Free House Church Resources

What Music Should Children Listen To?

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 19:31:47 -0700

It is important that children listen to and sing hymns and other Godly music that we normally think of as being for adults, in addition to songs that are geared for children. In fact, children need to be saturated with hymns and other decidedly Godly music. Here is why:

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Is Music Amoral?

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 19:32:9 -0700

There is a debate among Christians: is music itself amoral? To define what is meant, the question needs to be stated several ways. Is music neutral? Is sound capable of moral influence? Does music alone, with or without text, carry and communicate moral value? Does music have moral value? Does putting Christian words to any kind music make the music Christian or Godly music? Are different kinds or styles of music right or wrong?

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Why You Should Sing in Your House Church

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 19:32:55 -0700

Singing is a very essential part of our worship of God and needs to be a part of every house church. Our desire is to help you as best we can to make a beautiful, joyful sound in singing praises to our God. God loves singing, and loves to hear us sing praises to Him. The purpose of this article is to help you see how important your singing is to God, and to encourage you to perfect the singing ability of those in your house church.

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How to Turn the Hearts of the Fathers to the Children

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 19:33:25 -0700

God sent John the Baptist to prepare people for lasting revival so that the church would endure after Jesus returned to Heaven. Jesus’ ministry lasted only three years. At the end of those three years, the revival that began has continued for two thousand years. What God said that John the Baptist would do to prepare the people for Jesus, was to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of children to their fathers. Many Christian leaders have pooh-poohed the biological church growth among some groups and have put their focus on reaching unchurched people, not realizing that for lasting revival we need evangelism and we also need to keep the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of those brought in through evangelism and of those who are already Christians.

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Is The Headcovering for Today?

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 20:2:14 -0700

For years the question has circulated through various denominations: should women cover their heads? If so, when? How? With what?

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Preparing for the Future of the Church

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 20:6:7 -0700

It is vitally important that we prepare now for the future of the church. How we train our children and young people has great bearing on the spiritual commitment of the next generation. God has high expectations and standards of conduct for our youth and young adults. Our intentions and motives have been right, but has the spiritual education in Sunday Schools, vacation Bible schools, Christian schools and church youth groups been consistently producing young people who are up to God’s expectation and standards? Are they capable of providing future leadership for the church with the same doctrine, standards, and convictions that they have been taught? Are the children learning the Bible doctrines that they should? Are the young people in the Christian Church mature and following God’s ways?

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Home 'Sunday Schooling'

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 21:35:15 -0700

Training children and young people in the ways of the Lord is very important for passing on the faith to the next generation and to their children who follow. Building-based churches have used Sunday school and youth groups for years in an attempt to train children and young people. However, in the last 50 years or so, each succeeding generation trained in the church Sunday school has become more Biblically illiterate than the previous generation to the point today where there is little difference in belief between those in the church and those in the world. The Sunday school has not succeeded because it is based on the world’s public school method of teaching children rather than following our Creator’s instruction manual.

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Peace in the Old Testament

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 23:21:29 -0700

Would you go to the Old Testament to develop a theology of peace and your position on a Christian’s involvement in war? Or do you tend to ignore or gloss over the Old Testament on the issue of peace and participation in war because it does not fit your peace theology?

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How to Turn the Heart of the Fathers to the Children

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 2:23:52 -0700

Gene 18:17 And the LORD said, Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; 18 Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? 19 For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him.

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The NIV Report (Condensed)

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 4:33:27 -0700

The subject of Bible translations has been a tremendously interesting study for me. When I started the research, I was not prepared for the deception and misguiding information that I have found coming from Christian scholars. The problem is not so much the accuracy of the way words are translated although that is also a problem but the Greek text that is used for the translation of the of most of the modern translations. I believe that the Bible is the most significant subject facing the Church at the turn of the 21st Century.

God tells us that the Bible is pure, is truth, and words are not to be added to or removed from it. However when two translations of the Bible say two different things in the same verse, subconsciously people’s trust in the purity, and absolute truth of the Bible is eroded. When two translations say different things, which one is truth? Or are they both what God said? Christians then have to become judges of Scripture and pick which reading they like best. Therefore you hear "I like the way it says it in this translation," rather than "This is what God says."

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How to Become a Christian

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 7:0:44 -0700

"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." Romans 3:23

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How to Acquire Spiritual Understanding

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 9:14:6 -0700

This is a condensed version of our study on Spiritual Understanding in the Bible using the E-Sword Bible program and five computers networked together as explained in "Gold Miner’s Bible Study - Taking Bible Study to a New Level"

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Totally Rethinking Church Part 1: Stepping 'Out of the Box'

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 10:42:7 -0700

(Note: The purpose of these articles on Totally Rethinking Church is not to incite a rebellious attitude against the established church or encourage an elitist attitude; but to stimulate your thinking to look at the Scriptures and evaluate the church, so that you can help make the church more like Christ would have us to be.)

