Two New Books

Good morning from the hot place!  No...it's not hell, but the temperature sort of makes you think of it.  It's just a major heat wave in August in Louisiana.  Temps soaring over 100 each day, humidity so thick you can swim in it, and oppressive, smothering heat when you step outside the door to walk the few steps to your car. I'm keeping those pics of the snow from a few months ago very close.  They help.

The nice folks from Thomas Nelson ran across my blog and some of the books I have been recommending the past few weeks.  They were nice enough to send me a couple more to preview and talk about on this blog.  Life's schedule the past couple of months has been brutal and my reading time has been reduced to a few stolen moments here and there when I can make myself invisible behind a door or something, but I'm excited to dive in to the new stuff.



Ron Hall and Denver Moore have another book following "Same Kind of Different as Me."  You just MUST read that book if you haven't already.  It's a true story and will inspire you to live your life more in line with Matthew 25.  The sequel is "What difference do it make?"  I can hardly put it down.  I will be
finished in the next day or two and will write about it here...I hope you will read it, too, and comment about it.  Incredible book, incredible people, incredible God.








The other book is "The Heart Mender" by Andy Andrews.  I love anything he writes, so I can't wait to sink my teeth into it.



While we're on the subject of reading, there is a fabulous blog post on Donald Miller's blog at http://donmilleris.com/2010/08/06/do-this-one-thing-and-youll-rise-above-your-peers/ that discusses the importance of reading and what is happening to the state of reading in our nation.  Please take just three more minutes and go to his blog and read it.  Readers are leaders.  If we become illiterate, we become robots.  Read!

Grand Reunion

The last time I saw Mark in March, 2009, he was waving good-by from the cavernous opening of a nameless bus station in metro Manila, holding his papers and engulfing my heart with his sweet, sad eyes. 


I had no idea that I would ever see him again.


But because of love and God, the united prayers of the POA, the untiring efforts of the Mallorys, and the selfless love of Nellie and her family and her church, I saw him coming home from school on the afternoon of June 23, 2010--happy, excited, well-fed, loved, and beaming with his new knowledge of God, salvation, acceptance, and destiny.


He is loved by so many. Nellie and her family have taken him in and love him as their own. The Mallorys feel as if he is a third son, and so do the Shocks. His birth family understand his bright future and his one prayer every day is for his mom, grandmother, and brothers and sisters to be saved.

He is getting medical attention, and is enrolled in a private Christian school.  He has been filled with the Holy Ghost and baptized in Jesus name and says that he knows he wants to be a pastor when he grows up.  His English is improving weekly and the sweet smile that captured us in the first place has not diminished. 


It seems that others who may not have the best intentions are also interested in his future. It is impossible for me to be able to surround him and protect him from 10,000 miles away, but I know a God who can.  Prayer can follow him where none of us can...so pray we will!


I can't rescue every underprivileged kid out there.  But I can do my part to rescue one. 


I wonder what would happen if we all just found one?

What Did God See?

It was hot. 


It was more than hot, but I don't know another word to use to describe it.  


It was close to 100 degrees inside the smelly gym in some inner bowel of Manila that even the bus driver had gotten lost trying to find. It had rained and the smell of wet dogs, wet bodies, and wet wood was everywhere. 


Truth be told, I was a little aggravated.  The 20 of us had traveled all day long on day ten of a two-week stint, our praise team had stripped their voices and made themselves sick trying to sing on a ridiculously broken sound system, the preacher had preached his heart out to a congregation that couldn't even understand him for the most part and I thought my ears would bleed from the horrendously loud screeches coming out of the left speaker. The right one was blown, so the sound engineer in all of his wisdom thought he could make up for it by blowing the left one. Which was right by my ear. And I would risk offending others if I moved and would risk my life if I went outside. So I sat. And wondered why in the world we did this to ourselves.


Why in the world did we travel 10,000 miles and eat food we didn't really like and wear ourselves out and get so hot that the walls waved and the room did a little dance and then have maybe every fifth word understood by the audience? And leave feeling sick and weak and ineffective?


