Phil Gons

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God’s Love: A Bible Storybook

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God's Love: A Bible Storybook

If you have an iPad and kids or grandkids (or plan to one day), you’ll definitely want to download the iPad app God’s Love: A Bible Storybook, which is free until Monday morning.

Here’s the description:

Explore God’s love from the creation of the world to the ascension of Christ. Featuring 120 story pages and three hours of spoken audio, this storybook app can help parents and Bible teachers alike share God’s majesty with children.

Here’s the book’s intro:

Before Creation, God’s heart overflowed with love for the other members of the Trinity. Then as God spoke the universe into existence, His love exploded into a kaleidoscope of shapes, sounds, smells, and tastes. Yet above all this beauty, we find the fullest and brightest expression of God’s love in the Person and work of Jesus Christ. As you explore God’s majestic love, we pray that this storybook will encourage your family to develop a new awe for Him.

We purchased the iPad app for $9.99 last summer and then the print book [Amazon] for Christmas, and we’ve really enjoyed both with our daughter.

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16 Tips to Raise Kids Who Love to Read

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Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading BooksIn an age of smart phones, MP3 players, tablets, computers, TVs, video games, apps, and other electronic media, it’s important to be intentional about not letting reading take a back seat as we raise our children.

In “Raising Readers,” chapter 14 of Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011), Tony Reinke shares 16 helpful ideas for making sure your children value books and reading:

  1. Fill your home with books. Many of history’s most prolific readers, writers, and leaders were raised in homes stuffed with books. . . .
  2. Read to your kids. . . . We all begin as readers who require aided discovery, that is, initially we need parents, pastors, classrooms, and teachers to help us to learn from books. . . .
  3. Don’t stop reading to your kids. . . . Parents should read aloud to their children from birth until college, the point in their lives when literacy plays the most important role in their educational success.
  4. Read your books in front of your kids. Young children prize what they see their parents prize. . . . Let it be obvious to them that books are cherished in your own life.
  5. Teach young children to read. . . . Every child will learn to read at a different pace, but try to teach your children to read early. . . .
  6. Push entertainment into the background. . . . It is not impossible to enjoy reading and entertainment, but your priorities must be settled first. In our home, reading is the priority over video games and television and movies. This is modeled in how we talk about books and how we limit electronic media. . . .
  7. Listen to audio books in the car. Over the years we have logged many miles on the road for family vacations. We have grown to anticipate these road trips and the opportunity they present for the entire family to enjoy audio books. . . .
  8. Hunt for the best books. . . . Take time to plan books by season, by personal interest, and even by school studies. Talk with other parents in your church to find reliable recommendations. . . . [Read more…] about 16 Tips to Raise Kids Who Love to Read

Does God Have Dreams for His People?

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The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name

Talk of God’s having dreams seems to be growing in popularity—not the fall-asleep-and-see-strange-things kind, but the wishful, hopeful, I-really-want-this-to-happen kind. You won’t find this kind of language in (any?) English translations of the Bible. And you won’t find it in the writings of previous centuries’ theologians (e.g., Luther, Calvin, Owen, Edwards, Hodge, Spurgeon, and Warfield). But it’s all throughout the popular Christian literature of the last several decades.

I was reminded of this while rereading Sally Lloyd-Jones’s The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name with my wife and daughter during our family Bible time. There’s much to like about the book, but I’m not sold on the talk about God’s having dreams for His people—even in a book for children.

Here are three examples:

But God saved the best for last. From the beginning, God had a shining dream in his heart. He would make people to share his Forever Happiness. They would be his children, and the world would be their perfect home. (25)

God loves his children too much to let the story end there. Even though he knew he would suffer, God had a plan—a magnificent dream. One day, he would get his children back. One day, he would make the world their perfect home again. And one day, he would wipe away every tear from their eyes. (36)

That’s the end of that dreamer! they thought. But they were wrong. God had a magnificent dream for Joseph’s life and even when it looked like everything had gone wrong, God would use it all to help make the dream come true. God would use everything that was happening to Joseph to do something good. (78)

It’s obvious that she’s using dream synonymously with plan, but I’m uncomfortable with some of the connotations and implications dream carries with it.

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