Bøker av Jason Pfledderer

Jesus did much of his teaching in parables. One of His most famous parables is the parable of the sower.This parable is the Rosetta stone of parables; it teaches us how to understand all of Jesus' parables. This book is dedicated to understanding Jesus' parable of the sower, the seed, and the soil. If we understand the word of God as the seed that we must plant in our lives, then how do we nurture it? What kind of harvest can we expect?In the course of this book, I will not only explain this parable, but its relevance to our own lives as Christians today. I believe Jesus meant this parable to be a tremendous encouragement. Do not give up and do not let yourself be discouraged if you are not able to harvest every seed you sow. What survives will spring up and bring forth a great harvest; some thirty, some sixty, some hundred-fold. Jesus gave this parable to give tremendous hope and encouragement to go out and spread the word of God because it is powerful.

Living our lives God's way means living as if He was directing our every step. That means you have to take advantage of the gifts that God gives us. God's purpose is that those who are followers of Jesus Christ would become conformed to the character of His Son. When a Christian is pursuing this goal, he will find true happiness, as we shall see later in this book. God has provided everything that you need in order to be conformed to Christ as He desires. Absolutely everything God created was made to glorify Himself, including those who are called to be children of God. This book details the biggest gifts that God has given us as Christians, and helps explain what you should do with them. Everything around us is a gift from above. When you remain faithful to God, He will give us all you need for life and godliness.

The American church is in trouble; it seems that it has forgotten that its mission is to be salt and light in a dark world. It has forgotten that the task Jesus gave to the church was to make disciples of all people. As the darkness in the culture continues to deepen, many churches are embracing the darkness rather than being a beacon of light to a lost and dying world. Too many Christians have become used to living in a world that has lost its grasp on moral and spiritual values. Has the church forgotten that it is called to pursue holiness preparing to be the spotless bride of Christ? We cannot go back to casual and complacent Christianity ever again. We cannot go back to just doing church without really making an impact. We have to move forward as a healthy church for Christ. How do we do that? This book will help you understand how we can be the healthy church of Christ that God wants us to be.

Good Friday is a time of deep meditative reflection and sorrow for those who love Jesus Christ. And yet, it is also a time of anticipation towards Easter Sunday. The suffering endured by the Lord Jesus Christ on Good Friday is as much a part of Christianity as is the risen Christ. We live in a Good Friday world, but we are Easter Sunday people. As Christians, as Easter people, we are called to be a light to the world, the liberating voice of Christ. We are called to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with those who do not yet know Him as Savior. Jesus promised that He would set those who trusted in Him free from their "graves" of sin and guilt. Since Christ has risen victoriously from death, believers live in anticipation that they too will appear with Him in glory.

We as Christians can learn a lot from Peter. Peter is the most well-known of all the disciples. He was always first in any list. Even when there was a smaller group, he was the leader of that small group. In the inner circle of the disciples comprised of Peter, James, and John, Peter is the most well-known of any of the disciples in the Gospels. He is mentioned over 200 times. John is only mentioned 40.But that certainly doesn't mean that Peter was perfect. In fact, the reason we can learn a lot from Peter is that he messed up a lot. But he was forgiven, and more than that, he went on to do great things for Christ and the spread of the Christian faith. This book is devoted to studying Peter in the hope that you can be inspired by his successes to live a more faithful life for Christ.

If you are a Christian, then you know it is your duty to imitate Christ in all aspects of your life. Of course, that can be a lot harder than it sounds. And it sounds pretty hard. This world doesn't make things easy for Christians. We are surrounded by sin, immorality, and perverse things. Sometimes, you just get angry or disgusted or even discouraged by the world. I know sometimes it's made me question things, and even ask, "God, where are you?" I mean, there's so much going on in this world, and it feels like a lot of it is bad. We are surrounded by a temptation to sin, and you can feel Satan's presence everywhere. In order to follow Christ faithfully, you need to repent. Yes, even if you're a Christian. Repenting isn't just about trusting Christ the first time-it's about trusting Christ and following Him in your actions each and every day. That means when you find yourself going down a sinful path, you have to stop, consider your direction, and make a U-turn. Then, you have to put that U-turn into action by demonstrating Christ's character in all your actions. That is how you repent.

