O For a Thousand Tongues is a classic hymn that is easy to play on the guitar. The following PDFs provide the music, chords, chord diagrams, and first line for the song in English and Spanish:
Both documents provide a chord diagram for each chord the first time that the chord occurs in the song.
Copyright © 2011-2024 by Rajesh Gandhi. All rights reserved.
Learning to change smoothly among all the basic chords in a key is a vital skill that every guitarist must develop. To that end, I created the following charts for learning how to change from the main chord in the keys of Do and Sol to the other main chords in each key:
Chord Changes in the Key of Do
Chord Changes in the Key of Sol
These charts should help you learn to play well in these two keys!
Copyright © 2011-2024 by Rajesh Gandhi. All rights reserved.
Suffering in the will of God challenges us to persevere in our faith. God desires to use such suffering to advance His kingdom and righteousness in many ways, including further conforming us to the image of His Son. We need to keep the right perspective about such suffering:
The tears of those who suffer according to the will of God are spiritual lenses and windows of agate. As the weights of the clock or the ballast in the vessel are necessary for their right ordering, so is trouble in the soul-life. The sweetest scents are only obtained by tremendous pressure; the fairest flowers grow amid Alpine snow-solitudes; the rarest gems have suffered longest from the lapidary’s wheel; the noblest statues have borne most blows of the chisel. All, however, is under law. Nothing happens that has not been appointed with consummate care and foresight.
—F.B. Meyer, Our Daily Homily; bold text is in italics in the original
Copyright © 2011-2024 by Rajesh Gandhi. All rights reserved.
Praise Him, All Ye Little Children is an excellent children’s song that tells children to praise, love, and thank God. The song is easy to sing and easy to play on the guitar because it uses basic chords in the key of D.
This PDF provides the chords, chord diagrams, melody in my number format, and the words to all the stanzas. I’ve also added slashes above the chord symbols to show exactly how to strum the song!
Copyright © 2011-2024 by Rajesh Gandhi. All rights reserved.
In his book, The Holiest of All, Andrew Murray provides some excellent comments on Hebrews 11:35-38 and suffering:
Heb 11:35 Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection:
36 And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment:
37 They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented;
38 (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.
God has given us these examples of those who by faith triumphed over the extremities of suffering , that we might from them learn how to bear our lesser trials. Their faith in extraordinary suffering must strengthen ours in ordinary. It is in the little common trials of daily life that every believer can follow in the footsteps of these saints, in the footsteps of the great Leader of our salvation. By faith alone are we able to bear suffering, great or small, aright to God’s glory or our own welfare.
Yes, by faith alone. Faith sees it in the light of God and eternity; its short pain, its everlasting gain; its impotence to hurt the soul, its power to purify and to bless it. It sees Him who allows it, with us in the fire, as a refiner watching our purging and perfecting, as a helper of our strength and comfort. It sees that the forming of a character like that of the Son of God, maintaining at every cost the Father’s will and honour, is more than all the world can give. It sees that to be made partaker of His holiness, to have the humility and weakness and gentleness of the Lamb of God inwrought into us, and like Him to be made perfect in suffering, is the spirit of heaven, and it counts nothing too great to gain this treasure. By faith alone, but by faith most surely, we can, in the midst of the deepest suffering, be more than conquerors.
—Andrew Murray, The Holiest of All, 470-71.
Copyright © 2011-2024 by Rajesh Gandhi. All rights reserved.
Christian theology and practice is only as sound as it is in full keeping with all that Scripture teaches about any given subject or practice. Hebrews 2:9 and 5:9 are two verses that provide a good means of testing the soundness of one’s beliefs and living as a Christian.
Hebrews 2:9
The writer of Hebrews declares, “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man” (2:9). This verse presents some key truths about the death of Jesus, including the following: (1) He became incarnate in order to suffer death; and (2) He tasted death for every man.
What the Scripture writer specifies about the latter truth reveals an even more profound truth—Christ experienced death on behalf of others by the grace of God. With this teaching, he asserts that God’s grace to Jesus was vital in His dying for others.
In my experience, this truth has very rarely been stressed; nearly always, it has been Jesus’ laying down His own life that has been stressed. Hebrews 2:9, however, unmistakably asserts that Jesus died by the grace of God that was granted to Him.
We, therefore, must conceive of the death of Jesus in full accord with all that Scripture reveals about it: not only His laying down His own life of Himself (John 10:18), but also His receiving grace from God to do so. Regardless of whether or not we can understand how both these points can be true, we must maintain in our theology and practice that both are true.
Hebrews 5:9
In chapter five, we encounter another similarly profound truth that we must properly reflect in our theology and practice:
Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; 9 And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him (5:8-9).
These verses declare that Jesus was made perfect through what He suffered, and that His being perfected in that way was how He became the author of eternal salvation for all those who obey Him.
Strikingly, the author of Hebrews asserts that Jesus provides eternal salvation not simply by virtue of His intrinsic deity, which was true of Him throughout His entire life! Rather, His doing so vitally stems from what resulted from the suffering that He experienced as the God-Man. The profundity of this verse, as with 2:9, thus pertains directly to what we do with the truth of Jesus’ deity in relation to other vital truth about Him.
