Thus says the Lord: "Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.
But they said, 'We will not walk in it.'" --Jeremiah 6:16

 

5 June, 2006   comments: (0) Resource Spotlight   How To Buy and Reform Your MP3 Player An MP3 player is one of the best investments that you can make, especially if you have any amount of commuting that you do on a daily basis. If you think these devices are only music players, think again. You can turn your drive time into a productive learning and bible memory time with one of these units. But what is the best kind to buy, and what would you listen to on your MP3 player? Learn from my trial and error. Ok, so maybe the Reformers didn't really own iPods (can you prove that they didn't, huh?), and maybe my artwork is pretty poor. But I've been meaning to write this post for a long time, and I decided now would be a good time, since I was just asked about this topic by my good friend Jason S. who you may have seen here in the comments of Old Truth; Jason also attends my church. He does a lot of commuting each day, and is interested in putting his hours in the car to good use. I should say at the beginning, that I use my MP3 player in an unusual way. I rarely ever use it with headphones or ear plugs, and I don't listen to music with it. I have it filled with sermons, audio books, theology lectures, and an audio bible. I've listed some of the titles in the column on the right below, to give you an idea of what's available for your MP3 player. I've owned a couple of MP3 players. The first one was a small one that had enough space for only a few sermons, but the task of moving MP3 files back and forth between it and my computer got old really fast. About a year ago, I purchased an iPod; at $249 they are not cheap, but they have some very important features that make it my recommendation. The most important thing to me is storage space. Right now my iPod is indicating that if I were to listen to all 4,400 MP3's on it without stopping, I'd be listening for over 70 days continuous. Somewhere in that 70 days, the battery would run out, and I'd fall asleep, but it's still an impressive statistic. A very important feature these days is called "Pod Casting". Not all MP3 players can do Pod Casting, and this is another reason why I recommend the iPod. Pod Casting is a technology which automatically downloads your favorite radio programs or sermons, and deposits them onto your iPod for you. It saves you the step of going out on the internet to download your favorite programs on a regular basis. Just to give you an example of how this works, every day my computer downloads the latest John MacArthur MP3 for me. Then the next time I plug my iPod into my computer, it moves any new MacArthur MP3's out to my iPod for me. The only catch is, the website that you get your MP3's from has to support Pod Casting. More and more pastors, churches, and radio programs are starting to offer this however. One last reason that I recommend the iPod is that there are so many accessories. In Jason's case, he's going to want one of these cassette adapters that plugs into his iPod's ear phone jack. Then he can just put the cassette into his car stereo, and his iPod will be playing through his car speakers. I also have one of these speaker units that the iPod sits in. It's in our living room, so that our whole family can listen to the iPod together. There is a great website called iLounge that has product reviews for many other iPod accessories. eBay is a great place to buy them. Another must-have MP3 item is the Total Recorder software from High Criteria. It lets you record to MP3, anything that you can hear through your PC's speakers. Many of the audio clips that I have posted here on Old Truth were recorded using this software. If you own an MP3 player and have any tips that you can share, or if you have any questions, or MP3 downloads that you'd like to recommend, post a comment below. On My iPod Purchased Audios: ESV Audio Bible Valley of Vision - Puritan Prayers Foxe's Book of Martyrs Audio Book Handout Church History, Gerstner Decision Making and The Will of God RC Sproul Lectures Puritan Love For Christ - Audio Book The Sovereignty of God, AW Pink Shepherd's Conference MP3s James White Debates Free Downloads: 1500 sermons by S. Lewis Johnson Men of Whom The World Was Not Worthy Gene Cook Debates Church History MP3s from 9marks History & Theology of Calvinism series Phil Johnson lectures James White Lectures Various MP3s from Monergism.com Spurgeon Biography Pod Casts (daily/weekly): John MacArthur Stand To Reason Unchained Radio White Horse Inn Charles Spurgeon Bob DeWaay Wishlist (future buys): Augustine Confessions Calvin for Armchair Theologians Luther for Armchair Theologians The Reformation The Life of David Brainerd Evangelism & the Sovereignty of God Posted by: Jim B.   Link: http://www.oldtruth.com/blog.cfm/id.2.pid.293   Be the first to post a comment about this article        Home  |   About  |  Videos   |  Calvinism