Listen to this!

If you have ever struggled with pornography you need to listen to this!

New URL

You can now get here by entering the url: www.jonearls.com rather than www.jonearls.blogspot.com

Something tells me that this will never happen to me...

Laurence Chaderton was a noted preacher and the Master of Emmanuel College in Cambridge England. After preaching for two hours one day he paused for a just a moment and the entire congregation stood up and shouted, "For God's sake go on!" So, he preached for another hour.

Book Review: Dad's Bible

I signed up to receive this Bible over a year ago when my wife and I were still expecting our first child. I was excited to review a "Dad's Bible" because I was soon to be a Dad for the first time. Unfortunately it didn't live up to my expectations.

I really wanted to like this Bible. However, its taken over a year for me to review this Bible for a reason. Frankly it was just not a Devotional Bible that I could use on a regular basis.

This Bible uses the New Century Version (NCV). I had never used the NCV much prior to obtaining this Bible and frankly I'm not impressed. The NCV is a revision of the International Children's Bible and the language seems simplistic and choppy to me. The devotionals and notes added throughout the Dad's Bible were decent but weren't something I found all that helpful. I did like the overall design of the pages, but I'm not fond of hardback Bible's

Here's the bottom line: the Dad's Bible is a novelty/gift Bible that will be given as gifts to thousands of dad's on Father's Day but frankly it's probably not a Bible that will get used by many of those father's on a regular basis. So, if you're looking for something other than a tie to give go ahead and buy it. If you want one yourself you'll soon find numbers of these showing up at your local thrift store.

** out of *****

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com <http://BookSneeze®.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 <http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html> : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

I love it when God comes!

As those of you who attend my church or follow me on Twitter or are my friend of Facebook probably know already, my sister came back to the Lord this past Sunday! God came in a powerful way and moved upon people's hearts in our service. I can assure you that this had nothing to do with the Pastor!

Truth be told I had a real struggle as I was preparing to preach my message for Sunday morning. Recently I had been preaching through the book of Acts and had reached halfway through the book and felt like God didn't want me to go any further. My original intention had been to preach on through the book. This left me without clear direction of where I was headed in my messages for a few weeks. A week ago Sunday God helped me to preach from 1 Corinthians 10 on "A Warning and a Way of Escape." But, as I was preparing to preach this last week I was not completely clear on which direction to go. I felt like God wanted me to preach a series on Jesus leading up to Easter Sunday, but for this past Sunday it was one of those times when I was not completely clear what to preach. Those of you who are preachers will probably understand my situation completely - those of you who are not probably not so much...

Anyways I really struggled between two messages. However, God keep bringing me back to what I wound up preaching on Sunday morning. It was however one of those times when you get up to preach with a little more fear and trembling than usual!

But God came! Not that I felt like I preached particularly well. But God's Presence came and spoke to hearts. My message was "Jesus - A Friend of Sinners." Thank God He is and praise God my sister came back Home again!

Following the altar service I had one of our teenage African-American bus kids come up to me with his eyes wet with tears. In the past this boy has caused some trouble in his Sunday School class and you wonder if he's catching anything at all by coming.

This past Sunday he stayed for morning worship which is something he normally doesn't do. After the altar service he met me up front with tears in his eyes and tried his best to express to me that he was thankful for my message. I put my arm around him and told him that Jesus was his friend too. He smiled and pointed at his face and said, "These are tears of joy" and walked away.

I love it when God comes!! All the praise goes to Him!


Unfortunately we occasionally have a problem with our internet during our live streaming/recording and this recording is only a partial one.

Blessings

I recently heard this song for the first time and I really appreciate the song and the message of it.

The story behind the song is really moving...