Month: August 2018

Don’t miss out! 20% off for a limited time.

Scott and Cathy Jesse Tree 0 Comment
Don’t miss out! 20% off for a limited time.

It’s certainly not beginning to look a lot like Christmas yet… but orders are starting to trickle in for our lovely Jesse Tree Ornaments already.

We salute you if you’re already on it with Christmas prep! And to honour your sheer brilliance, we wanted to give you a helping hand.

So… if you order your Jesse Tree Ornaments before September 14th, you’ll get a whopping 20% off. Just enter this discount code at the checkout:

Early-Bird

If you’ve already purchased a set for yourself, maybe you could consider buying one as a gift – maybe a Christmas gift or for a Christening or dedication? Or maybe you could just bless someone in your church or family with a surprise little present?

What is Jesse Tree?

If this is the first time you’ve heard of the Jesse Tree, then read on to find out about how it works…

Jesse Tree ornaments date back hundreds of years, and are a bit like a Christian advent calendar. The name Jesse Tree comes from a prophesy in Isaiah 11.

Here’s how it works, it’s really simple: each day from December 1st through 24th you’ll hang one of the beautiful ornaments, and read the corresponding section of the Bible with your child(ren). Together you’ll be pointed forward to Jesus as you encounter him in his word.

We think it’s a wonderful tool to help keep excitement about Jesus at the centre of the Christmas period.

As you will know if you’ve read this blog before, we think that the gospel is good news for both parents and children, and we want to help you to keep the gospel central to everything. Advent and Christmas should be times of wonderful, joy-filled, gospel-saturated wonder. Very often, however, the gospel gets crowded out with everything else that’s going on. Jesse Tree is just one thing that aims to help keep the gospel at the heart of Christmas.

If you decide to make a purchase, you’ll receive 24 ornaments which have images that correspond to the first 24 chapters of the Jesus Storybook Bible*.

Alternatively, if you have older children you can read along with the suggested passages from our Jesse Tree Guide, which comes free with your purchase. So every day, from December 1st, you will be able to fix your family’s eyes on the wonder of the coming of Jesus. You’ll be able to build expectation as you look at some of the wonderful ways that Jesus is anticipated throughout the Old Testamant, and you’ll enjoy the climax of the story as you read about the coming of Jesus, leading you right up to Christmas day.

The usual price is just £35.00, but purchase before September 14th, and use the discount code
Early-Bird
and you will receive 20% off the purchase price!
That’s just £28 for your hand-crafted Jesse Tree ornaments.

This level of discount is will only be available for this limited time.

We hope you love the designs – we certainly do. We are blessed to be working alongside a brilliant designer from our church, Rory Henderson.

Each ornament is hand-printed with ink on rustic hazel wood, and comes pre-strung. We can ship it to you wherever you live in the world.

We’re also thrilled to be able to give 10% of profit to the work of Bible translation and distribution. This means that not only will your family enjoy this gospel-centred product, but you will also be contributing to work that will mean others around the world can gain access to the gospel too.

We have a number of colour options available – click through to our shop to see more images and place your order.

Our prayer is that your family will use these ornaments for many years to come. Through them, we hope that you will create some truly special memories that are recounted and repeated down the generations. And more importantly, our greatest prayer is that you will all grow in love for Jesus as you together see how (as the Jesus Storybook Bible* so memorably puts it) “every story whispers his name.”

Click here to head over to our website now to take a look, and if you do decide to purchase before 14th September, don’t forget to use the discount code 

Early-Bird

to receive 20% off.

And just so you know, we have a number of other products for sale, and this 20% off discount applies to them all. Here’s a selection of them, but click though to our shop to see them all:

The Friend Who Forgives | Book Review

Scott and Cathy Reviews 0 Comment
The Friend Who Forgives | Book Review

Do you have a favourite disciple?

I (Cathy) think mine has to be Peter. He’s impulsive, he’s passionate, he’s a blundering follower of Jesus – and I can see a lot of myself in him.

The Good Book Company has released a new children’s book, and we love it – “The Friend Who Forgives: A true story about how Peter failed and Jesus forgave”.