The book of Ecclesiastes is one of the most beautiful books of the Bible to me. It's one of the most famous, too - its excerpts and quotes permeate our culture at every level, from the Rolling Stones to The Simpsons. However, it's important that we read the book in its scriptural context and learn what lessons we can from its wisdom. In the New Testament, it says that "All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." (2 Timothy 3:16) We will examine the wisdom literature of Ecclesiastes in this book, discussing the pertinent themes and the ways in which they teach us as well as how they may apply to all of our lives today.

No doubt as a Christ-follower, you understand that life comes with an array of gifts. You have been born again by God's Spirit and been made whole and acceptable to God once again. You are saved by your faith in Christ. Therefore, you will one day be next to God as a saint in heaven. Then, there is the fact that you have been declared righteous and blessed with an internal desire to worship God for all eternity. So yes, His gifts to you are aplenty. So bountiful are these gifts of God that there is a plethora of them that are not often discussed. Still, they are there in the lives of believers. Whether or not we talk about them, they work to make our life joyful and productive. How much more efficient would our work for Christ be if we were to take notice of the lesser-recognized gifts from God? Could we become better Christ followers? I think so. Therefore, that is why I wrote Good Reception. It is a book about some of the lesser-known gifts in our life, and it is meant to help the reader take notice of those gifts. It is not meant to be an exhaustive list of the gifts given. No, it is meant to jumpstart the reader's mind and help him notice just how blessed he is. It will also help you develop your gifts. So, tune into God, for through Him, you will always have good reception.

Whether you realize it or not, you are in a war between good and evil, heaven and hell, the Lord God and the devil, Satan. There is no middle ground in this war either. God wishes to see as many people saved and brought to be with Him in heaven as possible, while Satan wishes to drag as many people with him down to the lake of fire, the final destination of torment. Satan knows that he loses in the end. His only aim is to oppose God in this age in the time he has left. The goal of this book is to teach you about our enemy, the devil. The Bible teaches us who he was at the beginning, what he became, and his tactics of war to deceive people whom God created to worship Him. As you read this book, feel free to read it as if you were sitting in and listening to the sermons preached by Dr. Jason Plfedderer. Allow the word of God to teach you who our true enemy is, what his tactics are, and how you can stand against his lies and deceptions by turning toward God and His word.

What is the church of Jesus Christ? How should the church operate in the world? These are important questions that all Christians should consider. These are important questions to think about in order to understand what the church is and how it should function. It's easy for the church to forget its mission even though it is comprised of God's chosen people. Too often, the church is influenced by the culture in which it finds itself rather than fulfilling its God-given task to impact the culture by making disciples. Even though we are destined for heaven, we are still living in this world. So what should our work be while we are here?Chosen People will seek to clarify what the church is and the role you have to play as part of the chosen people of Christ. Whether you are new to your faith or just want to remember what your duty is as a member of the bride of Christ, this book will remind you how to live and work in a broken world.

The Collective Words of Wisdom Series is an interactive and engaging book that is meant to draw the reader, teacher, and/or preacher into a discussion. In Let Love Burn Bright, you will come to better understand how the love of God can redeem you. Without a doubt, we have experienced some real difficulties in the world as of late. However, the love of God is here for you to redeem you. The love of God isn't just for you; it will also help you minister and evangelize the world around you. All you have to do is first Let Love Burn Bright within yourself first. These easy-to-use guided sermons are designed to remind us to be aware of the way that the Lord blesses us each and every day. These books contain a large number of reflective questions and function partly as journals, making each sermon adaptive to your targeted audience. The purpose of The Collective Words of Wisdom Series is to encourage us all to become more intentional Christians, more engaged in the word of God, and more obedient to the Lord and aware of the ways in which He works in our lives as well as the ways in which we can honor Him in how we live our lives. By doing this, we can grow in faith as well as discover, understand, and eventually carry out our God-given purposes as individuals and as Christians.

