We have lowered the price on Dr. Rosenbladt’s Law and Gospel Lecture, and his presentation’ When a Good Father Dies, It’s Always Too Early’ to just $4.95.

These are exceptional deals.  Both lectures are excellent.

‘Law and Gospel’ is a great introduction to the distinction of the Law and the Gospel. This distinction is the basic building block to a Christ centered theology, and central to being able to understand the Scriptures.

‘When a Good Father Dies..’ is a super deal, at over four hours in length. It includes Rod’s classic overview and defense of how we know the Scriptures are true, the Fatherhood of God and its relationship to earthly fatherhood,  Gospel centered parenting, and stories from Dr. Rosenbladt’s life growing up with his dad.  This is vintage Rosenbladt and not to be missed.

Download Thriving on Less here.

The Rich rules over the poor And the borrower becomes the lender’s slave.  Prov. 22:7

“Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions.” Luke 12:15

If you read my post from a few days ago on The Explosion of Minimalism, you know about my conversion to minimalism and my attempts to live as simple a lifestyle as possible.  It has been great so far and has really helped me in a number of areas.  I am still in the process of editing down my possessions and commitments, both personally and financially, and have a way to go yet, but I am experiencing more  peace of mind and increased ability to focus.  My performance at work has improved and I am able to concentrate on the task at hand more fully.

The Scriptures are full of exhortations to simplicity of life and our dealings with each other.  A prime example is Jesus admonition to let your yes be yes and your no be no. (Matt 5:37)  When I am over extended and overwhelmed, with responsibilities and commitments pulling me in often opposite directions, my ‘yes’ and ‘no’ are rarely unqualified.

When I am drowning in debt and stressed, my financial choices are not the best.  I recently spent five years in a job that took me out of church and away from my family because I was afraid of going broke and had gotten us in a precarious situation financially.   It damaged my relationship with my wife and kids.

Another thing that really bothered me was that my job performance suffered because of the crazy hours and the stress. Not only was I ashamed , but I felt it reflected poorly on the Gospel. It is known at my place of employment that I am a Christian, and to not be consistently doing my job well says the wrong thing about my faith. Stepping down to another position more in line with my life goals and priorities has enabled me to perform at top levels again.  My work ethic is known and respected by my bosses and co-workers.

After ruthlessly cutting our expenses and paying off most of our debt, financial disaster has not overtaken us as I had feared when we suffered a loss of income. We need a lot less to get by now.  We are much less slaves of the lender than we had been.

Here is a link  to download a free e-book entitled ‘Thriving on Less’ written by Leo Babauta of Zenhabits.net.  It is a companion book to his published work ‘The Power of Less.” (Note: I have not had a chance to read ‘The Power of Less’ yet, but will do a review here when I have finished it.)

‘Thriving on Less’ is a great intro to minimalism and simplicity for those unfamiliar with the concepts or who are just starting out. I enjoy Leo’s writing, and the concepts and actions laid out in this e-book have had real world results in my life. I hope they are of help to you too.

In keeping with the soon to be announced changes at NRP, we want to increase the number of free resources available to our friends and customers. The following talk is the first of many new resources we hope to share.

Earlier in October of this year (2009) the Pastor of a faithful ELCA congregation asked Dr. Rosenbladt to come and address the current situation in the ELCA, and to contrast the true Gospel with a number of false ones in circulation. This is the recording of that presentation. Dr. Rosenbladt discusses the various factors that need to be addressed by ELCA congregations considering leaving their synod. He then goes on a brilliant discourse highlighting the differences between the Gospel and the effects of the Gospel. This is followed by an exhortation to retain the distinctives of the Lutheran tradition. The session ends with a question and answer period.

This one is short and sweet coming in at slightly longer than 36 minutes. Enjoy.

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In my efforts to organize my life and get a better grasp on our finances, I stumbled upon a community or a group of communities in the blogosphere. They are centered around the disciplines of frugality and simplicity.

For the past several years my family, my friends and I seem to be living at an ever increasing pace. Our responsibilities, commitments, and finances seem to be growing exponentially more complex. We have been living in a state of exhaustion. In this frenetic rush my relationship with my wife and kids gets pushed to the back burner.

To be entirely honest, making time for prayer, the Scriptures and catechizing my children, even attending church, has been often more than we could manage. (It probably didn’t help when I accepted a promotion several years ago that demanded upwards of 60 hours a week and working ten hours a day every Sunday.)

Not too long ago I was reaching a breaking point. My health was beginning to deteriorate. I was exhausted and depressed. I would come home from work with nothing left to give emotionally to my family.

Together, my wife and I made the decision that I should step down from my position and return to working part time for my employer. It was a good call. Slowly I caught up on my rest and settled into becoming reacquainted with my family. We returned to regular church attendance.

