Chase that Lion & Grow with God!

I recently read a book called, “In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day” by Mark Batterson. In the book, he encourages Christians to trust God and realize that the future God wants for them is hiding in their biggest problem, worst failures and greatest fears! He emphasizes, as does the Bible, that God is glorified as His people step into the seemingly impossible opportunities that stand between them and their dreams because these are the places where God’s involvement can be the only explanation for success.  Even if the outcome is not that which was hoped for according to our definition of success, we are still ahead because we will have the opportunity to grow in our relationship with God, thus, find ourselves changed. Besides, we can trust that God doesn’t waste anything. The efforts made will certainly be used for God’s purposes to bring forth the planned outcome of God.

For instance, a number of years ago, Jon (my husband) and I answered the call to plant a church in Lumberton, NC. With little financial support and little previous  experience; with statistics saying small towns that are no longer growing are not the place to plant a new church especially by an outsider, we left our jobs and we moved to Lumberton. Although there were many struggles, there were many great things that happened through the plant to include salvations, water baptisms, new commitments to the Lord, divine relationships established through the fellowship including two marriages, and our experience of God in at a whole new level that resulted from this walk of faith. All of this was God’s plan and what came out of our obedience to “go” even in the midst of defying odds.

As for the church plant, it fell apart in its sixth year and we have moved on. But you see, nothing was wasted! God was glorified in our obedience in many ways as He worked out His plan for so many people through our obedience; and Jon and I are that much closer to our own destiny of becoming like Christ. Our relationship grew with Christ through the experience of obedience and in the experience of letting go of God’s people for Him to do as He pleased. We are not even close to being the same today as we were when we set out on that journey. You can only WIN in being obedient to God!  As Batterson says, “I wish I could tell you that every lion chase ends with a lion skin hanging on the wall, but it doesn’t…the dot.com dreamer may become successful beyond his wildest dreams, but the guy with political aspirations loses the election he dreamed of winning. However, both of them are LION CHASERS. What sets lion chasers apart ISN’T THE OUTCOME. It’s the courage to chase God-sized dreams. Lion chasers don’t let their fears or doubts keep them from doing what God has called them to do.

So, we are called to run after these opportunities as God puts the desire on our hearts. Or, as Batterson puts it, “chase lions” and lay hold of God’s best by not allowing our past experiences, present circumstances, fears, doubts, bad decisions, or habits keep us from stepping into what God has called us to do. Instead, chase these opportunities and with God’s help defy the odds, face our fears and re-frame our problems, embrace uncertainty, take risks, and seize opportunities – all at the risk of looking FOOLISH. As our trust grows in God’s sovereign timing and positioning us for His purpose in our life’s circumstances, and as we learn to recognize and lay hold of our God-ordained opportunities, we are transformed from glory to glory. And, that is God’s best no matter what the exterior circumstances look like. Next time around, the outcome may be just what one expects! So continue on chasing lions knowing God is with you. It’s all good! It’s all in God’s hands to be used for HIS eternal purposes!

                                       What dream are you allowing fear or doubt to hold you back from pursuing? Go on…chase that lion!

Cover via Amazon

What’s in a word?

I love pizza.

I love Saturday morning breakfast.

I love the full moon.

I love swimming at twilight.

I love my cat.

I love my husband.

I love hearing the still small Voice.

One word and so many different meanings. Love is a word that can be cheapened and tossed around glibly. I don’t love pizza like I love my husband.

So when I say, “I love you,” what does that mean? Love you like pizza?

Sometimes our words don’t mean much. I’m not posting to criticize our words. But it’s easy to clap a friend on the back and say, “Love ya,” and go on our way.

Check out 1 John 3:18. My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.

We can say I love you by what we do. The people in our lives, I’ve discovered, pass through so quickly sometimes. The younger we are, we think that our current situation will last forever. But then you wake up one day, and months or even years have passed. And so people move along as well. Either they leave this life, or leave our lives and move away, or people get too busy and grow apart.