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Myths About the Headcovering

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 12:25:11 -0700

I began a study on the headcovering when I was in college to find a basis that God no longer required the headcovering for today. I did not see a need for it. As I have studied the head covering in depth, I have discovered that there are many false teachings about the headcovering stated as truth. These false teachings are in many of the commentaries. They have been preached from the pulpit, and have been passed from one Christian to another to give a "clear" understanding of what they want the Bible to say, but which have no Biblical or historical basis. They have been repeated so often, that people believe them to be true and don’t verify it for themselves. As a result the church is teaching, acting, and reacting on the subject of the head veil based on faulty information. In general, I have found a lack of good scholarly research on the headcovering.

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God's Commands in the New Testament

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 12:42:26 -0700

Jesus commanded us in the second half of the Great Commission to teach others to observe ALL that He has commanded us. We first need to know the commands ourselves well enough so that we can teach others to observe them.
View an Uncategorized List of Commands

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Totally Rethinking Church Part 2: Sheep - a Key to Understanding God's Design for the Church

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 16:25:51 -0700

For many years, I felt like I was not being fed spiritually at church as much as I wanted to be. Many Sundays I felt like I was given skim milk instead of real meat that I could sink my teeth into. The meetings, activities, and teaching responsibilities in the church always kept me busy, but they did not really satisfy my spiritual longings. Little did I realize that I would have to become a farmer to understand God’s answer. Many of the truths in the Bible are given using agricultural terms and illustrations. Although I had grown up in the city, I thought that I understood what God was saying when He used agricultural illustrations in comparing the church to sheep because of what others had said who "knew". But I found out that I didn’t really understand.

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Totally Rethinking Church Part 3: A Refreshing Change for Church Leadership

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 17:8:54 -0700

The caring "pasture" shepherd pastor that is God’s plan for Church leadership is the type of pastor that we all have a deep longing for. God’s design for church leadership is much different than what we find in most conventional "feedlot" style, building based churches today. It requires a total reprogramming of our minds of what Spiritual leadership is and how it is carried out.

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Gold Miners' Bible Study

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 17:53:19 -0700

We have discovered a new method of Bible study that allows a family or group to quickly go deeper into the Word of God using modern technology. It adds a new, exciting dimension to Bible research. It allows a family to dig in the Word and meditate on it together. Since we have started studying the Bible in this manner, our family has uncovered a multitude of insights that we might never have found otherwise. Many of the articles on this website are the results of this method of Bible study. Thanks to our setup, we can do more research faster than before.

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What is the Best Bible Translation?

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 18:8:18 -0700

The question, "What is the best Bible translation?" requires more than a simple answer if you are to make an educated decision for yourself. There are a whole range of English Bible translations to choose from, and more keep coming out. Which Bible translation is the best one to study, meditate on, and use for our guide in faith and practice? Each translation claims to be better in some aspect than other translations. A few are basically literal word for word translations. But most employ some degree of paraphrasing or putting the Bible into the words of men. The New International Version calls its practice of putting things into their own words by the fancy term "dynamic equivalence". Some translators do a significant amount of putting into the Bible their own words, beliefs, and biases. A recent very perverted paraphrased version is the "Good As New" version. Among other things it uses foul language, renames the Apostle Peter as Rocky, and promotes sexual relationships with a partner outside of marriage. It is called a Bible.

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God Does Not Dwell in a Temple Made With Hands

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 21:6:37 -0700

In the Old Testament, when God commanded the Tabernacle to be built, it was a place for God to dwell with the people. The people did not meet inside the Tabernacle. Only the priests entered the Tabernacle. The people met together and worshiped God outside under the open sky. They never entered the Tabernacle or later the Temple.

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The NIV Report

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 21:6:56 -0700

The most significant subject facing the Church in the 21st Century is the Bible, its Greek text, and the way it is translated. Every Christian doctrine is based on the Bible. The way the Bible reads, the words that it has and the words that it does not have, the way the Greek words are translated or poorly translated, all affect the doctrine of the Church. At one point I thought that most translations of the Bible were basically the same except for the modernization of the old English in the KJV. As you will see for yourself, this is not the case. Most of the modern translations do not have every thing that the KJV does, as a result of changes in the Greek texts from which they are translated.