If you have ever worked on a vehicle, you understand that it requires special tools to get the job done. To put a new hub on your car, you need what is called a bearing holder and a c-clip spreader. The job is next to impossible to complete without them. The same thing holds true when working on any other task in life, you must have the proper tools to successfully complete it. Followers of Christ are to be lifelong learners. They are expected to be ever vigilant in their spiritual education. So too are they meant to constantly teach others about Jesus. To do this means they themselves must be ever learning what tools are needed to complete their tasks. You can believe God will always steer you towards the proper information He expects you to learn to complete the task that He's called you too. Although there is a lot of information that is good, it is best to recognize that the right information at the right time is not only necessary for you in your Christian pursuits, but also necessary for providence in your life. The information contained herein will no doubt assist anyone in Christ along their path. You never know when you will need to break them out and fix something.

Everyone likes a good story. That being said, it means that everyone should want to make their story (the story of their life) as good as it can be; not simply an entertaining story, but we all should strive for a purposed story. Even more, as a child of God, your story has the potential to be life-changing for others.His Story, Your Story, takes lessons from the birth, life, and death of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, and uses them to teach others valuable lessons that promote a great story in their own lives. Many people see Jesus as the King of kings, which He is. But what some people fail to remember is that Jesus was sent to live a humble life in His incarnation and die a horrible death on a cross before His exaltation to the right hand of the Father. He was not born in a palace with the benefits of luxury. He was born in a manger. He showed the world that the beginning of a story does not matter nearly as much as what happens at the end of the story. This is one lesson of His story. What will your story be like? Your past is part of who you are, but it does not represent the whole story. You can change the story of your life in a good or bad way depending on your response to God's principles for living. You should choose obedience to God.

We all know that Mary is the mother of Jesus. We know the story of His birth, and some might know from Michelangelo's Pieta that she was with Him when He died. But I think we have a very limited understanding of Mary and her role in Jesus' life. I think that there are very few people that understand Mary correctly. I want to do what I can to remedy that. In order to understand Mary and her role in Jesus' life, it's important that we understand Mary as she was and not the idealized version. Mary is not just the woman who birthed Jesus. She was with Him much of His life. We can learn a lot from her.

When was the last time you read the book of Proverbs? It's an amazing book that offers wisdom on how best to live your life. The book was written by Solomon 3,000 years ago, but because it is the living word of God, it teaches us how to live here and now, whatever city you may live in. The principles offered in the book of Proverbs teach us how to live wisely and live well. These principles are always true, since they come from the pen of one who was given wisdom by God beyond that of other men. We now have the privilege of going back and reading Solomon's warnings and his principles to live by, armed with the knowledge of Christ and His grace and mercy. With this knowledge, we can learn so much from the book of Proverbs.Let's be sure that we are living according to the wisdom of God every day.

A good name is better than a fine perfume, and God certainly has a good name. But what do we really know about God's good name?God cares for us.He created us and He loves us.As Christians, we know these things.But perhaps you have never spent much time thinking about the character of God. This book will use both the Old and New Testament to help us consider some attributes of the character of God. In The Character of God, we will use Scripture to consider several characteristics of God and how we might emulate them in our own lives. In so doing, we can become better Christians.

What happens after we die? It's an important question to answer, and it's one of the most serious questions we as humans have to consider. Now, if you're a believer in Christ, you have Scripture to turn to. Scripture provides all of the answers that we need in this life. But even so, the question of what happens after we die evokes fear in a lot of people. This book addresses some of those fears by considering what the Bible tells us about what happens after we die. It also addresses how to live with death in mind. How does one live intending to go to heaven? What determines whether we go to heaven or hell? All of these answers are at our fingertips if we will only look for the answers in God's holy word.

