Year end sale! 20% off and free shipping!
This is your chance to get our most popular books and CD sets at 20% off until the middle of January. Take advantage of these great buys and present yourself or your friends with encouragement you might need to keep going strong for the rest of the home school year.
This special price includes shipping!
You can set your children free to become the individuals God created them to be. The books I SAW THE ANGEL IN THE MARBLE and I CARVED THE ANGEL FROM THE MARBLE will explain how. These books have been called, “the cream of the crop” of homeschooling books, “a tremendous blessing for me and my whole family,” “a must read,” “the best advice for schooling and parenting,” “the 1st book that any new home school mom/dad should read," and ”a breath of fresh air.” Now both books are available at 20% off the regular retail price.
I SAW THE ANGEL IN THE MARBLE is also available as a set of 6 CDs read by one of its authors, Chris Davis, a popular speaker at homeschooling events. Chris also adds some extra material that is not in the original book. You can listen to an excerpt from the audio book at this link. CLICK HERE to get your ANGEL AUDIOBOOK now!
As a bonus, we are also having a sale on the books' companion CD set TURNING HEARTS: 8 ESSENTIAL HOME SCHOOLING SEMINARS as well as our other two popular seminar sets: BUILDING THE HOME SCHOOL OF YOUR DREAMS and BUILDING THE HOME BUSINESS OF YOUR DREAMS.
Forget the Mayan Calendar!
Proclaim the Year of the Lord's Favor
by Ellyn Davis
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OK, I understand that 2012 is the year the world is supposed to
end, but I'm just not buying into all the gloom and doom.
Why? Because one of the things Jesus told us He was anointed to do
but we hardly ever think about is "to proclaim the year of the
Lord's favor." (Some Bible versions translate this passage as "to
proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.")
If you're like me, you've tended to focus on the other parts of
those verses in Luke 4: 14 - 18. I've heard hundreds of sermons on preaching the gospel to the poor;
healing the brokenhearted, setting the captives free, recovering
sight to the blind, and "setting at liberty them that are bruised."
But in my whole life I've heard only one sermon about proclaiming
the year of the Lord's favor.
When is the year of the Lord's favor, the acceptable year of the
Lord? If it can be any year...then why not 2012?
Yes, I know there are all kinds of dire predictions for 2012
because the Mayan Calendar comes to an end. But why can't we
proclaim that 2012 will become the year of God's favor?
The turning of a new year is a time when many people hope for new beginnings. It is a time of reflection on the past year and deciding what we want or need to change in the next. It is a time for making New Year's Resolutions because we want our next year to be even better than our last...a new year when we can leave behind all of the negative things from our past and move into a new season in God.
At our house, we don't do New Year's Resolutions. We do New Year's proclamations. Here's how it works. We gather together with like-minded friends and family on New Year's Eve and have a big dinner. Then we each write out our "proclamations" for what we want the next year to be like. When everyone finishes writing their list of proclamations, we pray for one another and for each of our lists.
In the past, we've always been astonished to discover how many of our "proclamations" actually happen, even though no special effort has been made to help them come about. Sometimes we've even forgotten about the list until we drag it out the next New Year's Eve, but a great number of our proclamations have become realities.
You might want to start your own New Year's Eve family tradition for making the coming year "the year of the Lord's favor" for your household.
The acceptable year of the Lord
I grew up in Atlanta, home of Martin Luther King, Jr,. and I vividly remember when he gave his "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. It is one of the finest examples of the passion and power of the spoken word that I have ever heard and I have referred to that speech many times in public speaking or creative writing classes. Almost everyone is familiar with that speech and many are also familiar with the "I Have Seen the Mountain" speech MLK gave shortly before his death. But few have ever heard of a sermon he preached at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta in June, 1966 on "the acceptable year of the Lord."
Here are excerpts from that sermon:
Somewhere behind the dim mist of eternity, God set forth his guidelines. And through his prophets, and also through his son Jesus Christ, he said that, “There are some things that my church must do. There are some guidelines that my church must follow.”
The guidelines are clearly set forth for us in some words uttered by our Lord and Master as he went in the temple one day, and he went back to Isaiah and quoted from him. He said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”
The church, if it is true to its guidelines, must preach the acceptable year of the Lord. You know the acceptable year of the Lord is the year that is acceptable to God because it fulfills the demands of his kingdom. Some people reading this passage feel that it’s talking about some period beyond history, but I say to you this morning that the acceptable year of the Lord can be this year. And the church is called to preach it.
The acceptable year of the Lord is any year when men decide to do right.
The acceptable year of the Lord is any year when men will stop lying and cheating.
The acceptable year of the Lord is that year when women will start using the telephone for constructive purposes and not to spread malicious gossip and false rumors on their neighbors.
The acceptable year of the Lord is any year when men will stop throwing away the precious lives that God has given them in riotous living.
The acceptable year of the Lord is that year when men will learn to live together as brothers.
The acceptable year of the Lord is that year when men will keep their theology abreast with their technology.
The acceptable year of the Lord is that year when men will keep the ends for which they live abreast with the means by which they live.
The acceptable year of the Lord is that year when men will keep their morality abreast with their mentality.
The acceptable year of the Lord is that year when all of the leaders of the world will sit down at the conference table and realize that unless mankind puts an end to war, war will put an end to mankind.
The acceptable year of the Lord is that year when men will beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: and nations will not rise up against nations, neither will they study war anymore.
The acceptable year of the Lord is that year when men will allow justice to roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
The acceptable year of the Lord is that year when we will send to Congress and to state houses of our nation men who will do justly, who will love mercy, and who will walk humbly with their God.
The acceptable year of the Lord is that year when every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain will be made low; the rough places would be made plain, and the crooked places straight; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
The acceptable year of the Lord is that year when men will do unto others as they will have others do unto themselves.
The acceptable year of the Lord is that year when men will love their enemies, bless them that curse them, pray for them that despitefully use them.
The acceptable year of the Lord is that year when men discover that out of one blood God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth.
The acceptable year of the Lord is that year when every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess the name of Jesus. And everywhere men will cry out, “Hallelujah, hallelujah! The kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord and His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever. Hallelujah, hallelujah!”
The acceptable year of the Lord is God’s year.
These are our guidelines, and if we will only follow the guidelines, we will be ready for God’s kingdom, we will be doing what God’s church is called to do. We won’t be a little social club. We won’t be a little entertainment center. But we’ll be about the serious business of bringing God’s kingdom to this earth.
Til next time.....HAPPY NEW YEAR! And may it be the year of God's favor for you and those you love.
Ellyn
FREE e-book: A Strong Enough Why
In the twenty-plus years I’ve homeschooled, I’ve spoken with thousands of other homeschooling parents and I’ve discovered that most problems with home schooling tend to occur because parents get hung up over the HOWs of home schooling. And the reason is, they don’t have a strong enough WHY.
In Christian jargon, we might call the WHY a conviction and we could say that their home schooling efforts became a struggle because their conviction about home school ing was unclear or wavering.
Let’s be realistic. Home schooling is not for everyone. Home schooling is a massive, full-time commitment, primarily for Mom. Done well, it requires a total reorientation of your life, not just four or five hours of your day.
This e-book will help you create a strong enough WHY about home schooling to propel you through any problems of HOW. You can read it HERE.
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