I think back to the times I’ve told a friend I loved them, or assumed they “just knew.” Lately I’ve realized how it’s more important to do simple acts of love, those unexpected little things that will show someone that I love them. Not just telling them “love ya,” or figuring they already understood that.

What would mean something special to someone you love? A card or letter? An afternoon together? A cup of coffee, made just the way they like it? A verse you read, that you know they’d appreciate? A listening ear?

Deliberate demonstrations of love might make someone uncomfortable, though. When we acknowledge how truly important someone is to us, they may be embarrassed. But maybe it’s exactly what they needed.

My new promise to myself: no more regrets, no more holding back, no more thinking, “Oh, they already know I love them.”

Don’t forget to say I love you…Love out loud.

Let God Talk to You Review by Yvonne Ortega

Some people believe God doesn’t talk to people anymore. I’m grateful He still does. What a privilege to have the opportunity to hear God speak to us.

Many of us go to God with our long list of requests. We know what we want, and we want it now.

However, how many of us expect God to talk to us? How many of us stop our hectic pace and sit in silence to hear from God?

Becky Tirabassi writes with passion and conviction in her book, Let God Talk to You: When You Hear Him, You Will Never Be the Same.

She takes the readers step by step and explains not only that God talks to us, but also why, how, what God says, and when. She starts in the Old Testament, moves through the New Testament, and onto the present.

The author weaves in Scripture, examples, and detailed information on how to set up a prayer notebook to help readers prepare to listen to God. She calls the notebook, My Partner Prayer Notebook.

I challenge you to read this book, follow the steps and sit expecting to hear from God. He will talk to you, and I would love to know what happens.

I read Becky Tirabassi’s book and set up my partner prayer notebook. I cut out TV, the newspaper, and social media for a week. Relax. Becky didn’t say to do that, but I felt led to do so the week before Christmas. God talked to me, and I heard Him. He told me what He wanted me to do in 2012 and what He wanted me to cut out. Unfortunately, one of the things God wanted me to cut out was posting on Christians Read.

I’ve been blessed to be part of this ministry and have enjoyed posting about the many wonderful books available.

May God bless you richly as you read this book and hear God talk to you. He loves you so much that He’s waiting to talk to you.

Yvonne Ortega www.yvonneortega.com

In Defense Of Fluffy And Light by Lynette Sowell

I’ve been hearing a lot about books needing a theme, that deeper thread, that “message” that Christian readers like to find. You’ll hear varying opinions on what makes a book have a good “message.” As I’ve listened to opinions on both sides, I found myself feeling a bit defensive. So far, my books have not addressed those hard-gripping, emotionally charged issues that make you feel like you’ve been wrung out and hung up to dry. My heroes and heroines haven’t faced deep problems. I’m willing to say that as a writer, I’m not alone in that. We who write genre fiction, shorter novels, might be looked at as writing something that’s disposable. Here one month, gone the next.

I realize that some readers don’t want, and probably don’t need, the heavy-hitting, gut-wrenching, box o’ tissues read. The world has enough trouble and sorrow of its own that sometimes it’s nice to curl up in someone else’s world.

However, I am reminded that often, as Mary Poppins sang, “a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down in the most delightful way.” We who write sweet and light realize that our characters don’t have the pristine lives as they’d like for us to believe when we first meet them. I’ve enjoyed discovering their little secrets and that yes, indeed, my characters have–gasp–issues.

In Christmas At Barncastle Inn, my contribution to the anthology is a novella called “Christmas Duets.” Sweet and light, it’s my writer’s homage to one of my favorite movies, “White Christmas,” I discovered that the marshmallow world in the winter masked some issues.

Middle school music teacher Marcella Goudreau doesn’t like change. Change came in a big way when her grandmother threw grandpa out of the house the day after Thanksgiving. So she and her sister cook up a plan to get them back together over Christmas. Where else? By singing duets from “White Christmas” at Barncastle Inn. Armand Goudreau and his wife of over 50 years face what many couples do–growing older, starting to grow apart, and not communicating well.

Physician Assistant Sean McSweeney, a veteran whose time in the service is over, works for the Veterans Affairs facility where Armand likes to work out at the gym. Sean is very successful at shutting people out of his life. For him, Christmas is a solitary time because of his fractured family and alcoholic mother. Then he takes Armand in after the man shows up on his doorstep. Armand, though, refuses to miss out on the family’s Christmas gathering at Vermont’s Barncastle Inn, and insists that Sean go with him.

A fluffy and light Christmas read? Maybe just a little. Sometimes, though, that’s exactly what we need, and any “message” goes down easy and settles inside us to do its thing. I hope my readers think so. Merry Christmas to you all, and as you go about your preparations, remember that it’s okay if not everything goes according to plan. Sometimes that makes for the best Christmas ever.

- – -

Lynette Sowell  writes fiction for the inspirational market, from contemporary romance to mysteries. She’s always looking for the perfect recipe for a story–or a great dish–and is always up for a Texas road trip.

A Christmas Journey Home Review by Yvonne Ortega

A Christmas Journey Home by Kathi Macias is not a warm fuzzy novel. Kathi Macias is a master at writing novels that make the readers think and question the depth of their beliefs. In this novel, she doesn’t disappoint her loyal followers.

Isabella, a pregnant woman in Mexico, lost her family to gang violence. She fears the same thing could happen to her and her husband, Francisco.

isabella’s grandfather provides the money for Isabella and Francisco to pay a “coyote” to guide them illegally across the border to the USA.

Meanwhile, Miriam Nelson in Arizona is furious with God because her border patrol agent husband, David, was killed in a skirmish with drug smugglers. Miriam is bitter and wants revenge for the death of her husband.

The desperate situations Isabella and her husband face leave Isabella overwhelmed with fear and wondering if God will take care of them and the child she carries.

Kathi Macias does not condone illegal immigrants. She does make the readers see both sides of the issue and causes them to laugh one minute and cry the next.

Kathi demonstrates the power of prayer and holds the attention of the readers from the beginning to the miracle meeting of Isabella and Miriam on Christmas Eve.

This is a must read and will make a fabulous Christmas present or stocking stuffer. Include tissue with the gift.

Yvonne Ortega  www.yvonneortega.com

 

Choosing Gratitude: Your Journey to Joy by Yvonne Ortega

With Thanksgiving Day a week away in the USA, many of us may focus on what we will serve for dinner that day. Perhaps before we eat, we will thank God for his blessings to us.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss says, “Gratitude should be an every moment, every hour, every day, lifetime commitment. Will we ever run out of things to be thankful for? Not a chance.”

Nancy says, “If you’ve always wanted prayer to be as natural as breathing, then pave the way with gratitude.” She spent many months looking at what the Scripture has to say about gratitude.

The book is full of specific Scriptures and examples from the lives of such people as Fanny Crosby, writer of eight thousand hymns, who thanked God for the blessing of blindness.

Nancy takes us on a journey “to confront those stubborn weeds of ingratitude and choose to cultivate a thankful heart.” With transparency and humility she gives examples from her own life of how God encouraged her to give thanks for that which broke her heart.

In her book, the author says gratitude is “not a second-tier virtue in the Christian life—it is vital.” She points out that blessings come disguised as problems and difficulties. She asks if the pain will draw us closer to the Father or make us want to withdraw from his grace and fellowship. I pray it will draw us closer to the Father, especially after reading this book.

Nancy calls gratitude her life preserver and says that choosing gratitude is choosing joy. As we read the book, hopefully gratitude will become our life preserver too and we will choose gratitude and thus joy.

Nancy points out that people fall into two categories: givers and takers, lovers and fighters, Type As and Type Bs, free spirits and list makers, and whiners and worshipers. Will we whine or will we worship?

Our journey to grateful worship of God is “going gratitudinal” according to Nancy DeMoss.

To help us to practice gratitude and thus choose joy, the author includes a 30 day devotional at the end of the book.

Buy this book and read a chapter daily. Let the gratitude that flows out of your life be as abundant as the grace that flows into your life.

