Help for the Leaders....

Last week I had the joy of preaching to our congregation at Trinity on the God given responsibility of husbands. As I told our sweet fellowship, I am preaching on this not because I have mastered this, but because I need the Lord to speak to me and convict me as I preach His Word. I just pray that our people show back up this Sunday night after a very long service from their long winded Pastor this past Sunday! As I am preaching through this series, I want to take some time in my blog to give you some resources that will aid your walk (and your family’s walk) with the Lord. I know when I was growing up the resources for family worship were few and far between. The result was frustration for many men who genuinely wanted to lead their family in worship at home, but didn’t really know where to start. If you look at my blog from last week you will find several ideas I gave for teaching your children doctrine and introducing them to “dead people.” You can certainly use some of those books in leading your family in worship and discussing doctrine - in fact right now one of the things we are doing as a family is reading a short, beautifully illustrated book on Martin Luther. However, in addition to those resources from last week, you will find some great options below (many of which are wonderful whether you have children in the home or not). If you are using something right now that is a great benefit, please post a comment so I can add to these resources! Let’s share ideas….

http://www.heritagebuilders.com/store.htm For my family this is the site that started it all. If you will look at the bottom of the linked site you will find that Heritage Builders is about to team up with Amazon.com and will offer a wide variety of new resources. They now have some material for adolescents, but much of their material is for children 12 and under. These books will give “hands on” fun for your children as they learn the truths of Christ. These books have everything from simple crafts, family games, to building a small model of the Tabernacle. Once you set up a specific night for “family night” your children will have a celebration every time you announce that it is family time. Look especially at the books “family night tool chest.”

http://www.christianfocus.com/brand/show/3/- This page simply gives some books that you can read to your children before bed. The book “My First Book of Questions and Answers” (about half way down the page and under “Top Sellers”) is an excellent source to use for younger children as you give them basic biblical answers to eternal truths.

http://www.therebelution.com/ This site is one that you need to put before your teenagers and keep it in front of them. Let them post, let them meet other students that have a passion for God. But above all, buy copies of this book for everyone in your family and lead in a discussion about this book! After you read it, help them come up with a way to “Do Hard Things.” I look back and think how great my teen years could have been if I would have had this book as a resource (along with parents who would have rewarded me greatly to read it, of course!)


http://www.graceonlinelibrary.org/articles/full.asp?id=49|57|191
http://www.graceonlinelibrary.org/articles/full.asp?id=49|57|189
http://www.graceonlinelibrary.org/articles/full.asp?id=49|57|204
The three links above are things that every Dad should read. The first is written by John Bunyan, then Arthur Pink, and the final one is written by George Whitfield. They deal with the responsibility we have as men to lead our families in worship. They are great articles and very convicting.


http://www.amazon.com/dp/0875523927?tag=evegoopat-20&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0875523927&adid=1ZP5KXM05735Z1TXAYWG& I may have mentioned this book earlier, but this is outstanding material for a nightly worship time with your family. It is built around the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and it outlines what you should focus upon for each day of the week. For younger children especially, you will want to read and be ready to explain/discuss it with them for them to have a good understanding of the concepts.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0961860855?tag=evegoopat-20&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0961860855&adid=18XCW7ZV61SZ8HPNKMWS& This book is good for a topical study. It organizes the Proverbs into topics like “anger”, “selfishness”, etc. This is a very good resource to help you teach properly as you are “walking and sitting”. You will be able to go to the Word of God when correcting behavior and will get to the heart of the matter.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1888692073?tag=evegoopat-20&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=1888692073&adid=0ZN4ZR1HKZYC5PVA6ACY& A simple way to gather your children around the Word (this covers a variety of ages). It is set up to help you read and walk right through your worship time as a family.

http://www.peacemaker.net/site/c.aqKFLTOBIpH/b.958199/k.AFBE/Young_Peacemaker.htm If you will look on this site there are multiple resources for “Peacemaking for Families.” We have just ordered the Young Peacemaker for our boys and plan on using the book to discuss the subject matter, and the activity pages as a supplement. I have already ordered the church version of this material for Trinity to go through down the road – I can’t think of any single subject that is more needed in our churches and families today! It teaches how Matthew 18 is dealt with in every part of life. In a day when cowards can slander people on the internet and fighting over petty differences are splitting churches, we as Christians are called to be different. This is how to live out Scripture when we have disagreements, whether at Church or in our home.

I believe if you would use these links, along with my previous posts about “Catechizing Our Children” and “Introducing Them to Dead People”, you will find incredible ways for you to lead your family through the truths of the Gospel and everyone will have a blast!