What a Proper Theology and Practice That Reflects These Truths Looks Like
The immensely profound truths revealed in Hebrews 2:9 and 5:9 require that we not overemphasize the deity of Christ in our theology and practice to such an extent that we fail to give other vital truths their proper emphasis. Discussions of the death of Jesus and His saving work must reflect not just His deity, but also the grace of God at work in His life and His saving people by virtue of what He experienced as the God-Man.
These truths, in particular, must shape how we evangelize people. We must not present Jesus’ death only as His exercising His divine power. Nor should we present Him as able to save people solely because He is God.
Instead, when we evangelize people, we should also emphasize the divine help that He received in His death. Moreover, we should present Him as the glorified God-Man who provides salvation to those who obey Him because of how He as the God-Man was perfected through His sufferings.
Copyright © 2011-2024 by Rajesh Gandhi. All rights reserved.
Feliz, feliz cumpleaños is a special song that every Spanish guitarist should know how to play. This PDF provides the chords, melody notes in my number format, and the first line of the song.
Copyright © 2011-2024 by Rajesh Gandhi. All rights reserved.
¿Dios piensa que usted es una persona joven que . . .
1. tiene un gran interés en aprender más acerca de las cosas de Dios?
2. realmente le gusta estar rodeado de gente de mente espiritual que saben más acerca de la Biblia que usted?
3. escucha con atención y entusiasmo al hablar con esa gente?
4. se hacen esas preguntas las personas que muestran que usted quiere saber más acerca de Dios y la Biblia?
5. conoce su Biblia bien para una persona joven?
6. tiene que ser de las cosas de su Padre Celestial?
7. tiene que estar en la casa de su Padre Celestial?
8. abiertamente valora su relación con su Padre Celestial?
9. está continuamente sujetas a vuestros padres?
10. somete a sí mismo a sus padres, incluso cuando están en lo cierto, no lo entiendo, y ellos están equivocados?
11. trata a su madre con respeto, incluso cuando usted se enfrenta públicamente?
12. guarda sus palabras en tu corazón?
13. es abiertamente crecía en sabiduría?
14. es abiertamente aumentando en gracia para con Dios y el hombre?
15. realmente quiere ser como Jesús fue cuando era joven?
Copyright © 2011-2024 by Rajesh Gandhi. All rights reserved.
Whether or not Christians should or even may drink alcohol is a hotly debated subject these days. In this post, I offer my testimony concerning this issue. I hope that it will strengthen other brethren to continue to refrain from drinking alcohol.
As an unsaved college student at Western Illinois University, I had many opportunities to drink alcohol in social settings. Although I also encountered suggestions that I should drink alcohol on at least a few occasions, I never drank alcohol throughout my years of being an unbeliever.
In my thinking then, alcohol was a toxic substance that was not at all necessary for life and posed a serious risk of harming my body and enslaving me. I had watched some of my friends suffer harmful consequences of their drinking and had no desire to experience any of what they did.
In fact, I do not recall ever having in any context even the slightest desire to try alcohol, cigarettes, or any other such substances. As a very health-conscious person majoring in Fitness Instruction and Human Performance, I thought that it would be foolish for to me to drink alcohol.
For me it made perfect sense that if I never tried alcohol, there would be no possibility that I would ever become an alcoholic. Nor would I ever drive under the influence or engage in immoral behaviors under the influence of a mind-controlling substance that has destroyed the lives of millions of people throughout the world.
After becoming a Christian, I devoured the Bible and much other Christian literature. Nothing that I read in those early years of my being a believer signaled to me that I should change any of my thinking about drinking alcohol.
Over the rest of the years that I have been a believer, I have not heard or read anything that suggests to me that there is any value for me as a believer to drink alcohol. Moreover, my present belief that abstaining from alcohol consumption is the right position on this issue is even stronger than when I was an unbeliever who abstained from drinking alcohol.
If you are a believer who has abstained from alcohol consumption in the past, I encourage you to stand fast against any pressure you may be facing to change your position. If you never try alcohol in the first place, you will never become an alcoholic. If you never try alcohol, you will never become drunk.
Even some unbelievers recognize the value of not ever drinking alcohol and resist the pressure to do so; we who have the Spirit of God in us have incomparably greater resources and motivation to do so!
Copyright © 2011-2024 by Rajesh Gandhi. All rights reserved.
THE BIBLE contains the mind of God, the state of man, the way of salvation, the doom of sinners, and the happiness of believers. Its doctrines are holy, its precepts are binding, its histories are true, and its decisions are immutable. Read it to be wise, believe it to be safe, and practice it to be holy. It contains light to direct you, food to support you, and comfort to cheer you.
It is the traveler’s map, the pilgrim’s staff, the pilot’s compass, the soldier’s sword, and the Christian’s charter. Here Paradise is restored, Heaven opened, and the gates of hell disclosed.
CHRIST is its grand subject, our good the design, and the glory of God its end.
It should fill the memory, rule the heart, and guide the feet. Read it slowly, frequently, and prayerfully. It is a mine of wealth, a paradise of glory, and a river of pleasure. It is given you in life, will be opened at the judgment, and be remembered forever. It involves the highest responsibility, will reward the greatest labor, and will condemn all who trifle with its sacred contents.
—From the Gideons International New Testament
Copyright © 2011-2024 by Rajesh Gandhi. All rights reserved.
Rajesh Gandhi holds a Ph.D. in New Testament Interpretation from Bob Jones Seminary; he's a long-time member of Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Greenville, SC.
