It Starts with Me...Living a Whole, Healthy Life

There Are No Shortcuts

2012-01-13T11:06:00.000-05:00

There really aren't any shortcuts to losing weight and getting healthy.

We all would much prefer a "magic bullet" to the hard work and discipline required to get in shape.

I would, but I haven't found one.

Oh, I've tried and had limited success with a number of different types of what I will call diet aids--Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem, Weight Watchers, Atkins, low carb, low fat, protein shakes, HCG--but nothing lasting.

Because if it isn't about real change, it isn't sustainable.

So here I am again, down somewhat from where I was before, but not nearly where I should or want to be after so many years of toiling in this struggle.

I think I'm finally accepting that getting to an ideal weight for my height and age, and staying there, requires significant, monumental changes.

I've begun tracking everything I eat using a cool app that my husband introduced me to, MyFitnessPal. Every morsel.

What I like about this one over other weight loss journaling tools I've used in the past is that it's at my fingertips via my phone; most foods, even brand names, are already in the app so I don't have to guess; and it tells me what my caloric intake should be in a day, another thing that has pretty much been guesswork.

No more guessing. Guesswork = poor results.

The things that I eat that are pretty healthy, like one egg for breakfast, a half cup of fruit salad, an apple, salad, even chili, have pretty reasonable calorie counts. The things I know I shouldn't eat, like Cheez-its, cookies, potato chips, have pretty enormous calories, even in tiny servings. Of course, I knew that, but seeing the actual numbers is a huge wake-up call.

I can tell you it is totally possible to eat twice as much as one should in a given day without feeling completely fat and greedy.

Totally.

Those not-so-great calories really add up.

What will it take for change to become permanent?

I'm doing laundry last night and I'm thinking, as I whisper a prayer, then congratulate myself for bypassing the hard candy, that I've never really trusted God with my weight loss struggle.

Why not?

Then, I read an article in the paper this morning about Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis and his incredible discipline for healthy living. He regularly admonishes his family, especially his mother. Lewis says, "I stay mad at my mom because she spends so much time with God but doesn't trust God with her body."

Incoming dart. Right between the eyes.

I would hate for my boys to feel this way. They could say this to me now, as Lewis did about his mother, and they would be right.

When he had gone indoors, the blind men came to him, and he asked them, "Do you believe that I am able to do this?”

“Yes, Lord,” they replied.

Then he touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith let it be done to you”; and their sight was restored. -- Matthew 9:28-30

Little faith, little success.

Great faith, great success.

I trust God for many things, but somehow not for this.

Why?

I don't have an answer for that one. I'll be pondering it for a while.

Methinks there are no shortcuts to faith either.

Do you trust--truly trust--God with your chronic struggles? If you (we) did, would the struggle be chronic or would the struggle be over?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eat Less: Overall, not so great, but heading in the right direction. Becoming conscious of everything I'm putting in my mouth.

Move More: Sometimes life works with you when it seems like it's working against you. A little car trouble, resulting in the use of public transportation, goes a long way toward moving more. Walking daily.

Write: This is my other focus area, the one that contributes to my mental and emotional health. Made some progress on the daily writing front, not as much as I would like, but definitely trending in the right direction.

Renewal of Mind = Body Transformation

2012-01-05T07:00:00.000-05:00

Here's something I've learned: you have to be careful who you share with. Because if you share with people what God is speaking into your heart/life, and they don't see what they consider to be concrete the evidence of the blessings God has promised you, according to their chosen measuring stick, they badmouth you.

Who is "they"?

Friends, family, co-workers, neighbors...could be anyone.

Sometimes, it feels like things are to be shared only after they have come into fruition. But faith is not that way. We have to believe--and share--the things we cannot see so that when they do come into fruition, God will be glorified.

I feel that way about a lot of things, one of which is my weight loss. Feels like I've been sharing and making progress, not so obviously evident progress, for years. Some may wonder why I bother or at least why I keep talking about it.

Because, with God's help, I'm going to make my goal weight.

This year.

I've got a little extra motivation this year, but I'll keep that to myself. For now.

Sure, I've talked a lot here about my weight struggles. Seems like I'm constantly hitting a snag, gaining more than losing and restarting with a newfound zeal.

Truth is, in the past five years, I've lost weight. I began this new year lighter than I have in a long time.

Not where I want to be. Not even close.

But encouraged.

Even with the four lbs I gained over the holidays (the least I can ever remember gaining during this time of the year).

So I'm not restarting because that would mean I'd have to go back to where I was before.

I'm recommitting.

Not a New Year's resolution. I actually started working on this before Thanksgiving which is how I managed to gain so little. (I'm usually good for 10+ lbs.)

More like a renewal of the mind.

Romans 12:2 says "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will." (NIV, 1984)

Renewing the mind brings about transformation.

I'm going to transform this body.

This year.

And I'm going with the completely simple, fool-proof method: eat less, move more.

This, believe it or not, has worked well for many, including myself, in the past.

Oh there's more, including the types of foods I choose, how often I eat, and in what quantities, but this simple phrase--"eat less, move more"--succinctly summarizes the plan. It rings in my head which makes it easier to follow.

Anybody with me?

Wednesday Worship: Bridge Over Troubled Water

2011-12-21T16:02:00.000-05:00

I was looking for Angels We Have Heard On High, but God knew what I needed to hear.

Enjoy this rendition of Bridge Over Troubled Water by Josh Groban and Brian McKnight.

May you enjoy peace this Christmas season and should you need one, may you find your bridge over troubled waters in Him.

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

Featured Book: Hell is Real (But I Hate to Admit It)

2011-12-20T07:00:00.000-05:00

What do you believe about hell?

Today's featured book, Hell is Real, is definitely for adults.

No, correction. It's for any believer of any age who doubts the existence of hell. (Younger believers may need translation, but the message remains as relevant to them as to any.)

Read the first chapter.

You may want to read on.

Hell is Real (But I Hate to Admit It)

by Brian Jones

David C. Cook (August 1, 2011)

***Special thanks to Audra Jennings, Senior Media Specialist, The B&B Media Group for sending me a review copy.***

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Brian Jones is the senior pastor at Christ’s Church of the Valley, an innovative community of faith in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Brian is a graduate of Cincinnati Christian University (B.A.) and Princeton Theological Seminary (M. Div.) and has served in leadership positions in churches for over twenty years. His humorous and raw style has made him a popular speaker for conferences, seminars, churches and retreats.

Visit the author's website.

SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:

Recently, the media has ignited in a brimstone blaze of controversy over the question of Hell, and the idea that’s generating so much attention is that Hell isn’t real, and even if it were, a loving God wouldn’t possibly send people there. Is Hell real, or is it a concept that is misguided and out of place in today’s Christianity? Many believe the answer to this question will have profound implications on the future of the faith, and important personalities on both sides of this question are drawing lines in the sand.

If you would like to hear his sermon on Hell is Real, see video below...

Product Details:

List Price: $14.99

Paperback: 272 pages

Publisher: David C. Cook (August 1, 2011)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0781405726

ISBN-13: 978-0781405720

AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:

Eternal Damnation, Really?

The great Christian revolutions come not by the discovery of something that was not known before. They happen when somebody takes radically something that was always there.

—H. Richard Niebuhr¹

My three daughters know that I have one sacred, unbreakable rule when our family drives anywhere on vacation: If you have to go to the bathroom once we’re on the highway, you better have a Pringles can close by because we’re not stopping.

I’ve learned the hard way that when it comes to small bladders, you have to exert martial law on the whole van. Otherwise you’ll spend half your vacation touring the country’s finest rest stops and eating twelve times the daily recommended allowance of pork rinds. In fact, after years of driving to remote vacation spots, I’ve learned four key principles for a successful road trip with kids: Keep ’em sleeping, keep ’em separated, keep ’em dehydrated, and keep ’em watching videos. If complaining erupts, I’ve also found it helpful to have memorized Bill Cosby’s classic line: “I brought you into this world; I can take you out!”²

There have been times, however, I’ve been tempted to break my own rules. For instance, I’ll never forget the time we drove from Dayton, Ohio, to Dallas. We had just stopped in Louisville to fill up, and after twenty minutes we had successfully emptied all the bladders, gotten situated with our snacks, and pulled back on the road heading toward the highway. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a plume of smoke rising from the rooftop of a small apartment complex. I looked for a chimney but saw none. I reassured myself that surely someone had already called 911 and everything would be fine.

Besides, I thought, I can’t even tell for sure if there’s a fire.

Yet something inside of me kept wondering, What if I’m the only person who is seeing this right now? As I approached the onramp I went back and forth in my head, Should we stop? Should we keep going? Should we stop? We don’t have time for this! But what if I’m the only person—I swerved to the left at the last second, drove past the onramp, and circled back into the apartment complex. My guilt (or basic human decency) had won out.

As I pulled up I discovered that it was in fact a fire, and by then the flames had engulfed a large part of the roof. Worse, my suspicion was accurate—we were the only ones there. I asked my wife, Lisa, to call 911, and then I ran inside to warn people to get out.

Once I reached the third floor, I frantically started to bang on the doors, one by one, but at each door there was no response. I then ran down to the second floor and did the same. As I was about to go down to the first floor, a shirtless young man with disheveled hair stuck his head out of one of the second-floor units. He cracked the door open, and as I ran back to meet him, I was hit with a wall of marijuana smoke.

“Yo, my man, what’s up?” he said with a slight grin.

“What’s up is that your apartment is about to burn to the ground. Put your joint down and help me get people out of here!”

We ran down the steps to the first floor. Two couples responded to our knocking. “There’s an elderly lady on the third floor!” one woman shouted. “Did you get her out?”

My heart sank. After racing back up to the third floor, we began furiously pounding on her door. The first-floor neighbor yelled, “She gets confused easily. We may have to break down the door.” But just as she said that the handle slowly began to turn. Coughing, confused, and minutes away from being consumed by the fire, she followed her neighbors down to safety. As we stepped out the front door, we heard sirens in the distance. After we guided the elderly woman into the hands of the paramedics, I turned around and watched the firemen storm up the apartment steps to stop the blaze.

As I stood there, the weight of it all hit me. I let out a deep sigh and thought to myself, What would have happened if I had kept driving?

A few hours later, when my adrenaline had finally worn down and the kids were asleep, a bizarre thought came out of nowhere. I call it a “thought” because to this day I’m still not sure if what popped into my mind came from God or from the triple stack of chocolate chip pancakes from IHOP digesting in my stomach. Here’s what came to my mind:

Let me get this straight: You’re willing to run into a burning building to save someone’s life, but non-Christians all around you are going to hell and you don’t believe it, let alone lift a finger to help.

Admittedly, I was a little freaked out by the “thought,” but at the time I blew it off as a lingering remnant of my conservative-evangelical upbringing.

Four years prior to this event I had graduated from seminary, and with the endless boxes of books I lugged into the moving truck when I left, I also packed my watered-down theology, a healthy dose of skepticism about biblical authority, and a nail-tight conviction that hell was a mythological concept that no loving and thinking Christian could accept. I had weighed the evidence, read all the books, and sat at the feet of experts for three years. Now the verdict was in—the Bible’s teaching about hell was inaccurate at best and hateful at worst. What I was taught as a child was a lie, and now that I was becoming a pastor, I was sure I’d never perpetuate that ridiculous myth again.

Objections to Hell

Undoubtedly, you’re a smart person. You like to read, and you were intrigued enough by the topic of hell and eternal damnation to give this book a go (either that or the bookstore didn’t have that Dan Brown novel you were looking for). And so I think you can understand the six good reasons it seemed ridiculous to me that God would send anyone to hell. Read through these objections and see if you resonate with how I felt.

1. Hell Is a Very Unpopular Idea

Hell has always been an unpopular concept, and for obvious reasons. According to a recent survey by The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, only 59 percent of Americans believe in hell.³ That’s six out of ten people, a slight majority in any room. But another poll narrowed the question even more and discovered that “fewer than half of all Americans (43 percent) thought people go to heaven or hell depending on their actions on earth.”⁴ Furthermore, in twenty-five years of being a pastor, I would add that maybe three out of every ten Christians I’ve met truly believe people who die without becoming Christians go to hell.

The fact that so few people believe in hell made me wonder if it was about as factual as the lost city of Atlantis.

2. The Punishment Doesn’t Fit the Crime

To my post-seminary self, sending someone to hell for all eternity seemed tantamount to sending someone to death row for stealing a postage stamp. Enduring physical, emotional, and spiritual torture not just for a year, or ten years, or billions of years on end, but for all eternity—it just didn’t seem fair. In fact, it seemed hateful and absurd. Who would propose such a punishment on anyone for anything done in this life? Atheist William C. Easttom put it this way,

God says, “Do what you wish, but make the wrong
choice and you will be tortured for eternity in hell.”
That … would be akin to a man telling his girlfriend,
do what you wish, but if you choose to leave
me, I will track you down and blow your brains
out. When a man says this we call him a psychopath
and cry out for his imprisonment/execution.
When God says the same we call him “loving” and
build churches in his honor.⁵

When I looked at it from this vantage point, I understood why Tertullian, a well-known pastor in the early church, wrote, “We get ourselves laughed at for proclaiming that God will one day judge the world.”⁶ In eighteen hundred years that sentiment hasn’t really changed.

3. Life Is Hell Enough

The more I thought about the concept of eternal punishment, the more I kept thinking to myself, Don’t most people go through enough hell in one lifetime? Think about all the suffering people go through in this life. Hell just didn’t make any sense to me. One blogger does a fantastic job of illustrating this point:

Given life’s headaches, backaches, toothaches,
strains, scrapes, cuts, rashes, burns, bruises, breaks,
PMS, fatigue, hunger, odors, molds, colds, parasites,
viruses, cancers, genetic defects, blindness, deafness,
paralysis, retardation, deformities, ugliness, embarrassments,
miscommunications, confused signals,
ignorance, unrequited love, dashed hopes, boredom,
hard labor, repetitious labor, old age, accidents, fires,
floods, earthquakes, typhoons, tornadoes, hurricanes,
and volcanoes, I cannot see how anyone, after
they’re dead, deserves “eternal punishment” too.⁷

4. Hell Seems Intolerant and Hateful

One of the biggest things that weighed on me was how cruel and arrogant the concept of hell sounded when I talked about it with good friends of mine who weren’t Christians.

A friend once asked me, “How can you believe my great-grandparents who brutally suffered and died in the Holocaust won’t go to heaven just because they didn’t believe in Jesus? They were loving, God-fearing people.” I didn’t have a good answer, and the lack of an answer that sounded loving and moral troubled me immensely. The vast majority of people on this planet think that believing anyone—except people like Hitler who commit heinous crimes against humanity—would go to hell is arrogant, insensitive, ignorant, and hateful.

Victor Hugo wrote, “Hell is an outrage on humanity. When you tell me that your deity made you in his image, I reply that he must have been very ugly.”⁸ I had to agree. What kind of God would send anyone to hell? I thought.

5. Respected Evangelical Scholars Reject the Idea of Hell

What troubled me even more was that everywhere I turned, noted Christian scholars confirmed my inner struggle. For instance, evangelical theologian Clark Pinnock wrote,

I consider the concept of hell as endless torment in
body and mind an outrageous doctrine.… How can
Christians possibly project a deity of such cruelty
and vindictiveness whose ways include inflicting
everlasting torture upon his creatures, however sinful
they may have been? Surely a God who would do
such a thing is more nearly like Satan than like God.⁹

Statements like this made sense to me. Knowing that highly educated people like Pinnock and others thought this way gave me more confidence that it might be okay to veer away from my traditional Christian beliefs if I chose to do so. If they veered from clear biblical teachings, why couldn’t I?

6. I Like Being Liked

Finally, truth be told, the need to be liked was a real factor in my personal struggle. I hated the fact that I could have friendships with people, but if I stayed true to my Christian beliefs, I felt like I had to spend all my time and energy trying to convert them. I wanted to embrace them, cherish their uniqueness, understand their beliefs, and celebrate our diverse cultural and religious upbringings. Hell was an affront to all of this. I didn’t want to be thought of as the nutty, intolerant guy who was always trying to get people to admit that they were sinners in need of a Savior. I wanted to be the cool, relevant, and intelligent pastor people liked and wanted their friends to know.

Do you resonate with any of those objections to hell?

An Unexpected Confrontation

The combined weight of the attacks by my professors and the sheer immorality of the idea itself finally broke the theological dam open for me. Over time I simply gave up on the idea, proudly. The problem was that believing the Bible is God’s Word is, well, up near the top of any pastor’s job description, at least in an evangelical church. I needed a job, so I came up with what seemed like a simple solution:

I would never tell anyone about my disbelief. In fact, I carried my secret around for four years after graduate school without ever telling anyone, not the people who went to my church, not the staff with whom I worked, not my friends, not even my wife. The secret was so well hidden that sometimes I was able to forget about it—until that apartment fire in Louisville, and then again a few months later at a monastery in northwest Ohio.

I was in the habit of going to a monastery roughly once a month for a spiritual retreat. I would arrive early in the day to pray, journal, take long walks in the woods, and leave late in the afternoon. On one such retreat I felt an overwhelming sense of spiritual pressure, the spiritual equivalent of the kind of pressure you feel in your ears when swimming in deep water. I sensed that something was wrong, but I didn’t know what it was. For the better part of the day, I locked myself into a cold, cement-block room and asked God to show me the source of my consternation.

For the first three hours, I heard nothing—my prayers seemed as if they were bouncing off the ceiling. By noon I felt like I was starting to make a connection with God, but I wasn’t prepared for what happened next, when I felt God’s Spirit impress upon my heart, “Brian, this charade has to end. You’re a pastor and your job is to teach people the Bible, but you don’t believe what you’re teaching. You don’t believe in hell.”

I was a little startled, so I picked up my Bible and did something I had up to that point discouraged people in my church from doing—I played what I call “Bible Roulette.” In his book Formula for a Burning Heart, A. W. Tozer said, “An honest man with an open Bible and a pad and pencil is sure to find out what is wrong with him very quickly.”¹⁰ I can attest to the truth of that statement.

I closed my eyes, wildly fanned the pages back and forth, and randomly pointed to passages and read them. The first passage was about eternal punishment. I looked up at the ceiling and said, “That’s a coincidence.” The second passage was about God’s wrath. This time I felt a little uneasy. Then I did it a third time and couldn’t believe my eyes—eternal punishment again. I’m not usually the most mystical person in the world, but I slowly closed the pages of my Bible, put it down on the table next to me, and said, “I get the message.” Church leaders must “keep hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience” (1 Tim. 3:9), and hell is one of those “deep truths.”

I spent the next five hours reading and underlining every passage about hell in the New Testament, and as I did, I felt an overwhelming sense of conviction. What I discovered shocked me. I had always assumed that the Bible contained only a few scattered references to hell. I was wrong; hell is taught everywhere.

Take the book of Matthew, for instance, just one book among twenty-seven in the entire New Testament. Here is what we learn about hell from that book alone:

Twelve separate passages record Jesus’ teachings about the judgment of nonbelievers and their assignment to eternal punishment.¹¹ Matthew 13:49–50 summarizes them all: “This is how it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Jesus employed the most graphic language to describe what hell is like: fire (Matt. 5:22; 18:9); eternal fire (18:8); destruction (7:13); away from his presence (7:23); thrown outside (8:12; 22:13; 25:30); blazing furnace (13:42); darkness (22:13; 25:30); eternal punishment (25:46); weeping and gnashing of teeth (8:12; 13:42; 13:50; 22:13; 24:51).

Jesus twice used the word eternal (18:8; 25:46) to convey that the punishment of nonbelievers would continue forever.

As I moved from the Gospels into the rest of the New Testament, I was struck by how the writers unashamedly addressed the issue. There is no hesitancy or apology in their words. The basic tone is,

“This is a reality. Now let’s get out there and tell people how to avoid it.” Second Thessalonians 1:7–9 summarizes what these other New Testament authors taught:

This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed
from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful
angels. He will punish those who do not know God
and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They
will be punished with everlasting destruction and
shut out from the presence of the Lord and from
the glory of his might.

My heart raced as I flipped page after page after page. I discovered, by the end of my study, that the New Testament’s teaching about hell is not an ambiguous topic supported by a few hard-to understand passages. It is inescapable: Virtually every book in the New Testament underscores some aspect of the reality of hell. Jesus taught it; Paul, Peter, and every early church leader taught it, but I wasn’t teaching it. I realized I had a decision to make. Could I discount what Jesus taught about hell if I based my belief in heaven on similar passages in the same books?

Could it be possible that Jesus’ disciples actually had some of the same reservations I had but still persisted in teaching it because they knew in the depths of their souls that hell was real? Wasn’t my hesitancy to believe in hell a sign of my compassion for people? Yet, if hell really exists, and I knew that but wasn’t willing to tell people how to avoid it, wouldn’t that also be the most extreme form of cruelty imaginable? Most of all, could it be that I was ultimately basing my acceptance of this teaching more on what people thought of me than on whether I felt it was intellectually plausible?

As the weight of it all finally set in, I dropped to my knees, stretched out my arms and legs to the sides, and fell prostrate on the unfinished concrete monastery floor. Not content, however, with the act of simply lying facedown, I shoved my face over and over against the concrete as if an invisible hand pushed against the base of my neck. I buried my face in the silence and wept. After an hour or so passed, I just couldn’t stomach listening to myself any longer. I stood up, gathered my belongings, and walked out of the monastery retreat house I had rented for the day. While my planning retreat certainly didn’t end quite like I thought it would, I left knowing exactly what I needed to do.

I drove straight home and met Lisa in our kitchen, sharing everything that had transpired from beginning to end, and then I begged for her forgiveness. Then I drove over to the church, gathered my staff, and did the same. Later that night at an emergency Leadership Team meeting, I walked our bewildered church overseers step-by-step through every detail of my secret. A few days later, standing before the church, I completely fell apart. Four long years of strategic rationalizing couldn’t protect me from the inevitable—my sin had indeed found me out.

Do you want to know what’s scary? When I confessed this, nobody really cared. In fact, the response from a man on my Leadership Team captured the response of just about everyone: “Oh, thank God. You really scared me,” he said. “I thought you called us together to tell us that you did something serious like have an affair.”

Want to know what’s even scarier? You probably agree with him.

I’ve shared that story hundreds of times over the last two decades, and each time I’ve always gotten the same reaction: “Let me get this straight—you started believing in hell again because you reread every passage in the New Testament that talked about hell and then fell on the ground and asked for forgiveness?”

When you put it that way, well, then yes, that’s exactly how it happened. But it wasn’t that simple. There was much more going on beneath the surface. Undergirding that experience were two foundational truths that I didn’t come to realize until much later.

Christians must repent of “sins of disbelief ” in the same way they repent of “sins of behavior.”

Most Christians I know think they need to ask God’s forgiveness only for things they do that are outside of God’s will for His followers. Did I lie today? I need to ask for forgiveness. Did I gossip? I need to ask for forgiveness for that sin too. Did I take something that wasn’t mine? I’ll ask for forgiveness for that as well. Sins of disbelief are no different. 1 Timothy 4:16 says, “Watch your life and doctrine closely.

Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.”

It’s life and doctrine—we can sin against God in both how we act and how we think. Both our actions and our thoughts should be under Christ’s control because both have the power to negatively impact our relationship with God and the spiritual walk of everyone around us. We can’t live our lives guided by the Word of God and then allow our minds to function differently. Scripture tells us to love the Lord our God with … what? All our hearts, souls, and minds! How we think is a reflection of our love for God. Don’t believe me? Reread the New Testament and notice how many times the phrase false teachers pops up. Then look at how ruthlessly Paul and other church leaders deal with false teaching.

Christians don’t think their way out of a faith crisis; they repent their way out of a faith crisis.

When it comes to leaving behind “sins of disbelief,” recapturing a biblically correct position regarding the reality of hell (and the fact that non-Christians will go there) is never accomplished by laying out all the evidence and weighing the options. It’s about obedience to Jesus Christ. At its core, believing in hell is an obedience issue, not a theological issue. Am I willing to trust Christ to forgive my sins? That’s an obedience issue. Am I also willing to trust what He says about heaven? Of course. He’s my Lord. If He says it, I believe it. Then why would the issue of hell be any different? As Oswald Chambers wrote,

The golden rule for understanding spiritually is not
intellect, but obedience. If a man wants scientific
knowledge, intellectual curiosity is his guide; but
if he wants insight into what Jesus Christ teaches,
he can only get it by obedience. If things are dark
to me, then I may be sure there is something I will
not do.¹²

The fact of the matter is: Hell is real. Deciding whether or not hell exists isn’t an intellectual exercise; it’s a matter of eternal life or death. Of course I still have doubts about hell from time to time, but the point is my relationship with the risen Jesus supersedes all my doubts. The reality you and I need to grasp is that this is happening. Right now. On our watch. This is happening to friends and acquaintances of yours and mine who aren’t Christians. And you and I have one decision to make in this matter—are we going to keep on driving and pretend we know nothing, or are we going to turn around?

If you’re ready to slam on the brakes and do a 180, I’ll sit in the passenger’s seat and take that ride with you. I’ll help you understand why hell makes sense. I’ll also help you feel good about believing in the Bible—all of it. I’ll help you feel confident defending what you believe before your friends who lump you together with the crazy televangelists who make people want to throw up in their mouths. Together we’ll discover that believing what the Bible teaches regarding hell is logical, fair, and above all else—loving.

And finally, if you let me, I’ll also coach you on how you can have authentic conversations with your friends without getting creepy in the process. That’s really, really important. More on that later.

However, I have one tiny piece of advice: You might want to grab a Pringles can because we’re not stopping.

Notes

1. H. Richard Niebuhr, quoted in Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace?

(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1997), 13–14.

2. Bill Cosby, “The Grandparents,” Himself (Motown, 1983), compact disc.

3. Greg Garrison, “Many Americans Don’t Believe in Hell, but What

about Pastors?” USA Today, August 1, 2008, http://www.usatoday.com/news/

religion/2009-08-01-Hell-damnation_N.htm.

4. Christiane Wicker, “‘How Spiritual Are We?’ The PARADE Spirituality Poll,”

PARADE, October 4, 2009, 5.

5. William C. Easttom II, quoted in Gary Poole, How Could God Allow Suffering

and Evil? (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003), 59.

6. Tertullian, The Apology, quoted in Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson,

trans., Ante-Nicene Fathers (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1999), 4:52.

7. Edward T. Babinski, “Hell and Heaven, and Satan, and Christian Superstition,”

October 22, 2005, http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/skepticism/heaven_hell.html.

8. Victor Hugo, quoted in Rufus K. Noyes, M.D., Views of Religion (Boston: L.K.

Washburn, 1906), 125.

9. Clark Pinnock, “The Destruction of the Finally Impenitent,” Criswell

Theological Review 4 (1990): 246–47, 253, as quoted in Randy Alcorn, Heaven

(Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale, 2004), 24–25.

10. A. W. Tozer, The Formula for a Burning Heart, quoted in Martin H. Manser,

compiler, The Westminster Collection of Christian Quotations (Louisville, KY:

Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 363.

11. See Matthew 7:21–23; 8:12; 10:15, 33; 11:22–24; 12:41–42; 13:30, 40–43,

49–50; 24:50–51; 25:11–12, 29–46.

12. Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest (New York: Dodd, Mead &

Company, 1935), 209.

How A Little Can Change A Lot

2011-12-02T11:42:00.001-05:00

Today's post is courtesy of Jessica Dotta, Senior Editor of Inspire a Fire., by way of Gina Holmes, author of Crossing Oceans and Dry As Rain.

/--------------------------------------------------------------/

“We have much to be judged on when he comes, slums and battlefields and insane asylums, but these are the symptoms of our illness and the result of our failures in love.” -- Madeleine L'Engle

When my brother traveled to the Sudan he had an encounter that changed his life—and as it ends up, mine too.

He stood in Darfur at an orphanage filled with children leftover from the genocide. There were over 800 children, and during the night wild dogs were dragging them off and killing them.

My brother already felt shell-shocked from the travesties he'd witnessed in Uganda.

The day was hot. The sun beat down upon him. His camera had nearly been ruined from all the dust. He'd barely slept. His gear was heavy. Yet his conscience was seared by the numbness he felt, so he turned and confessed to a Sudanese pastor.

"We shall pray right now that your heart will be opened," he was told.

Not long after that prayer three young children approached Joshua and started to follow him. After a bit, his father nature kicked in and he stopped and sang Father Abraham. It didn't take long before the four of them were dancing and going through the motions.

When they finished, he asked the children to tell him how they came to be there.

The oldest, a girl, answered. "The soldiers came and shot my mother and father, so I came here."

The two other children nodded in agreement. "Me, too."

He was grief struck, but it was what transpired next that tore my heart. "Do you have a Mommy?" The little girl asked my brother.

"Yes," he answered.

"And a Daddy?"

Again, his answer was yes.

"Oh," she said, her voice hinting at a strange intermingling of numbness and grief.

Her question stirs me still. For I believe it came from her soul and revealed the thoughts of her heart. She didn't want to know what his country was like, what kind of food he ate, or what he did for a living. She had her own bullet holes leftover from the genocide. Her world consisted of this single question: Who still had parents and who didn't?

In her questions I heard her worry and fear. Imagine being trapped in a war-torn country, a land of famine, drought and disease. Imagine trying to survive it as an orphan with death threatening you every hour. No matter how much she's endured, at the end of the day, she's still just a little girl. And all she really wants is her Mom and Dad.

I imagined my daughter living as an orphan in the Sudan. If I were shot and dying, it would be my hope that my brothers and sisters would care for her. But what if her aunts and uncles were killed too? What was it then, that her parents hoped?

As members of the body of Christ these children are not alone. They have aunts and uncles. Multitudes and multitudes and multitudes of them. Talk about staggering! These kids are our nieces and nephews! Mine. Yours.

So who, I wondered, within the church has the responsibility to step in?

I didn't like the answer that came. Earlier that week I was shocked to learn that globally I was one of the richest people in the world—even though as an American, I'm pretty poor.

Like it or not I was the rich aunt. I had knowledge of the situation. That made me accountable.

I wasn't comfortable with the knowledge then, and I'm not comfortable with the knowledge now. But I am determined to do something.

Anything.

That day Joshua had in his possession a picture book that someone had asked him to give to someone in the Sudan. It was a children's book with a story about how we have a Heavenly Father who always loves and cares for us. Joshua read the book and gave it to them.

An American woman took it upon herself to raise the money to build shelter. Every person who donated, even a dollar, helped to create a place where the little girl now sleeps safe from wild dogs.

When Joshua told me he's going to start a branch of Watermelon Ministries called Media Change, a non-profit encouraging Americans to give up a portion of the money spent on entertainment to serve those fighting world hunger and thirst, I wanted to support it.

For seven years he's helped non-profits raise money that serves the "least of these." He's seen the impact a small investment can have. This is a brand new initiative. He's not quite ready to launch, but you can sign up and be kept updated at http://www.mediachange.org/. His first goal is garner the support of 10,000 people who are willing to give $10 a month. I'm number #3.

This is only a blog post, but who knows what one blog post can do.

What if the task of helping others isn't as overwhelming as we make it?

/---------------------------------------------------------------/

Thank you, Jessica.

If you have a blog and would like to make a difference, please tithe your blog. For more information: https://www.facebook.com/#!/events/195671567184043/

Featured Book: Triple Dog Dare

2011-11-28T09:31:00.001-05:00

Over the next several days, I'm featuring several books that were on my calendar for 2011 but slipped through the cracks, but I still want to share.

The first is Triple Dog Dare, a devotional book for boys, by Jeremy Jones.

Triple Dog Dare Devotional

by

Jeremy V. Jones

David C. Cook (October 1, 2011)

***Special thanks to Audra Jennings, Senior Media Specialist, The B&B Media Group for sending me a review copy.***

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jeremy V. Jones is an award-winning journalist who has served as senior associate editor of Breakaway magazine. He has authored several books, including Toward the Goal: The Kaka Story and The Keeper: The Tim Hoard Story. He also writes for magazines such as Clubhouse and Christianity Today. He resides with his wife and two children in Colorado.

SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:

Boys want action. They don’t want to sit around and talk—that’s for grown-ups and girls. They engage life and relationships by doing something: skateboarding, playing games or re-creating favorite movie scenes. So why should faith be any different? That’s why Jeremy V. Jones created Triple Dog Dare: One Year of Dynamic Devotions for Boys—to provide the action boys need in order to grow their faith.

The Bible is full of action. Remember how David slew Goliath, Daniel faced those lions, Paul survived a shipwreck and Jesus stood up for a woman about to be killed? God made boys to take His truth and do something with it, to man up and change the world. These action-packed devotions for boys ages 9 to 12 are filled with godly truth and bold spiritual challenges that transform time with God into the adventure of the day.

Triple Dog Dare connects God’s Word to boys’ hearts and hands with real-life scenarios and activities. Each day is filled with short Scriptures, concise biblical truth and a daily dare, all challenging them to put their faith into practice. Scripture readings from every book of the Bible open up the action-packed Word of God. Whether it’s drawing comic strips of biblical battles, dreaming up a life list of goals, making snack packs for the homeless or producing Bible-based movies, boys will go on daily dynamic experiences with God, taking faith off the page and setting it into motion. Themes cover the daily realities of pre-teen males, including bullying, peer pressure, girls, sibling rivalry, honesty and more.

These exciting devotions will inspire boys’ hearts toward godly characteristics such as integrity, generosity and kindness. Parents will appreciate watching Christ-like traits emerge as each dare is undertaken. It is a manual that will deepen boys’ friendships with Jesus as they look forward to spending time with Him every day. So if you know a boy who is up for the challenge, triple dog dare him!

Product Details:

List Price: $14.99
Reading level: Ages 9 and up
Paperback: 432 pages
Publisher: David C. Cook (October 1, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0781404576
ISBN-13: 978-0781404570

AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER (Click on images to enlarge):

REVIEW

I wanted to take a look at Triple Dog Dare because I've got boys. Three of them. And one is approaching that very interesting period between 10 and 13 years old. Thought this devotional might be something we'd find interesting.

We did.

Everything from trash talking to puking to zombies. That's the part he likes. Then there's everything from practicing patience to respecting others to taking responsibility for one's actions. That's the part I like.

The activities are all about reaching beyond one's comfort zone and getting involved with others. Some seemed more practical and readily done by teens than by this age group, but all are worth consideration.

Take a look. I Triple Dog Dare you!

Wednesday Worship: Nobody Like You, Lord

2011-11-16T13:30:00.001-05:00

Nobody like, nobody like,

You, Lord, You, Lord.

There is nobody like

You, Lord, You, Lord.

Picked up Fred Hammond's 2009 Love Unstoppable CD a couple of weeks ago.

I love most every song, as I expected I would--it's the incomparable Fred Hammond!--but this is the one that's been swirling around in my head.

Because, frankly, there's no one quite like Jesus.

I can't find nobody,

There just ain't nobody.

Can't find nobody,

Nobody, nobody.

Have you found someone like Jesus? Do tell, or share why you agree "there ain't nobody...".

Live Life Now

2011-10-25T07:00:00.000-04:00

My life was over but I never got what I wanted.

So ended a poetic illustration by speaker Luci Swindoll. Luci's advice to the Women of Faith attendees was to "Live fully in this moment. Life fully now."

This is my last Tampa Women of Faith post. It was a tremendous experience, one I will always cherish. I have a new friend, Gina, and I had some amazing women pour into my spirit.

It was appropriate for them to end the conference with Luci Swindoll.

Luci Swindoll is nearly 80 years old and she has an arthritic knee, but she also has a deep reservoir of wisdom and joy. Luci's message was about experiencing joy.

We don't always like where we find ourselves and we expend a vast amount of energy wanting something else, waiting for something else. As Luci says, "We've forgotten what it means to be happy."

About life, Luci said, "It's a gift and it's called life. Don't miss it be always wanting something else."

How many women spend time wishing they could go back to happier times or waiting and hoping for better times? If we spent our time and energy on making the most of where we are today with what we have today, we will be happier people.

And the world will be a happier place.

Luci admonished us to "Do something for your soul, something that will make life fuller or richer or more substantial within."

And she asked us, "What are those things that turn your joy crank?"

When it was all said and done, I thought (and tweeted), "Luci Swindoll is the grandma everyone dreams of, and every child deserves."

Sometimes Getting Beyond the Pain Means Getting Out of the Boat

2011-10-24T07:00:00.001-04:00

Angie looks deranged in this picture, doesn't she? I assure you she's not. She is a powerful and funny speaker.

I can't relate Angie Smith's talk which centered on the loss of her daughter. I can't do it justice.

Too painful.

Too close to home.

We too lost a daughter to physical challenges identified while she was yet in utero. Our Stephanie was a stillbirth; Angie got to hold her daughter until she breathed her last breath a few hours after delivery.

Both are devastating experiences.

Angie talked about impossible faith using the story of Peter being asked to walk on water and, because he realized it wasn't something he should be able to do, he began to sink. To paraphrase, Angie said, "Every day we have to choose between what the world tells us and allows us access to, and a man who tells us He is the Son of God."

I sobbed through her talk, especially once she took a moment to recognize all the women in the audience who had experienced a pregnancy or infant loss, in keeping with the National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day.

I thought I was over it.

Not "over it." You're never over this.

Rather, I thought I had made my peace with my loss.

No, I haven't.

Not sure I ever fully will.

The thought that came to my mind was that getting past the pain is not the same as being healed from the hurt. Pain tolerance can grow over time.

Healing for this thing seems impossible.

It will require impossible faith.

What I also know is that Jesus will hold your hand and walk with you even as you are walking in pain. He, of course, is waiting for me to give my pain and my inability to forgive myself for what I see as my fault to Him, but as long as I'm carrying it, He'll still be right there by my side to soothe and to comfort so that I can bear it.

Until I no longer have to because He does.

Are You Angry?

2011-10-21T07:00:00.001-04:00

Anger.

Anger is dangerous. It's hurtful and devastating to those we love. To ourselves.

Nicole Johnson told us anger is unique for women. Women find it hard to admit to being angry. When asked, "What's wrong?", we often reply, "Nothing", internalizing rather than expressing the anger.

I know that's true for me. I will go so far as to say I'm hurt or disappointed, but I realized I rarely ever admit to being angry.

But Nicole also told us, "Anger is never buried dead. It's always alive."

Anger lies in wait, for just the right moment--or I should say, for just the wrong moment--to explode. It erupts and overflows like hot lava, spilling onto everyone and everything in its path.

As Nicole continued to teach about anger, she told us that we have as much right to be angry as we do be thirsty. Anger is made up of hurt, fear and frustration, the frustration simmering on the top.

It's what we do with the anger.

Nicole continued to share about dealing with anger, using her divorce as an object lesson, but she was three things that will stay with me:

"You need people who will walk alongside you, not throw rocks at you."

"No other God has wounds."

"God has the best recycling program. He takes the trash of our lives and turns it into treasure. He sees what we cannot see for ourselves. He turns us in the most beautiful creations."

Are you angry? Who are you angry with, is it God? Where are you directing your anger?

Can you see yourself letting go of that anger, giving it to God?

He is happy to take your anger from you.

God's Great Blessings

2011-10-20T07:00:00.000-04:00

Have you ever considered how much God blesses you in a single year? In what ways does God bless you? What types of blessings does God promise?

One-Year God’s Great BlessingsDevotional

Want half a blessing? Or God’s best? Award-winning authorPatricia Raybon dares to pursue God’s greatest in her new One Year® devotional,God’s Great Blessings. Join her search for the enriching secrets of a boldChristian life, exploring 52 biblical values and virtues that God blesses notbecause we’re good but because He’s God. This path is uplifting, challenging,sometimes surprising but always transforming. Get on board with our BlessingGod for the life-changing journey.

About the Author

Award-winning writer Patricia Raybon is author of twocritically acclaimed books, “I Told the Mountain to Move” and “My First WhiteFriend.” Her personal essays have appeared in the New York Times Magazine,Newsweek, USA Weekend, Charles Stanley Ministries’ In Touch Magazine and havealso aired on National Public Radio. She writes full-time on life-changingfaith. Visit Patricia’s Website at http://www.patriciaraybon.com.

Bound for Glory (Coming November 1,2011)

This powerful gift book is inspired by a stunning collectionof calligraphic paintings by world-renowned calligrapher Timothy R. Botts andfeaturing reflections in verse by award-winning author Patricia Raybon. Thebook’s 52 paintings are visual interpretations—in words and pictures—of AfricanAmerican spiritual songs. These amazing songs are an important part of ourAmerican heritage, and they continue to give us hope in the face of life’s manychallenges. The book also includes 52 reflective readings from Botts andAfrican-American writer Patricia Raybon. It also includes lyrics from thespirituals along with inspirational Scripture verses from the New LivingTranslation.

Video Trailer for God’s Great BlessingDevotional

REVIEW

What constitutes a blessing? Do we know God's blessings when we encounter them?

The One-Year God's Great Blessings Devotional from Patricia Raybon and Tyndale House will help you to discover the answers to these questions. With 365 devotionals examining God's blessings and the virtues He seeks in us, this beautifully appointed devotional will inspire you to think about and grab hold to the blessings of God in your life.

Bound in soft green leather, a color that signifies life and living, these devotionals will speak to and encourage you to see and embrace the blessings of God. Tradebook-sized, the book contains pages with an appropriate weight, not too heavy but heavier than the average book, perfect for notations as you read.

The title didn't grab me. It's a mouthful, but then I guess the title of a devotional book has to convey what the book is about and how many devotionals it contains. This title accomplishes both of those things.

I skimmed this book, and I loved what I saw. When you consider all that you may encounter in the course of a full year--birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, funerals, job loss, sickness, the start or ending of relationships, promotions, financial woes or harvest, and other unexpected events, good and bad--having a devotional book that reminds you to consider and meditate upon God's blessings is a good thing. I'm sure a lot of people could benefit from such a devotional during these recessionary times.

Author Patricia Raybon has a second release coming out, Bound for Glory, a full-color, coffee table book which pays homage to African-American spirituals. The colorful pages of this book caught my eye so much so, that I found myself flipping through it even before examining the devotional. Beside the lyrics of each spiritual, you will find a poem or writing that not only speaks to the spiritual but elevates it into contemporary context.

VISIT THE FULL BLOGTOUR SCHEDULE AT http://bit.ly/PatriciaRaybonVirtualBookTour.

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

Wednesday Worship: It Is Well

2011-10-19T07:00:00.001-04:00

The music at the Women of Faith conference was awesome.

Although I was familiar with both Nicole C. Mullen and Natalie Grant, I wouldn't have called myself a fan.

I do now.

Both women were just astounding in their energy, their vocal ability and their heartfelt worship.

So it's fitting to share them with you. Today, Natalie Grant singing "It Is Well".

I was so astounded I didn't actually record her singing in Tampa. From the moment she began, I was caught up in worship.

This video is from a different city, but the best one I could find online. The experience was very similar.

Ignore that this clip was shot from a distance and starts into the song. At least this woman had the presence of mind to record something.

Close your eyes and listen. Tell me that you don't get chills.

Off to find a Natalie Grant CD...

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

We Matter To God

2011-10-18T07:00:00.000-04:00

Lest you think the only speaker at the conference was Sheila Walsh, there was a whole cadre of other speakers, all of whom had wonderful, insightful things to say.

Lisa Harper, she of the southern drawl mixed with Western twang, started out by asking, "Have you ever seen something with the naked, natural eye only to find out later that it wasn't at all what you thought you saw?" (If you ever meet Lisa, ask her about the naked man in Pulpit Rock Park, Colorado Springs, CO.)

I can't believe I didn't get a picture of Lisa, but since I didn't, the IMAGINE sign works well. Because the entire weekend was about imagining ourselves to be more than we know or believe in God.

Lisa's message was about the holes in our heart, holes that only God can fill. Using illustrations from her own life, Lisa offered a number of quotable phrases, all of which I scribbled down for future reference.

Consider these:

"God had saved me, but I thought he tolerated me. I didn't know He delighted in me."

How's that for mind-blowing? How many women were punched in the gut upon hearing this because they too thought the same thing?

More from Lisa:

"Little girls with Daddy issues grow up to be women with intimacy issues."

"The Bible is not a rule book, not a textbook. It's a love story."

"God loves messy people."

Most of all, Lisa implored us to remember that God knows everything there is to know about us, every detail and He knows because we matter to God.

"God knows every detail about us because we matter to God."

Do you realize just how much you matter to God? Can you make the leap from believing you're tolerated to believing you are a delight?

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

Resting On God's Promises

2011-10-17T07:00:00.000-04:00

I'm going to continue to post from the Tampa Women of Faith conference throughout the week.

Sheila Walsh, who I could not get enough of, after her very first session, asked, "What is always true, not just for a season?"

We all know about seasons. We go through seasons in our lives. People come into our lives for a season. We endure certain circumstances for a season. We think "If I get just make it through this season..." because there's always another season coming.

But what is true in and out of season, across all seasons?

Do you ever wonder whether the troubles in your life stem from some deficiency in you?

It's hard to express this without the entire context, but I think you'll understand. Sometimes we think, deep down, that the root of the problems in our lives is us, that something dark and secret about us is the reason for the bad things that happen to us.

But God is sovereign. For always and forever.

Sheila read a portion of Psalms 91 to highlight her message about the promises of God, about what He has promised to do for us when we find ourselves in a world of difficult circumstances and hurt, but I'm going to post the entire thing here. It's that powerful. In it, you will find more than one or two promises. There's a whole bunch of them, so many that if we only focused on the promises in this one passage of Scripture--although you may want to find out about others the Lord has made, that you may have the totality of His grace--we'd be doing ourselves a world of service.

Note, however, that's there a promise in there that we must make as well. (Hint: It's on the 2nd line.)

Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”

Surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence.

He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge;

his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day,

nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday.

A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.

You will only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked.

If you say, “The LORD is my refuge,” and you make the Most High your dwelling,

no harm will overtake you, no disaster will come near your tent.

For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways;

they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.

You will tread on the lion and the cobra; you will trample the great lion and the serpent.

“Because he loves me,” says the LORD, “I will rescue him;

I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.

He will call on me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble,

I will deliver him and honor him.

With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.”

Did you catch all the promises, all the things God said He will do for you?

Now you know what God will do for you.

What will you do?

Connecting in Healthy Ways

2011-10-16T15:33:00.001-04:00

Friday afternoon's message from speaker Sheila Walsh was no less powerful than her morning talk. The theme for the afternoon--for the day, really--was about having healthy relationships, healthy connections. Connecting with others is vital, but we have to learn to do so in healthy ways.

Sheila began by telling us, "Guilt says, 'I've done something wrong.' Shame says, 'I am something wrong.'"

Peace, at least the peace of God that passses understanding, comes from a Greek word, eirene. Peace is the total security and well being because God's presence is with us.

Circumstances can remain the same and God's peace still works, "because the peace comes not from the absence of trouble but from the presence of Christ."

Illuminating the Bible story, in which Jesus, after his peaceful sleep during a storm was interrupted by fearful disciples, Sheila went on to say, "Whether Christ speaks to the storm outside your life or inside your life, it doesn't matter. They both have to obey."

Finally, Sheila talked about unforgiveness. Unforgiveness is a prison that will bottle you up worse than any guilt or shame. But sometimes, in the midst of really difficult circumstances, we may feel as though we have nothing left to give, not even forgiveness.

"Fair doesn't live here, but Jesus does...Forgiveness is God's gift to us as we live in a life that's unfair."

Do you struggle with unforgiveness? Have you found God's peace?

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

Q & A with Sheila Walsh and Dr. Henry Cloud

2011-10-16T00:12:00.001-04:00

Mid-afternoon on Day 1 of the Women of Faith conference, there was a Q&A session with Sheila Walsh and Dr. Henry Cloud. Attendees were invited to drop anonymous questions into baskets from which the questions were chosen.

I couldn't see Sheila and Henry during this portion to take a picture since they were seated and I was stuck behind one of the monitors that circled the stage.

But here are some of the notable quotes that came from the Q&A session:

"To make any marriage work well, you have to be part of a community." -- Dr. C.

"You don't want anybody in your cage (your community) who doesn't want to be there." -- Dr. C.

"A burden is bigger than a person can carry." -- SW

I tweeted this yesteday but I'll requote it here:

"Somebody can hand their stuff to you, but you don't have to take it." -- SW

"Marriage is one of the most perfect places to learn to be more like Christ." -- SW

"When you can draw boundaries and live with the uncomfortableness for a while, you will end up with something worth fighting for." -- SW

"'No' is a complete sentence." -- SW

"Identity is always about saying 'no'...You will never find yourself by starting at the top...Try a bunch of stuff...You will find your gift in your heart." -- Dr. C.

The two were full of wisdom and humor, and together gave great answers to some complex, intriguing questions.

I have so much more to share. Stay tuned...

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

Blogger/Phone Problems

2011-10-14T23:41:00.001-04:00

Blogger (or maybe my Galaxy phone) stopped being friendly via smartphone about modway thru Friday's session of Women of Faith. But I took copious notes so I'll post more summaries as soon as I can.

Necessary Endings #womenoffaith

2011-10-14T13:07:00.003-04:00

Life is about beginnings and endings. Not all endings are alike.

Endings are prunings. As with a rosebush, prunings are necessary to reach full vitality.

-- When the rosebush produces more roses than it can sustain and reach its potential

-- When the rosebush has branches that are sick and not going to get better

-- When the rosebush has dead flowers or branches that are taking up space

We hold on because we are hoarders. We believe deep down, like people who hang on to a bunch of junk because "I might need that."

