Free Advent Ebook

http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/good-news-of-great-joy-daily-readings-for-advent

Desiring God is offering their Advent Ebook for free again this year.  The title of the book is Good News of Great Joy.  According to the Desiring God website:

A year ago, the team here at Desiring God did a deep dive into our thirty-plus-year reservoir of sermons and articles, and selected brief devotional readings for each day of Advent. Now we’ve slightly revised the ebook to have it optimized for 2013. Our hope is that God would use these readings to deepen and sweeten your adoration of Jesus this Advent.

It goes on to say:

Many contacted last year to ask for permission to print these devotionals not only for private use, but to share with friends and family — even their whole local congregation. We love that impulse to spread the joy, and gladly encourage you do so. Also, to serve as many as we can, we’ve worked with Amazon to make available a quality paperback version at low cost, in case that’s your preferred format.

You can go to Amazon right now for the discounted ebook version:
Good News of Great Joy: Daily Readings for Advent

Or you can go to the desiring God website for the Kindle Version, the ePub version or the pdf.
Good News of Great Joy

I have also made a pdf of their pdf to make it easier to print as a booklet.
Booklet Form

Since permission has been given to print this, I think that I am going to print some of these up for my church and try to get everyone to read it together.

Offworld by Robin Parrish -- Book Review

Offworld (Dangerous Times Collection Book #1) by Robin Parrish was an interesting story with an interesting catch (on the plot). Set slightly in the future, the premise of this book involves a crew returning from the first manned mission to Mars, only to find the planet uninhabited by man or animal.

I found this book to continue at a good pace.  I was never bored with the story-line, and I found myself not wanting to put the book down on several occasions.  There was good character development, causing me to get attached to more than one of the main characters. The suspense in the book built at a good pace.  Even when the premise was explained, about three quarters of the way through the book, there was an appropriate level of intrigue remaining to keep me turning the pages until the end.

I also appreciated the cleanliness of this book. So often, anymore, science fiction authors are tending to believe that nobody will read their books unless they are raw and filled with profanity and inappropriate situations. No doubt the future will be full of questionable morals on many peoples parts, but good literature doesn't have to have it every single time.

I noticed this book was listed among the Christian books on Amazon and on another book site.  I could see the author being a Christian, for the previously mentioned reasons, but to say this was a "Christian book" might be a bit of a stretch.  It presents God in a vague, easily acceptable by the masses, sort of way. The specifics of the person of Jesus, essential to any authentic presentation of true Christianity, were not presented in any way. That is fine for this book, but dropping thoughts of God into a book doesn't make it a "Christian" book.

This book is currently still free, so if you are looking for a decent fictional book to dig your claws into, then this one is absolutely worth the cost. Supposedly it is the first book in a series, but it doesn't leave you hanging or feeling the need to read the next book in the series. It was good enough that I would consider getting the other books, though.

Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton - Book Review

I have heard that I should read some G.K. Chesterton.  So I did.  I read Manalive and The Man Who Was Thursday.  I also read another one of his fictitious works, it might have been Lilith. But I have heard that I shouldn't just read his fiction, but one of his other works.  Recently I saw on a blog an encouragement to read Orthodoxy with a link to a free version on Amazon.

Orthodoxy is almost autobiographical, but not really.  It is a collection of thoughts that tell the story of Chesterton's journey away from Orthodox Christianity into truth, only to find that at the center of truth was Orthodox Christianity.

His writing style is fairly unique, and reminds me of C. S. Lewis.  There are references to names and ideas that are time-period specific, quaint little comments that I didn't understand, but gathered that his audience would have understood completely what he was talking about.  There is a whimsical edge to his words, but there is also a deep and profound logic to what he is saying.

I don't think that I could write a review that does this book justice, so I am going to share one of my favorite sections with you:

The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life.  

The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.  

But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. 

It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore. 

I think he may be right.

Free eBooks by R.C Sproul

Right now the ebook versions of the Crucial Questions series by R.C. Sproul is free. The announcement on the Ligonier Ministries website reads:

To further help Christians know what they believe, why they believe it, how to live it, and how to share it, from today the eBook editions of R.C. Sproul’s Crucial Questions series will be free forever.

So, there is no rush to go grab these. (Although I went immediately and grabbed all of them.) They have epub format available, but they also have links to the Kindle version and the iTunes version.

Check it out now and go get some questions answered.

http://www.ligonier.org/blog/rc-sprouls-crucial-questions-ebooks-now-free/

Free Books on Prayer

Musician Andrew Case is offering three books on prayer for free.  There is one for husbands, one for wives, and one for children.  You can download them in kindle format or pdf.  He also offers the books in print, but as cheap as possible.  There is a pay-what-you-can policy in place on his site.

He also offers his music for free.  I'm going to be downloading some in a bit, I've heard of him before, and heard good things.  Plus, I like free music.

I wanted to share these free resources with you.  I know that I have been motivated to spend more time, and more meaningful time in prayer.  I'm hoping to get continued good advice/thoughts on this topic.

Here is a link to the free books.

Bloodlines by John Piper for Free

For Martin Luther King Day, John Piper made his new book Blood Lines available for free.  You can click here to go to the Desiring God blog post to download it.  He also includes his recent message dealing with the same topic to download for free.

Here is a short documentary for this book that you can watch for free as well: