Writing’s an individual sport. Yet in a group, we find support to stay focused, inspired, and excited about our craft. If you write to get published or for personal reasons, this blog is a place where you will find proactive support and encouragement for your personal writer’s journey.
Personally, I felt called to make writing a career in 2000, and have been slowly moving in that direction ever since. Sometimes the progress is two steps forward, one back, but I’m making progress every year. If you’re a writer, you know how it goes. I hope you drop by often. It’s lonely pounding out words in front of your computer all day. When you take a break, use the posts here to motivate you onto love and good works.
Take the Stairs: Seven Steps to Achieving True Success
by: Rory Vaden, TarcherPerigee, December 31, 2012.
Take the Stairs by Rory Vaden is an energetic look at the mindset that creates sustainable success. In some Christian circles, I often hear the mantra, “God doesn’t want you to just survive, He wants his children to thrive.” I enjoyed Rory’s book for three reasons:
- He doesn’t use cliches (like the one above), he teaches and tells memorable stories.
- The book’s seven steps are clear . . . simple to understand and admittedly harder to apply.
- He doesn’t put much of the responsibility in for your success in God’s hands, or make success a matter of the right confession and beliefs. After teaching, inspiring and motivating his readers, his final chapter’s summary is bolted to the only axle that moves the wheels down the road. You and I have to do what we believe.
Hearing Jesus Speak into your Sorrow: Book Review
Hearing Jesus Speak into Your Sorrow.
By: Nancy Guthrie, Tyndale House Publishers, 2009
In his work The Problem of Pain, prolific Christian author C.S. Lewis wrote, “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” [1] For some reason, much of the contemporary Christian world has forgotten God’s purpose of pain, or maybe we’ve never learned it. Into this gap between success focused, performance centric worship and the reality of pain and suffering experiences by many Christians, Nancy Guthrie speaks. Drilling down into eleven specific circumstances, Nancy challenges her readers to find God rather than run from Him when they experience pain, suffering, grief or unanswered prayers.
What’s the Big Deal about Grace?
In the past six months, I’m hearing a lot about Grace, and to tell you the truth, I’m confused. Maybe I’m in a bubble, but I don’t understand how or why ministries are developing the message of grace into a subculture of the gospel. Most of these ministries and their preachers are presenting the truth of the gospel (more on that later) because grace is essential, no, the core of salvation.
Hope in the Mourning Bible
Finding Strength through God’s Eternal Perspective
From Amazon.com:
WHEN A CASSEROLE OR A GREETING CARD ISN’T ENOUGH.
Grief is one of life’s toughest challenges. During such times it is difficult to know where to turn. Yet in the midst of your deepest despair, God reveals Himself and His promises for a better tomorrow. The NIV Hope in the Mourning Bible works to bring a peaceful sense—in the midst of the coldest winter—that spring will one day come again. The collection of devotions and prayers warmly offer inspiration and hope based in God’s Word and his promises to those who have lost loved ones. This Bible emphasizes the love and hope that your Lord has for you even during your darkest days.
Features* Complete text of the NIV, the world’s most popular modern-English Bible* Daily devotions written for and by those who have experienced the loss of a loved one or who are helping a loved one through extended terminal illness* A prayer appendix featuring 52 prayers based on the book of Psalms* Short reflections and song lyrics for meditation * Resources list containing information for those seeking additional help.
I wrote 9 or 10 devotional meditations for this bible, published by Zondervan in Fall 2013. These meditations are designed to come alongside those who are awash on the turbulent sea of grief to help them find their bearings again, and rekindle their hope in God’s mercy and love.
Successful Small Groups – From Concept to Practice
Jesus’ last words gave Christians the Great Commission, a command to build disciples in all nations. Disciple building is a process, not an event, and too often Christ followers focus on events. Preaching is part of the process, as is baptism, church membership and reading the Bible. However, unless these lessons become part of a changed life, the discipling process remains incomplete. Teena’s book lays out steps to start and grow a successful small group ministry, which is often the essential key for changing decision makers and church attenders into disciples. (T. Stewart, 2007, Beacon Hill of Kansas City)
Tim is an experienced small group leader and spiritual mentor. His contributions to Successful Small Groups grow from personal experience, and 20 years of discipling ministry.
She Was Convinced of God’s Hand in Her Life
I met Wanda Maxey three years ago in a small writing group. Timid and quiet, Wanda wanted to tell her private story to the world. She believed that God had taught her about his beautiful love and grace, even though her personal history was filled potholes of alcoholism and abuse. Wanda’s story includes an alcoholic father, and a similar man that she settled for when she got married. Zig Ziglar once said that people often prefer a known hell to an unknown heaven, and his wisdom is woven around the reasons Wanda chose her partner.
Wanda was married to a man like her abusive, alcoholic father for thirty-two years. It took a violent confrontation one night at the point of a gun to bring her to her senses. Her story, in the book Love and Abuse on 40 Acres, tells how she justified the emotional twists and turns until she finally found the courage and freedom in Christ to surrender to him and stand up for herself. Her book is available on Amazon in a print edition, or on Kindle.
