This week’s Free Stuff Fridays is sponsored by Zondervan, who also sponsored the blog this week.

They are giving away FIVE 3-packs of Bill Mounce’s NEWEST book Why I Trust the Bible, so you can do a reading group with your family or friends.
Here is more about the book:
We are often told we can no longer assume that the Bible is trustworthy. From social media memes to popular scholarship, so many attacks have been launched on the believability of Scripture that many have serious questions about the Bible, such as:

Did Jesus actually live?
Did the biblical writers invent their message?
How can we trust the gospels since they were written so long after Jesus lived?
How can we believe a Bible that is full of internal contradictions with itself and external contradictions with science?
Aren’t the biblical manuscripts we have just copies of copies that are so corrupted they don’t represent what the original authors wrote?
Why should we believe the books that are in the Bible, since many good ones were left out, like the Gospel of Thomas?
Why trust the Bible when there are so many contradictory translations of it?

If you find yourself unable to answer questions such as these, but wanting to, Why I Trust the Bible by eminent Bible scholar and translator Bill Mounce is for you. These questions and more are discussed and answered in a reasoned, definitive, and winsome way.
The truth is that the Bible is better attested and more defensible today than it ever has been. Questions about the Bible are perhaps the most significant challenge confronting the Christian faith today, but they can be answered well and in a way that will lead to a deeper appreciation for the truth and ongoing relevance of the Bible.
Go here to find out more about Why I Trust the Bible.

Enter Here
Again, there are five 3-packs to win. And all you need to do to enter the draw is to drop your name and email address in the form below.
Giveaway Rules: You may enter one time. As soon as the winners have been chosen, all names and addresses will be immediately and permanently erased. Winners will be notified by email. The giveaway closes Saturday at noon. If you are viewing this through email, click to visit my site and enter there.

I once heard of a ship that was crossing the Atlantic from Europe to South America, and as it neared the end of its crossing, it escaped a close call that would have sent it to the depths and would have taken the lives of many of its passengers.
After departing Dover, the ship had cruised for many days without incident and without mishap. In fact, the crossing had been so smooth and so unremarkable that the crew began to grow lax in their duties. As the ship drew close to the South American coast, the man on lookout nodded off, and as he slept his ship began to approach a particularly rocky and ruinous spot.
But as it happened, there was a cricket aboard that ship. Until that point in the journey, no one had noticed its presence, but as the ship drew close to land, the cricket somehow smelled it or sensed it, and set up a shrill call. The lookout awoke, understood that land was quickly approaching, and stopped the vessel before it blundered into the rocks and was lost.
In this case, something as insignificant as the chirping of a cricket saved many lives. And I sometimes wonder what you and I may accomplish with what seems to be the simplest and least significant of sounds. I wonder what heaven will someday reveal—what we will hear in the soundtrack of heaven.
Maybe the scratching of a pen on a notecard will prove to be the means God used to encourage one of his downcast people and strengthen them for another day of love and service.
Maybe the tapping of a keyboard that sounds the writing of an article or email will be shown to have introduced a skeptic to the gospel and won a sinner to salvation.
Maybe the clank of a spoon stirring a pot will eventually be seen to have been used to feed one of God’s “angels unaware”—to have displayed a distinctly Christian commitment to love and hospitality.
God is the master of transforming the ordinary to the extraordinary, the mundane to the miraculous.Share
Maybe it’s the click of knitting needles as they create a sweater to clothe one who is cold, the crunch of footsteps in the snow as they approach a home for a time of prayer, the sound of a sob as one Christian weeps with another, sharing a heavy burden and so fulfilling the law of Christ. Maybe it’s even the sound of a bell ringing from a church steeple and calling people to turn to Christ that day, that hour, that minute.
God is the master of transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary, the mundane into the miraculous. God is the master of accepting little and multiplying it to much. God is the master of taking our little contributions and making them the great means through which he blesses his people and brings glory to his name. And I am convinced we will one day learn that the soundtrack of heaven is made up of the simplest of sounds that God has joined together into the most stirring of symphonies.

God has created a beautiful world that is full of wonders, and these wonders serve a purpose—they are meant to evoke awe, which in turn is meant to provoke worship. This was the experience of King David, who said, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:3-4).
It is difficult to think great thoughts of ourselves as we gaze into a starlit night sky or stand before the Matterhorn. In this way, David studied God’s creation, marveled at what he saw, and was stirred to worship.
Yet for all the beauty of creation and all it communicates to us, God has deliberately limited its message. Through creation God has revealed “his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature” (Romans 1:20). But through creation, God has not revealed his plan of salvation. He has not revealed how sinful man can be reconciled to a holy God. For that, there must be another kind of revelation.
Hence, Daryl Wingerd can say, “To put it in simple terms, general revelation provides enough knowledge of God to get rebellious people like you and me into trouble, but not enough to get us out of it. We need something more.” Indeed, we do.