What we really believe is "I don't believe anyone can or will provide for me." and "No one gives to me."

Sometimes it's because we're stuck in the past. But we can't be in two places, in abundant life and in unsatisfying conditions, at the same time.

You may need to prune patterns of behavior, patterns that keep you from having satisfying relationships or a sense of prosperity, that is, of total well-being.

God is calling us to take some risks in order to have the necessary endings that will lead to new beginnings.

Daughters of The King #womenoffaith

2011-10-14T12:44:00.001-04:00

A group of women from New Port Richey came adorned in tiaras. These women know they are daughters of The King. What else would a princess wear?

The Law of Happiness #womenoffaith

2011-10-14T11:31:00.001-04:00

What makes people happy?

Only 10% of happiness comes from circumstances.

We have a setpoint of who we are as a person. Life and growth are about changing that setpoint, that thermostat.

Secular research doesn't call their recommendations "God's ways", but everything the researchers recommend is in God's Word. A life pursuing God's ways brings happiness.

Happy people are givers to those in need.

Happy people are connected.

Dr. Henry Cloud teaches from his book, The Law of Happiness.

Find Peace In God's Amazing Grace #womenoffaith

2011-10-14T11:08:00.001-04:00

When Sheila Walsh sings in that high soprano colored by her Scottiah brogue, tears spring into the eyes.

Sheila said, "We're walking on a broken road...God never intended for any woman to have her breast cut off, to bury a child, or to lose her home. We're on a detour."

Find peace on this road in the unfailing, amazing grace of God!

How Do You Start Your Day? #womenoffaith

2011-10-14T10:38:00.001-04:00

Ps 143:8 Let the morning bring me word of Your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you.

How do you begin your days? What's the first word you hear and receive into your spirit?

Speaker Sheila Walsh began hers remembering "a cockroach the size of a hamster" for which she wanted a Marine, not housekeeping. But this is her start of the day Scripture.

New Friends

2011-10-14T09:58:00.001-04:00

This is my new friend, Gina from Sarasota. This is her 2nd year. She came equipped with blankets. Our seats are over the ice rink of the Tampa Bay Lightening. Hope my toes don't get cold! #womenoffaith

Women of Faith at St. Pete Times Forum

2011-10-14T09:30:00.001-04:00

I'm blogging today from the Women of Faith conference at the St. Pete Times Forum in Tampa.

The doors are open and small groups of women are on their way in. Lots of smiles and laughter. A quiet but palable energy. Given the huge buses that were lining the streets surrounding the Forum, I expect a nice crowd.

Wednesday Worship: You Hold My World

2011-10-12T07:00:00.000-04:00

You hold my world in Your hands,
You hold my world in Your hands,
And I am amazed at Your love,
I am amazed that You love me.

You hold my world in Your hands,
You hold my world in Your hands,
And I'm not afraid,
My world is safe in Your hands,
In Your hands.

I first heard this Israel Houghton song shortly before my brother passed away earlier this year. He was alone when he died, in pain and suffering.

I think about him a lot. I wish I'd been a better sister. We were so close and he knew I would do anything for him, knew that I loved him. I just wish I could have done more.

We used to talk about the things of God some times. He wasn't where I am, not quite as sure that his Heavenly Father cared about him or loved him the way I know that Jesus did. He believed in Christ as His Savior, but organized religion, church, wasn't his thing. To my knowledge, his relationship hadn't deepened but perhaps stagnated over the years.

In truth, I don't really know.

Oh, I wish I could have done more.But when I hear this song, as tears stream down my face, I always imagine Daniel hearing these words, almost as if the Holy Spirit was whispering them to him as confirmation, in his final minutes:

You won't let go of me,
You won't let go of me,
You won't let go of me.
Never let go.

You will take care of me,
You will take care of me,
You will take care of me,
You will take care,
Always take care.

It's such a strong image, with him sitting in a particular chair in the living room, facing the picture window in the house where we grew up. It's almost as though God burned that image in my head to comfort me. It's the same image every time I hear this song.

I'm glad I know that God holds my world and that my world is safe in His hands.Do you know who holds your world?

Peace & Blessings,
Patricia

Wednesday Worship: Lord, How I Love You

2011-09-28T07:00:00.000-04:00

Lord, my heart is yours
It all belongs to you
I give you all the glory,
Yes, I love You.
I worship and adore
I'm gonna tell you more
Oh oh, Lord, how much I really do love You.

I must have really been going through. Because I completely missed Fred Hammond's Love Unstoppable CD. I frequently heard and bopped to one song, They That Wait, but considering Hammond is one of my all-time favorite gospel artists, I'm not sure how the rest of the CD slipped by me. I didn't buy it and I'm not sure why. But I'm listening now and as always, I'm in awe of Hammond's talent. He's great in a live performance, but he's at his best when he's writing and singing contemporary worship songs.

Lord, How I Love You sings to my soul.

If you're a Fred fan, have a listen and lets cyber-worship together. If you're not, well, you just might be after hearing this beautiful song.

You are worthy,
I love You...

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

Wednesday Worship: Addictive Love, Anniversary Love

2011-08-31T14:18:00.000-04:00

A special song selection today. Addictive Love by BeBe and CeCe Winans.

Today's my 20th wedding anniversary.

A lot of people, when these major anniversaries occur, say, "I never would have thought..."

I can't say that.

I never thought we wouldn't make it. When I said, "I do", I meant it. I can't imagine us any other way. Perhaps that's "Addictive Love".

Oh, there have been times when things got nip and tuck. Times when we had to have serious discussions to decide whether going on together was the way to go.

Even then, I assumed we'd find our way out of the jungle of whatever issue was threatening to consume us.

We did.

And here we are.

Babe, thank you for 20 years. The good and the tough, the ups and the downs.

Thank God for 20 years of marriage. The good and the tough, the ups and the downs. (See, He's the 3rd spoke in this marriage wheel and definitely the reason the wheel is still turning.)

Here's to a lifetime more.

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

Wednesday Worship: You Put The Light In Me

2011-08-24T07:00:00.000-04:00

You put the light in me...

Got this one from a new FB friend. That's why I love social media. We will only get better if we draw closer to, not farther from, each other.

The spark,
The shot to the heart,
You are the hope that leads me out of the dark.
You let your love shine down
So that the world can see,
You put the light in me.

Are you shining your light?

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

Wednesday Worship: Nobody Greater

2011-08-17T07:00:00.004-04:00

Searched all over,
Couldn't find nobody.
I looked high and low,
Still couldn't find nobody.
Nobody greater, nobody greater,
Nobody greater than You.

I heard other people cover this song for the longest...and didn't like it. Tempo was changed, usually too slow, and song just didn't speak to me.

But then I heard the original, and now I can't get it out of my head. Love the smooth music and love the simplicity of the lyrics.

Is there anyone greater than Jesus?

Nobody greater, nobody greater...

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

Blogging Women of Faith 2011 in Tampa

2011-08-15T07:00:00.002-04:00

The Women of Faith conference is coming to Tampa, and I'll be blogging it!

I was selected to receive 2 free registrations in return for blogging posts and pictures from the Women of Faith conference.

I'm so looking forward to the event, this time of sharing God's love and grace with other inspired women, women over the top!

Here's the conference preview video:

If you're in the Tampa area, join me at the Women of Faith conference, October 14-15.

Imagine!

Wednesday Worship: We're Going to Make It

2011-08-10T07:00:00.000-04:00

No matter what the test,
Whatever comes our way,
We're going to make it.

With Jesus on our side,
Things will work out fine.
We're going to make it.

I've loved this song forever. When I heard it on gospel radio the other day, I had to look for a video. Couldn't find a live one to share, but this will do. Just listen...

The tests and trials don't stop coming. Not in this life. You just have to know, that someway, somehow, with Jesus, you're going to make it.

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

Wednesday Worship: Rescue

2011-08-03T07:00:00.011-04:00

You are the source of life
I can't be left behind
No one else will do
I will take hold of You

I need You Jesus to come to my rescue
Where else can I go?
There's no other Name by which I am saved
Capture me with grace
I will follow You

My heart is Yours for life
I need Your hand in mine
No one else will do
Lord I put my trust in You

He reached down from on high and took hold of me;
   he drew me out of deep waters.
He rescued me from my powerful enemy,
   from my foes, who were too strong for me.
They confronted me in the day of my disaster,
   but the LORD was my support.
He brought me out into a spacious place;
   he rescued me because he delighted in me -- 2 Samuel 17:22

Do you need rescuing? Do you know the Rescuer?

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

Wednesday Worship: Trust Me

2011-07-27T07:00:00.001-04:00

Some times we need to put the promises of God in simple terms, terms everyone can understand.

I will be with you,
I will be with you,
I will be with you,
If you will only trust Me.
Trust Me, trust Me.

The incomparable Richard Smallwood has released a new project, the first single entitled "Trust Me".

Do you trust Him?

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

Wednesday Worship: Jesus Is Lord

2011-07-20T07:00:00.006-04:00

Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess, that Jesus is Lord!

That pretty much says it all!

This old Andrae Crouch classic withstands the test of time, both in message and in song. I recently heard a remake Crouch did with a Caribbean beat. I couldn't find that one, but this older version will do.

And because, as with Doublemint gum, two is better than one, here's a recent tribute version with Bishop Marvin Winans and Karen Clark-Sheard:

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

The Beauty and the Power of Christian Fiction

2011-07-19T07:00:00.033-04:00

I recently read a passage in a novel that, for me, completely demonstrated the beauty and power of Christian fiction.

When the heroine wonders about the changes God subtlely has been making in her life, and how, if she's a new creature as the Bible says, she still thinks and does bad things, her friend compares her state to that of an amputee who still physically feels the missing limb even though it is obviously gone, a condition known as "phantom leg". He goes on to tell her:

"So long as you have an earthly body, sin dwells in this body. All our bodies are programmed for death. But that's just your body. Your inner man was renewed with Christ. When you find yourself doing things that don't line up with who you are, that's the phantom. You can feel and act and link like something you're not. What matters is when God looks at you. He doesn't see that old you. He views you in Christ. He's trying to get us all to behold what He sees."

"...to behold what He sees."

Simple truth.

I know lots of readers don't like "preachy" fiction, but this small passage was as preachy at this book got. Believe me, there was lots more stuff that would raise more than a few brows on the faces of church folks--and produce some unseemly snorts of laughter.

This conversation took place between two characters in a TGIF restaurant over a chicken and cheese dish and salad. It was followed by a kiss. He's a guy in ministry who wishes people would see him for who he is, not simply as a pastor, and she's a woman who is living with another guy and fighting off the effects of Walmart on her aunt's neighborhood store.

Don't worry. No spoilers in that if you decide to read Someone To Watch Over Me by Michelle Stimpson.

Real people with real problems. A teensy bit preachy, but mostly thought provoking.

Gospel truths wrapped up in an entertaining package.

That's the beauty and power of Christian fiction.

Fiction can touch people in places they fear or resist to allow the Gospel to tread. Usually because they don't see it coming or maybe they're just more inclined to ride along with an entertaining story.

I wish I'd had this kind of fiction when I was coming up. As a teenager and young woman, had I read this passage, I might not have wondered whether I was "saved" for real when I made mistakes. I finally got a true understanding in my late 20's, some 15 years after I'd given my life to Christ.

So many years wasted on guilt and shame.

In addition to sharing Scripture with new converts or even long time believers, try handing them a carefully selected novel. A Christian fiction novel.

Christian fiction can change lives.

Wednesday Worship: Blessings

2011-07-13T07:00:00.000-04:00

Sometimes God's blessings are obvious for all to see. At other times, we wonder and question whether God is blessing us. Has He forgotten us? Even when we know in our heart that He never forsakes His own, our head may yet ponder.

We pray for blessings,
We pray for peace.
Comfort for family,
Protection while we sleep.
We pray for healing,
Prosperity.
We pray for your mighty hand
To ease our suffering.

And all the while you hear each spoken need
You love us way to much to give us lesser things.

What if your blessings come through raindrops,
What if your healing comes through tears
And what if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know you're near?
And what if trials of this life are your mercies in disguised?

Have you counted your blessings lately?

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

Wednesday Worship: You Are Good/Find No Fault

2011-07-06T07:00:00.002-04:00

Sometimes a simple refrain captures the outpouring of my heart:

Lord, we love you. You are good.

and

I find no fault in Him, no fault in Him.
Jesus my Savior, I find no fault in Him.

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

Did I Marry the Wrong Guy? by Michelle Stimpson

2011-07-05T07:00:00.003-04:00

I've featured books by Michelle Stimpson before. I've enjoyed her adult and YA fiction. But this time Stimpson plunges into the nonfiction realm to explore a topic that will speak to many a wife, particularly Christian wives who may feel conflicted about their feelings based on their faith. After the thrill of getting married wears off and the reality of being married sets in, women all over may second guess themselves and their mate. In this nonfiction spin-off from her last novel, The Good Stuff, Stimpson offers encouragement and laughter for women wondering whether they indeed married the wrong guy.

I can certainly confess to wondering from time to time, and I'm also certain my husband would admit to the same, especially when we're at odds over something and in the heat of the moment, those harsh, inflated, uncontrollable emotions cause us to feel doomed. But thank God, through 20 years, we've been able to withstand the emotion rollercoasters, to dig deep in prayer, to listen to wise counsel and to step back and ultimately appreciate each other and the marriage God blessed us with. As Stimpson so aptly points out "every marriage is a foreign land." A more true statement has never been posited. You have to learn the culture, language and nuances of your marriage, the rules and regulations, the penalties and consequences for your actions, before you can begin to feel welcome, much less at home. In a breezy, conversational style, in a book you can read in under an hour (although you'll come back to reflect and consider the wise counsel therein), Stimpson will help you do this with laughter and love.

Did I Marry the Wrong Guy? And Other Silent Ponderings of a Fairly Normal Christian Wife

CreateSpace (May 23, 2011)
List Price: $6.99
Paperback: 84 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace (May 23, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1461186528
ISBN-13: 978-1461186526

***Special thanks to Michelle Stimpson for sending me a review copy.***

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Michelle Stimpson is an author, a speaker, and an educator who received her Bachelor of Science degree from Jarvis Christian College in 1994. She earned a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2002. She has had the pleasure of teaching elementary, middle, and high school as well as training adults.

In addition to her work in the field of education, Michelle ministers through writing and public speaking. Her works include the highly acclaimed Boaz Brown, Divas of Damascus Road (National Bestseller), and Last Temptation. She has published several short stories for high school students through her educational publishing company, Right Track Academic Support Services, at www.wegottaread.com.

Michelle serves in the Discerning Hearts women's ministry at her home church, Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship. She also ministers to women through her online newsletter: www.womengrowinginchrist.com.

Michelle tours annually with the Anointed Authors on Tour. She regularly speaks at special events and writing workshops sponsored churches, schools, book clubs and other great organizations.

Michelle lives near Dallas with her husband, their two teenage children, and one crazy dog.

Visit the author's website.

SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:

What wife hasn’t second-guessed herself after a heated discussion or yet another curious incident of the missing remote control? In addition to the title’s question, this book discusses those unspoken thoughts lurking in the back of even Christian women’s minds, such as:

* We’ve Grown Apart

* I’m Just Not That Into Sex

* I Miss the Thrill of Being Single

* I Love My Husband, but I’m Not In Love

* Watching My Parents Probably Messed Me Up

While these silent ponderings might seem harmless, they have the potential to create a negative undercurrent of resentment if not specifically addressed in prayer. Through this spinoff of her popular Christian fiction novel, The Good Stuff, Stimpson tackles tough questions about wifehood through this short, humorous book of wisdom for the not-so-in-love-with-my-husband days.

AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:

We Started Off Wrong

I’m sure our wedding picture could appear on posters warning romantic kids about what not to do. For starters, I was four months pregnant when we married. Stevie and I were in love, but I’d be lying if I said our unborn baby wasn’t a major factor in our decision to marry after our thirteen-month long-distance courtship.

Stevie was twenty-three, I was twenty-one. He had a child from a previous relationship, and I was still secretly reeling from a past heartbreak. We both came from so-called “broken homes.” His parents divorced when he was in middle school, mine when I was only a child, though my mother re-married when I was four. She and my step-father later divorced. Neither Stevie nor I had any kind of model for a successful marriage.

Stevie had said that he was raised in the church, but (as is turns out) we had two different working definitions of what it meant to be church-reared. He was a CME member (Christmas, Mother’s Day, and Easter), while I was the child of the church musician (attending services every Sunday, many weeknights, too). Nonetheless, we were equally yoked because we were both spiritual infants. Probably more like spiritual embryos.

But we were in love. And Stevie had super-hot legs.

The one good thing was our financial situation. I had just finished college and begun making decent money as a teacher, while Stevie worked at a plastic manufacturing company. We had very little debt. Stevie was good with money, and we both really liked seventy-nine cent burritos.

As the “bad years” came upon our marriage, a slew of regrets constantly nagged me:

I wished I’d known him better before I’d gone and gotten myself pregnant.
I wished I hadn’t gotten myself pregnant in the first place.
We shouldn’t have married just because of the baby.
We were too young—I barely even knew myself.
We didn’t have time to settle into our marriage before the baby got here.
We should have had more than thirty minutes of pre-marital counseling.
I should have checked his church attendance record.

I imagined myself writing any or all of these statements on papers requesting a divorce. Who could expect us to overcome those feats? Why didn’t anyone tell me how hard marriage could be?

To make my personal pity-party even worse, I was the first of my college friends to get married. Watching them move ahead and do all the things I wanted to do but couldn’t, thanks to my brand-spankin’-new family, didn’t help at all.

I didn’t want a divorce. I didn’t want to stay married. I just wished the whole thing had never happened.

* * * * *

Granted, I wouldn’t want my daughter to marry under these circumstances. But if I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t change anything for Stevie and me because the truth is: every marriage is a foreign land. Over these years that my husband and I have been together, I’ve seen young and old, rich and poor, pregnant and non-pregnant, Christian and non-believer, childhood friends and internet-matched couples rise and fall. Sometimes the people who think they’ve got it all together don’t. Sometimes the ones who don’t have a clue figure it out together and overcome all their previous folly, by the grace of God.

Whatever shoulda, woulda, couldas you have about marrying your husband when you did, let them go. Maybe you could have done better. You definitely could have done worse. You made a decision with the information you had at the time, and that’s all anyone can do.

The beauty of a life surrendered to God is His willingness to intervene where His people fall short. If you recognize that your marriage began in a less-than-desirable state, talk to God about it. Admit your shortcomings and ask Him to make sense of your tangled mess. He has a way of un-raveling knots without breaking the string!

* * * * *

Father, I repent of my willful disobedience, and I thank You for Your watchful eye where I was simply ignorant. You have preserved me and this marriage for Your purposes, and I want the testimony of Your ability to deliver us beyond our faults. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

Dug Down Deep by Joshua Harris

2011-06-30T07:00:00.021-04:00

Do you desire a deeper relationship with God? Are you a Christian but living on the surface of Christianity?

Joshua Harris, senior pastor of Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, MD and author of popular Christian living books I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Sex Is Not the Problem and Stop Dating the Church, challenges you to scratch beneath the surface of your Christian faith and truly get to know God in his latest release, Dug Down Deep.

Joshua Harris

and the book:

Dug Down Deep

Multnomah Books (May 17, 2011)

Special thanks to Staci Carmichael, Marketing and Publicity Associate, Image Books/ / Waterbrook Multnomah, Divisions of Random House, Inc. for sending me a review copy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Joshua Harris is senior pastor of Covenant Life in Gaithersburg, Maryland, which belongs to the Sovereign Grace network of local churches. He is the author of Why Church Matters and several books on relationships, including the run-away bestseller, I Kissed Dating Goodbye. He and his wife, Shannon, have three children.

Visit the author's website.

SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:

Dug Down Deep shows a new generation of Christians why words like theology and doctrine are the “pathway to the mysterious, awe-filled experience of knowing the living Jesus Christ.” Joshua Harris enthusiastically reminds readers that orthodoxy isn’t just for scholars. It is for anyone who longs to know and love God.

Product Details:

List Price: $14.99

Paperback: 288 pages

Publisher: Multnomah Books (May 17, 2011)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1601423713

ISBN-13: 978-1601423719

AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:

MY RUMSPRINGA

“We’re all theologians. The question is

whether what we know about God is true.”

IT’S STRANGE TO SEE an Amish girl drunk. The pairing of a bonnet and a can of beer is awkward. If she were stumbling along with a jug of moonshine, it would at least match her long, dowdy dress. But right now she can’t worry about that. She is flat-out wasted. Welcome to rumspringa.

-

The Amish, people who belong to a Christian religious sect with roots in

Europe, practice a radical form of separation from the modern world. They live and dress with simplicity. Amish women wear bonnets and long, old fashioned dresses and never touch makeup. The men wear wide-rimmed straw hats, sport bowl cuts, and grow chin curtains—full beards with the mustaches shaved off.

My wife, Shannon, sometimes says she wants to be Amish, but I know this isn’t true. Shannon entertains her Amish fantasy when life feels too complicated or when she’s tired of doing laundry. She thinks life would be easier if she had only two dresses to choose from and both looked the same. I tell her that if she ever tried to be Amish, she would buy a pair of jeans and ditch her head covering about ten minutes into the experiment. Besides, she would never let me grow a beard like that.

Once Shannon and her girlfriend Shelley drove to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for a weekend of furniture and quilt shopping in Amish country. They stayed at a bed-and-breakfast located next door to an Amish farm. One morning Shannon struck up a conversation with the inn’s owner, who had lived among the Amish his entire life. She asked him questions, hoping for romantic details about the simple, buggy-driven life. But instead he complained about having to pick up beer cans every weekend.

Beer cans?

“Yes,” he said, “the Amish kids leave them everywhere. ”That’s when he told her about rumspringa. The Amish believe that before a young person chooses to commit to the Amish church as an adult, he or she should have the chance to freely explore the forbidden delights of the outside world. So at age sixteen everything changes for Amish teenagers. They go from milking cows and singing hymns to living like debauched rock stars.

In the Pennsylvania Dutch language, rumspringa literally means “running around.” It’s a season of doing anything and everything you want with zero rules. During this time—which can last from a few months to several years—all the restrictions of the Amish church are lifted. Teens are free to shop at malls, have sex, wear makeup, play video games, do drugs, use cell phones, dress however they want, and buy and drive cars. But what they seem to enjoy most during rumspringa is gathering at someone’s barn, blasting music, and then drinking themselves into the ground. Every weekend, the man told Shannon, he had to clean up beer cans littered around his property following the raucous, all-night Amish parties.

When Shannon came home from her Lancaster weekend, her Amish aspirations had diminished considerably. The picture of cute little Amish girls binge drinking took the sheen off her idealistic vision of Amish life. We completed her disillusionment when we rented a documentary about the rite of rumspringa called Devil’s Playground. Filmmaker Lucy Walker spent three years befriending, interviewing, and filming Amish teens as they explored the outside world. That’s where we saw the drunk Amish girl tripping along at a barn party. We learned that most girls continue to dress Amish even as they party—as though their clothes are a lifeline back to safety while they explore life on the wild side.

In the documentary Faron, an outgoing, skinny eighteen-year-old sells and is addicted to the drug crystal meth. After Faron is busted by the cops, he turns in rival drug dealers. When his life is threatened, Faron moves back to his parents’ home and tries to start over. The Amish faith is a good religion, he says. He wants to be Amish, but his old habits keep tugging on him.

A girl named Velda struggles with depression. During rumspringa she finds the partying empty, but after joining the church she can’t imagine living the rest of her life as an Amish woman. “God talks to me in one ear, Satan in the other,” Velda says. “Part of me wants to be like my parents, but the other part wants the jeans, the haircut, to do what I want to do.”1When she fails to convince her Amish fiancé to leave the church with her, she breaks off her engagement a month before the wedding and leaves the Amish faith for good. As a result Velda is shunned by her family and the entire community. Alone but determined, she begins to attend college.

Velda’s story is the exception. Eighty to 90 percent of Amish teens decide to return to the Amish church after rumspringa.2 At one point in the film, Faron insightfully comments that rumspringa is like a vaccination for Amish teens. They binge on all the worst aspects of the modern world long enough to make themselves sick of it. Then, weary and disgusted, they turn back to the comforting, familiar, and safe world of Amish life.

But as I watched, I wondered, What are they really going back to? Are they choosing God or just a safe and simple way of life?

I know what it means to wrestle with questions of faith. I know what it’s like for faith to be so mixed up with family tradition that it’s hard to distinguish between a genuine knowledge of God and comfort in a familiar way of life.

I grew up in an evangelical Christian family. One that was on the more conservative end of the spectrum. I’m the oldest of seven children. Our parents homeschooled us, raised us without television, and believed that old fashioned courtship was better than modern dating. Friends in our neighborhood probably thought our family was Amish, but that’s only because they didn’t know some of the really conservative Christian homeschool families. The truth was that our family was more culturally liberal than many homeschoolers. We watched movies, could listen to rock music (as long as it was Christian or the Beatles), and were allowed to have Star Wars and Transformers toys.

But even so, during high school I bucked my parents’ restrictions. That’s not to say my spiritual waywardness was very shocking. I doubt Amish kids would be impressed by my teenage dabbling in worldly pleasure. I never did drugs. Never got drunk. The worst things I ever did were to steal porn magazines, sneak out of the house at night with a kid from church, and date various girls behind my parents’ backs. Although my rebellion was tame in comparison, it was never virtue that held me back from sin. It was lack of opportunity. I shudder to think what I would have done with a parent sanctioned season of rumspringa.

The bottom line is that my parents’ faith wasn’t really my faith. I knew how to work the system, I knew the Christian lingo, but my heart wasn’t in it. My heart was set on enjoying the moment.

Recently a friend of mine met someone who knew me in early high school. “What did she remember about me?” I asked.

“She said you were girl crazy, full of yourself, and immature,” my friend told me.

Yeah, she knew me, I thought. It wasn’t nice to hear, but I couldn’t argue.

I didn’t know or fear God. I didn’t have any driving desire to know him.

For me, the Christian faith was more about a set of moral standards than belief and trust in Jesus Christ.

During my early twenties I went through a phase of blaming the church I had attended in high school for all my spiritual deficiencies. Evangelical mega churches make good punching bags.

My reasoning went something like this: I was spiritually shallow because the pastors’ teaching had been shallow. I wasn’t fully engaged because they hadn’t done enough to grab my attention. I was a hypocrite because everyone else had been a hypocrite. I didn’t know God because they hadn’t provided enough programs. Or they hadn’t provided the right programs. Or maybe they’d had too many programs.

All I knew was that it was someone else’s fault.

Blaming the church for our problems is second only to the popular and easy course of blaming our parents for everything that’s wrong with us. But the older I get, the less I do of both. I hope that’s partly due to the wisdom that comes with age. But I’m sure it’s also because I am now both a parent and a pastor. Suddenly I have a lot more sympathy for my dad and mom and the pastors at my old church. Funny how that works, isn’t it?

At the church where I now pastor (which I love), some young adults remind me of myself when I was in high school. They are church kids who know so much about Christian religion and yet so little about God. Some are passive, completely ambivalent toward spiritual things. Others are actively straying from their faith—ticked off about their parents’ authority, bitter over a rule or guideline, and counting the minutes until they turn eighteen and can disappear. Others aren’t going anywhere, but they stay just to go through the motions. For them, church is a social group.

It’s strange being on the other side now. When I pray for specific young men and women who are wandering from God, when I stand to preach and feel powerless to change a single heart, when I sit and counsel people and it seems nothing I can say will draw them away from sin, I remember the pastors from my teenage years. I realize they must have felt like this too. They must have prayed and cried over me. They must have labored over sermons with students like me in mind.

I see now that they were doing the best they knew how. But a lot of the time, I wasn’t listening.

During high school I spent most Sunday sermons doodling, passing notes, checking out girls, and wishing I were two years older and five inches taller so a redhead named Jenny would stop thinking of me as her “little brother.” That never happened.

I mostly floated through grown-up church. Like a lot of teenagers in evangelical churches, I found my sense of identity and community in the parallel universe of the youth ministry. Our youth group was geared to being loud, fast paced, and fun. It was modeled on the massive and influential, seeker-sensitive Willow Creek Community Church located outside Chicago. The goal was simple: put on a show, get kids in the building, and let them see that Christians are cool, thus Jesus is cool. We had to prove that being a Christian is, contrary to popular opinion and even a few annoying passages of the Bible, loads of fun. Admittedly it’s not as much fun as partying and having sex but pretty fun nonetheless.

Every Wednesday night our group of four-hundred-plus students divided into teams. We competed against each other in games and won points by bringing guests. As a homeschooler, of course I was completely worthless in the “bring friends from school” category. So I tried to make up for that by working on the drama and video team. My buddy Matt and I wrote, performed, and directed skits to complement our youth pastor’s messages. Unfortunately, our idea of complementing was to deliver skits that were not even remotely connected to the message. The fact that Matt was a Brad Pitt look-alike assured that our skits were well received (at least by the girls).

The high point of my youth-group performing career came when the pastor found out I could dance and asked me to do a Michael Jackson impersonation.

The album Bad had just come out. I bought it, learned all the dance moves, and then when I performed—how do I say this humbly?—I blew everyone away. I was bad (and I mean that in the good sense of the word bad ). The crowd went absolutely nuts. The music pulsed, and girls were screaming and grabbing at me in mock adulation as I moon walked and lip-synced my way through one of the most inane pop songs ever written. I loved every minute of it.

Looking back, I’m not real proud of that performance. I would feel better about my bad moment if the sermon that night had been about the depravity of man or something else that was even slightly related. But there was no connection. It had nothing to do with anything.

For me, dancing like Michael Jackson that night has come to embody my experience in a big, evangelical, seeker-oriented youth group. It was fun, it was entertaining, it was culturally savvy (at the time), and it had very little to do with God. Sad to say, I spent more time studying Michael’s dance moves for that drama assignment than I was ever asked to invest in studying about God.

Of course, this was primarily my own fault. I was doing what I wanted to do. There were other kids in the youth group who were more mature and who grew more spiritually during their youth-group stint. And I don’t doubt the good intentions of my youth pastor. He was trying to strike the balance between getting kids to attend and teaching them.

Maybe I wouldn’t have been interested in youth group if it hadn’t been packaged in fun and games and a good band. But I still wish someone had expected more of me—of all of us.

Would I have listened? I can’t know. But I do know that a clear vision of God and the power of his Word and the purpose of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection were lost on me in the midst of all the flash and fun.

There’s a story in the Bible of a young king named Josiah, who lived about 640 years before Christ. I think Josiah could have related tome—being religious but ignorant of God. Josiah’s generation had lost God’s Word. And I don’t mean that figuratively. They literally lost God’s Word. It sounds ridiculous, but they essentially misplaced the Bible.

If you think about it, this was a pretty big deal. We’re not talking about a pair of sunglasses or a set of keys. The Creator of the universe had communicated with mankind through the prophet Moses. He gave his law. He revealed what he was like and what he wanted. He told his people what it meant for them to be his people and how they were to live. All this was dutifully recorded on a scroll. Then this scroll, which was precious beyond measure, was stored in the holy temple. But later it was misplaced. No one knows how. Maybe a clumsy priest dropped it and it rolled into a dark corner.

But here’s the really sad thing: nobody noticed it was missing. No search was made. Nobody checked under the couch. It was gone and no one cared. For decades those who wore the label “God’s people” actually had no communication with him.

They wore their priestly robes, they carried on their traditions in their beautiful temple, and they taught their messages that were so wise, so insightful, so inspirational.

But it was all a bunch of hot air—nothing but their own opinions. Empty ritual. Their robes were costumes, and their temple was an empty shell.

This story scares me because it shows that it’s possible for a whole generation to go happily about the business of religion, all the while having lost a true knowledge of God.

When we talk about knowledge of God, we’re talking about theology. Simply put, theology is the study of the nature of God—who he is and how he thinks and acts. But theology isn’t high on many people’s list of daily concerns.

My friend Curtis says that most people today think only of themselves. He calls this “me-ology.” I guess that’s true. I know it was true of me and still can be. It’s a lot easier to be an expert on what I think and feel and want than to give myself to knowing an invisible, universe-creating God.

Others view theology as something only scholars or pastors should worry about. I used to think that way. I viewed theology as an excuse for all the intellectual types in the world to add homework to Christianity.

But I’ve learned that this isn’t the case. Theology isn’t for a certain group of people. In fact, it’s impossible for anyone to escape theology. It’s everywhere. All of us are constantly “doing” theology. In other words, all of us have some idea or opinion about what God is like. Oprah does theology. The person who says, “I can’t believe in a God who sends people to hell” is doing theology.

We all have some level of knowledge. This knowledge can be much or little, informed or uninformed, true or false, but we all have some concept of God (even if it’s that he doesn’t exist). And we all base our lives on what we think God is like.

So when I was spinning around like Michael Jackson at youth group, I was a theologian. Even though I wasn’t paying attention in church. Even though I wasn’t very concerned with Jesus or pleasing him. Even though I was more preoccupied with my girlfriend and with being popular. Granted I was a really bad theologian—my thoughts about God were unclear and often ignorant. But I had a concept of God that directed how I lived.

I’ve come to learn that theology matters. And it matters not because we want a good grade on a test but because what we know about God shapes the way we think and live. What you believe about God’s nature—what he is like, what he wants from you, and whether or not you will answer to him—affects every part of your life.

Theology matters, because if we get it wrong, then our whole life will be wrong.

I know the idea of “studying” God often rubs people the wrong way. It sounds cold and theoretical, as if God were a frog carcass to dissect in a lab or a set of ideas that we memorize like math proofs.

But studying God doesn’t have to be like that. You can study him the way you study a sunset that leaves you speechless. You can study him the way a man studies the wife he passionately loves. Does anyone fault him for noting her every like and dislike? Is it clinical for him to desire to know the thoughts and longings of her heart? Or to want to hear her speak?

Knowledge doesn’t have to be dry and lifeless. And when you think about it, exactly what is our alternative? Ignorance? Falsehood?

We’re either building our lives on the reality of what God is truly like and what he’s about, or we’re basing our lives on our own imagination and misconceptions.

We’re all theologians. The question is whether what we know about God is true.

In the days of King Josiah, theology was completely messed up. This isn’t really surprising. People had lost God’s words and then quickly forgot what the true God was like.

King Josiah was a contemporary of the prophet Jeremiah. People call Jeremiah the weeping prophet, and there was a lot to weep about in those days. “A horrible and shocking thing has happened in the land,” Jeremiah said. “The prophets prophesy lies, the priests rule by their own authority, and my people love it this way” (Jeremiah 5:30–31, NIV).

As people learned to love their lies about God, they lost their ability to recognize his voice. “To whom can I speak and give warning?” God asked. “Who will listen tome? Their ears are closed so they cannot hear. The word of the LORD is offensive to them; they find no pleasure in it” (Jeremiah 6:10, NIV).

People forgot God. They lost their taste for his words. They forgot what he had done for them, what he commanded of them, and what he threatened if they disobeyed. So they started inventing gods for themselves. They started borrowing ideas about God from the pagan cults. Their made-up gods let them live however they wanted. It was “me-ology” masquerading as theology.

The results were not pretty.

Messed-up theology leads to messed-up living. The nation of Judah resembled one of those skanky reality television shows where a houseful of barely dressed singles sleep around, stab each other in the back, and try to win cash. Immorality and injustice were everywhere. The rich trampled the poor. People replaced the worship of God with the worship of pagan deities that demanded religious orgies and child sacrifice. Every level of society, from marriage and the legal system to religion and politics, was corrupt.

The surprising part of Josiah’s story is that in the midst of all the distortion and corruption, he chose to seek and obey God. And he did this as a young man (probably no older than his late teens or early twenties). Scripture gives this description of Josiah: “He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD and walked in all the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left” (2 Kings 22:2, NIV).

The prophet Jeremiah called people to the same straight path of true theology and humble obedience:

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.” (Jeremiah 6:16)

In Jeremiah’s words you see a description of King Josiah’s life. His generation was rushing past him, flooding down the easy paths of man-made religion, injustice, and immorality.

They didn’t stop to look for a different path.

They didn’t pause to consider where the easy path ended.

They didn’t ask if there was a better way.

But Josiah stopped. He stood at a crossroads, and he looked. And then he asked for something that an entire generation had neglected, even completely forgotten. He asked for the ancient paths.

What are the ancient paths? When the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah used the phrase, he was describing obedience to the Law of Moses. But today the ancient paths have been transformed by the coming of Jesus Christ. Now we see that those ancient paths ultimately led to Jesus. We have not only truth to obey but a person to trust in—a person who perfectly obeyed the Law and who died on the cross in our place.

But just as in the days of Jeremiah, the ancient paths still represent life based on a true knowledge of God—a God who is holy, a God who is just, a God who is full of mercy toward sinners. Walking in the ancient paths still means relating to God on his terms. It still means receiving and obeying his self-revelation with humility and awe.

Just as he did with Josiah and Jeremiah and every generation after them, God calls us to the ancient paths. He beckons us to return to theology that is true. He calls us, as Jeremiah called God’s people, to recommit ourselves to orthodoxy.

The word orthodoxy literally means “right opinion.” In the context of Christian faith, orthodoxy is shorthand for getting your opinion or thoughts about God right. It is teaching and beliefs based on the established, proven, cherished truths of the faith. These are the truths that don’t budge. They’re clearly taught in Scripture and affirmed in the historic creeds of the Christian faith:
There is one God who created all things.

God is triune: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Bible is God’s inerrant word to humanity.

Jesus is the virgin-born, eternal Son of God.

Jesus died as a substitute for sinners so they could be forgiven.

Jesus rose from the dead.

Jesus will one day return to judge the world.

Orthodox beliefs are ones that genuine followers of Jesus have acknowledged From the beginning and then handed down through the ages. Take one of them away, and you’re left with something less than historic Christian belief.

When I watched the documentary about the Amish rite of rumspringa, what stood out to me was the way the Amish teenagers processed the decision of whether or not to join the Amish church. With few exceptions the decision seemed to have very little to do with God. They weren’t searching Scripture to see if what their church taught about the world, the human heart, and salvation was true. They weren’t wrestling with theology. I’m not implying that the Amish don’t have a genuine faith and trust in Jesus. But for the teens in the documentary, the decision was mostly a matter of choosing a culture and a lifestyle. It gave them a sense of belonging. In some cases it gave them a steady job or allowed them to marry the person they wanted.

I wonder how many evangelical church kids are like the Amish in this regard. Many of us are not theologically informed. Truth about God doesn’t define us and shape us. We have grown up in our own religious culture. And often this culture, with its own rituals and music and moral values, comes to represent Christianity far more than specific beliefs about God do.

Every new generation of Christians has to ask the question, what are we actually choosing when we choose to be Christians? Watching the stories of the Amish teenagers helped me realize that a return to orthodoxy has to be more than a return to a way of life or to cherished traditions. Of course the Christian faith leads to living in specific ways. And it does join us to a specific community. And it does involve tradition. All this is good. It’s important. But it has to be more than tradition. It has to be about a person—the historical and living person of Jesus Christ.

Orthodoxy matters because the Christian faith is not just a cultural tradition or moral code. Orthodoxy is the irreducible truths about God and his work in the world. Our faith is not just a state of mind, a mystical experience, or concepts on a page. Theology, doctrine, and orthodoxy matter because God is real, and he has acted in our world, and his actions have meaning today and for all eternity.

For many people, words like theology, doctrine, and orthodoxy are almost completely meaningless. Maybe they’re unappealing, even repellent.

Theology sounds stuffy.

Doctrine is something unkind people fight over.

And orthodoxy? Many Christians would have trouble saying what it is other than it calls to mind images of musty churches guarded by old men with comb-overs who hush and scold.

I can relate to that perspective. I’ve been there. But I’ve also discovered that my prejudice, my “theology allergy,” was unfounded.

This book is the story of how I first glimpsed the beauty of Christian theology. These pages hold the journal entries of my own spiritual journey—a journey that led to the realization that sound doctrine is at the center of loving Jesus with passion and authenticity. I want to share how I learned that orthodoxy isn’t just for old men but is for anyone who longs to behold a God who is bigger and more real and glorious than the human mind can imagine.

The irony of my story—and I suppose it often works this way—is that the very things I needed, even longed for in my relationship with God, were wrapped up in the very things I was so sure could do me no good. I didn’t understand that such seemingly worn-out words as theology, doctrine, and orthodoxy were the pathway to the mysterious, awe-filled experience of truly knowing the living Jesus Christ.

They told the story of the Person I longed to know.

Dug Down Deep is yet another book that I planned to skim for review purposes, but my plans and reality are not matching up. In fact, I ordered this one for my teen son, thinking it would help him to deepen his faith. Well, this book turns out to be much more than I anticipated, making me look in the mirror and truly see the reflection of my faith. Harris's conversational style and direct approach make the spiritual truths that he shares easy to absorb. He may have started out writing for Christian youth, but his books today are for all ages.

I'm going to be in this book for more than a minute, and Teen Son will have to wait.

Okay, maybe I'll share, and he and I can explore our faith together.

If you insist... :)

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

Wednesday Worship: Healer

2011-06-29T07:00:00.003-04:00

What do you believe about God?

Lately, I'm encountering things that are making me look at what I believe about God, to check what I believe versus what He says about Himself in His Word, and affirm what I believe.

This song speaks to that:

You hold my every moment,
You calm my raging seas.
You walk with me through fire
And heal all my disease.

I believe You're my healer,
I believe You are all I need.
I believe You're my portion
I believe You're more than enough for me,
Jesus, You're all I need.

Nothing is impossible for You.

You hold my world in Your hands.

What do you believe?

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

Wednesday Worship: More Than Anything

2011-06-22T07:00:00.000-04:00

I was looking for a completely different video but I came across the one of this sweet song.

I lift my hands in total admiration unto you
You reign on the throne
For you are God and God alone
Because of you my cloudy days are gone
I can sing to you this song
I just want to say that I love you more than anything

You hold me in your arms
You are my shelter from the storm
When all my friends were gone
You were right there all along
I never known a love like this before
I just want to say that I love you more than anything

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

Happy Father's Day: Dance With My Father Again

2011-06-19T07:00:00.009-04:00

Happy Father's Day to all the fathers of the world!

I miss mine, gone 25 years this December. That's more than half of my life.

I love you, Daddy!

And my heart is breaking for my young niece who just lost hers when my brother passed away back in April.

I'm so glad my Heavenly Father fills in the empty spaces.

If you have the opportunity to talk to or spend time with your father, take advantage of it. So many don't, even when their fathers are still living.

I'm thankful my sons have a loving, caring, present father in my husband.

Love you, Babe. You're a wonderful dad!

Enjoy the song that has made me cry every single time I've heard it, one of the most beautiful songs ever and the best tributes to dads I've ever heard:

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

Wednesday Worship: Glorify You Alone

2011-06-15T16:32:00.000-04:00

The beauty of this song, both the words and the music, struck me on Sunday. I had to share it.

Who is this King of glory
Beautiful and matchless one
Who is this King so holy
Every knee will bow at His throne

Jesus, the Lamb of God
Savior and King

You alone are worthy of our praise forever
You alone are seated on the throne of Heaven
Glorify, glorify, You alone

Inspirational Words: Fully Engaged by John Busacker

2011-05-25T07:00:00.003-04:00

Fully Engaged by John Busacker is a tiny book. Maybe 100 pages? So I thought I'd breeze through it in order to post a review.

Didn't happen.

The first chapter blew me away. Simple truths on the back of a strong spiritual wind stopped me in my tracks. I began thinking seriously about how busy I am, how satisfied I am, or long to be, and what it would take to get me there. That's the intention and the power of Fully Engaged.

John Busacker

and the book:

Fully Engaged

Summerside Press (May 1, 2011)

***Special thanks to Audra Jennings, Senior Media Specialist, The B&B Media Group for sending me a review copy.***

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

John Busacker is president of The Inventure Group, a global leadership-consulting firm, and founder of Life-Worth, LLC, a life planning creative resource. He is a member of the Duke Corporate Education Global Learning Resource Network and is on the faculty of the University of Minnesota Carlson School’s Executive Development Center.

In 2009, Busacker released his first book, 8 Questions God Can’t Answer, which unlocks the profound power of Jesus’ timeless questions. He annually teaches in a variety of emerging faith communities and supports the development needs of leaders in Africa through PLI-International.

John is an avid explorer, occasional marathoner, and novice cyclist. He and his wife, Carol, live in Minneapolis and have two adult sons, Brett and Joshua.

Visit the author's website.

SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:

Doing less is typically equated with laziness in our culture, but on a recent trip to the Serengeti plain, author John Busacker learned that doing less can actually be a very productive strategy for living. As Busacker and his family realized that they were lost in the wilds of Africa, their guide, Moses, stopped and waited for a new course to emerge. Within moments, the family was back on the right path. What John learned that day was the power of what can happen when he stopped DO-ing in order to focus on BE-ing found.

In the same way, says Busacker, we have to allow our internal GPS to stop and recalculate the direction of our life. As we do so, we’ll find greater abundance, contentment, and peace of mind. If you are like most people who feel lost on the road of life, Busacker’s new book, Fully Engaged: How to Do Less and Be More, is perfect for you. Fully Engaged encourages and equips us to move beyond what Busacker calls an “air guitar life”—a life of furious motion and considerable energy, but in the end one with no sound and little lasting impact. In a world filled with noise and fury, Busacker offers a measured and wise strategy for living that is marked by three key components: 1) Awareness, 2) Alignment, and 3) Action.

Living with Awareness means that, instead of piecing together random moments, you begin to live intentionally. By doing so, you no longer measure your life worth by your pay check, but by your attitude.
Living with Alignment ensures that what you have and what you do match what you really want out of life. It means that your job is not simply a means to make money, but a calling to be pursued with vigor.
Living with Action compels you to move in directions that propel you toward an exhilarating future. This means that you’re not afraid to fail and that setbacks are to be celebrated as progressive steps on the journey of success.

John Busacker - Fully Engaged from John Hoel on Vimeo.

PRODUCT DETAILS::

List Price: $14.99
Hardcover: 144 pages
Publisher: Summerside Press (May 1, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1609361156
ISBN-13: 978-1609361150

AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:

Measure Your Worth

Your life is worth so much more than money. It seemed like a good plan at the time. Seven years ago, our family decided to spend spring break in Tanzania, East Africa. One night, we stayed in a quaint African lodge on the edge of the Serengeti Plain. The plan was to wake up at dawn, drive out into the vast national park at first light, and see who was eating whom for breakfast. By noon, we were to have made it to the gate of the Ngorongoro Crater, intending to venture down in for additional afternoon wildlife viewing.

Of course, nothing on an African safari goes exactly according to plan. It rained during the night, so what passes for roads quickly transformed to goo-filled ruts. Our guide, Moses, was forced to navigate by feel, having neither a map nor GPS. It became increasingly clear that we were driving in circles, making no progress toward the Ngorongoro Crater. Not wanting to sound any alarms, as discreetly as I could I leaned forward and quietly inquired, “Moses, are we lost?”

What followed was a rapid-fire conversation between Moses and Ramos, our driver. Having limited Swahili vocabulary but reading the body language and urgency of tone, I was guessing that this was not good news!

After about a minute, Moses leaned back, looked straight at Carol, and delivered the verdict: “We could be.”

Uh-oh!

Carol, who is an intensive-care nurse by background and who values both having and then executing an orderly plan, began to envision our imminent death at the mouths of the same lions we had just observed eating a Grant’s gazelle for breakfast.

I knew what our older son, Brett, was thinking by the gleam in his eye. He who has never seen a 50-foot cliff he didn’t want to drop on a snowboard and authentically values adventure, especially accompanied by a little danger, was thinking, This is AWESOME! I’m the fastest guy in the car! So what do I have to worry about anyway? Humans, it is said, are the only animals that speed up when lost. This is especially true of American humans.

Moses, our guide, did the exact opposite. Rather than speed up, he came to a complete stop and waited for someone else to catch up so he could determine where we were in the Serengeti and then chart a new course to our destination.

He stopped DO-ing in order to focus on BE-ing found. What we needed that day on the Serengeti Plain was a GPS. What an amazing technological device. Using the broad perspective of three coordinates—latitude, longitude, and altitude—a GPS can find your car amongst the millions of cars on the planet, tell you exactly where you are, and then help you navigate to your desired destination…all in a soothing, patient voice too. Humans, it is said, are the only animals that speed up when lost. This is especially true of American humans.

When you screw up or are too stubborn to heed its advice, it doesn’t bark, “You moron! Why don’t you ever listen?”

No, it simply says “Recalculating” and calmly charts and then gives you a new route. Now that’s grace! So why don’t we apply the same broad perspective and grace to our own lives? Our tendency is to zero in on only one coordinate—money—and then ratchet up our speed at all costs to get more money or the stuff that more money can buy (like prestige or power).

Let’s be honest. Too often we value our stuff above our health, relationships, spiritual vitality, or life itself, don’t we? If you don’t think so, take a quick peek at your schedule right now…bet you just winced a bit, didn’t you?

It’s so easy for our personal GPS to get messed up— especially if we’re willing to let a single-minded pursuit of financial assets spin us in circles in the wilderness. After all, we believe, assets and liabilities determine our financial health and overall success…don’t they?

Net worth—what you have minus what you owe—has long been the key scorecard of prosperity and progress. Are you successful? on track? Check your net worth statement.

But is that really an accurate measure of a successful, fully engaged life?

An abundant life is that healthy but elusive blend of play, work, friendship, family, money, spiritual growth, and contribution. Abundance creates contentment. Contentment inspires gratitude. Your peace of mind, sense of fulfillment, and joy are determined by how well you manage many life dimensions, not just your finances. Intimate relationships, deep spiritual life, right work, good health, a vibrant community, interesting hobbies, and active learning all impact your sense of engagement with life.

Life worth is the investment you make into and the return you receive from all of these dimensions. It is both internal (a deep personal sense of engagement and fulfillment) and external (the ability to bring joy and lasting value to others). And, like a GPS, it takes more than one coordinate to determine your location and direction. You can be fully engaged with little or no net worth. Here’s what I mean. Net worth: what you have minus what you owe. Life worth: the investment you make into and the return you receive from all life dimensions.

The first time I visited Tanzania, I was amazed at how content the people seemed to be, even though they had next to nothing in possessions. I wondered, Is it because they are unencumbered by the shackles of “stuff” that they are fully able to connect with their families and friends? Is that why they are happily able to do the work required to live yet another day? Why they are content, even when they’re not sure sometimes where their next meal is coming from? Upon further reflection, I couldn’t help but add to these thoughts: And why is this sense of joy sorely lacking in our affluent Western world?

The thought was sobering…and enlightening.

As Os Guinness says: The trouble is that, as modern people, we have too much to live with, and too little to live for. In the midst of material plenty, we have spiritual poverty.1

Simply stated, material wealth is measured by net worth. Spiritual wealth and engagement are summed up by life worth. So let me ask you: What’s your life worth right now? Many people decide they must build their net worth first in order to fund life worth later.

But putting life on hold for one more business deal, one more project, a pay increase, a hopeful inheritance upon a relative’s death, or an investment return ensnares the unsuspecting in its grip of “not quite enough.” It can slowly form habits of overwork and selfishness. The focal point is always on what’s next instead of what’s first. Do you find yourself falling into the trap of thinking, Hey, I’ll just hang in there. What’s coming next has got to be better.

If so, you are in danger of driving in endless circles— and exhausting yourself in the process. Don’t fall for that kind of thinking. Dreams delayed can become a life unlived. As American journalist and best-selling author Po Bronson put it: It turns out that having the financial independence to walk away rarely triggers people to do just that. The reality is, making money is such hard work that it changes you. It takes twice as long as anyone plans for. It requires more sacrifice than anyone expects. You become so emotionally invested in that world—and psychologically adapted to it—that you don’t really want to ditch it.

Dreams delayed can become a life unlived.

Always DO-ing more ultimately causes us to BE less— less of a friend, mother, partner, student, or son.

I know. I’ve experienced it firsthand. I spent 14 years in the financial services industry, sitting at the table with countless people as they discussed their life dreams and financial goals.

What moved me were the life stories of the people with whom I met. Embedded in the discussion of money were the hopes, dreams, fears, regrets, beliefs, and biases of each person. Asking the right questions and then listening with both head and heart got right to the core of the matter with most people. And it was always about so much more than money. Inevitably, meaning trumped money. Life worth always outweighed net worth. Don’t wait until you have your own “lost in the Serengeti” experience—divorce, death, job loss, a failed semester, or a sick child—in order to enlarge your perspective. Choose to take an accurate reading of your life worth now so you can make a balanced investment in each of your key life dimensions.

To do this, you have to practice a “salmon perspective”—swimming upstream against a rushing torrent of marketing and messaging to the contrary. But nothing wonderful is ever gained by taking it easy. It requires commitment on your part. Let me share something with you. It’s worth it. Your life, thinking, and relationships will be transformed.

Jesus knew all about our natural inclination to fret about our finery and stew about our stuff—to live a one-coordinate life. That’s why He cautioned His closest friends: Don’t fuss about what’s on the table at mealtimes or if the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your inner life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the ravens, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, carefree in the care of God. And you count far more.

Leading a fully engaged life begins with a multi-coordinate focus on your life worth—a realization that &

Relationships matter more than anything. Health determines your quality of life. Work gives voice to your giftedness. Hobbies engage your energy beyond work.

Learning animates your imagination. And Faith gives all of your life purpose. Nothing wonderful is ever gained by taking it easy. It requires commitment on your part.

To determine your current life worth, use the assessment that begins on the following page. There are 10 dimensions of life worth. Measure each one. Your life is worth so much more than money. Are you living like it?

DO less. BE more.

What Is Your Life Worth?

How satisfied are you with each life dimension listed below? How important are these life dimensions to you? Please rate each on a scale of 1–5 (1=low; 3=medium; 5=high).

Satisfied Important

HEALTH ______ _______ Regular routines that promote healthy energy and vitality

LEARNING ______ _______ People and environments that stimulate growth

FAMILY ______ _______ Interest and involvement in the lives of family members

WORK ______ _______ Work that expresses talents and passion

LOVE RELATIONSHIP ______ _______ Alignment with loved one’s values and dreams

SPIRITUAL LIFE ______ _______ Sense of purpose, relationship with God, and/or service to others

I Miss Him But I Can Smile

2011-05-20T10:18:00.000-04:00

Usually I reserve videos for Worship Wednesdays, but today's a special day.

Today would have been my brother's 50th birthday. He passed away on April 18, 2011, just over a month ago.

I miss him. I mourn him. But I smile.

Are you smiling? It's Friday, the sun is shining (at least here in central FL) and God still reigns.

PatriciaW

Wednesday Worship: He Wants It All

2011-05-11T07:00:00.002-04:00

There's a voice that cries out in the silence,
Searching for heart that will love Him,
Longing for child that will give Him their all.
Give it all, He wants it all.

There's a God that walks over the earth,
Searching for heart that is desperate,
Longing for child that will give Him their all.
Give it all, He wants it all.

And He says, "Love me, love me with your whole heart."
He wants it all today.
"Serve me, serve me with you life now."
He wants it all today
"Bow down, let go of your idols."
He wants it all today.

This song has been a favorite of mine for a while now. I posted a different version of this video nearly a year ago, but it has literally rung in my head over and over since the recent passing of my beloved brother. He Wants It All asks the hard questions that always come following the death of a close loved one, even when that person dies in Christ.

Are you giving the Lord your all?

Managing Yourself

2011-03-23T10:16:00.000-04:00

I've been pondering what to do with this blog, everything from changing its name to collapsing it into my other blog to getting rid of it. There's really a lot I want to say via this site, but I haven't had--correction, I haven't made--time to do it, and so, I've been silent.

As far as the blog name, I'm keeping it. "It Starts With Me" is an admonishment to myself as I occasionally wondering why this isn't happening for me or why I haven't achieve that yet. I truly believe God gifts us with the talents and wisdom we need to do the things our hearts desire. We may not always heed His call or take action given the opportunity.

Believing this, I place any disappointment squarely at my own feet and strengthen my resolve.

Leadership guru John Maxwell, in this morning's Minute with Maxwell video clip, spoke about stewardship. I gasped when I heard him utter the phrase, "It starts with me."

Yes! That's exactly what I believe.

Take a minute to listen: John Maxwell on Stewardship

You see, if God truly has seeded within us all that we need, then tending that garden (developing those gifts and skills), picking the fruit of the garden (exercising those gifts) and offering the fruit for sale or gift (reaping the benefit of the gifts) depends on us. Our choices. Our efforts. Our commitment. Our management.

Maxwell simplies this to one word: stewardship.

We often think of stewardship over physical assets, like money, homes and other treasures. But we also have to be good stewards over our lives, including our hopes and dreams, our thoughts, our beliefs and values and all that is intrinsic in us.

We are to be good managers of that which God has given us, not to worry about that which we don't have and not to lament over what's not happening as readily as we might want. Rather, our focus should be on managing ourselves and our lives, for our good, for the good of others and ultimately to the glory of God.

I try to remind myself of this first, whenever I start to whine or complain about what my life isn't or what I don't have. Becoming a good steward is a challenging process. It doesn't happen overnight, and some never learn. I hope to master it one day.

How well are you managing you?

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

10 Lessons from a Former Fat Girl

2011-02-17T07:00:00.012-05:00

I wish!

I wish I were the former fat girl who wrote this book. I'm not, but Amy Parham, former Biggest Loser contestant, is.

BTW, I love The Biggest Loser. Haven't caught the last couple of seasons, but I like what they do. They help people to change their lives. Sure, the contestants get isolated, dedicated time to work on their nutrition, exercise and emotional needs, but it works. And even if some gain their weight right back, not all do. One person saved from death by obesity is a person saved. I've secretly wished I had a life that would allow me to be whisked away for 6-10 weeks and deal with these fat issues once and for all.

I'll get there. I've got two years to meet my goal before my next big milestone.

Anyway, Amy Parham, who participated along with her husband, Chuck, has written a book about what she has learned. 10 Lessons From a Former Fat Girl covers Amy's unvarnished battle with weight and the issues that led to it, as well as how she has managed to lose and maintain her weight loss since.

She says, right in the first chapter, "Often weight can be a security blanket to keep from having to deal with sensitive things going on in the heart, and uncovering those hurts can be a painful process."

Boy, I've found this to be true, at least at the start, when we're not conscious of gaining weight or what we're doing to our bodies. A lot of the issues begin in childhood, where even if your family life was good and nurturing, insecurity may have latched on as you wondered who you were, where you fit and what you were meant to do with your life. Later on, when perhaps the issues are so deeply rooted or maybe even after they've been dealt with, you're stuck with poor eating habits and sedentary lives that require a mountain of effort to get out from under. Through her book, Amy shows that achieving weight loss can be done and words of encouragement to get you through.

###

This is a FIRST Wildcard Blog Tour featuring

Amy Parham

and the book:

10 Lessons from a Former Fat Girl

Harvest House Publishers (January 1, 2011)

Special thanks to Christianne Debysingh, Senior Publicist, Harvest House Publishers for sending me a review copy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Amy Parham co-authored with her husband, Phil, The 90-Day Fitness Challenge and The 90-Day Fitness Challenge DVD. She and Phil were contestants on Season 6 of NBC’s The Biggest Loser. Over a seven-month period, they recorded the highest percentage of weight loss of any couple in the program’s history. Married for more than 20 years, they live in South Carolina with their three boys, Austin, Pearson, and Rhett.

Visit the author's website.

SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:

Former fat girl Amy Parham offers a practical, proven plan for changing not only the fat-girl body but also the fat-girl mentality. Focusing on the mental ,emotional, and spiritual aspects of our relationship with food and exercise, Amy shows how readers can make this a healthy partnership that brings permanent change.

Product Details:

List Price: $11.99
Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers (January 1, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0736938656
ISBN-13: 978-0736938655

AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:

We All Have an Empty Place

We’re all searching for something to fill up what I like to call that big, God-shaped hole in our souls. Some people use alcohol, or sex, or their children, or food, or money, or music, or heroin. A lot of people even use the concept of God itself. I could go on and on. I used to know a girl who used shoes. She had over two-hundred pairs. But it’s all the same thing, really. People, for some stupid reason, think they can escape their sorrows.

— Tiffanie DeBartolo, God-Shaped Hole

My earliest memories were such happy ones. Mom had dinner on the table when Dad came home from work, and my two sisters and I laughed and talked about our day with our parents. It was the best feeling. Everything about our family felt so right and secure. I remember Mom walking me to kindergarten every day at a church around the corner from my house. In that same church parking lot, my dad taught me how to ride a bike without training wheels. He also taught me to fly a kite, and with his help, I won a blue ribbon in a kite-flying competition at my school.

I had my own bedroom with a yellow gingham canopy bed and a playhouse in the backyard. There was also a dogwood tree that I climbed all the time. My best friend, Teresa, lived across the street, and my grandparents lived nearby. Life was good and felt normal, but when I turned eight years old, my seemingly perfect life changed forever.

A Growing Hole

Dad quit his longtime job at a local radio station in South Carolina to pursue a job at another radio station in West Palm Beach, Florida. We had to sell our house immediately and move to what seemed to me to be a different planet. I will never forget the image of Teresa and me standing by the “For Sale” sign in our front yard. We bawled our eyes out and held each other so tight because we knew we might not ever see each other again.

When we got to Florida, the five of us moved into a tiny apartment. There was nothing wrong with the apartment, but I was uncomfortable because I was used to living in a larger space and having a big yard to play in. My sisters and I barely had enough room to squeeze past each other on the way to the bathroom. My new school was huge compared to the one I attended in South Carolina. But the worst thing was that while everyone knew and loved me at my old school, I was now the new girl at school, and I got ridiculed for it. I felt insecure, unsure of myself, and alone. I wanted to go back to my happy, carefree life.

This was the first time I remember being unhappy and having no control over my circumstances. I was deeply sad, and it felt like I had an empty hole in my soul. Thankfully, we only stayed in Florida for one year, but things would never go back to how they were before. I would never regain the sense of normalcy I had so desperately craved.

When we came back to South Carolina, we moved to a different city, and my parents bought a restaurant and ice-cream parlor. It was hard work building a new business, and the stress took a toll on Mom and Dad. They began to fight all the time about money and other issues. It got so bad that they divorced.

When my parental situation turned upside down, I found myself in a world that lacked security and stability. Suddenly, I was being raised by a single mother, and as the oldest daughter at ten years old, there was a lot of pressure on me to help my mom care for my two sisters. She worked very hard (sometimes up to 18 hours a day), and I know she did her best to keep food on the table and clothes on our backs. She usually had no time to tuck us in at night and tell us bedtime stories because she worked such long hours.

My sisters (who were four and six years old) and I spent a lot of time at home alone. As much as we tried to pick up after ourselves, you can imagine how messy three kids can be. I felt terrible when my mother would come home, tired from working so much, and be cranky because the house was such a disaster. I never felt like I could do enough to make Mom happy or fix our broken home life.

Many mornings she had to get to work at the crack of dawn and woke us up at three in the morning to take us to the restaurant. She made us a makeshift bed on the concrete floor in the back room and let us sleep there while she worked. This was not an ideal environment for kids, but she was doing the best she could.

It wasn’t her fault. The problem was me. I felt the hole inside my heart growing bigger and bigger, and I desperately needed something to fill it.

Enter the Banana Split

I remember one particular day when I was playing outside the restaurant and decided to go visit the couple who worked at the dry cleaners next door. The owners were in their late twenties and had no children of their own. They were kind enough to let me hang out with them sometimes, and it made me feel good.

In my mind, I felt “less than” because my life had changed so drastically in only two years. I was nothing like the other kids at school and always felt out of place. This couple welcomed, accepted, and loved me just the way I was. They talked to me like I was one of their peers, and I appreciated the kindness and warmth they showed me.

This day was like any other day that I would drop by for a visit. I had been sitting at the counter and talking to the wife for about 20 minutes when her husband walked in. He abruptly told me that it was time for me to go. He said that their business was no place for children and that I shouldn’t hang out there so much.

I was hurt to my core and very embarrassed. I thought they were my friends, but they were abandoning me. I tried my best to maintain my composure and make myself believe that it didn’t matter. I reassured myself that I didn’t need them and was fine on my own. I remember announcing to them that I was leaving, anyway, to go to make a banana split for myself.

I guess in my own childlike way, I was trying to hold on to my self-respect by pointing out that I could have a banana split anytime I wanted one. Maybe it seems silly, but for me that moment was a turning point because it concerned food. I ended up making myself that banana split and hoping it would fill some of the rejection and the emptiness I had been feeling for so long. It was the first time I used food for comfort, but it would definitely not be the last time.

Bigger and Bigger

As I got older, I gained weight and came under the attack of my grandmother who constantly told me I was chubby. My two sisters were in this weight battle with me. What else would anyone expect from kids who ate fast food and ice cream every day for years? Being overweight compounded our problems in school. Not only were we still the new kids on the block, but we had also become the fat kids.

My youngest sister had an especially hard time with children teasing her. To this day, she talks about the negative memories — one of which was having to shop for clothes in the husky department at Sears — that have haunted her through the years. Not only did she suffer from a kidney problem that made her gain even more weight, she also had an eye condition and had to wear coke-bottle glasses. She felt like such an outcast, and it broke my heart. At this point, I had taken on the role of surrogate mother for my sisters. I felt responsible for them and believed it was my job to protect them. I hated to see them suffer so much.

I don’t say all of this to blame my parents. I know they both loved us girls very much and did their best at the time, but the fact was I felt very alone and abandoned. While my mom worked long hours to support us, my father took up a new life. He started dating a woman soon after the divorce. We didn’t realize how serious the relationship was until we found out they had gotten married. My sisters and I weren’t even invited to the wedding.

Yet again, I felt I was left behind as he started a whole new life without my sisters and me. This feeling was further reinforced when he purchased a two-seater sports car. I remember thinking that there wasn’t enough room for my sisters and me. Where were we going to fit in? To me, the car was a symbol of how we weren’t a part of Dad’s life anymore.

My void grew deeper with each passing day. As I shoved more food into my mouth to soothe the pain that wouldn’t go away, my weight crept up.

When I was eleven years old, my friend Beth invited me to attend her church youth group one night. My grandfather was a Pentecostal preacher, and church was a big part of our lives. We visited many churches through the years and spent many weeks during the summers at different vacation Bible schools, which were hosted by local congregations. I had even accepted Christ into my heart at a young age.

Since moving back to South Carolina, however, our family had stopped going to church. I missed it. The thought of visiting one with my friend absolutely thrilled me. When I arrived at the service, I immediately felt as if I belonged. I was in a wonderful place where people loved and cared about each other. It felt like I was home again. Church became my refuge. I especially felt drawn to the youth pastor, Sam. He quickly became a father figure to me, and I felt like I could tell him anything.

This reconnection with church sparked the beginning of a deepening relationship with God. Every Tuesday night, the church bus would drive to my house and take me to church. It was there that I experienced overwhelming love from others, and I discovered that God wanted to fill up the empty hole inside of my heart.

My faith commitment didn’t mean that my problems were suddenly solved. I didn’t ride off into the sunset of my new, happily-ever-after future. It just meant that for the first time in a long time, I felt like I had a lifeline. I had hope. My heart had a chance to become whole.

By learning about God’s love for me, I realized that because we are all human, we all carry with us a certain measure of hurt and pain. This is a part of the sin nature of humankind. But that was not all. I also discovered that God created us with a space that only He can fill. He wanted to be the one to fill my voids and heal my hurts. The pain I was trying to mask with ice cream was a pain that only He could mend.

The Fat Girl Thinks She Is in Control

I want you to know that emptiness is normal. If you feel as if you need to numb the pain or soothe your soul with something outside of yourself, you are not alone. We all endure suffering from time to time. It’s a normal process of living in a sinful world.

While emptiness is normal, it is how you fill the emptiness that will determine whether you are a fat girl or a fit girl. These two chicks cope with problems in different ways. The fit girl chooses God. The fat girl chooses unhealthy addictions. The fat girl can use many different ways to try to heal the hurt on the inside. Some abuse food, drugs, or alcohol or become addicted to work, hobbies, or unhealthy relationships. It might be hard to believe, but some folks can even abuse exercise to an addictive level.

Let me tell you something. The hole that is formed inside of us is not shaped like an ice-cream cone, a vodka bottle, a cigarette, or a good-looking guy. The hole is shaped like the Holy Spirit, the Comforter. He is the one who is meant to fill our empty places and heal our hurts.

I like to think about it this way. We have been created like puzzles with a missing piece. That piece is a relationship with God. He wants us to invite Him into our hearts. The closer we walk with God, the less we will search for other things to fill the hole. This is something the fit girl knows and understands.

I will be honest with you. There have been many times in my life, especially as a fat girl, when I have drifted away from my relationship with the Lord. I’m not a psychiatrist, but I believe that because of the instability I felt as a result of my parent’s divorce, I made a decision as a little girl that when I became an adult, I would be self-sufficient. I would take care of myself so that bad things would never happen to me again.

As most of us know, life usually doesn’t turn out as smooth as we hope it will. Bad things happen to everyone. Here’s a reality check. In life, people will disappoint us one way or another. If you have never been hurt or offended by someone, then you just might be an alien from outer space. The fact is none of us can measure up to perfection, and since we can’t, then certainly life will never be perfect.

My sense of independence severely impaired me when it came to trusting God with my life. I voiced my commitment to Him, but when things got tough or trials came my way, I wanted to take back my commitment. I wanted to do things my way instead of His way. When I turned away from God, that original hole in my heart would reappear, and I temporarily filled it with something. My choices were usually food, of course, and sometimes alcohol or the attention of the opposite sex. None of those things ever gave me true contentment because nothing outside of God could fulfill me.

A significant time I pulled away from God was when my son Rhett was diagnosed with autism. I was 35 at the time, and Rhett was 3. Autism is a spectrum disorder that presents different social and psychological abnormalities in some children. The main challenges we had with Rhett were that he screamed nonstop and was very sensitive to certain sounds. He also had a high threshold for pain. If he was hurting, he didn’t know how to tell us, and so my husband and I were always afraid that he might be sick and we would never know.

We faced other obstacles with our son. Rhett acted as if he had no fear. He was always jumping off the top of the sliding board, and one time he even climbed out of his bedroom window and onto the roof. He exhibited destructive behaviors, colored on the walls, overfilled the bathroom sink or tub with water, and broke things around the house at random. Because he couldn’t communicate in a normal manner, he was easily frustrated.

It was a very sad and dark time in our lives. I was utterly exhausted. I couldn’t believe that God would allow my child to be this way, especially because I tried to live a good Christian life. For goodness sake, I even served Him in ministry at church! Why me? This was the question I constantly asked myself whenever I threw a pity party, which was quite often. This should not happen to someone like me, I thought.

I determined that if my son could suffer from autism when God was supposed to be in control, then maybe I should take back the reins of my life and chart my own course. I would figure out how to fix Rhett. I would find a way to make him better by myself. Who needed God? I was pretty sure I could handle things on my own.

As I focused on being in control, guess what happened? That’s right. The hole that formed when my family fell apart grew bigger. And that’s when the fat girl came out in full force. When it came time for bed, I was so exhausted from trying to do everything on my own that I would fall into a heap on the sofa. I spent many nights with my new comforters—a bowl of ice cream or a bag of chips. Oh, I still had conversations with God, but they were more like yelling matches. I would demand that He fix Rhett in the spirit of “You got me into this mess, God, so You’d better get me out of it.”

One day as I was driving down the road and screaming at God yet again, He gently put me in my place. A still, small voice spoke quietly to my heart and said, “Amy, you aren’t perfect, and I love you. Why does Rhett have to be perfect for you to love him?” Talk about getting hit right between the eyes! I knew that God was absolutely right. I was definitely not perfect, and instead of loving Rhett for who he was and dealing with the situation at hand, I had been focusing on making him normal (whatever that even means). At that moment I shifted my focus and asked God to forgive me. I asked Him to help me trust Him with Rhett and the other challenges in my life.

I quickly came to the realization that when I controlled my life, I only made more of a mess of it. It was a lesson I would continue to learn even after I lost the weight and transformed into a fit girl. (By the way, you’ll quickly find out that the fit girl is always learning!)

A week later, I was at church, and as I listened to the sermon, the pastor stopped in the middle of what he was saying and told the congregation that he felt led to say something specific. He said that there was someone in the service who didn’t know how much longer they could hang on, and that they should be encouraged because God was about to perform a miracle in their life.

I was stunned. Only a few days earlier, I mumbled something to myself about not being able to take these problems anymore. Not only was I dealing with my weight — I was 230 pounds at that point — and Rhett’s autism diagnosis, but my husband, Phillip, and I had also lost a business right after we had purchased a home that needed thousands of dollars worth of renovations. I was emotionally drained by these problems. It seemed I couldn’t get a break.

I felt as if the pastor was talking to me. It was the encouragement I needed to hear. Maybe my life would get better! Within days, the miracles started happening. First, we found out about a therapy called “audio integration” that proved to be a miracle cure for Rhett. It stopped his sensitivity to sound and his constant screaming. We were able to catch and keep his attention for a long period of time, and for the first time, I felt he could actually begin to learn. Second, our financial situation started to turn around as we found new careers in real estate.

When things started changing for the better, Phil and I specifically realized we had been feeding our physical bodies instead of filling our spiritual bodies. In the process, we had become morbidly obese. It was time to begin the journey to lose the weight. For me, it was time to say good-bye to the fat girl and hello to the fit girl.

What about you? What’s your story? I have met people all over the country who have stories that make mine seem like a walk in the park. One such lady that I met recently told me that her problems with her weight began right after her husband committed suicide. That in itself is a horrifying traumatic event, and now this woman is left to pick up the pieces of a family torn apart by tragedy. This affected her and her family emotionally, mentally, and financially. Five years later this lady is obese, depressed, and struggling to support her family. My heart goes out to people like this because I see the magnitude of their holes and how they are desperately trying to fill them.

Pascal wrote, “What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.” In this he describes the search that is familiar to the fat girl. So many people are on this journey to fill that hole in their hearts.

