It is Good Friday today, a holiday up here in Canada. That means I am sitting back and spending the day with familiy. But I did still manage to get together this week’s edition of Free Stuff Fridays (I know, I know—Friday just wouldn’t be the same without it). Today’s sponsor is The Good Book Company. They are offering to 10 lucky winners a pair of these 2 great family resources, Beginning with God and Gospel-Centered Family.

Beginning with God, Bible discovery for pre-schoolers

Bible reading with toddlers can be tricky so we’ve produced these Bible study notes to use with pre-school children which will help them understand and remember God’s word. Packed with games and activities to do while at home and out and about, Beginning with God is a great resource for your toddlers!

Gospel-Centered Family, Becoming the Parents God wants you to be

Tim Chester and Ed Moll take parents straight to the heart of what being a gospel-rooted family should look like - asking, not how the gospel fits in to family life, but how family life should fit in to the gospel. It is extremely practical and each chapter is only a few pages long so that even the most exhausted parents can work through a section at the end of a long day!

Rules: You may only enter the draw once. Simply fill out your name and email address to enter the draw. As soon as the winners have been chosen, all names and addresses will be immediately and permanently erased. Winners will be notified by email. The giveaway closes Saturday at noon.

Another Friday is upon us and by now you know what that means—another edition of Free Stuff Fridays. This week’s sponsor is Shepherd Press, a name well-known among us, I’m sure. They are giving away 10 copies of Jim Andrews’ great book Polishing God’s Monuments. This was my favorite book of 2007 and one that both moved and blessed me. It tells the story of a young woman and her devoted husband who have faced a lifetime of mysterious, devastating illness. Written by the young woman’s father, the book intersperses narrative with teaching, experience with theology.

As I wrapped up my review of the book I wrote:

As I closed the cover on this book, 294 pages (yet only one day) after beginning, it struck me that this is undoubtedly one of the best books I’ve read so far this year. I skimmed back through my files to see how many other books I’ve read in 2007 and can see that it is at least sixty or seventy. So it’s no small thing to realize that this is one of the best. I simply can’t recommend Polishing God’s Monuments too highly. I wholeheartedly agree with Bruce Ware who writes, “To enter into this theological reflection on suffering is to accept the challenge to grow deeply in Christ, and to cherish the sure and certain promise of the gospel.” This book gripped my heart and helped me cherish the promises of the gospel like few books I’ve read recently. I commend it to you, trusting you will benefit from it as I have. Perhaps the greatest tribute I can render Polishing God’s Monuments is this: I read almost 300 pages about suffering and pain, yet closed the book with tears of joy in my eyes, rejoicing at the greatness of our sovereign and gracious God.

It truly is an excellent book and one that will be a blessing to you.

Each of five winners will receive two copies of the book—one to read and one to give away or donate to the church library.

Rules: You may only enter the draw once. Simply fill out your name and email address to enter the draw. As soon as the winners have been chosen, all names and addresses will be immediately and permanently erased. Winners will be notified by email. The giveaway closes Saturday at noon.

Today is Friday and that means it is time for another Free Stuff Fridays. This week’s sponsor is Seeds Family Worship. “Seeds Family Worship was planted when worship leader, Jason Houser, was asked to write some songs to help kids remember the verses from his church’s summer Bible school.” A few months ago I gave away some sets of their albums. Today I will do that again but with an important addition—they’ve recently created a DVD.

“Seeds Family Worship has partnered with Igniter Media to create high energy and visually appealing worship tracks for children’s and family worship gatherings. Seeds Worship Tracks are visual media vignettes based on Seeds Family Worship’s CD “The Power of Encouragement.” Each song is taken directly from the Bible using the NIV translation and is excellent in helping aid Scripture memory for all ages.”

Included on DVD:

• Full version of track
• Instrumental version of track
• Click track (split) version of track
• easySLIDES

Here we are at another Friday. This is a significant one around these parts because it’s the last day of school for our kids before they get a week off for March Break. This means that hundreds of thousands of Canadians are heading for the airports and, from there, to southern climes. And who can blame them, really. It has been a long winter.

But I digress. Now, to the business at hand. This week’s Free Stuff Fridays sponsor is Granted Ministries. About their ministry they say, “Our site consists primarily of sermons that are available for purchase or free download.  We refuse to profit in any way from this ministry and will give you the resources if you are in any way unable to pay for them. The messages you will find on this site are not necessarily unique to us.  Several of these messages can be found on other, more well-known websites.  It is not our aim to be anything special or unique.  We are simply endeavoring to serve the people of God with the teaching of His glorious Word.”

They are offering five prize packages, each of which will contain two books they’ve published: Justification & Regeneration by Charles Leiter (which I’ve reviewed here) and The One True God by Paul Washer (which I’ve also reviewed, as it happens).

With a new Friday comes a new edition of Free Stuff Fridays. This week’s sponsor is ChristianAudio, a company you must know by now for their monthly free downloads. If you visit their site just once per month and you’ll be well on your way to building a solid library of audio books. This week they have put together a great prize package for you. Five winners will each receive the following three audio books:

• Ministries of Mercy by Tim Keller
• The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul
• Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer
  Keep Reading →

It’s time for yet another edition of Free Stuff Fridays. This week’s sponsor is the same as last week’s--Ligonier Ministries. This week they are offering five great prize packages, each of which consists of three books by Richard Phillips and a pass to a conference.

• The Masculine Mandate
• Jesus the Evangelist
• What’s So Great About the Doctrines of Grace?
• A pass to any 2010 Ligonier Conference

It’s time for yet another edition of Free Stuff Fridays. This week’s sponsor is Ligonier Ministries, a ministry that I suspect requires little formal introduction. You know it, of course, as the teaching ministry of Dr. R.C. Sproul. It has a long history of faithful ministry to the church.

This week they are offering five great prize packages, each of which consists of:

First off, I apologize for the lengthy site outage. I had the site host do some work on the server yesterday and I guess they didn’t do it quite right. Somehow they managed to redirect www.challies.com to a blank page. Since I no longer check emails in the evening, I was happily oblivious to this development. I take this as a test of my resolve not to check emails in the evening. I will stand strong!

Now, with a new Friday comes a new edition of Free Stuff Fridays. This week’s sponsor is Timberdoodle, who have sponsored a giveaway once before. This week they are offering up five copies of my favourite Christian book of 2009, Russell Moore’s Adopted for Life. You can read my review of it here.

But first, a word (and offer) from our sponsor…

It’s Friday morning, which means that I’ve got some free stuff to give away. For this week’s contest I cajoled my buddy Josh Harris into giving up ten copies of his new book Dug Down Deep. So there will be ten prizes, each of which will be an autographed copy of the book.

Here is a brief description of it:

In Dug Down Deep Joshua Harris shares how we can rediscover the relevance and power of Christian truth. This book shows a young man who rose quickly to success in the Christian evangelical world before he realized his spirituality lacked a foundation—it rested more on tradition and morality than on an informed knowledge of God.

For the indifferent or spiritually numb, Harris’s humorous and engaging reflections on Christian beliefs show that orthodoxy isn’t just for scholars—it is for anyone who longs to know to know the living Jesus Christ.

Keep Reading →

It has been quite a week. I finally got home from Savannah only to find that Aileen had succumbed to the flu that all three of the kids had while I was gone. While I was sitting in a Savannah beach house, she was cleaning up messes (time and time again). So I am mostly going to have to take care of things around the house today. But I did manage to get together this week’s Free Stuff Fridays post.