It’s a beautifully illustrated hardback book (roughly A4 size) which tells the story of the friendship between Peter and Jesus. It tracks the story from when Jesus called Peter to be a fisher of men, to how Peter witnessed his miracles, believed that Jesus was the son of God and grew in his faith. It  goes on to depict the sad betrayal of Peter as he denies knowing Jesus, again and again and again. And then it wonderfully shows how Jesus forgives bumbling Peter and gives him a chance to tell Jesus that he loves him, again and again and again. This full and free forgiveness transforms Peter into a bold fisher of men who tells many people that they too can be forgiven by Jesus, again and again and again.

It’s a great story of personal transformation through encountering Jesus, and it shows Jesus’ willingness to offer everyone full and free forgiveness.

We’ve triple-tested the book now, we’ve read it to our sons the last 3 nights in a row and they LOVE it. Our 2 year old likes pointing out the bright and engaging pictures (although he does get a little disengaged by the end… but he has only just turned two!). Our 4 year old follows the story line, is finishing off the sentences with gusto and giggles at the humourous illustrations. We asked our 4 year old what he’s learnt from the book, and he said with a huge grin on his face that “eating fish for breakfast is weird!”, which is one of the funny lines from the book. Thankfully that’s not all he’s taken from it – he understands too that it is Jesus who forgives, and that he was even willing to forgive his friend Peter.

The book will be well read in our household. The good book company recommend it for 2 to 6 year olds – like we said it’s perhaps a little long for fidgety 2 year olds (like ours), but we can definitely see children up to 6 loving it, and perhaps a bit beyond… we’re going to try it on our 5 year old niece tomorrow.

What’s great about it is that it communicates important theology and a brilliant true story, and it does so in an engaging and fun way. We recommend it as a gift for 4-6 year olds, it will go down a treat.

It’s a thumbs up from us!

You can purchase your copy here, The Friend who Forgives*. If you do, let us know what you think!

Just so you know, we received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher. We haven’t let this colour our reflections on it – we hope this is still a fair review!

Praying For Your Children Is Easy!

Scott and Cathy Uncategorized 0 Comment
Praying For Your Children Is Easy!

“I was awake for 4 hours last night with my child – I can barely string a sentence together, never mind formulate a prayer.”

“I yelled at them again – I just feel too guilty to pray.”

“I’ve been asking God to change my child’s behaviour in that area for so long, I no longer feel it’s worthwhile to pray.”

“Pray? When do you expect me to do that? I haven’t even got time to brush my teeth!”

Praying for our children can sometimes feel far from easy. The obstacles to prayer seem to just keep building up. Whether it’s busyness, guilt, tiredness, disappointment, or even something else, it’s often easy to feel that prayer is off the cards for us as parents.

But all of these things tell us that we’re forgetting something crucial about prayer. All of these feelings show us that we’re forgetting that:

Prayer isn’t a job to do.

Getting the hearing from God in prayer isn’t a right we earn through our good works.

Prayer isn’t a performance that must be eloquent and articulate.

Prayer doesn’t need to be something that we only do in a set aside time of quiet, with a lit candle on our knees in the quiet of a special place.

Fundamentally, we’re forgetting this:

God is our Father.

He’s our Dad. He loves us. He wants to hear from us. Like any good parent, he doesn’t expect a polished statement when we come to him – incoherent mutterings will do – he just wants to hear from us. Jesus makes our prayers acceptable.

God is our Father.

He’s our Dad. He loves us. He doesn’t want us to make ourselves good enough to come before him – somehow showing we’re worthy enough to gain a hearing (as if we could!). Jesus gives us all the goodness we need.

God is our Father.

He’s our Dad. He loves us. And as such, he knows what’s right for us. So even though we may have prayed about this thing a hundred times before, he wants to hear from us again, because he knows the perfect timing to answer our prayers. Jesus is in the business of bringing glory to our Dad – it might be through answering our prayer this time, or it might be through the patience and compassion he’s developing in us by making us wait.

God is our Father.

He’s our Dad. He loves us. Though he loves it when we set aside time devoted to him, he also loves it when we remember him in the middle of our frantic lives and chat to him as we go. Jesus has torn down the barrier to our Dad so that we can approach his throne with confidence, whether we’re in a quiet place, a playgroup, on the toilet or cooking dinner.

When we remember who we’re praying to – our Father who loves us – then prayer is easy. It’s a delight. Because we know we can come to him wherever we are, whatever is going on. We can come to him, knowing that he’s for us, that his goal is our good, which is for his glory.

This post was inspired by the first chapter of Tim Chester’s book, “You can pray“, which Scott is reading at the moment. If you want to think more about prayer, we can recommend it so far!*