Another time I met a beautiful young woman with an incredible singing talent. She is tall and blonde and beautiful in spite of the more than 100 pounds she wants to lose. She shared with me that when she was in high school, her stepfather was murdered. Before that she had never had a weight problem, but that event threw her into such a depression that she could hardly get out of bed in the morning. Her grades suffered, and she had to drop out of school for a while. She began eating to comfort herself in her grief.

These people suffered a pain that pierced their hearts like a bullet and left a hole that couldn’t be healed. They needed the Comforter to heal them, but instead they turned to food. Does this sound familiar? Have your fat-girl tendencies to heal yourself left you more depressed and burdened with extra weight? Have you suffered in a way that you feel no one can understand? Do you feel that there is no way out of the pain that plagues you day and night? It’s time to become the fit girl.

What a Fit Girl Knows

Fit girls know that making the right nutrition choices and getting regular exercise are only half the battle. The real key to losing weight and keeping it off is in fighting a spiritual and mental battle. When I lost all the weight while on The Biggest Loser, I found that many issues from my past reappeared. When it was time for the fit girl to deal with her internal fears and let go of the crutches the fat girl held on to for dear life, I felt like a scared kid curled up in a corner in a fetal position. I had to give that scared little girl permission to rise up and be strong. Why? Because fit girls are strong and are not afraid to face challenges, obstacles, or their fears. I had to show the fat girl what a fit girl is capable of.

As a fat girl, I focused on naming things I couldn’t do. After I started losing weight, I was on a mission to prove the fat girl wrong. I climbed mountains, kayaked rivers, hiked the Grand Canyon, and endured physical challenges that I never thought I could face. Being able to witness my own strength for the first time in my life and overcome the impossible was just the beginning of my fit-girl transformation. Healing my heart on the inside would prove to be a bigger challenge than climbing the biggest mountain I could find, but it was only when my heart healed that I was able to find the fit girl.

You may be asking, “Who is the fit girl?” The fit girl is you when you discover that the hole on the inside of you is designed to be filled by God, your heavenly Father and the Creator of the universe. The fit girl is you when you realize that the compulsion to fill an internal void with food, alcohol, or other stuff is futile because only God can fill that place. The fit girl is you when you realize that you don’t need to comfort yourself with anything but God because you know He loves you very much and wants nothing but the best for your life.

The Bible says that “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (see Hebrews 11:1 nkjv). Faith in God is the belief that He is the substance you need for the life you dream of but have yet to see. For the fit girl, a life worth dreaming about is one where she doesn’t have to fill the empty places in her life with things outside of God when pressures get to her.

Remember how I said I would continue to learn this lesson? Well, when I was going through the process of losing weight, I faced different kinds of temptations to fill the void. My new alternatives to filling the void were worse than the food addiction.

For instance, as I got thinner, I was getting attention from men other than my husband. I hadn’t experienced that kind of attention in years, and to be honest, I liked it. In fact, I liked it so much that I realized that even though I was a happily married woman, I still sought after male attention to prove that I was attractive. I liked it when other men thought I was pretty, and so I didn’t discourage harmless flirtations. As you can imagine, my husband didn’t find this behavior an acceptable replacement for my food cravings.

Before I knew it, I found myself switching from one addiction to another. I stopped caring about welcoming glances from men and started drinking red wine. That occasional one glass of wine quickly turned into two or three glasses a few nights a week. Obviously the fat girl wasn’t just an outside issue but an issue of the heart. I had a heart problem, and I needed a healer.

So once again I turned to the Lord and asked Him to heal me and be my guide. I asked Him to fill me with His Holy Spirit and show me how to change my heart. I asked Him to reveal to me the keys to change my reactions to life and its challenges and pressures. It was then that God, once again, asked me to have faith in Him and trust Him with my life. He didn’t want to be my acquaintance. He wanted to be my Lord. Thankfully, I said yes to that process. I haven’t looked back since.

What about you? Have you noticed that your struggles are similar to mine? Do you have a hole in your heart that you are trying to fill up with addictive behaviors like compulsive shopping, drinking too much, or smoking cigarettes? Have you lost weight and found yourself holding on to things that have replaced a food addiction? What’s your new drug of choice?

Often weight can be a security blanket to keep from having to deal with sensitive things going on in the heart, and uncovering those hurts can be a painful process. Know this: God loves you and wants you to be whole and fit. He wants to build a relationship with you so that you can allow Him to fill every part of your life. It’s not enough to occasionally chat with Him through a prayer. God wants to be your partner and your friend. He wants to transform you from the inside out! He wants you to be a fit girl.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Transformation Tips

I want you to do something for me. Find a really quiet place and go there by yourself. I know this might be hard if you have little kids or a busy schedule, but carve out some time to sit in the quiet and set your daily routine aside for a while. This is important. (By the way, finding a few minutes alone to meditate and pray is a great thing to do at the end of each of these lessons.)

During this quiet time, pray and ask God to reveal some things that may be holding you back from being the fit girl He made you to be. He may bring things to your mind that you haven’t thought about in years. You may have buried feelings, situations, or experiences you didn’t want to deal with back then — things God wants you to uncover today. God can show you these things through dreams or even nightmares. Identify whatever comes to your mind and write them down in a journal.

Here is a list of questions that will help you with this process and show you some things that may be keeping the fit girl at bay. Take some time to meditate on these questions and pray about your answers. Ask God to speak into your heart.

What are my earliest childhood memories? Are they happy ones? Sad ones?
How have these memories shaped my life?
Are there people from my past who I need to forgive or ask to forgive me?
What role does God have in my life? Can I draw closer to Him?
In my relationships with others, does the way I act cause hurt feelings? Concerning myself, does my behavior cause harm or is it self-destructive?
These might be hard questions for you to think about, but it’s what you have to do if you want to transform yourself into a fit girl. Finally, I want you to pray about each revelation and ask God to show you how to make changes in the areas that need some work. Trust that He will give you the strategies to heal the places that need healing.

Commit to having a closer relationship with God and listening more closely when He speaks to your heart. He may ask you to call someone and ask them to forgive you for being angry with them. He may tell you that you are going to have to end relationships in your life that are unhealthy. Whatever it is you feel He is leading you to do, do it. This is the beginning of the healing journey and finding the fit girl in you!

Your Prayer

Father, please help me realize that only You can fulfill me, and that I need only You to fill the empty spaces inside me. Help me turn away from the temptation to fill my empty spaces with anything else. I pray that You would give me the strength to continually make the choice to relinquish control of my life to You. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

Where Was I Headed?

2011-01-05T11:30:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted over here in eons, mostly because my thoughts are changing about what I want to do with this blog. But a writing friend, Wanda, who pens inspirational thoughts provoked this question today, a good question particularly at this time of the year when many are considering their goals and New Year's resolutions. Check out her post over at her blog, The Watered Soul.

For me, I can say my life is not what I thought it would be. That's not a bad thing. In my early years, I thought I'd be a U.S. Senator or high-powered attorney. Politics leaves a sour taste in my mouth, although I do wish I'd gotten that law degree.

Later, I thought it'd be fun to do something in publishing or book selling. After all, I've always loved books. I dropped that dream for something more solid and lucrative, a technical career. I wish I'd stuck with that dream, although in a way I've come full circle since I'm now writing for publication.

Then, I imagined myself a corporate bigwig with a PhD. Those dreams fell to the changing priorities resulting from marriage and motherhood. I decided corporate America wasn't quite all it was cracked up to be, even though I'm still in it, and I found myself in a place wherein education, given the cost and time commitment, needed purpose. I'm okay with that, although "Doctor Patricia" still has a nice ring to it and I'm nearing a point where education for education's sake might be okay.

I also dreamed of marrying and growing old with a man who loves me, and becoming a mother many times over. I've done or am doing, in the case of growing old, those things, and those things have led me down paths to experience things I never dreamed. Life is good. Still, I want more.

The point I'd like to make is there's nothing wrong with changing your plans, as Terah did. There is, however, something wrong with ceasing to dream and to move in those dreams, even if it's marching in place, for a time.

Today my dreams involve my name on the cover of multiple books and in the byline of magazine articles, with unexpected doors opened as a result. My financial needs completely covered (not necessarily through book publishing). My children healthy and prospering. My family connections deepened. Hubby and I contagiously in love. Encouraged by and inspiring to a close circle of friends. My body lighter and stronger. Living out my faith in a way that positively affects my family and community, a spiritual life that will please God.

This is what I think about as I consider the year 2011.

What do you dream? Do you know where you're headed?

Peace & Blessings,
Patricia

Worship: I Give Myself Away

2010-11-03T10:49:00.000-04:00

Heard this a few weeks back in church, but didn't know the name or artist until I heard it again on gospel radio the other day.

Here I am
Here I stand
Lord, my life is in your hands
Lord, I’m longing to see
Your desires revealed in me
I give myself away
I give myself away...

Peace & Blessings,
Patricia

Wednesday Worship: He's Been Faithful

2010-10-27T07:00:00.000-04:00

Ever get a song in your head and can't get it out? Vicki Yohe singing He's Been Faithful has been that song for me for the past few days, ever since Hubby had it blasting through the house Saturday morning. It's been a favorite for years but I hadn't heard it in a while.

Right now it feels as though God is speaking to me through this song, branding this message into my heart and mind that I might offer it back to Him in thanksgiving. I can't begin to express the many ways in which God has been faithful to me and to my family.

You've been faithful, Your love and your mercy I see...

Great is thy faithfulness...morning by morning...

Do you see His faithfulness in your life?

Wednesday Worship: Offering

2010-10-20T07:00:00.001-04:00

What have you done for God lately?

Sound absurb? It's not.

What have you given God? Have you given Him your worship, your praise?

Have you given Him your service, your time, your talent?

Have you given Him your hands, your feet, your heart for His use?

These are the thoughts that ran through my mind as I listened to this song, Offering by Paul Baloche, on the radio the other day.

No one on earth deserves the praises that I sing,
Jesus, may You receive the honor that You're due
O Lord I bring an offering to You

Well?

Wednesday Worship: Faithful Is Our God

2010-10-13T07:00:00.009-04:00

God is faithful.

That feels like 'nuff said, but for those who aren't sure, know that God keeps His promises.

For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us. 2 Corinthians 1:20 (KJV)

Simply put, you can count on Him.

Sometimes it may feel as though there's no one you can trust, no one you can turn to, no one you can count on.

Let me say it again. You can count on Christ.

His promises are forever. You have to know this in your heart of hearts in order to live a fulfilled life in Jesus.

Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands. Deuteronomy 7:9 (NIV)

Maybe you need to hear it. Repetitively. Faithful is Our God by Hezekiah Walker and LFC take care of that for me, very nicely. Listen, enjoy and be reminded: You can count on Christ!

Featured Book: The Comic Book Bible by Rob Suggs

2010-10-05T07:00:00.000-04:00

The Comic Book Bible is a cute and enticing way to present the Scriptures to young children, particularly boys. If they enjoy reading about Spiderman, the Fantastic Four and other superheros, why not the most super of all heroes, Jesus Christ?

The Scriptures are presented in standard Bible sequence, with each story limited to four pages of comic frames. This makes it quick and easy to read and digest the story for readers ages 6 - 10. The nice thing is that even younger readers, like my five-year-old who's just learning sight words, can enjoy the Bible stories and glean the messages from the cartoon depictions. This is certainly a less intimidating way to introduce them to the Bible than any other translation I've seen.

Because the graphics are a bit cheesy, not many adult fans of comic books will pick this one up, but then the book isn't targeted toward them (and they'll likely get more insight from one of the many Bible translations available today). This is not a Bible that young readers could take to church to follow along, but it is one that they can use for personal study and yes, entertainment.

Peace & Blessings,

Featured Book: Soul Food and Living Water by Yolanda and William Powell

2010-09-30T07:00:00.003-04:00

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

WILLIAM J. POWELL is a senior policy analyst for the District of Columbia and also pastors, Dominion International Ministries, a new start-up and dynamic church fellowship in Southern Maryland.

YOLANDA POWELL is president of Oracles & Utterance, Incorporated, a Kingdom-advancing ministry to establish the global Body of Jesus Christ in deeper life intimacy, prophetic intercession, and spiritual warfare. She also serves as apostolic director of EXOUSIA, a Mid-Atlantic prayer training summit to equip church leaders and prayer teams in intense levels of intercession.

THE POWELLS reside in Dunkirk, Maryland with their three young adult sons.

ABOUT THE BOOK

As God-conscious families, we all struggle to maintain a vibrant faith that will lead to strength and happiness in the midst of declining social values and daily challenges. Marital commitment, child rearing, financial stewardship and family harmony are problems that can become intensely magnified, draining our joy and ability to sufficiently thrive.

Overflowing with Biblical teaching, practical examples and real encouragement, Soul Food and Living Water provides the spiritual nourishment you and your family needs. Written in culturally sensitive language, reflecting the rich heritage and strong faith of African Americans, Soul Food and Living Water refreshes and equips families for today’s challenges.

Soul Food and Living Water is a personal invitation to come and dine at the Lord’s table, to be comforted in His presence and to feast upon His Words. So eat heartily and drink deeply.

PODCASTS

PODCAST 1 - Yolanda Powell talks About the Book

Download MP3 file OR click here to listen...

PODCAST 2 - William Powell talks About the Book

Download MP3 file OR click here to listen...

PODCAST 3 – "It’s Family Time"

Download MP3 file OR click here to listen...

PODCAST 4 – Excerpt from Chapter 1

Download MP3 file OR click here to listen...

BOOK REVIEW

Soul Food and Living Water gets right to the heart of the matter: people are dying for lack of spiritual nourishment. Oh, it's not that there are more than enough opportunities to get nourished, what with thousands of churches, millions of books, an increasing number of television and Internet options to hear/watch the Word of God being preached. But as the authors point out, that's just "churchin'", which is very different than actually investing time in one's spiritual development and the establishment of a steady and sturdy spiritual foundation in the home.

The Powells address everything from the need to slow down and make time for God to intimacy within marriage and helping hip-hop lovin' teens to get to know for who He really is in a world that is bombarding them with mixed messages. Although the book is targeted toward African-Americans, all can take away important lessons and thoughts to ponder from this written admonishment to do better in our professed relationship with Christ by implementing the practical tips that are packed within its covers. Soul Food and Living Water is not a quick read, but it's a necessary one.

Purchase the Book Online at:

· Amazon.com

· BarnesandNoble.com

· Booksamillion.com

· Borders.com

· Christianbook.com

· Indiebound.org

For More Information

Visit the authors at http://soulfoodandlivingwater.com.
View the blog tour schedule at http://bit.ly/SoulFoodandLivingWaterTour

Wednesday Worship: That's What He's Done For Me

2010-09-22T07:00:00.014-04:00

I heard a song off Israel Houghton's new album called "You Won't Let Go of Me". Gotta find that one, but not yet on Youtube, it seems. So this week, I went with an "oldie but goodie".

This song began ringing in my head during our move this past weekend. Moving always uncovers items you haven't seen in a while and resurrects memories of times past. For us, a tape of the original recording of James Hall & Worship & Praise is one of those things. (Disclosure: Hubby was the executive producer, and what a wonderful recording it was. The only negative is that we didn't shoot any video back in 1993 as we shook the floor at Institutional COGIC in Brooklyn. If you've ever been to Institutional, you know what I mean.)

This song, That's What He's Done For Me, is so simple yet so on point. Every time I hear it, I start thinking of the many ways that God has blessed me and kept me throughout my life. Rather than be maudlin about all the mishap and mayhem I could have been in, I'd rather get with James and the gang--a choir so good they could sing the paint off the walls--and dance and sing my celebration and appreciation.

How about you? Has the Lord done something that gets you out of your seat every time you think about it?

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

Wednesday Worship: Still

2010-09-08T07:00:00.000-04:00

God has been giving me lessons in being still. Learning not only to be patient, but to truly be still. To do nothing despite what my analytical, I-need-a-plan brain says. To move out of His way. To take a step back and watch Him work.

It's amazing stuff. God is a wonder.

Do you find it difficult to be still when "the oceans rise and thunders roar" in your life?

I dare you to try it.

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

Wednesday Worship: He Wants It All

2010-08-25T12:04:00.000-04:00

Wow! Haven't posted here in a nearly a month. So much going on. How to handle it all? How do you handle it all?

The good news is we don't have to because He wants it all. God wants us to give Him every part of our being--our hopes and dreams, our pains and disappointments, our struggles, our joys, our praise, our worship.

He wants it all!

Give Him your all. He'll give you back so much more.

Peace & Blessings,
Patricia

Wednesday Worship: Everywhere That I Go by Israel Houghton

2010-07-28T07:00:00.022-04:00

I love hearing Israel Houghton perform live. This song, Everywhere That I Go, has been ringing in my head for the past week, even as we played a boatload of other CDs driving to and from Atlanta last weekend.

God wants us to remember that wherever we are, He's there too. We don't have to wonder or look very far. God is always within reach, always willing to listen, always ready to guide and inspire.

You promised me You'd never leave,
You promised me I'm never forsaken,
And I believe
Goodness and mercy shall follow me,
Surrounding me,
Where I go,
Everywhere that I go.

Now, before you click on the video, I hope you won't mind the Jackson 5 riff at the beginning. I think Israel simply appreciates good music. I certainly do.

Peace & Blessings,
Patricia

Bishop Walter Hawkins Has Gone Away

2010-07-12T10:31:00.001-04:00

The passing of Bishop Walter Hawkins might not get the same attention as that of another seminal singer from the last four decades, Michael Jackson, did only a year ago, but in the church world, this loss is just as great.

If you spent any significant time in the Black church during the 1970's and '80s, you are very well aware of Bishop Walter L. Hawkins and the Love Center Choir. Who doesn't remember when Love Alive, the first of five Love Center albums, hit the scene? We were treated to such great and now iconic songs, like "Changed", "I Won't Be Satisfied", "Dear Jesus, I Love You", and "Goin' Up Yonder". Note when this album hit, they weren't CDs nor was it called Love Alive 1. Who knew there would be others? After hearing the songs though, we were all clamoring for more.

Of course, big brother Edwin Hawkins had already made a name for himself and the Edwin Hawkins Singers with "Oh Happy Day" but would this new choir, this new sound, last?

Then came Jesus Christ Is The Way, followed by Love Alive II, and we were knew the first album hadn't been lightening in a bottle. Walter Hawkins and the Love Center Choir, which featured his then-wife Tramaine Hawkins and his sister Lynette Hawkins, was for real.

Bishop Hawkins and the choir teased us, though. Unlike other choirs that shot of the gate, dropped a bunch of music and faded from the scene, they made us wait. Their releases were much farther apart than other choirs, but somehow we all understood. Their level of greatness couldn't be rushed.

It wasn't just the music, though. Bishop Walter Hawkins and his brother, Edwin Hawkins, had flair. They had style. I'm not sure anyone other than their very closest circle of friends and family, and maybe not even them, saw these gentlemen looking anything but pressed and dressed to impress. Always.

They didn't come out often. We didn't see them on every music show and special or at every gospel music conference. So when they appeared, we knew we were in fro a special treat. Even if they didn't perform, just having them there brought an air of magic to the event.

A solo album came and a family album. As much as we loved them--and we did--were they a signal that the Love Center choir was no more? Uncertain but pleased to hear more of the dulcet tones of Walter Hawkins and his singing family, we basked in songs like "What Is This?", "Goin' To A Place", "Try Christ".

The mid to late 1980's brought us Love Alive III and Love Alive IV. By now we knew the unique chord structures and vocal tones of Bishop Hawkins and his music as soon as we heard it. As the decade waned, we hoped there was more, even as we realized that the passing of time meant the now bishop had responsibilities for so much more than sharing his musical gifts with us.

More solo projects and guest recordings while we waited and waited.

Finally, Love Alive V, a two-CD 25th anniversary set, dropped in 1998, and it was like giving a gallon of water to a thirsty man in the desert. Sure, a number of songs were remakes, but we didn't care. Walter Hawkins could sing those songs as many times and as many ways as he wanted.

The music of Bishop Walter Hawkins defined a generation of gospel music and marked the milestones of life for many Christians. My husband and I sat up last night just naming songs--"Never Alone", "When The Battle is Over", "Be Grateful", "I'm Going Through", "Give Use Time", "Wait On the Lord", "The Just Shall Live", "My Gratitute", "Thank You", "The Potter's House", "Seasons"...simply way too many to name and all of them memorable.

In person, the man of such a big and moving voice seemed a bit demure, reserved, making the voice all that much more amazing. He was both kind and gracious.

After a bout with pancreatic cancer, he has gone on to a place where he can rest in peace. We will miss Bishop Walter L. Hawkins.

Peace & Blessings,
Patricia

Winning Your 30-Day Challenge

2010-06-29T07:00:00.015-04:00

Folks have been cheering me on, encouraging me to hang in there and win my 30-day Exercise Challenge. I'm not doing anything as intense as winning at Wimbledom but 30 straight days of exercise has been a huge challenge.

I'm three days and four workouts away! I didn't blog about the challenge as much as I would have liked, as other writing priorities took my time and attention. But as my challenge winds down, I'm giving lots of thought as to why this was different than other challenges I've given myself, and how you too might be able to challenge yourself and win.

First, pick a goal that's reasonable and doable. I could not possibly scale Mt. Everest for 30 straight days. I could, however, commit to 15 minutes of exercise a day for 30 days.

Second, define your goal in a way that you can't miss. 15 minutes a day? I mean, I spend more time than that reading in my bathroom. Uh, probably more than you wanted to know, but it's the only quiet place and... Well, you get my point. How could I not do 15 minutes a day?

Third, start your challenge quietly. I know pundits say that telling others creates a commitment. True, but sometimes you need to commit to yourself first. No one knew I was challenging myself until my challenge was well underway. Then, others noticed. "Hey, I see you doing this and you must be serious about it." If you don't get going--although you absolutely will--you're disappointing yourself which is heavy enough. Do you need grief from others too? Minimize the opportunities of the naysayers. Don't look to others in this challenge; look to yourself. Savor what you are willing to do for you.

Then, do more. That's right. This is not about challenging yourself to do the minimum that you can do, but to exceed your own expectations. I planned for 15 minutes a day, knowing I would never, ever exercise for that short amount of time. I averaged more like 40 minutes a day, sometimes, when my workout started in or around midnight, maybe only doing 20 minutes and some days, when I was particularly motivated, going for a full hour.

Fifth, once you get going, and you're nearing the end of those heady first few days, maybe three or four, when it feels exciting, tell someone. Tell everyone. Because darker days are coming, and you'll need some external support to push you forward. Your best motivation still comes from within, but a little nudge of encouragement from others doesn't hurt.

Sixth, do it. Whatever you said you were going to do, do it. No excuses. I had days when I was dog-tired and tying my sneakers at a quarter to midnight. I had to do it. I promised me, and that's important. There were days when I was dragging and didn't think I could last five minutes on the treadmill. I found that I could always do more than I thought once I got going. Inertia is heavy and resistant, but movable.

Seventh, celebrate your successes in ways that don't sabotage your victory. If you pledge to eat healthy for 30 days, then do that. Don't celebrate after day 10 with a candy bar, though, even a small one. Better yet, don't celebrate that way when the 30 days are up either. I'll talk more about the post-challenge at a later date, but once you've busted your butt for 30 days, why throw it all away for momentary indulgence? (Yes, this means I'll be continuing my exercise.)

Eighth, have fun along the way. This is so obvious but still needs to be said. Be creative with your challenge. Mine was exercise so I met my goal when I ran around a playground--yes, ran!--with my two youngest and when I shot hoops with the family. Because I really was excited about what I was doing, I still worked out on those days, and it felt great!

Ninth, invite others to join you. Because some things are better with friends. Know yourself. I needed to do this first one alone, to push myself in ways I'd not done before. Now, I can take others along for the journey.

Tenth, be prepared. Have a plan. To get through your challenge, you will need to do some planning. Look ahead to see where you might have obstacles in the road to success, and develop a plan. Mine were my bi-weekly hair appointments. Every two weeks without fail, and I, like most other Black women in America, do everything in my power not to look like I even know how to spell s-w-e-a-t for at least 48 hours afterward. So I gave myself that time. I exercised at night, except for on hair days. On those Fridays, I exercised in the morning and then not again until Saturday evening. Not quite 48 hours but good enough. And Saturday following a hair appointment was a light workout so I didn't sweat too much--gotta be cute on Sunday morning--but it still counted.

Then plan for the euphoria you will feel as you reach the end of your challenge, and plan for your next challenge and your transition to it. As I said, I'm going to continue my exercise. 5 days a week minimum. No exceptions. But I'm going to use my 30-day challenge to focus on another part of what I need to do to improve my health. Not sure which one just yet. Perhaps my eating. Getting more sleep. Taking vitamins (sounds simple, I know, but I never quite manage to do it consistently). Remember, your challenge is yours. It may be like swallowing for someone else, involuntary and requiring no thought, but for you, it's an area in your life where you need and have a desire for significant improvement.