Strange Sounding Advice

I would like to submit to our parents that two of the greatest things you can do for your children sound extremely strange. I want to mention each of them and give a little guidance! I am advising this not because I am an expert, but because the Lord gave us a burden to do this for our boys and we initially struggled finding material to carry these two tasks out. I would suggest to you that the two greatest things you can do for your children are: (1) Catechize them (2) Introduce them to dead people. In our culture both of these thoughts seem rather foreign, so I want to take a couple of steps to not only explain to you what I mean, but link you to some resources that may help you. I will deal with the catechism in this posting, and we’ll discuss “dead people” later.

What does it mean to catechize your child? You may have thought of euthanizing them at certain times, but not catechizing them. If you know what this term means you probably think of it as a Catholic term, but it is not. To catechize comes from the Greek word "katecheo" which means “to sound aloud”, it also has as a connotation “to teach”: therefore, all we are doing when we catechize our children is allowing them to sound aloud biblical doctrine. This is done in a form of questions. This is so important in a day when doctrine is downplayed-we must make sure we are instructing our children to true doctrine of the Word of God. For the last several years we have taken a couple of questions a week and taught our boys to explain such words as: justification, sanctification, regeneration, etc. I must say that at 9 and 10 years old I had no idea what these words meant and I would further guess that the average Baptist would not be able to clearly define these terms. Catechizing your child means they will not have to hide when Mormons or people with false doctrine come to their door, because they know what the truth looks like. Below you will find some links that will help you to allow your children to learn real doctrine.

Christian book.com
This book “Big Truths For Little Kids” is a fantastic introduction to a catechism. It is written in a story format to keep their attention and the characters are kids that they can identify with. When you get to the section on baptism, you will need to explain the differences between Baptist and Presbyterians. But outside of that it is outstanding!

Doorposts.com
This is just a page that sells some resources for families. It includes catechisms and family worship guides.


Keepersofthefaith.com
This is a new found website that has some great resources, especially for boys.


Grace.org.uk
This is Spurgeon’s catechism. I love anything by Spurgeon.

Reformed.org/documents/cat_for_young_children.html
This is what we are doing with our boys right now. They know all the way down to question 60 thus far. It is incredible to watch your children learn these truths and be able to explain what they believe.

I know you may be thinking this is a daunting task but I am telling you that even young children can do this - but only if your reaction to this learning is the same as if they hit the game winning home run and if you put the same energy into teaching them these truths as we do teaching them to read. By the way this is more important than a game winning homerun or touchdown catch. Our children get their cues from us as to what is important…make this fun and watch God plant great truths in them!

Stay Tuned to see what "Introducing your children to dead people" is really all about!

Bro. Chad Everson

Welcome to Holding to Truth!

Welcome to my blog! It is my prayer that this blog encourages, challenges, and inspires you to be a man/woman of The Book. The purpose of this blog as you will see in my next post is primarily for the members of Trinity Baptist Church. I have only been the Pastor of this dear church for about a month. But my desire is to use every tool available to enhance their walk with God and love for the Word. Let me begin by stating how I came up with this name. I battled for some time as to what to name this. I wanted something that would capsulate my ultimate desire for this blog, so I played with long names and short names and still nothing seemed to fit. One name that I thought of was based in a quote by one of my favorite preachers of all time. The great London preacher Charles Spurgeon, read the outstanding book The Pilgrim’s Progress every year. He had great admiration for John Bunyan, as all lovers of Christian literature should. When Spurgeon spoke of Bunyan he said:
He had studied our Authorized Version…til his whole being was saturated with Scripture; and though his writings are charmingly full of poetry, yet he cannot give us his Pilgrim’s Progress---that sweetest of all prose poems---without continually making us feel and say, “Why, this man in a living Bible! Prick him anywhere; and you will find that his blood is Bibline, the very essence of the Bible flows from him. He cannot speak without quoting a text, for his soul is full of the Word of God.
Now I must confess that I can not say this of myself, nor would anyone else, but oh it is the desire of my soul! I want to know Him more, so I better know His Word more. My favorite chapter in all the Bible is Psalm 119. It tells us such great truths about what the Word does in our lives. In verse 7 I am reminded that I can’t even praise Him rightly if I do not know His Word. So while this blog may share much of my life, I hope throughout this blog you see in the words a “bibline” theme. I desire for each of us to hold to the Truth - with diligence and desperation! I look forward to the days ahead as God sanctifies us together through His Word. It will be an honor to have you read this blog as we walk through this journey together.

Bro. Chad Everson
Pastor, Trinity Baptist Church