This chapter in my life has caused me to reflect deeply on our culture’s call to become enmeshed in work for the sake of money and possessions. Today it is called ‘consumerism.’  The Scriptures call it covetousness or greed, they name the fear of privation as unbelief and lack of faith.

In an effort to enlist aid in a new way of life I searched the internet and found several blogs that have really helped guide me. Through these blogs I have been introduced to an entire online community devoted to sane and frugal personal finance and the discipline of simplicity.

The first site is The Simple Dollar. This blog is devoted to simplifying and organizing your personal finances. Trent Hamm started this blog to help people dig themselves out of bad financial situations after he recovered from his own financial meltdown. Trent is a Christian, but his faith is not the main thrust of his site, and he mentions his faith tangentially where appropriate. He covers everything from eating inexpensively to simple budgeting and investing. He also has tons of tips on saving money and regularly does book reviews. His writing is clear and he strikes an encouraging and even-handed tone.

Through the links on his site I found the second blog that has been extremely helpful, Zen Habits. (NO, I am not becoming a Zen Buddhist.) Leo Babauta has devoted his blog to the discipline of simplicity in every area of life. He does wax a little New Age on occasion, but the the benefit of his writing transcends those issues.

Years ago Leo found himself in a similar situation to the one I faced and decided it was time to prioritize and ruthlessly cut out all that was not in line with what he valued most: family, friends, and a sane relationship with his vocation. There are tons of great posts on simplifying your work, your budget and finances, simple ways to increase your productivity at work, how to overcome bad habits and instill good ones, how to simplify diet and exercise, even how to cultivate the habit of getting up early. Check out his ‘Start Here’ column.

Explore the links on these two sites and you will find a wealth of sites devoted to living simply and living debt free. There is an explosion of interest in what is termed minimalism or the simple life and the accompanying discipline of frugality.

The traditions of frugality (stewardship) and simplicity have a long and honored history among Christ’s people. It is refreshing to find a resurgence of these disciplines in our culture.

These sites have been of immense help to me. One of the themes that they have pounded into me is that if I ruthlessly cut expenses, get out and stay out of debt, and live within my means, I don’t need to spend every waking hour slaving away at a job to the detriment of my faith and my family. I actually have time and energy to devote to what is most important in life, and, strangely enough, do a much better job at my work. I hope our friends and readers will find much help and encouragement from these sites and the accompanying links.

In the next week or so we will be blogging about some important changes coming to NRP.  In the mean time, as we prepare for our special announcement, I wanted to draw your attention to a new pricing structure for a number of our items.  These changes are permanent and in some cases reflect a 60% discount on our most popular items.

Bible in an Hour has been marked down 10$ to just $9.95 for both the MP3 and CD.

Most of our shirts have been marked down to $15.95 or lower.

A number of our book outlines have been priced at $1.95.

There will be more price changes to follow and we will makes those public in the near future. Follow us on Twitter or visit our blog regularly to watch for a special announcement concerning NRP. We are really excited about the changes we are implementing and the new products coming out soon. Stay tuned.

We’ve been hammering away at this and it appears that we’ve got the problems ironed out. I would invite you to place an order with your credit card in our store if you’ve been waiting to hear more on this before doing so.

I would like to ask your help, though. If you do receive a decline message on your order, before giving up, please double-check your billing and credit card information. The only ways we’re seeing declines come in right now is due to incorrect billing or credit card information of some kind, like the expiration date, etc.

If you’re absolutely positive that your billing and credit card information is 100% correct and you still get a decline message, please contact us immediately. We’re watching our transactions very carefully right now, so we will likely know about it before you contact us, but we’ll look into it for you nonetheless.

Thanks again for your patience!

I wanted to post a note that we’ve been seeing an inordinate number of payment attempts get declined when people are trying to pay for their order via credit card. We’ve been digging into this in the last couple weeks and I wanted to let you know that we’re getting closer to a solution. The trouble appears to come from some recent updates we made to the website.

We haven’t had to chance to talk with every customer who’s experienced this, but we’ve gotten input from many of you. Thank you!

If you’ve recently experienced this problem yourself when trying to place an order here, we offer our sincere apologies. I know exactly how frustrating something like this can be from a user’s perspective. We will be contacting those of you who’ve had trouble with a special offer, in case you’re interested, for the time and effort you’ve have taken to work with us (or even just to get your payment to go through!) and help get things ironed out. I certainly appreciate how patient you’ve been.

I will post an update here when I have more. I expect a solution soon. In the mean time, if your credit card payment is declined incorrectly but you have a PayPal account, I recommend using PayPal to pay for your order as it is continuing to function correctly.

Thanks again for your support and as always, please feel free to contact us any time if you have any problems or concerns.