I am blessed to see how Wanda has grown personally as the result of taking the risk to tell her story. She is genuine, transparent and honestly confronts her decisions that shaped her life. Today, Wanda is writing and speaking about her personal journey. You can find out more and contact Wanda via http://wandasmaxey.com/.
God Encounters
Author James Stuart Bell worked with Howard Books to collect stories of God’s real involvement in the lives of his children. The first in a 10 book series, God Encounters tells how a loving God answered desperate prayers and interacted with his people (J. Bell, 2009, Howard Books)
Tim’s contribution to this compilation book tells the story of how God answered a 4 year old prayer to begin reconciling his relationship to his son Josh.
Forged in the Fire – Shaped by the Master
God wants to do great things through you, but whether or not his will ever comes to completion in your life depends to a great extent on whom you allow to shape your life. Do you insist on following your own patterns, habits, and ideas for change? Are you willing to allow God’s pattern to shape your life into a masterpiece bearing His signature?
David met God personally and intimately through His provision in the wilderness, and it forever changed him into “a man after God’s own heart.” Joseph met God in the dreams of his youth, and when those dreams were finally fulfilled, a self-important young man was transformed into the humble leader of the most powerful kingdom on earth. You could say they were forged in the fire as they were shaped by the Master.
On the other hand, King’s Saul and Hezekiah both started their walk with God with purpose and the Spirit’s power only to fall, miserably. Saul was sent an “evil spirit from God” because he insisted on doing his own will instead of God’s. Hezekiah started his reign surrounded by supernatural miracles, but his selfishness cost him the kingdom.
After unpacking the lessons from these two successful leaders, Forged in the Fire turns to Kings Saul and Hezekiah. Both of these leaders started well, but they finished in defeat. Forged asks “Why?” and then discovers 12 lessons from these 4 kings’ lives to learn and apply as you pursue the purposes of God in your generation.
Self Help Advice for the Rest of Us
Are You Living or Existing? by Kimanzi Constable
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I don’t know about you, but I don’t connect with some of the self-help Experts and Gurus out there. I know they do good work, and if their income is any reflection to the quality of their advice (which is what I’m supposed to think, I think) then their advice is worth its weight in gold. Yet I have a hard time peeling away the pounds of plastic and veneer of their presentations to find something that really feels genuine.
I met Kimanzi Constable at a local conference last year, and he was just finishing this book, Are you Living or Just Existing. Kimanzi, or Z as he liked to be called, had finally reached the end of accepting life as a delivery driver, and was determined to find the life of his dreams. He was focused on a better income, a better career and a better outlook on life in general. His book, Are You Living or Just Existing, is filled with this blue-collar honesty as he talks about his journey, and the principles he’s using today to change his life.
Z is a normal guy, but he’s not average. He’s applying the advice in his book, not just talking about it. I’ve watched him travel from Hawaii to Israel talking to growing audiences, and I’m seeing the words on his pages come to life. I highly recommend Z’s book. It’s filled with self-help advice for the rest of us.
An International Adoption Goes Terribly Wrong
We’re spoiled here in America. Laws are written to protect us from corrupt officials who use their offices for their own benefit at the expense of the helpless. We rely on just officials to hold our rights as sacred, as gifts from our Creator, as they hear disputes and work toward equitable solutions when inevitable conflict happens. Here between the oceans shores, a place where corrupt governments haven’t yet been allowed to flourish for centuries, we are spoiled.
What happens when fair laws disappear under the whims of men seeking their own power, rather than their citizen’s wellbeing? What does the world look like when the thing you expected, planned and paid for are blocked by a careless, almost flippant disregard for the laws you’ve bent over backward to uphold, when you’re in a foreign country, and the officials are fairly certain you have no resources or recourse.
I met Kim deBlecourt shortly after she returned from the Ukraine, or should I say escaped? The ordeal still embedded in her eyes, she told me the story of being on the run and underground in the former Soviet bloc country, trying to get home with the little boy she’d legally adopted. Kim’s story is one of courage, true love, and a mom’s passion to protect a Ukrainian orphan she and her family grew to know and love during the long process of an international adoption. Somewhere along the way, the conflict between Kim and a corrupt government official became personal – to the official, and Kim’s flight became a race against politics and power in a foreign country.
Until We all Come Home is the story of Kim and her family’s love and passion. In a country for almost a year in which she didn’t speak or understand the language, those who helped her understood the love she had for her son, and a mother’s devotion to her children. Until We all Come Home reads more like a Tom Clancy novel if Mr. Clancy had been a mom. Only then could he have told this true story.
In book stores now, Until We All Come Home tells Kim’s harrowing true story. Kim speaks at conferences, and has recently been on the cover of Today’s Christian Woman. Yet Kim is just a mom from Holland, Michigan, and an adoption advocate for international adoptions. When you purchase a copy of her book, all the profits go to support hundreds of abandoned children, waiting in orphanages like her son was, just two short year ago.
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