of those chapters to pray through. So, if I were reading through Galatians every day, on Monday I would read all five chapters and then pray chapter 1. On Tuesday I would read all five chapters then pray through chapter 2, and so on. Reading the Bible in this way has been a huge encouragement and has yielded much fruit for me. At one time I would drudge through a passage just trying to get to the end. My goal was quantity and not quality. There is a certain emptiness and despair in reading the Bible that way. It leaves me clinging to self-righteousness – that I had accomplished something by reading the Bible – but left me spiritually wanting more. Reading through the Bible in a year and other ventures of the sort aren’t necessarily bad suggestions, I just believe that repetition is a better, more fruitful way for the Christian who longs to glean from the Holy Scriptures. In fact, I would suggest doing both, but it may take you longer than a year to read the Bible in a year.

​This is really not some revolutionary new way to read the Bible. It couldn’t be sold as a new “how to guide.” All it really comes down to is observation. All it really comes down to is spending time in the Word of God and letting the Holy Spirit lead and guide. It is certainly pragmatic. I genuinely believe that a Christian must grow by reading the Bible this way. He has no choice. The Bible is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, right?

     Again, this is not a Bible study program meant to make us scholars. This is simply reading the text and the Spirit showing us things we may normally glance over. I’ve found as I read through several chapters repeatedly, I notice the context of the passage and how each idea fits together. It’s not that I'm looking for context. I haven’t sat down with medical instruments ready to dissect the text. I am just reading and the context shows itself. After several days, the theme of the author is made apparent. I start to understand why Paul said what he said in Galatians 4 and how it relates to his opening chapter. I start seeing his concerns and how the Holy Spirit moved him to use those specific words. I start noticing the same words used often, that tell me of the authors concern and focus. 

     One of the most incredible insights I have gained is seeing the love and concern the author has for the readers. I spent a few months reading through the Thessalonians. After several weeks, it became glaringly obvious that Paul had a deep and caring love for the people of Thessalonica. His words were dripping with love. It wasn’t just one verse that I could pinpoint either, it was chapters and the book as a whole that lead to that conclusion. I don’t think I would have ever really understood that without reading it over and over.  Such knowledge was and is invaluable to me.

     We are not called to be like the teenage pupil in 8am biology class, dozing as the instructor reads through the book. We are called to be paying attention. We are called to see, hear, and obey what is in the text. Read through and notice the imperatives. See how the author focuses on one theme throughout a passage. Don’t just focus on the core verses, like the John 3:16’s, but also read the verses in between. We often scan through passages looking for the verses that would look nice highlighted, but remember that the rest of the text is inspired too. The letters in black are just as inspired and important as those in red. Read both with a thirst for knowing Christ and knowing the God of the Bible.

     And I haven’t even mentioned the benefit of praying through the word. That’s for another article but it is imperative we know and believe that the Holy Spirit of God works through his word. He works both by the reading of His word and by praying through it. 

     Ultimately, if we cherish God's Word, we will want to read it like we would a love letter from our beloved. We would read it over and over and focus on each little word. We would notice how the letters are rounded off a specific way or how they dot their I’s. We would notice the smell and the paper on which it was written. We would fawn over those words like they were more valuable than any precious stone. Well, the scriptures are much more than any love letter and they are more precious that jewels. They tell you of the holy and righteous King of the universe, God Almighty. Dive into those words.

Mutants and their Immutable God

What follows below is a guest post by Eddie Ragsdale, Pastor of First Baptist Church in Marshall, AR. I've known Eddie only 4 years but he has become a dear friend and brother in Christ. I appreciate his pastoral heart and theological insights. Hope you are blessed today from his writing:


Last evening I was watching a science show about genetic modification. In the course of this show there were several interesting topics being discussed such as bioethics and just how expansive an impact these new technologies might be. However, what seemed to stir my thinking the most was an off handed comment about how that we are all 'mutants' and the very important role the ability to mutate is for us to adapt and survive. Now I would of course take a different view of history and origin issues than those on this program. They would clearly have an evolutionary worldview whereas I would have a biblical young earth creationist worldview. But still the fact that there have been mutations in all of our genomes is clear and observable scientific information.


What seemed to be so intriguing to me is the fact that we are mutable. We change! As a matter of fact we are always changing. You are not the same person you used to be. Have you ever had the experience of reconnecting with an old friend that you haven't communicated with in years? Now I know the sappy stories of people picking up where the left off and bonds lasting even through time and separation blah blah blah. But my personal experience has been that even close friends I once had are almost strangers after years of separation because we have both changed so much. As a matter of fact I think that's healthy. I mean if you can pick right up with someone from twenty years ago with out any problem, what have you been doing for twenty years? Personal growth and life experiences should change us. I'm not even sure if I could relate very well to myself from twenty years ago. The fact is all this change can be both exciting and terrifying.


So what's the point, why am I writing all of this? Well, I was drawn into thinking about this whole subject of our mutability because that word 'mutable' made me also think about the word 'immutable'. Now it would be a tragedy if we were immutable because we need to grow and develop. A child that didn't grow and develop would quickly be found deficient for the next stage of life. The fact is we need to change because we as imperfect beings need to get better; we need to improve. Our current state simply isn't good enough. So immutability would be a bad thing for us.


However, there is One who is immutable! The Bible says that God does not change. "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). Now while it would be a bad thing for fallen imperfect beings like us to be immutable, it is an altogether great thing for a holy, righteous and perfect triune God to be immutable. Actually, in a universe filled with so much expansion and change the only reason that we can know anything is because God who has made and continues to hold all things together is unchanging. If our God could change or did change then everything we think we know could change. All of our understanding of matter and science is built on the idea that there are absolute laws that must exist in the universe. These laws depend on God and if He changed then they could change. However, even more important than any of these physical things is the reality that if God changed then we would have no confident hope in His promises. We can trust God's promises and His amazing work of redemption because He does not change! So much more could be discussed here: the immutability of His word or of His will or of His ways. But for the moment let us marvel at His glorious immutability. I might add also let us as sinners take full advantage of our mutability by repenting of our sins and putting our settled trust in the Lord Jesus Christ!