Right now, my focus is my health, but there are other areas of my life where I expect to apply the 30-day challenge. Writing. Reading my Bible. Forgoing TV. It can be applied to anything at all. It's about stepping stones to an optimal you.

The nice thing about your 30-day Challenge is it's all about you.

Featured Book: God Alone Is Enough by Claudia Mair Burney

2010-06-27T07:00:00.006-04:00

I know author Claudia Mair Burney by way of her Amanda Bell mystery series, a mix of Christian suspense and romance. Through her artful storytelling and sometimes lyrical prose, Burney has both pleasured and provoked my soul. Now Ms. Burney has put her pen to paper for a nonfiction book that explores the art and power of prayer, courtesy of St. Teresa of Avila.

In this unique blog tour, each day a blogger has talked about a single chapter in the book. (You can find the tour schedule here.) The final chapter is chapter 13, The Mysteries of the Bridal Chamber.

To bring you up to speed, Burney invites readers to take a prayer journey, guided by the provocative and powerful words of St. Teresa of Avila, a Roman Catholic saint. Like Burney, I too grew up in a church environment where "the esteemed dead in Christ are gone for heaven's sake". The "saints" were alive and well, or dead and never to be communicated with again.

Thus, I came to this blog tour with curiousity and not a small amount of apprehension. But I'm glad I did.

Regarding contemplative prayer as a means to growing closer to God, St. Teresa compares the soul to a castle with many rooms, not unlike the mansion God has prepared for each of us, the entry door being prayer.

Before we get to the bridal chamber, we must first go through rooms one through three, dark places where we must become more self-aware and get past the worldly things--possessions, accolades, business affairs, etc.--that cloud our minds and lessen our ability to hear God. Room four is a transitional place, brighter where our "holy longing" is more acute but still fraught with temptations and the possibility of falling prey to spiritual disappointments.

In this last chapter, however, Burney tells us, now that we've made it past the first four rooms in our soul's castle, we've arrived at a place that's not for the faint of heart. It's time for the spiritual "meat", and she likens this meat to "steak tartare...raw and dangerous".

Here, in rooms five through seven, is where we see ourselves as the spiritual brides of Christ, longing for Him, waiting for Him following our betrothal, and giving ourselves wholly to Him upon His return to us, the intensity of our passion for Him growing to the point of each passage into the next room growing aching and unbearable.

As Burney says, this is "heady stuff". I can't tell how many times I've heard recited or read the Scriptures likening Christ to the bridegroom. I've mostly considered these to deal with the unbeliever coming, as the bride, and joining with Christ in salvation. Not so much have I've given thought to them with regard to continuing to seek Him after one is already in relationship with Him. But as Burney so pointedly notes, "we rarely trust what we already know how to do, which is why we miss many precious encounters with God".

Have you taken God for granted? I sure have. Not intentionally, of course. I certainly seek Him when I have need of Him or desire His grace for someone else, and I pray throughout the day, but I can't say that I walk around with a heart-wrenching longing for Christ every day. Sad and difficult to admit, but true. I've spiritual work to do.

"In the seventh dwelling things are different from before. God removes the scales from the eyes of he soul so she can understand in some way the grace she's received...What we knew by faith is now understood by sight, so to speak...The truth is, she's (the soul's) more active than before, especially where God's work is concerned, and where she's not busy serving him, she enjoys his ceaseless companionship. Unless she turns away from God, he'll keep her aware of his presence and she'll possess an assurance that God will never take the favor he's given her away now that he's bestowed it."

So go the words of St. Teresa of Avila. A ceaseless companionship such that the favor of God will never be taken away? Wow. Almost unimaginable.

But if we embark on this prayer adventure with Burney and St. Teresa, we may find the way to achieve such a state and our souls most certainly will be blessed.God Alone Is Enough is a wonderful companion guide for the journey.

ABOUT THE BOOK

"Joyous, sprightly, earthy, zestful and real, St. Teresa of Avila comes bursting forth in this vibrant new book. Claudia Mair Burney is the perfect guide to lead readers into the freeing, but often misunderstood, spiritual insights of one of history's most remarkable women." -- James Martin, SJ, author of My Life with the Saints

You have the opportunity to spend a few hours listening to the wise advice of a prayer warrior--one of the most interesting women to ever follow Jesus with abandon. So pull up a chair as Claudia Mair Burney introduces you to Teresa of Avila. You'll be able to say you've met a real saint.

"A perfect read for all who thirst for spiritual waters." -- Lisa Samson, author of The Passion of Mary Margaret.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Claudia Mair Burney is the author of seven novels, including the Amanda Bell Brown mysteries, and Zora and Nicky, and Christy Award finalist in 2009. Readers familiar with her style will enjoy this rollicking journey through their own interior castles. She lives in Kentucky, where she also authors the popular blog, "Ragamuffin Diva."

Learn more about the book at Paraclete Press.

Wednesday Worship: How Great Is Our God

2010-06-23T10:55:00.000-04:00

I think I featured this song before, but doesn't matter. Never grow tired of acknowledging the goodness and greatness of God.

Peace & Blessings,
Patricia

Featured Book: Stuff Christians Like by Jon Acuff

2010-06-18T07:00:00.001-04:00

If you find humor in Christianity, this book is for you. Jon Acuff has one of the best Christian satirical blogs there is, and keeps me laughing daily with posts on subjects like how to know whether you're qualified to usher, knowing whether an American Idol contestant is Christian, and pastors' kids gone wild. Along the way, he also takes a serious look at faith, helping readers to lighten up and in doing so, draw closer to Christ.

It's not uncommon for me to email the link to one of his posts to a bunch of friends. Now, the book has been released, and I can encourage everyone I know to pick up a copy. You'll find laughter...and God.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Sometimes, we fall in love on mission trips even though we know we'll break up when we get back. Sometimes, you have to shot block a friend's prayer because she's asking God to bless an obviously bad dating relationship. Sometimes, you think, "I wish I had a t-shirt that said 'I direct deposit my tithe' so people wouldn't judge me."

Sometimes, the stuff that comes with faith is funny.

This is that stuff.

Jonathan Acuff's Stuff Christians Like is your field guide to all things Christian. In it you'll learn the culinary magic of the crock-pot. Think you've got a Metro worship leader-Use Acuff's checklist. Want to avoid a prayer handholding faux pas? Acuff has you covered.

Like a satirical grenade, Acuff brings us the humor and honesty that galvanized more than a million online readers from more than 200 countries in a new portable version. Welcome to the funny side of faith.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

For the last ten years, Jonathan Acuff has written advertising for clients ranging from the Home Depot to Chick-fil-A. In addition to his many day jobs, he also writes a blog called Stuff Christians Like. He and his wife live with their two daughters outside of Atlanta, Georgia.

For more information, please visit http://www.stuffchristianslike.net.

A complimentary copy of this book was provided for review purposes.

Wednesday Worship: It's All God

2010-06-09T07:00:00.001-04:00

No matter where I find myself, up or down, I'm thankful that I know "it's all God".

Especially in those "down" moments. I may have to still myself, pinch myself, remind myself, but I do remember that life isn't something that is happening to me. Rather, it's a gift from God, something for me make the most of, with all that I am and all that I have.

I'm not much of a quartet fan, but I always loved the Winans. This group, the Soul Seekers, kind of reminds me of them. (Probably has a lot to do with their guest, Bishop Marvin Winans).

It's Day 8 for me on the 30-day Exercise Challenge. Are you with me?

Peace & Blessings,
Patricia

A Tacky Invitation to my 30-Day Exercise Challenge

2010-06-08T07:00:00.001-04:00

This post is akin to me hosting a party and calling you from said party to say I meant to invite you. Really. But I forgot. Yes, the party is already underway, but I really want you to come. So do you mind dropping what you're doing and coming by?

Tacky, tacky, tacky.

My apologies.

It is Day 7 of my 30-Day Exercise Challenge. On June 1st, well really, it was June 2nd, but my sense of time was all messed up by the Memorial Day holiday, I began a 30-day challenge. The challenge: I will exercise in a concerted fashion for a minimum of 15 minutes every day for 30 days straight.

That's it. Pretty straightforward, right? By concerted fashion, I mean something other than housework or running errands or even playing with my kids, unless we're in some type of athletic pursuit like basketball, tennis, swimming or such. Mostly I use the treadmill, exercise bike, and free weights.

Please feel free to join me. (I know, I know, but I've already apologized for the tardiness and tackiness of my invitation.)

How did this come about?

You've probably noticed I haven't blogged much about my weight loss efforts in the last, uh, year. That's because I lost 23 lbs last year but gained about a quarter of those back by year's end. My gaining continued into 2010, even while I went to a free 12-week Weight Watchers At Work program where I went up and down and up and down, finishing at about a +3 lbs, I think, but ultimately up nearly 50% of last year's loss. Shortly after that, I noticed my hands and ankles were retaining water, and my knees were starting to ache. Oh, boy. Not good.

I jumped back on the weight loss bandwagon. (Yes, I know yo-yo'ing is not healthy, but isn't it yo-yo'ing only when you have a period in which you completely forget about losing weight and don't even try? I never forget. Not even in the middle of an all-out snack binge. It's an ever present thought, 365 days of the year.)

Anyway, I have since lost all of the weight I had regained. I am firmly back at last year's low and this time, I'm continuing on my journey. For me, that means exercise and nutrition working in tandem. I've learned that when I'm exercising, I tend to eat better. The same is not true for when I'm eating right. I do not necessarily exercise better, or more, or at all.

So to keep things interesting and moving forward, I decided to challenge myself.

30 straight days of exercise.

So far, it hasn't been too difficult. My average time is 35 minutes per day, and the only major obstacle I had was the night of my son's prekindergarten graduation, when I found myself exercising at 11:30 at night, something I never would have done without this challenge.

I foresee some challenges on the horizon, like beauty parlor days. I typically get my hair done on Fridays and don't even think about exercising again until the following Monday. I need to get the most out of my newly coiffed head, and certainly want to look cute for church on Sunday. I'm thinking I'll have to exercise the morning of my appointments which means getting it in before work, and then Saturday evening. Since I vary the intensity of my workouts, trust me, Saturday and Sunday after a hair appointment will be lighter workouts.

So that's what's going on with me and my weight loss woes. Feel free to join me in this challenge. Unlike other bloggers, I don't have a cool prize to offer you other than the satisfaction of getting it done, and the glow you'll feel when you weigh yourself on July 2nd. (The challenge began June 2nd and runs thru July 1st.) After all, all this exercise has to result in reduced tonnage, doesn't it?

I'll be really impressed if you start your own 30-day challenge, a full 30 days. If exercise isn't the bane of your existence, try something else, like forgoing dessert for 30 days or boycotting dairy or drinking more than 8 oz of water. How about it?

Peace & Blessings,
Patricia

Featured Book: What Your Son Isn't Telling You by Michael Ross & Susie Shellenberger

2010-06-07T11:37:00.001-04:00

The title of this book, What Your Son Isn't Telling You: Unlocking the Secret World of Teen Boys, got my attention. After all, we're raising three sons, one of whom is firmly embedded in the teen years, on his way to becoming a man and making it harder for me to know what he's thinking and feeling day to day. I used to be able to look at him and tell him what was on his mind. He would looked stunned, and I would reply, "I know you better than you know you." It was true...then. Now, not so much, although I still astonish him at times.

So of course, I'd be interested in a book that purports to help me understand my sons better.

I'm not sure whether this book does what it claims to do, as I've always made it my business to have open lines of communication with my children, and thereby, few surprises. I didn't find a lot of "a-ha" moments or new information here. It did, however, trigger memories of my own childhood, raising a few issues and feelings for me to be on the lookout for that I may have forgotten. For that alone, it was worth the read.

Interestingly enough, I asked my teen to take a look at the book. He didn't read it--not his cup of tea, of course--but he did thumb through it, stopping to read selected passages that caught his eye. When he was done, he handed it back to me, and said, "Who are they talking about? That's not me." Either there's more that he's not telling me, or this book really doesn't speak to his experience. I believe it's the latter. If there is any place where cultural differences come to light and children struggle with them as they establish their sense of self and identity, it's during the teen years. This book, although well-meaning and sufficient for many, doesn't address those differences at all. That's why my child felt they were talking about kids other than himself, kids he might go to school with but who he doesn't really connect with on a deeper level.

Still, I would recommend this book particularly to those parents who feel distanced from their children and need help establishing better communication with them. Putting cultural differences aside, there are many more similarities among teens than not, and What Your Son Isn't Telling You is a good place to start thinking about what your teens might be thinking.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Full of practical help, What Your Son Isn't Telling You gives parents behind-the-scenes footage they can miss in the day-to-day life of their son. Parents will begin to see and understand not only the world in which their teenage sons exist, but also their struggle to become their own person versus the desire to measure up as man by conforming to a false code of always being a tough guy, never showing weakness, and never expressing true feelings.

Each chapter of this must-read book is packed with real-life stories and emails from teen boys that will give parents a new understanding of what their sons aren't telling them

A complimentary copy of this book was provided to me for review purposes.

Featured Book: Uncovered: Revealing the Secrets of a Sexy Marriage by Susie Davis

2010-06-02T09:45:00.000-04:00

How many Christian marriage books recommend having regular "quickies"? Today's book, Uncovered: Finding the Secrets to a Sexy Marriage, does.

In August, my husband and I will celebrate 19 years of marriage. Although there have been way more days of rainbow and sunshine than dark clouds, we've had our moments and we're still together. Believe me, I don't take this for granted. Just yesterday, it was announced that former Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, are separating after 40 years. 40 years?

One thing that helps married couples is being open to new information and new ways of looking at familiar topics. This is what made me sign up to tour this book.

I'm reading slowly because there is so much good stuff to digest, but to give you a better sense, here's another quote that I just love: "He didn't marry you because you were a great mom, sister, daughter, friend...you get the drift. He married you because you were plain and simple a fabulous, sensual woman. Yes, take a breath, dear, of course he loves 'your personality and your heart' but let's get real. He looked at you and he saw lips, breasts, curvy hips, bodacious booty--you know, all that."

Gotta love a marriage book with plain language that gets right down to the nitty gritty. Here's what the publisher has to say:

WHAT YOUR HUSBAND REALLY THINKS ABOUT SEX AND MARRIAGE

In Uncovered, author and radio talk-show host Susie Davis offers wives a vantage point into their marriage that they’ve never had before: through the eyes of their husbands.

“I want women to understand what their husbands are really thinking and begin to understand what he really needs from her,” Davis says. “When you read these authentic testimonies, where husbands share what’s really on their hearts about their marriages, you start to see your husband in a different light and revolutionize your marriage.”

That’s the premise she offers in her latest book, Uncovered: Revealing the Secrets of a Sexy Marriage, where she pinpoints how wives can cultivate closer relationships with their spouses and understand their husbands’ needs.

But Davis knew that what would make these concepts resonate with readers was to hear what real men had to say on the subjects, ranging from quality sex and intimacy to how often they’d like to hear encouragements from their wives. So she formed a focus group of husbands—from construction workers to CEOs and even pastors, who all who have been married for at least ten years in Christ-centered marriages—and gathered their honest responses on these subjects and more.

Bolstered with biblical wisdom, practical sense and a bit of feminine charm, Davis helps wives understand what their husbands really want out of their marriage and what matters most to them, ranging from sex to finances to having fun together.

Readers will learn to:

Rediscover the “red hot mama” within herself and a sexy self-confidence about her body
Understand the powerful influence she has over her man—to do good or harm
Create a craving for sexual intimacy, even when life gets busy
Guard against materialism and the burden it can put on a marriage
Invite laughter and fun into your marriage, like when you were first dating
Communicate with their husbands in new ways
Discover the mission statement for their marriage

Susie Davis is the author of several books, including Parenting Your Teen and Loving It, and is a popular retreat and conference speaker. She is founder and director of Susie Davis Ministries and has a passion for helping others develop God-centered relationships. With her husband, Will, she co-founded Austin Christian Fellowship in Austin, Texas, where he serves as senior pastor and she frequently teaches. They have three children.

Susie is also a morning radio show host in Austin, on The River's Family Friendly Mornings on 105.9FM. One other book she authored, that I'd like to point out if for no reason other than I love the title, is Loving Your Man without Losing Your Mind. Find out more about Susie at her website, http://www.susiedavis.org.

Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group, offers practical books that bring the Christian faith to everyday life. They publish resources from a variety of well-known brands and authors, including their partnership with MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) and Hungry Planet.

For more information, visit www.RevellBooks.com.

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for review purposes.

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

Featured Book: Storylines by Andry Croft and Mike Pilavachi

2010-05-28T07:00:00.002-04:00

Looking for a way to help your youth better understand the Bible? I requested this book for my son. I think, if I can get him to crack the cover, he'll be pleasantly surprised.

In their new book, Storylines: Your Map to Understanding the Bible (David C Cook, March 2010), Mike Pilavachi and Andy Croft provide readers with the keys to unlocking their understanding of the complex, confusing and sometimes intimidating stories of faith found in the Bible.

Intended for beginners, rather than biblical scholars, Storylines explores the six main themes of the Bible—Jesus, Covenant, (Divine) Presence, Kingdom, Salvation, and Worship—and takes an exciting journey into the “big pictures” of Scripture. On the way, readers will also uncover amazing truths about the Person to whom all Scriptures ultimately point.

“We believe the six majors motifs we investigate in Storylines are the strong cords that will bind together readers’ understanding of Scripture, helping them grasp the central ideas before delving into the details,” say authors Pilavachi and Croft, leaders of the U.K.’s biggest Christian youth event, Soul Survivor. “We hope the book we’ve written will make a massive impact on readers’ lives; we know that it has deeply affected ours!”

Storylines is topped and tailed by an overview of Scripture’s content—a concise summary of the Bible in 20 pages!—and a brief history of how the Bible came to be in its present form. In between, each chapter focuses on one “thread” and closes with a “paperchase” that summarizes how that particular theme develops through Scripture. Throughout the book, readers will encounter Old Testament characters and events who anticipate the fullness that came in Christ and is being worked out in the world through the gift of the Holy Spirit to the church.

With a youth-friendly style, Storylines is a handy and much needed resource for pastors and youth leaders concerned about low biblical literacy levels in their churches and groups. Older Christians will also find it lively and refreshing as they, too, trace the threads that run through the Bible. The future sequel to Storylines, Lifelines, will be a journey through big ideas in Scripture—biblical values and life management issues such as generosity, sexual morality, and anxiety—to equip readers for living.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Mike Pilavachi is the founder and public face of the U.K.’s biggest Christian youth event, Soul Survivor (25,000 annual attendance), and senior pastor of the Soul Survivor church in Watford, North London. He is the author of Live the Life, For the Audience of One, Wasteland?: Encountering God in the Desert, and Worship, Evangelism, Justice.

Andy Croft is a young twenty-something who has just been awarded a First Class Theology degree from Cambridge University. He is due to be the next leader of Soul Survivor.

REVIEW

A guide to understanding the Bible, Storylines, seemed to be just the thing to help open up the wonders of the faith to my teen son. Much more than those old yellow-and-black Cliff Notes of my day or today's popular "Dummies" books, Storylines provides an easy-to-follow overview and discussion of the key pillars of the Christian faith. Written by two youth pastors, it is appropriate for any student of any age who is interested in looking at the Scriptures in a new and thorough way.

This is not a book that one plows through, but rather a guide that can be read before, during, or following a walk through the Bible. They use modern, real-world examples from their personal lives and imaginations to bring their points home and to make the Scripture come alive. Not counting the Introduction, Acknowledgements, and Appendix, the book numbers fewer than 170 pages. What more could a mother ask for in a companion guide for a teenager?

READ THE FIRST CHAPTER...

The Jesus Storyline

Years ago, when I was in my teens and Mike was having his first midlife crisis, a series of very popular picture books came out. Perhaps you remember them: They were called Where’s Waldo? The basic idea was you would look at a big picture that would tell a story; there’d be loads of characters in it and tons of stuff going on. Waldo (a little bloke in a red-and-white shirt) was hiding somewhere in the picture. Sometimes he’d be up a tree, sometimes under water, sometimes he’d be in a massive crowd, often he’d be peering out from behind a corner, and almost always he’d be hidden from plain view. The challenge was to find him hidden in the story the picture told.

Two thousand years ago Jesus said to a bunch of Pharisees, “Where’s Waldo?” But he said it like this, “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life.

These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life” (John 5:39–40). Jesus wasn’t talking about the New Testament, because his biography hadn’t been written yet, so he must have been talking about the Old Testament. But how could he have been? Everyone knows the Old Testament was about Israel and Moses, David, Abraham, Joshua, and others. Did Jesus get this one wrong? Had he eaten a rotten fig for breakfast? Or …have we all been missing something? Could it be possible that, like Waldo in the picture books, Jesus appears hidden all over the Old Testament?

You probably already know that Jesus is all over the Bible; in the Old Testament he’s concealed, in the New Testament he’s revealed. Finding Jesus in the Old Testament is not just a game, like finding Waldo. It’s more like a treasure hunt, and it brings the story of God to life in a whole new way. Throughout the Old Testament we see strong hints, images, and prophecies about Jesus. In the New Testament those hints, images, and prophecies are unveiled; the curtain is ripped apart, from top to bottom, to reveal the star of the whole show. Let’s go on a journey together to find Jesus in the crowd of Old Testament heroes.

Noah

The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the LORD said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. (Gen. 6:5–8)

The human race was so messed up there was no way to straighten it out. God decided to bring a flood and wipe out every creature. There was just one problem. Noah.

Noah and God were friends, and Noah was a righteous man. To destroy every living creature would have meant the unjust of killing his friend. God longed to save Noah, and so he commanded him to build a massive ark. We’ve been to the Middle East, and in case you hadn’t realized, it’s a desert! Despite how stupid he looked, Noah obeyed God to the point of humiliation. But it meant that, when the rains hit, Noah was saved. What’s more, his whole family came with him. Why was Noah’s family saved? Were they righteous? No. Noah was the only righteous one around, but because they were attached to him, his family got to come along!

The first hero of the Old Testament is our first signpost to Jesus. The flood didn’t solve the problem of humanity’s wickedness. God’s righteous judgment is still that humanity deserves to die in its wickedness and be cut off from him forever. However, God has found one totally righteous man, even more righteous than Noah. This righteous man obeyed God to the point of utter humiliation, dying on a cross. What’s more, all the unrighteous people who attach themselves to him are saved. After the flood a rainbow was the sign of God’s promises; today it is the cross. All who shelter in Jesus, the ark of salvation, are not wiped out but given eternal life. Sometimes when we read about the cross, it can seem mysterious—something that’s difficult to get our heads around. Discovering things like this throughout the Old Testament on one level helps us to understand it better—the patterns of salvation often reoccur. But on another level it speaks of the wonder and increases the mystery. Thousands of years before the birth of Jesus, God was carefully laying out the foundations for his master plan …

Abraham and Isaac

Several chapters later in Genesis, we come across a strange scene. In Genesis 22 we find an old man holding a knife over the chest of a young boy he’s about to sacrifice. Years ago God had promised the old man that he would have a son, and after an age of waiting, Isaac was born. The baby became a boy, and Abraham loved him dearly. It was at that point God said to Abraham, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about” (Gen. 22:2).

How could God command someone to sacrifice his own son? And yet—“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son …” (John 3:16). The words of John, describing God’s giving of his beloved Son, deliberately echo those of Genesis 22:2. God asked no more of Abraham than God himself was willing to give. God gave up his only Son, whom he loved, completely out of choice and love for us.

The old man obeyed God: “Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey” (Gen. 22:3). Father, son, and donkey headed to the region of Moriah. When Mike and I visited Israel, we were amazed to discover that the region of Moriah is where, hundreds of years after Abraham, Jerusalem was built! And so when we read about Jesus entering Jerusalem riding on a donkey, we’re reading about another father, another son, and another donkey riding into exactly the same area Abraham had been told to head to. In little, subtle ways—ways that we wouldn’t notice unless we looked for them—God is laying down hints in the Old Testament of the plans he has for his Son in the New Testament.

When Abraham and Isaac arrived, we read that the father placed the wood for the sacrifice on the back of his son: “Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife” (Gen. 22:6). Isaac then carried the wood for his own sacrifice up a hill in the region of Moriah. Isn’t this amazing? Centuries later,the Father placed the cross, the wood for the sacrifice, on the back of his Son. Jesus then carried the wood for his own sacrifice up a hill in the region of Moriah.