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List of Commands in the New Testament

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 7:18:1 -0700

This is a tool to help you carry out the second half of the Great Commission: "Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." This is a complete listing of all the commands that apply to us today. People often wonder what are the commands that Jesus commanded us to teach. As you look over this list you will see that God instructs us in great detail what it means to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus: how we should act, and what we should do, and what we should not do in various circumstances. There are a total of 684 passages.
View the List of Commands in Subject Categories

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Singleness - a Peek at God's Perspective

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 11:22:11 -0700

We see things in our life from a narrow perspective, and it is often difficult for us to understand all that God is allowing to happen. Someone standing 10 feet behind us can see a much bigger perspective than we can. They can see things we can’t. They can also see some of our blindspots. God sees an even bigger and clearer perspective as He sees all of our past, present, and future all at once. God invites us to get a peek from His perspective.

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A House Design for a House Church

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 20:34:33 -0700

One example given in the New Testament of a house design that was practical for a home church was a large room on the second or third floor with a kitchen. Being on the top floor it was not part of the normal living quarters but reserved for special occasions. This would even be an ideal design for family holidays. A couple with adult children and a lot of grandchildren do not need a large house except when all the family comes home. Having a large room where all can gather is ideal.

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Divorce and Remarriage - Why Didn't We See This Before?

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 23:6:0 -0700

The research for this report began a number of years ago in an attempt to find out what God’s Word has to say about divorce and remarriage. Is divorce wrong? Is the adultery in remarriage an act or a state? In what cases are divorce and remarriage permitted? What place do divorced and remarried couples have in the Church? Can the church accept them the same as any other married couple? As I look at the interesting truths that I found in Scripture on divorce and remarriage, I have to ask myself, "Why didn’t we see this before?"

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Bible Verse Sorter

Sun, 3 Feb 2008 20:39:32 -0700

This tool will sort a list of verses into Biblical order. Simply paste the list of verses into the box and click "Sort!" It will convert e-Sword abbreviations into the full name. However, it may not properly sort some abbreviations that do not contain the first three or four letters of the book.

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A New Look at Predestination and Once Saved Always Saved

Mon, 4 Feb 2008 10:17:9 -0700

Note: I had never had a real interest in theological positions or discussions about Salvation. One day the Lord impressed upon me that I needed to study the subject of Salvation for myself so that I would know for sure what was truth, Calvinism or Arminianism. I reluctantly dove into this study thinking it would be dry and boring. What I found was the exact opposite. God opened a whole new bigger picture for me about Salvation. This study is not exhaustive, nor can it ever be here on earth. There is more for you to discover and share with the rest of us.

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How to Make Spiritual Truths Stick in Your Mind

Mon, 4 Feb 2008 10:35:45 -0700

The songs that we sing and listen to permanently shape our understanding of who God is and what the Christian life is all about. It is readily recognized among educators that information in song form is easier to remember. It has been stated that "What’s learned in song is remembered long." Songs that children learn are remembered the rest of their lives. Once a tune is learned a person never totally forgets it. It will always be familiar.

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God's Commands on Alcohol

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 23:17:14 -0700

Jesus gave us a number of commands in the New Testament about the use of alcohol (and they also apply to drugs). Each command is listed in Bold. The verses following each command are related verses or cross-references that help us understand what the command means. The Bible is the best commentary on itself and helps us to understand the command from God’s perspective. Ask God to give you understanding and meditate on each verse.

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God's Commands on Children

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 5:19:12 -0700

God gave us a number of commands in the New Testament for and about children. Each command is listed in Bold. The verses following each command are related verses or cross-references that help us understand what the command means. The Bible is the best commentary on itself and helps us to understand the command from God’s perspective. Ask God to give you understanding and meditate on each verse.

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God's Commands on Anger

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 5:19:23 -0700

Jesus gave us commands, not suggestions, about how to live the Christian life. This section contains the commands God gives us in the New Testament relating to anger. Each command is listed in Bold. The verses following each command are related verses or cross-references that help us understand what the command means. The Bible is the best commentary on itself and helps us to understand the command from God’s perspective. Ask God to give you understanding and meditate on each verse.

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God's Commands on Authority

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 5:20:36 -0700

There are a number of commands in the New Testament on authority. Each command is listed in Bold. The verses following each command are related verses or cross-references that help us understand what the command means. The Bible is the best commentary on itself and helps us to understand the command from God’s perspective. Ask God to give you understanding and meditate on each verse.

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God's Commands on Bible Study

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 5:20:50 -0700

There are a number of commands in the New Testament relating to Bible Study. Each command is listed in Bold. The verses following each command are cross-references that help us understand what the command means. The Bible is the best commentary on itself and helps us to understand the command from God’s perspective. Ask God to give you understanding and meditate on each verse.

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God's Commands to Be Of One Mind

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 5:21:0 -0700

Jesus gave us a number of commands in the New Testament about the Church being of one mind. Each command is listed in Bold. The verses following each command are related verses or cross-references that help us understand what the command means. The Bible is the best commentary on itself and helps us to understand the command from God’s perspective. Ask God to give you understanding and meditate on each verse.

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