Well, I for one was tired and getting a gargantuan headache from the ridiculous speaker to my left and my foot was hurting where I had fallen the day before and injured it.


And I was baking in heat not fit for humans to survive.


And in all my miserable attitude, I glanced up and saw her not three feet in front of me.


She was in front of the same speaker and the temperature was the same. She had to have been tired, because her hands told the story of a woman who had to work hard every day just to survive. She didn't show the heat as much, because her body had adjusted to it, and her clothes looked fresher because they were made of some cheap fabric that wouldn't wrinkle.


But she didn't have an attitude about any of it. She had come to worship and nobody was going to stop her.


I doubt she understood the English. I imagine the bad sound was pulsating through her brain, too. The smells were the same beside her as they were beside me.


But it didn't matter.


She lost herself in praise and thanksgiving. 


She smiled at God and was beautiful.


I watched her and asked forgiveness. 


And I worshipped, too. 

My Mind Is Not A Blank Slate

It's very interesting the way life takes these little side roads where you think you are going to meander by waterfalls and through peaceful, wooded glades and BAM! all of a sudden you are smack dab in the middle of an interstate. Or the Daytona 500 track. Or in the path of an oncoming train.

Well, that is exactly what happened to us several months ago. Life came so hard and so fast until I'm still not even sure what to say.

I think I may be back now. I hope so. There is a lot on my mind that I need to get out.

So check back often. The words are beginning to stir.

Where's Waldo?

Oh my.  Did I fall off the face of the earth?  I do believe I did.

Please forgive my lapse in posting and check back frequently.  I think I'm back on track.

First on the list:  Finish the final blog lesson of "Eat This Book" - Lesson 6 - "Pitfalls."  Coming right up!

The Shack

The Shack.

One of the most polarizing Christian novels to have come along in a long time.  You either love it or you hate it.

The story of author William P. Young is a compelling one.  Raised as a missionary kid in New Guinea, he endured sexual abuse at the hands of the tribe his parents were serving, suffered untimely deaths and losses, and the result was a faith that was deeply shaken and a life that became a train wreck.

Young originally wrote The Shack as a story for his children.  Following an adulterous affair, his wife, Kim, declared that he must change and forced him to confront all the painful issues of his past in order for him to heal and begin to make sense out of tragedy.  The Shack is a product of that confrontation.

In The Shack, the protagonist, Willie, endures a painful tragedy called The Great Sadness and, as a result, has a personal encounter with God.  The details of that encounter as well as the way Willie deals with his tragedy are met with extreme criticism from many religious arenas.

In my opinion, the book starts a bit slow and the description of The Great Sadness is very hard to read.  It is painful and I was tempted to put the book aside.  However, once past the graphic description of the tragedy, I was mesmerized and could not put the book down.  The end of the book presented yet another twist which was totally unexpected.  I pondered it for weeks after I finished it.

You must read the entire book in order to develop a complete perspective.  I will wait until comments indicate that several have read the book until I post my comments.  I don't want to give away any details that could possibly color someone's interpretation.

Of one thing I am sure: you cannot walk away from the book without a strong opinion.

Prayer=Bible=Prayer=Bible

LOVE this....it was sent to me by a friend and I have lost the source...I apologize.  But read it and ponder.


The Bible is a prayerbook.

You don't read it statically. You read it proactively. As you read, the same Holy Spirit who inspired the writers illuminates the readers. How awesome is that? The Holy Spirit quickens the Word and something gets in our spirits.
I'm convinced that the Bible is the means to just about every spiritual end. I promise you this: if you are reading the Bible, God will convict you of sin that you need to confess. So in that regard, the Bible is the key to purity. You will also find plenty of promises to claim. The Bible sanctifies our expectations so we have more confidence after we read the Word. In that regard, the Bible is the key to faith. And, of course, it's the key to so many other things. What I'm getting at is this: prayer is a byproduct of Scripture.It is the way God talks to us. Then prayer turns the monologue into a dialogue.

My point? I'm not worried about your prayer life if you're reading the Bible. I think the quality of your prayer life will be directly proportional to the quality and quantity of Scripture you're reading.