I have been wanting a book to put in our guest bags. I wanted it to be gospel-focused, like the mini-books Done or Paid in Full and others you might have seen, but I also wanted it to be helpful to those who are already Christians. We have a lot of guests come to our church who are already saved, so I wanted something that could help them too. After several years of work on gospel tracts, gospel handouts at our Christmas play, and other gospel presentations in written form, I finally settled on a gospel presentation about twelve pages long. It deals with sin, exposing our sin by the law, and calls people to repent of that sin and trust Christ by placing their faith in Him alone. I tried to make it very, very simple, like a gospel tract, so that the gospel message is easily readable, but also robust enough to include an explanation of some of the key concepts. So this whole book is our new attempt at that: a gospel-focused guest book that is also for saved people. Only the first chapter is the gospel, but all of this book came from our desire to share the gospel with the world.
Hi, church. I hope you will enjoy this book. It is available now on Amazon. We have a few available at our resource desk, but most of our stock is going to be used for our guest bags, especially for the fall festival coming up in November; we want to make sure we have enough. If you are new here, my name is Pastor Ryan Rench, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, California. Today’s resource highlight is a book we just launched with Calvary Baptist Publications called Scripture Helps.
Two Quick Commercials
Before I get too deeply into that, I want to give another little commercial for the latest Baptist Times we have at the church. It is a really good magazine, published every other month, and I encourage you to grab this issue. The topic is “Why Do We Have Multiple Church Services Every Week?” I am not going to do a full review or a whole video on it this time, but I encourage you to grab it and read through it. It has some great thoughts, even on the trend lines: Baptist churches kept adding services up to a peak in the 1950s, and since then the number of church services has declined. It tries to reason through it: are we better off in America by removing church services? What is replacing them? What is the heart behind “I do not want to go to church for all the services of the week,” Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night? So there are some compelling thoughts and good reasons for why we still have Sunday night and Wednesday night services and Sunday school, and I believe that is going to be a real help to every church member. So I encourage you to grab the Baptist Times. Also, we finally got the softcover edition of my wife’s devotional; the Joy devotional is now available in softcover, and our church members get it at the printed rate, so much cheaper than on Amazon. You can get them at our resource desk, so check those out.
Inside Scripture Helps
But back to the Scripture Helps book. About twelve pages are the gospel, the focus of the first chapter, but the book is over eighty pages long, and the rest of it is helpful to just about any reader. Chapter 2 is Scripture Helps for Understanding Christianity. Chapter 3 is Scripture Helps for Times of Need. Chapter 4 is Alphabetical Topics. And the appendix is really practical things. First, the chapter on understanding Christianity. I got a little fold-over pamphlet from the Rock of Ages prison ministry, with some Scriptures and topics as a form of discipleship material. I have lost the original, but I had taken some notes on it and had the secretary send some of those, so I took those notes, expanded on them, and added some of my own. That chapter goes through several Scriptures to help us understand what I was before salvation, and it lists and writes out all the verses right here in the book: I was spiritually dead; I was a sinner; that kind of thing. Then it goes over God’s promises, with verses on eternal life and salvation and all the things God promises. Then what I did when I got saved, with verses on repentance; I was justified, I was adopted, I was made new, those kinds of things. Then a section on how to have assurance of salvation, assurance by the Word, by the Holy Spirit, through prayer, with verses on that. Then how to know God’s blessings: I am His child; I am a joint-heir with Christ. A section on how to grow in God’s family: how to have daily devotions, what to do when I fall or have trials, Scriptures about Satan, God’s care, temptation, worry, God’s will, the flesh, victory, judgment, church life, all kinds of Scriptures, and some really great practical helps for new believers, like teaching new believers to carry tracts, read their Bibles, beware of the love of money, give cheerfully, and maintain a clear testimony. So chapter 2 is a very, very helpful resource.
Chapter 3 has some overlap with that. I got the idea from a Bible I had as a kid. In the first couple of pages of that Bible were a few pages called “What to Read in Time of Need,” and that always stuck with me. When a topic came up that I was facing, I knew that at least in that Bible I could go to a list of Scriptures on that topic, with several references underneath, and I was so helped by that as a young person. The Bible is such a big book that you are not always sure where to look, so a reference list like that is really, really helpful. So we put a whole chapter in this book of what to read when you are alone, when you are afraid, when you struggle, when life hurts, or when you are battling spiritually. There are specific topics under each of those headings: for instance, when you are tempted, when you have sinned, when your faith is weak, when you need courage to witness, when you need strength for service, when you are burdened for the lost. So there are the broad topics and probably eight or ten topics under each, with the Scriptures that go with them.
Chapter 4 is a ton of alphabetized topics. I got a counseling book from Striving Together that had a bookmark or brochure listing a lot of these alphabetized topics, and I thought that was a great idea, so I created some of my own, with references under each topic. Not quite A to Z, but almost. There are two, three, or four verses under each topic: abortion, abuse, addiction, alcohol, anger, anxiety and stress, apathy, assurance of salvation, and so on through the A’s and all the way down. I did not have a Z topic, but there is a W topic, verses on work and worry. So almost A to Z: A to W. Maybe I should have put that on the cover. That is chapter 4. Then the appendix has a lot of practical helps to get going in your Bible reading. There is a schedule if you want to read through the Bible in a year, or a thirty-day starter plan. There is a Bible memory plan with key verses that would be great to memorize, a lot of them through the Romans Road and many others. There is a daily prayer plan, and just ways to help Christians get started in their faith. So I am really excited about this book. It is available now on Amazon; I think you can find it for about $9.99. It is cheaper on Kindle if you want to check it out digitally, and if you are subscribed to Kindle Unlimited, I think it is free there. For our church members, it is cheaper if you buy it here from our stock at church. I am really excited about this book. I hope it is a help to our guests, and I hope God uses it to see people saved. So I encourage you to check it out, and I am eager to see what God does with it. That is all for today. Keep on growing in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. God bless you.