Upon reaching the top of the hill, Isaac said to Abraham, “The fire and wood are here … but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” (Gen. 22: 7). “Abraham answered, ‘God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son’” (Gen. 22:8). Abraham then tied his son to the wood and was about to kill him when the Lord cried for him to stop. God told Abraham to sacrifice a ram he saw caught in a hedge. Rejoicing, Abraham took it and sacrificed it in the place of his son. “So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, ‘On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided’”(Gen. 22:14). Two thousand years later on a mountain in the region of Moriah, the Lord did provide. He provided not a ram but a lamb for the offering … the Lamb of God. He is “my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22). This provision of Jesus for us was something God had planned and intended from the beginning, before any of us were born. The storyline of Jesus running through the life of Abraham and Isaac shows us that even before most of the people in the Old Testament had been born, God knew what was going to happen, and he knew what it was going to cost him. He knew what you were going to cost—and then he went ahead anyway.

Joseph

So we move on to Joseph. Jesus is everywhere in his story. God’s plan from the beginning, revealed to Joseph in his dreams (Gen. 37), was that he would achieve a high status and bring blessing and salvation to many others through that ruling status. Jesus was born to rule. He was born to be King, and because of his kingship many would find salvation.

Joseph’s brothers became jealous and did what many of us want to do with our siblings: They sold him into slavery. Joseph was sold to merchants for twenty pieces of silver. Years later Jesus was sold to the Jewish leaders for thirty pieces of silver. Just think—if only it had been the same price, it would have been a perfect parallel … what a shame … But wait! The Bible tells us that Joseph was sold for the going price of a slave in 1900 BC and Jesus for the going price of a slave in AD 30. The price had gone up, but God had accounted for inflation!

Joseph was eventually sold to Potiphar, a high official in Egypt, and soon became his right-hand man. Mrs. Potiphar tried to seduce Joseph. She was very subtle—“Come to bed with me!” she begged. “No way, José!” Joseph replied, and when Mrs. Potiphar came in one door, he ran out the other. Jesus was tempted in the desert by the Devil. The Devil offered him all the kingdoms of the world if only Jesus would bow down and worship him. In response to the Devil’s seduction, Jesus said, “Get lost!” (or words to that effect). By not sleeping with Potiphar’s wife, Joseph resisted abusing the power his master had given him; by not “getting into bed” with the Devil, Jesus refused to abuse the power God had given him.

Mrs. Potiphar accused Joseph of a crime he did not commit. He was unjustly sentenced and thrown into the deepest dungeon. Jesus, years later, was accused of crimes he did not commit and was unjustly sentenced. While Joseph was serving his sentence, two criminals came to join him. Years later, while Jesus was serving his sentence on the cross, two criminals joined him. You can read in Genesis 40 about how Joseph, through the interpretation of a dream, spoke words of life to one of those criminals. Joseph promised he would be saved, and the criminal was later released. You can also read in Luke 23 about how, as he was dying between two criminals, Jesus spoke words of life to one. Jesus promised he would be saved, and we can be sure that criminal is now with Jesus in paradise.

Joseph was eventually released from prison. From the lowest pits of jail, he became Pharaoh’s prime minister, the highest position in Egypt. He named his second son Ephraim (meaning “fruitful”) and said, “God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering” (Gen. 41:52). Egypt was an alien land that was not his home. When God became man, he was born into an alien land that was not his home, and yet it was in this land of suffering that God made Jesus fruitful. He was raised up from the lowest point—death—and is now seated at the right hand of God.

Famine struck the whole area, and Joseph’s brothers came to Egypt to buy food. They were reunited with Joseph, the brother they’d sold into a life of slavery. Instead of having them killed, Joseph forgave them, assuring them, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Gen. 50:20). He went on to save the lives of all his brothers, of those who had sinned against him. He brought them from a place of famine and death to one of abundant life.

The Jewish religious leaders, Pilate, and the Roman soldiers—as our representatives—accomplished what they intended in harming Jesus to the point of death on the cross. Jesus, as he was dying, cried out, “Father, forgive them” (Luke 23:34). We, the human race, meant the death of Jesus for harm, but God meant it for good. He intended it to accomplish what is now being fulfilled, a passage from certain death to abundant life, the saving of many lives.

Isn’t this incredible? Joseph was born to be a ruler, he was sold into slavery, he was severely tempted, he went through great suffering, he predicted the salvation of one he suffered with, he was raised up again by God, he forgave those who’d sinned against him, and he declared it had happened that many might be saved.

Jesus’ storyline is central to the story of the Bible, and it runs like a bullet through the story of Joseph. This is more than just an amazing biblical parallel—it carries with it a message for us today. Ever felt insecure about God’s love? Ever been a little unsure as to whether or not he’ll bring about what he’s promised? Ever messed it up and thought, “It’s been one too many; God’s probably going to quit on me this time”? We can draw deep confidence from the fact that God planned his death on the cross. The way that Joseph’s life prophesies Jesus’ shows in an incredible way that God always thought we were going to be worth it—his decision to come to earth wasn’t a last-minute afterthought. John’s gospel tells us that Jesus is from “the beginning,” and Joseph’s story backs that up—he is from the beginning, and he was always going to bring about the ending. This picture is yet another guarantee to our hearts of the love God has—and has always had—for us.

Moses

Hundreds of years later the descendants of Joseph and his brothers had undergone a population explosion. They were now the people of Israel and were being used and abused as slaves by the Egyptians.

God heard the cry of those he loved, now slaves to Pharaoh, and through Moses he set out to do something about it. We read that, at the start of Exodus (chapter 3), the Lord revealed himself to Moses and commanded him to go and save the Israelites. Before he went anywhere, Moses wanted to know who this burning bush of a God was: “Who shall I say has sent me?” he asked. God replied, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you’” (Ex. 3:14). God’s name was “I AM.”

Also, Moses was understandably a bit nervous about taking on Egypt single-handedly, and he asked God, “Who am I, that I should go?” This time God ignored his question. He didn’t say “You’re Moses, kung fu champion!” He just replied, “I will be with you” (Ex. 3:12). The only thing Moses needed to know on this account was that God had his back.

So God’s rescue operation for a people who were suffering as slaves involved one man. The reason this one man was going to save anyone was because God was with him. Who was this God that was with him? I AM.

Hundreds of years later God again heard the cry of those he loved who were slaves to sin, and through Jesus he set out to do something about it. Moses had asked the God of the burning bush who he was. The Pharisees asked Jesus, “Who do you think you are?” (John 8:53). Amazingly Jesus said in response, “‘Before Abraham was born, I am!’ At this, they picked up stones to stone him …” (8:58–59). Some of the Jews responded with outrage; they wanted to kill Jesus. Why? Because he was claiming to be God. When they asked him who he was, he told them he was I AM. The God I AM went with Moses to save a people; the God I AM came in person to save a world. One of Jesus’ titles is Emmanuel. It means “God with us.”

Moses confronted the evil powers of Egypt, defeated them—and Pharaoh released Israel. They started the hike out of Egypt, but before long Pharaoh changed his mind; he sent everything he had after them. If we pick up the trail in Exodus 14, we find Israel trapped. In front of them lay the Red Sea, and behind them the Egyptian army was closing in. They had no options. Then God told Moses to raise his staff out over the waves of the Red Sea. Moses obeyed, and the waters parted. Through Moses’ actions a way to freedom and life opened up—Israel now had one option! They passed through the waters and passed from death to life.

In front of all of us lies death; in and around all of us is the evil of this age. Do we have any options? Miraculously God provided an option for all who are trapped. Jesus defeated the evil power of this age (Satan); he conquered sin and death. Through Jesus’ actions a way to freedom and life has opened up. We now have one option! In following Jesus we can be saved. Like the Israelites following Moses, on our journey we, too, pass through water in our crossing from death to life: “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit” (John 3:5). Ours is the water of baptism.

Moses’ and Israel’s hike through the wilderness went on for years and years. Mike and I recently went hiking down the Grand Canyon. It lasted for hours rather than years. Still, when we walked through the Grand Canyon, it was baking hot and hard work. After an hour or so, Mike started to moan … “I’m thirsty, I want some water!” He’s Greek, so he tends to exaggerate, and he started to whine, “This is the end, I’m going to die!” Throughout the hike down, Mike complained, moaned, and whined at me. First he wanted water. Then he wanted food. After he’d eaten five PowerBars, he wanted a different sort of food … and so it went …

Moses was in a similar situation in the desert with Israel. They moaned, they whined, they groaned, and they rebelled. If we pick up the story in Exodus 32, we read that the people of Israel had just built themselves another god! Despite all God’s amazing miracles they still mutinied and wanted to worship gods of their own hands. When Moses discovered this, he exclaimed in horror, “You have committed a great sin. But now I will go up to the LORD; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin” (Ex. 32:30).

Earlier, God, knowing what the people of Israel were up to, said to Moses, “Leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation” (Ex. 32:10).

What an offer! God told Moses to get out of the way; he was going to destroy Israel and start again with Moses’ own children. Moses had a chance to get rid of the nation that had been a pain in his backside ever since leaving Egypt, and to start his own dynasty! There were moments when, had God appeared to me at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and offered to kill Mike, I would have replied, “Brilliant idea, Lord! In fact I’ll help you!”

Moses didn’t respond like that. He didn’t ask for a machine gun. Instead, after seeing Israel’s sin, he said this: “Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold. But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written” (Ex. 32:31–32).

Astonishing! Instead of offering to help God wipe out Israel, Moses asked to be wiped out in their place! God refused Moses’ offer. He had another plan. Moses’ offer was well meant, but he didn’t realize he didn’t have the right qualifications. God didn’t blot Moses out for the sake of Israel’s sin. He already had someone else in mind. About 1,400 years later it was the life of Jesus, not the life of Moses, that was blotted out to make up for sin.

Sometimes the Bible can seem a little disjointed—we can read one story and wonder if it’s got anything at all to do with the one we were reading the week before. Jesus is the center and the heart of the Bible; again here we see how the life and actions of Moses point forward to who Jesus is and what he was coming to do.

[Note: Mike would like it to be known that he was not allowed to contribute to this section, and in fact disassociates himself from the accuracy of the illustration used above … I, however, insist it’s true, and I’ve got the emotional scars to prove it.]

David

David was born in the small town of Bethlehem. Samuel the prophet declared he was chosen by God to be king of Israel. When Samuel poured the oil onto David, God anointed him for this task. Soon afterward David fought the great battle with Goliath. We find the site of the battle in 1 Samuel 17. The people of Israel were lined up against their archenemies, the Philistines. The huge Philistine champion would daily shout to all the Israelite soldiers, “C’mon then, if you think you’re tough enough!” None of Israel’s soldiers thought they were tough enough, and no one would go and fight Goliath. This went on for weeks until David the shepherd boy arrived and volunteered. He went out alone to face the enemy as the representative of his people, Israel. David won a great victory without using the weapons of the world—he refused to wear a sword or armor. Instead he used a sling, the weapon of a shepherd boy, and it was in this apparent weakness that he defeated Goliath. David declared, “All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD’s …” (1 Sam. 17:47).

Jesus was born in the same small town of Bethlehem. At Jesus’ baptism John the Baptist declared that Jesus had been chosen by God to be the Savior of the world, and the Holy Spirit was poured out on him (Luke 3:22)—Jesus was spiritually anointed for his task. Having been prepared in this way, Jesus faced the Enemy of the human race, Satan. He entered the battlefield of the desert where he encountered and withstood Satan for forty days. Three years later he went alone to the cross as the representative of the whole world. He won the victory over Satan without using the weapons of the world. Instead Jesus, the Good Shepherd, won the victory in the weakness of the cross; it was not to be by sword or spear that the Lord would save but by laying down his life for the sheep.

David was anointed to be king of Israel. Jesus, the Christ (which means “the anointed one”), was called “The King of the Jews” at his crucifixion. Jesus was also called “the Son of David,” and people expected the Messiah to be like David. Many expected a David-type military leader who would arrive to kick the Romans’ heads in. Jesus was like David, but not in the ways that were expected.

Of all David’s psalms, Psalm 23 is the most well known, but the psalm that comes immediately before it is an incredible prophecy about the death of Jesus. It is one of the so-called “messianic psalms” (because it points ahead to the Messiah), and it begins with “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus knew his Scriptures, and so when he cried these words on the cross, he knew he was quoting from Psalm 22. Before we go on to look at this psalm further, we suggest you put this book down, open your Bible, and read Psalm 22 for yourself. Where do you see Jesus in this psalm?

Now let’s look together:

The psalm that begins with the words “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” continues with many other striking references to Jesus on the cross.

David says, “But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by men and despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads: ‘He trusts in the LORD; let the LORD rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him’” (22:6–8). The cries of scorn heaped on Jesus by those present at the crucifixion are almost identical:

In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. “He saved others,” they said, “but he can’t save himself! He’s the King of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross and we will believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” (Matt. 27:41–43)

The psalm continues, “From my mother’s womb you have been my God” (Ps. 22:10). If anyone could say those words with more integrity than David, it was the son of Mary. The psalmist goes on, “My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death” (22:15). The phrase “my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth” is simply another way of saying “I’m thirsty.” Jesus said on the cross, “I am thirsty” (John 19:28).

The next verse is translated, “Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet” (Ps. 22:16). David wrote these words hundreds of years before the Roman punishment of crucifixion had even been invented.…

He continues, “They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing” (22:18). Luke tells us that at the scene of Jesus’ crucifixion “… they divided up his clothes by casting lots” (Luke 23:34).

Psalm 22:22 says, “I will declare your name to my brothers; in the congregation I will praise you.” The stunning thing about this verse is that the writer to the Hebrews in the New Testament tells us that Jesus said it too: “So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers. He says, ‘I will declare your name to my brothers; in the presence of the congregation I will sing your praises’” (Heb. 2:11–12).

Perhaps most amazing of all, the psalm that started with the words that began Jesus’ crucifixion—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”—ends with these five words: “for he has done it” (Ps. 22:31). Only Jesus was able to put these five words into the first person: “It is finished” (John 19:30). For he has done it—it is finished.

How amazing that David, without knowing it, should have written these words for the “Son of David,” his Lord, to speak on the cross a thousand years later!

~~~~~~~~

We have listed just a few of the references to Jesus in the Old Testament. There are many others. We encourage you to go on a treasure hunt of your own! None of this is to say that the stories in the Old Testament don’t have a power, force, and meaning of their own—they do very much! In this chapter, however, we are only interested in tracing the storyline of Jesus through the Old Testament. It’s like going to an IMAX cinema and being given special 3–D goggles when you go in. Try watching the screen without the goggles, and the pictures are there—though slightly blurred. Once you’ve put on the 3–D goggles, there’s suddenly a whole new, sharp, remarkable dimension that comes into view. We’ve just watched some events of the lives of only a few of the characters of the Old Testament—Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, and David—wearing our 3–D goggles; even with only this brief snapshot, some of what was concealed has been revealed. What we need to remember is that this isn’t just a clever joining of dots to make neat parallels—this is rich and glorious truth. It’s the plan of salvation for our lives laid out through the lives of the Old Testament heroes. It’s part of the mystery and wonder of God that he was able to weave the story of Jesus into the lives of his most faithful followers in the Old Testament in such an incredible way. In the same way, he is weaving the story of Jesus into our lives and our individual stories.

The Messianic Prophecies

There are also over three hundred prophecies in the Old Testament that are fulfilled in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. As we said at the beginning of this chapter, Jesus identified himself in the Old Testament when he said to the Pharisees, “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life” (John 5:39–40).

At the end of the chapter, we’ve listed tons of the messianic prophecies, and we hope you’ll take the time to open your Bible and discover more of them. But for now, we’d like to look at one of the most significant passages, found in Isaiah 53. Before this chapter Isaiah has been talking about the plight of Israel, how they have turned from their God, worshipped idols, and broken his laws by acting unjustly toward one another. The book of Isaiah begins before the exile in Babylon and then continues during the exile. Isaiah begins to speak hope to a hopeless people. He declares that God has not given up on his people and describes the coming of an anointed one, a Messiah who will bring salvation to Israel. In chapter 53 this Messiah is described in detail. We again urge you, put down this book, open the Bible to Isaiah 53, and read it. Too much explanation of this chapter is unnecessary; it speaks clearly for itself.

In Isaiah 53:2 we notice that when God came to earth, he didn’t look like Brad Pitt. We are also told the coming king would be “a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering” (53:3). This is key, as many of the Jews were expecting a victorious and powerful leader. Verse 6 lays out the sin for which the servant of God would die, the sin of human beings choosing their own way instead of God’s. This verse reminds us that the heart of sin is going astray, choosing to live independently from him; the choice made by Adam and Eve. Verse 7 speaks of the fact that when Jesus, the Lamb of God, was brought before his accusers, he did not defend himself. Jesus himself even quotes verse 12 at the Last Supper in Luke 22:37: “It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.” Isaiah 53 was fulfilled hundreds of years later when Jesus, dying on the cross, “bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors” (53:12).

We began this chapter by saying that Jesus is concealed in the Old Testament and revealed in the New. The fact is that Jesus hasn’t been concealed very well—we’ve looked at only a few examples, yet pictures and prophecies of Jesus are all over the place!

What does all this tell us? First, Jesus Christ is the central character of the whole Bible. He does not just appear in the last scene. The person of Jesus is, if you like, the glue that holds the whole Bible together. Secondly, this tells us that Jesus was not Plan B. His birth, life, death, and resurrection were written into the script from the very beginning. Our sin and rebellion did not take God by surprise, and Father, Son, and Holy Spirit did not need to have an emergency cabinet meeting in heaven to work out the rescue plan. Before creation began, God knew that he would have to become part of, and suffer with, his creation. (Take a look at Revelation 13:8.)

A wise couple counts the cost before deciding to have a baby. There is the possibility of several months of vomiting followed by hours of agony for one partner. Then years of sleepless nights for both, followed by the expenditure of ridiculous amounts of money on toys, school uniforms, etc. Then more sleepless nights as they wonder where the teenage offspring are at 2:00 a.m. and even more expenditure if they try and send them to college.

A couple who has counted the cost of all this, but who has decided to love deeply and with commitment, decides to pay the price. God counted the cost and decided to pay the price. From the beginning he said we were worth it. From the beginning he said you were worth it. The whole of the Bible, the Word of God, is a revelation of Jesus, the Word made flesh.

A few years ago a friend of ours proposed to his girlfriend. He went all out. The day before the proposal he went into the countryside and laid an elaborate trail of messages. It began with a note hidden in the branch of a tree. The note was a love letter but also directions and clues as to where the next note was. She soon found, under a rock, another love letter with a clue as to where the next was hidden. Then there was another, inside a bottle concealed by a hedge. This went on for hours until she came to the final love letter. With this love letter, buried in the earth, was a box. When she opened the box, she saw the engagement ring, and he was already kneeling. The fact that he had gone to such a huge effort and carefully laid this elaborate trail was all to show her just how much he desired and loved her. Most women will never forget their wedding day; this woman will never forget the day he proposed. It was spectacular. He planned it down to the last detail; he left the clues everywhere, and it meant the world to her.

In the same way, we, as the bride of Christ (and we know this can seem corny), should be rejoicing and know ourselves to be much loved because our God has laid the paper trail throughout the Old Testament. He has hidden the clues of his love and amazing salvation.

It is our prayer that as you’ve read this chapter you have gone on a journey of discovery, not simply of Jesus, but of how deep God’s love is for us—of how he loved you before you were even conceived.

Jesus Storyline Paperchase:

– John 5:39–40 (Jesus asks, “Where’s Waldo?”)

Pictures in the lives of the Old Testament characters

– Genesis 6–9 (Noah)

– Genesis 22 (Abraham and Isaac)

– Genesis 37–50 (Joseph)

– Exodus 3, 14, 32 (Moses)

– 1 Samuel 17; Psalm 22 (David)

Messianic prophecies

As we said before, there are over three hundred prophecies about Jesus in the Old Testament that are fulfilled in the New Testament. To help you get started discovering the Jesus storyline throughout Scripture, we’ve listed a few of them for you, and we pray that God will reveal wonderful things to you as you study!

1. The Messiah will be born in Bethlehem

Micah 5:2–5a

“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” Therefore Israel will be abandoned until the time when she who is in labor gives birth and the rest of his brothers return to join the Israelites. He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God. And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth. And he will be their peace.

2. He will be King

Isaiah 9:6–7

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the LORD Almighty will accomplish this.

Daniel 7:13–14

In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

Zechariah 9:9

Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

3. He will be a descendant of David/family lineage

2 Samuel 7:12–16

When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men. But my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom shall endure forever before me; your throne shall be established forever.

Psalm 132:11

The LORD swore an oath to David, a sure oath that he will not revoke: “One of your own descendants I will place on your throne …”

Jeremiah 23:5–6

“The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will raise up to David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: The LORD Our

Righteousness”

Jeremiah 33:15

In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s line; he will do what is just and right in the land.

Isaiah 11:1

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.

Numbers 24:17

I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel. He will crush the foreheads of Moab, the skulls of all the sons of Sheth.

4. He will be born of a virgin

Isaiah 7:14

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.

5. He will be a priest

Zechariah 6:11–13

Take the silver and gold and make a crown, and set it on the head of the high priest, Joshua son of Jehozadak. Tell him this is what the LORD Almighty says: “Here is the man whose name is the Branch, and he will branch out from his place and build the temple of the LORD. It is he who will build the temple of the LORD, and he will be clothed with majesty and will sit and rule on his throne. And he will be a priest on his throne. And there will be harmony between the two.”

Psalm 110:4

The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind: “You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.”

6. He will be Lord

Psalm 110:1

The LORD says to my LORD: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”

7. He will be God

Isaiah 9:6

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Jeremiah 23:6

This is the name by which he will be called: The LORD Our Righteousness.

8. He will bring salvation

Isaiah 49:6

He says: “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.”

Zechariah 9:9

Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

9. He will atone for sins

Isaiah 53:4–6

Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Isaiah 53:7–8

He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken.

Isaiah 53:10–12

Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand. After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors.

For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

10. He will heal the sick/preach the good news

Isaiah 61:1 (and whole chapter)

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners …

Isaiah 35:5–6

Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer, and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert.

11. He will teach in parables

Psalm 78:2

I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter hidden things, things from of old …

12. He will be a light to the Gentiles

Isaiah 42:6

I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles …

Isaiah 49:6

I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.

13. He will enter Jerusalem riding a donkey

Zechariah 9:9

Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

14. He will be rejected/mocked/suffer and die

Isaiah 53:1–3 (and verses 4–12)

Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Psalm 118:22

The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone.

Psalm 22:7–8

All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads: “He trusts in the LORD; let the LORD rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him.”

15. His enemies will pierce his hands and feet, divide his clothes among themselves, and cast dice for his garments; and he will be served by future generations

Psalm 22:16–18

Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.

Psalm 22:30

Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord.

16. He will be betrayed by a friend

Psalm 41:9

Even my close friend, whom I trusted, he who shared my bread, has lifted up his heel against me.

17. He will be betrayed for thirty pieces of silver

Zechariah 11:12

I told them, “If you think it best, give me my pay; but if not, keep it.” So they paid me thirty pieces of silver.

18. The thirty pieces of silver will be thrown to the potter.

Zechariah 11:13

And the LORD said to me, “Throw it to the potter”—the handsome price at which they priced me! So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the LORD to the potter.

19. He will be beaten, mocked, and spat upon

Isaiah 50:6

I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard; I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting.

20. His bones will not be broken

Psalm 34:19–20

A righteous man may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all; he protects all his bones, not one of them will be broken.

21. His side will be pierced

Zechariah 12:10

And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.

22. He will be raised from the dead

Isaiah 53:8–12

By oppression and judgment he was taken away. And who can speak of his descendants? For he was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgression of my people he was stricken. He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand. After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light of life and be satisfied; by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities. Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Psalm 16:10

… because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay.

Psalm 49:15

But God will redeem my life from the grave; he will surely take me to himself.

23. He will ascend to heaven

Psalm 68:18

When you ascended on high, you led captives in your train; you received gifts from men, even from the rebellious—that you, O LORD God, might dwell there.

Discussion Questions:

• Are you surprised at the extent to which the Old Testament points to Jesus? If so, why? If not, then why aren’t you?

• What does this tell us about the way that the Old Testament links to the New Testament?

• What practical relevance does this knowledge—that Jesus’ life was foretold in so many miraculous ways—have?

©2010 Cook Communications Ministries. Storylines by Andy Croft and Mike Pilavachi. Used with permission. May not be further reproduced. All rights reserved.

Storylines by Andy Croft and Mike Pilavachi

David C Cook/March 2010
ISBN 978-1-434764-75-1/224 pages/softcover/$12.99

www.davidccook.com

Peace & Blessings,

Patricia

Wednesday Worship: Take My Life

2010-05-26T07:00:00.000-04:00

Take my heart and form it,
Take my mind, transform it
Take my will, conform it
To Yours, to Yours, oh Lord

I heard another version of this recently on my local gospel station. It took me back to an earlier time in my life. I was struck by how easy it is to sing the words, and how tough it can be at times to live them.

Have you given Him your entire life to form, to transform, to conform?

Peace & Blessings,
Patricia