I have blogged a number of times on great Bible study tools that I run across. In all my reading and research, nothing appears to be more critical to our growth in the Christian life than personal, reflective time spent in the Scripture.

The problem I find too often, is that when people get into the Scriptures, they get hung up on difficult passages or odd themes. Most often, those who try hard to resolve those problems get lost in the extensive results that appear in a Google search, or they find that the freely available commentaries like Matthew Henry’s work from long ago, do not adequately answer their questions.

The problem that I find is that too much great content is locked inside the confines of publishing contracts and academic institutions that demand compensation for anything they create. Commentary sets that I use on a daily basis through the library at Dallas Theological Seminary cost thousands of dollars a set – $50-100 a volume. Although I do understand the need to appreciate great academic work, it shames me that virtually no good contemporary content has been made available by the American and European Christian communities…almost…

Tom Constable, a lifetime professor of the Bible at Dallas Theological Seminary, spent most of his career compiling notes on each book of the Bible. In the course of 30+ years, he has accumulated over 7,000 pages of guidance for those reading the Bible in an easy to understand, unbiased format. And he has always ensured that they could be obtained freely electronically by anyone who wanted them at soniclight.com

Now they are built into the NETBible website, so that you can access them as well as other notes and resources with the Bible side-by-side. As a student of the languages, I am also appreciative of the integrated Hebrew and Greek resources as well.

Hopefully, this is only the start of things to come.

www.netbible.org

Do you know the basic concepts of the faith? Why not take a test and find out?

Bible.org, a site that has long been dedicated to low-cost, high-quality Bible resources has released an assessment tool for discipleship relationships, allowing you to assess yourself on the basic concepts of faith, and also send the results to a leader in your church.

This tool assesses the following areas:

1. Salvation (Soteriology)
2. Assurance (of Salvation)
3. God (Trinity)
4. Prayer
5. Bible Study Methods
6. Baptism
7. Communion
8. The Church (Ecclesiology)
9. Sexual Purity
10. Evangelism
11. Discipleship
12. Spiritual Gifts
13. Giving (Tithing)

The assessment tool comes with the lots of content that helps a person fill in the gaps in areas they find are lacking, and guides the person with additional tracking tools, like a Bible Reading plan.

This assessment tools is currently under development, but represents a great, free tool for us to use. If you are interested enough to check it out, please also use the feedback links at the top and bottom of bible.org to send Tony Tucci your feedback.

Here is the link (click), but if it stops working for you,

Visit Bible.org – Click on the Link for Users – Then Click the link on the top right that reads: “Path to Spiritual Maturity Get Started on your path today!"

Free and available for editing and adaptation for Evangelical purposes

In my desire to consistently share the gospel with the people around me, I have tested and tried a number of applications for smartphones. The principle is simple: no matter where I go, I always have my phone on me. While I am impressed with the availability of applications that allow me to take the Bible with me, I cannot find an application or video that successfully presents the gospel in an effective manner. Therefore, I endeavored to create such an application myself. In my search, I realized something incredibly important: the most accessible way to create the presentation was to package it in a Power Point presentation or PDF slide set. Those two documents are universally applicable to any smartphone or mobile device today: Windows Phone, Android device, tablet, ipad, iphone, etc. Better yet, updating the language or contents in these slide shows is simple too, so that they can be adapted to each person’s specific style and desire.

Below is a downloadable copy of the basic presentation, a copy of a longer presentation directed at Muslims, and a guide that describes the basic concepts each slide is designed to represent. Feel free to edit this to work for your personal use. I don’t desire credit and I don’t have a desire to force anyone into my mode of sharing the gospel, I only desire to equip other people beyond myself.

Remember this helpful aspect of electronic presentations too: They are as easy to share with others as sending them as an email attachment. This is often a very comfortable way for me to both give the person follow up material, and get their contact information.

For someone who accepts the gospel, I will leave them with a Bible or a New Testament, and we set a plan going forward for church attendance and follow up. I always pass along this presentation by email, so they can review it and be reminded of the concepts, and then I pray blessing for them as they start their new walk.

Basic Gospel Presentation:     PPT File          PDF File

Gospel for Muslims:               PPT File          PDF File

Presentation Guide

For anyone downloading these tools, I only ask for one thing: feedback. Please tell me what you like, what you don’t like, and what you would change.

Also note, the reason I have pdf files in addition to Power Point, is that Power Point is best, but I have found that it does not always work perfectly on some devices, particularly the HP Tablet. Often the background graphics don’t work perfectly.

So I find myself preaching once again, and to tell the truth, its still a lot harder than it looks!

I’ve had practice, I have evaluations, and yet, it requires more and more and more. Preaching is like learning to drive a car with a manual transmission: you can get the basics down with a little bit of practice, but to really get good, you need to log some hours in the car. Let’s face it, until you have some practice, you will get from point A to point B, but the car ride will be less than smooth.

That being said, I have two sermons to preach this semester: Eternal Rewards for Believers, and Responding to Disaster. The first one has been posted below: my outline, my manuscript, and the audio from my presentation. In it, I work to answer some common questions: Are we really going to be rewarded in heaven? Should I be motivated by rewards? Aren’t rewards manipulative?

Sermon Texts and Explanation (Exegesis)

Sermon (Preaching) Outline

Sermon Manuscript (Full Text)

Sermon Audio

I hope you enjoy it…it won’t be super smooth, but I hope it will be informative and challenging!

This semester is one of capstone projects:

• Writing a research paper that requires an advanced level of research and scholarship
• Teaching a class for 10 weeks on the topic of Small Group Leadership
• Taking a class that discusses the use of the Old Testament in the New Testament, translating both Hebrew and Greek
• Preaching topically: working through the analysis multiple passages to speak to key topics, and then crafting and delivering a compelling message.

It’s been a long couple of months so far, and a few more are yet to come…but I am glad to be able to put the small pieces of my training together to make a coherent set of skills that will help me as a minister.

These days, it seems that the greatest challenge is simply dealing with the stress: wanting to do anything but more schoolwork, and yet being unwilling to balance my time between important non-school things, because the demands of the semester are so heavy upon me.

Oh how I hope that next summer really feels like freedom. People often think of me as a great student, but the truth is, I would much rather have a 40-hour a week job than be here. I am only here because God called me to DTS, and because He has put a passion on my heart to invest in and assist Him in the work of changing lives, 40+ hours a week. Ph.D? Not on your life, and only if God demands it of me!

Anyway, I needed to vent a bit, so there it is.

Pray for me. It’s not easy being a seminary student.