Karl & Liesl Kranich

ChristianAudio offers a free audio book each month — this month’s is Pilgrim’s Progress. You can either browse to http://www.christianaudio.com/free_download.php each month, or sign up for an email reminder.

You click to purchase the downloadable version of the book at the normal price, then enter the monthly coupon code before finishing the purchase. The purchase page shows that you’ll be charged nothing, and it’s been working well for me for many months!

Of course, they also have tons of great books available for purchase!

If you haven’t been to Campus Crusade’s main web site at www.ccci.org lately, check out the new design. I think the team did a great job.

You’ll find:

• Fresh new look
• Over 100 country profiles
• Training for spiritual mentoring
• Bold photographs, riveting stories
• Improved search and navigation
• Locate ministries near you
• Tools for evangelism
• Conveniently manage your financial giving

We have a new section on the sidebar of our site for information that Liesl has gathered about umbilical cord blood donation.  This is a little-known source of stem cells that have been used to cure many diseases without the ethical issues surrounding embryonic stem cells.

Please check out the links and read Liesl’s piece called Saving Lives without Taking Others—Why I Chose to Donate My Baby’s Cord Blood.

The latest God’s Art took me back to my many backpacking trips with Pasquale. By (and used with the permission of) Pasquale R Mingarelli of wildheartphotography.com:

The top of Longs Peak.

The peak is flat. What kind of mountain is that? Well, okay, it does look a bit impressive. It’s snow covered, rugged looking and the smooth face to left looks like it would make some great rocking climbing challenge. But there is more that draws thousands of hikers to come to Rocky Mountain National Park to climb it every summer along with the other 100,000 people that stop and hop out of their cars to just grab a photo of it. What really makes this mountain impressive is what the second photo shows. It has a massive base and is 14,259 feet high.

I heard my Sunday school teacher, Pastor Ray Mahew, say, “It’s not the top of a mountain that makes it impressive.” He was making the point that it’s not the top that makes a mountain, but what the top is built on. Without all that is below it, a mountain peak would be nothing but a big rock.”

Pastor Ray went on to say that in the Bible the New Testament is the peak of the mountain and the Old Testament is the base of the mountain. We cannot fully appreciate the New Testament without first having a good understanding of the Old Testament.

Too many Christians are illiterate when it comes to understanding the scriptures and it is even worse when it comes to the Old Testament. I believe this may be from the whole “feel good movement” that has hit the church today. People do not want to study God’s Word. They just want to know how the Word makes them feel good. Many of the hottest Christian books, typical messages from many pulpits and the lack of time the average Christian studies God’s Word reflect this. As a result, many Christians have a very weak faith, worldly lifestyle and a poor witness.

The Old Testament is the rock foundation for the New Testament. If you have never read the complete stories of Nehemiah, Mordecai, Jeremiah, the Rechabites, Hanani, Hannah, Elijah, Manasseh or Josiah, you may want to! Understanding their lives will give you a better understanding of the mountain of God’s Word, what God is like and how He may work in our lives today.

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See more of God’s Art and Pasquale’s work here.

Steve Brown (of Key Life Network) gave the sermon on March 2nd at University Presbyterian Church.  The Death of Evangelism is a great message about ideas that defeat or empower evangelism.

We love listening to Steve.  He preaches challenging messages and helps us see things from a different perspective.  We wouldn’t discount the value of evangelism training as much as he did, but it was still a great message.

You can listen to the message online or download it from www.upc-orlando.com/programs/podcast/