Almost all Christians know the story of the prodigal son. The problem is that some might not remember it correctly.Jesus told this parable in order to communicate truth about our relationship with God the Father. Jesus was being questioned about why He spent much of His time hanging out with sinners. To answer this question, Jesus told a few parables, including the parable of the prodigal son and his return to the pursuing father. The truth is that in one sense we are all prodigal sons. We all fall short, and we all sin. Mankind is doomed to fall short.As this parable teaches us, however, that doesn't mean that we can't be saved. By reading this parable we learn important truth about the character of God the Father and His Son, Jesus, so we can learn how to return to our Father, too.

In John 15, the apostle John reported the Jesus said that He is the true vine. We are the branches that must stay attached to Christ in order to bear fruit in our lives. Now, that sounds easy; we are part of the same plant as Christ, and God the Father is our Gardener. But it's not as easy as that. If you know anything about gardening, you know that pruning, cutting a plant back, is necessary for it to grow in a productive way and bear fruit. God will cut everything out of our lives that will cause us to be unproductive or unfruitful. That's the pruning process for a Christian. We've all been through it, I'm pretty sure. Sometimes pruning is hard. Sometimes it's painful. It's not an enjoyable process, but because it is the work of God, it's always worth it.

God made man and woman, and He made them differently. A man does not always know how a woman thinks, and vice versa. But God did not believe it was good for man to be alone; He instructed us to be fruitful and multiply. Human sexuality is complex. In this book, I want to offer you instructions on how to view your own sexuality and how to deal with it not only in the context of the world, but specifically how to use it according to the instructions we are given in the Bible. This book is written to help you discern the qualities that you should be looking for when you look for a spouse. It is written for men and women alike, youth and senior citizens alike. Within these pages is advice about the characteristics you should look for when you are trying to find your lover.

As Christians, we are all on a spiritual journey. Sometimes, we are on a literal journey. When a pastor took to the Appalachian Trail as a pilgrimage, it changed his life and taught him lessons he never would have expected. On the trail, one can learn creative ways to express his praise to God, and discover that God not only communicates truth to us through his word but also through the wonders of his creation. Sometimes, God uses other people along the way to bless us and speak truth into our hearts. God communicates to us through many other ways than just His written word. A Tale From the Trail is a fictionalized account of the story of a pastor ministering along the Appalachian Trail, interspersed with spiritual stories taken from the Bible. The lessons learned on the trail, when read together with the word of God, teach us about how to be Christian pilgrims and how to grow in our journeys with God.

If you are a Christian, then I have no doubt that your life has significantly changed. You are dead to sin, and you are born again in Christ. That is a great thing, of course, but have you allowed it to change your life entirely? What about your family life? Since we know certain things to be true-that God was made man in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, when He came to earth and died for us to save us from our sins and was then resurrected-then we should allow these truths to affect the way we live. That includes the way in which we function within the family. The word of God teaches us not only what the family is but how we should behave: how we should treat our spouse, how we should treat parents and grandparents, extended family members, how to raise children, and what we ought to pass on to our kids. These are important things for any Christian to consider. Are you reflecting Christian attitudes in your home, living as God wants His children to live in a stable family unit? The Christian Family turns to the word of God to make sure that we know the best way to be husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters.

The "Our Father" is probably a very familiar prayer to most believers. In some ways, that's part of the problem with the prayer; we are so familiar with it that we have forgotten what the words mean. Our Father seeks to remind us of the meaning of the words of one of the most important prayers in scripture. This is the prayer that Jesus Himself taught us to pray. Whenever we pray, we are coming into the presence of God to worship Him and present our petitions to Him. We are coming to lay hold of the love of God, which is somehow already laid hold of us. We know in our hearts that we want the living God, we want to know Him, we want to love Him.We want to be truly able to call Him "Father".

Jesus is the center of our faith as Christians. There is so much that we know about Him, and so many prayers that we dedicate to Him. In this book, I have selected seven crucial parts of Jesus' life and ministry and discussed each of them in depth. These include His disciples, His ministry, His baptism, and much more. By reading about these events, we can learn about the impact Jesus' actions and teaching had on His first followers. We can also learn powerful lessons that will impact our lives today. Jesus, as fully God and fully Man, did so much in His time here on earth that it's important that we remember the specifics of how and why He did what He did. It's important that we remember that He was Israel's Messiah, and He is our Savior and Lord, and He accomplished everything required so that we could be reconciled to God.

Isaiah 52 contains important biblical prophecies. As we have the New Testament to provide us context to better understand these prophecies, we can read this chapter and understand what exactly Isaiah was prophesying. The chapter opens with the words, "Behold my servant." That servant that the verse is referring to is none other than the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. Isaiah wrote this song more than 700 years before the first coming of Christ and describes in detail the crucifixion. These verses demonstrate one of the powerful reasons why we believe in the inspiration of Scripture: this prophecy came true. Christ took our sins upon Himself and He provided an atonement for all the elect. In the course of this book, I am going to walk you through the prophecy described to us in Isaiah 52, discussing how it was fulfilled by Christ and what it means for us.

In the book of Revelation, we are told of seven churches that each failed for a different reason. The advice regarding these churches is not only prophetic, but offers us as Christians warnings to avoid certain failings that can lead us away from following Christ well. That's what I want to discuss in this book: The Seven Churches of Revelation. Although the seven letters in Revelation are tailored to each of the churches named by the Apostle John, these churches and their failings can represent all churches and all Christians. The instruction given to these churches' congregations, therefore, is valuable to all Christian congregations today.

The purpose of this book is to discern the qualities that make a good leader. If you want to be a good leader, this book is for you; it's also for those who want to be able to discern good leaders in their churches, communities, and even their political parties. The focus of this book is a little-known character from the Bible who appears only in the book of Proverbs: King Lemuel. He was a person born with privilege, with position, and with power. That's an extremely dangerous combination, unless you live by principle. His mother knew that, and so his mother taught him the qualities that she believed he needed to embody to be a good leader. This book recounts those qualities and expands on them so that you might consider how to adopt them into your life. Do you want to be a leader? Do you want to follow good leaders? If so, this is the book for you.

If you are a Christian, then you know God. You know that You are His creation, and if you have repented of your sins and trusted Christ as Savior, you are His child. As such, God wants to have an intimate relationship with you. But that relationship takes work and effort on your part. You have to keep dedicating yourself to knowing and maintaining a close relationship with God in each of the Persons of the Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. You should desire to have an intimate relationship with God. But developing that relationship involves knowing God on a deeper level. My objective in this book is to help you come closer to the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, so that you feel connected to Him.

hips of your life. Placing your trust in Jesus as your Savior is a huge turning point in life, but it does not mean that suffering and trials are over. Becoming a Christian starts a journey; the Christian journey begins the moment you are born again and lasts until the day you die. Some people think, "I made my decision. Jesus is my Savior." However, when you look at their lives, you do not see any change even though they claim to be Christians. If that is the case, then you can be very sure that they were not truly regenerated by the Holy Spirit. The Bible says that the Christian is a "new creation." That means that there will be change in a person who has been regenerated by the Holy Spirit. This book's purpose is to help God's people understand and stick with the Christian journey. You are saved by faith alone, but the Christian journey doesn't stop when you're saved-it's just the beginning.

As we step forward into our technological future, it seems as if far too many people have stepped away from the God that caused the United States of America to become so great. However, continuing along our current trajectory can mean only one thing: America is doomed! That is, unless the people repent. America is destined to see destruction because the culture has rejected Christian values. We see this in many areas: the widespread acceptance of the murder of the unborn, the epidemic of addiction to pornography, the rapidly growing number of people who reject their God-given gender, and many more choices that are radically opposed to God's revealed will. What America needs is revival, a genuine turning from sinful self-centered living opposed to God, to belief in the forgiveness Jesus died to provide and then living life in obedience to Jesus' commands.