The Truth About Prayer Habits by Sarah Goebel

Whatever exercises we practice in the Christian life, they are in vain if done without the reading of Scripture and prayer. Yet sadly, most Christians go through life without an active prayer life. They worship, they go on mission trips, they serve in the church but many seldom pray. Donald Whitney in his book, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, tells about a survey done in the 1980s. “More than seventeen thousand members of a major evangelical denomination were surveyed about their prayer habits while attending seminars on prayer for spiritual awakening. Because they attended this kind of seminar, we can assume these people are above average in their interest in prayer. And yet, the surveys revealed that they pray an average of less than five minutes each day. There were two thousand pastors and wives at these same seminars. By their own admission, they pray less than seven minutes a day.”

On the other hand, can we really pray continually as we commanded in 1 Thessalonians 5:17. Yes, we can do this because Scripture is not speaking here of prayer as an activity. This is important for us to understand.  “Pray continually” speaks of relationship. My friend, Jennifer K. Dean in her book, Heart’s Cry, explains that God is calling us to live a praying life versus a prayer life.  She calls this lifestyle “living behind the veil in the presence of God throughout our days, living in Christ and Christ living through us. Prayer is in this sense living in an unbroken awareness of the presence of God as we move through our day.” It means you may be concentrating on another activity at the moment, but at the same time, you are aware of God’s presence and the need to return your attention to Him. In other words, you never really stop talking with God; you just have interruptions in your conversation. Praying continually is chatting off and on all day long as we take care of our responsibilities and enjoy the activities we are involved in as though God is our companion, traveling right along with us. The thing is – He is. We simply fail to acknowledge it.

Living a praying life does not mean, however, that we never set aside a particular time for devoted prayer. We are told in Colossians 4:2, we are to devote ourselves to prayer. When we devote ourselves to something, we make it a priority. God wants us to live with a continual awareness of His presence, communing and communicating with Him while doing life as well as to have focused dedicated times of prayer. His expectation for us to pray flows from His love for us, not from a heart to put us to task. To illustrate, when I travel, my husband expects me to call him when I arrive at my destination. I expect the same from him. We don’t put this expectation on one another as a means of control or distrust. The one traveling communicates to put the other’s mind at ease by informing them they are safe. Besides, Praise the Lord, we are still after all these years eager to hear one another’s voice when we are separated by distance. My point here is just as our expectation to phone one another flows from our love, God’s expectation for us to pray is also born out of love. When we set aside special time alone with God where our attention is all on Him, we are in a place of intimacy where God can reveal to us His most intimate secrets.

So how is your prayer life? Does it seem lifeless or alive? Do you receive direct answers to your prayers? Are you experiencing the reality of God’s continual presence in your life?

To develop a praying life lifestyle combined with special times of dedicated prayer starts with a decision to do so. God will help you once you commit to it. I would also highly recommend you read Heart’s Cry: Principles of Prayer and Live a Praying Life, both by Jennifer Kennedy Dean. Regardless where you currently are in your walk with God, I truly believe these books will set you on course for a deepened intimacy with God and a more powerful, answered prayer life.

            

To end this post, I want to share one exercise I have found helpful to developing a praying life relationship with our Father. Spend 5 to 10 minutes in prayer each morning upon awakening before your thoughts become clouded with the day’s plans. Thank Him for your life and day and ask Him to be Lord over it. Focus your thoughts on Him and His love, sovereignty and majesty. This should help you to remember He is with you from the time your feet hit the floor and as you go through your busy day.

How about you? I know we have many readers who walk closely with God. Do you have an exercise you could share that has helped you to live a praying life or increased your intimacy with God?

Book Review: 40 Ways to Get Closer to God by Vicki Hinze

40 Ways to Get Closer to God

Jerry MacGregor and Keri Wyatt Kent

• Publisher: Bethany House
• ISBN-10: 0764209183
• ISBN-13: 978-0764209185

At some point in our lives, often when we’re in crisis, we call on God for help.  When the crisis passes, all too often we return to our normal routines and keep God distant as we did before.  Even more often, we don’t realize we’re creating that distance, we just slide back into normal and the routine—and then we wonder why we feel disconnected or as though God’s forgotten us, put us on ignore, abandoned us.  We want something.  We want more.  We want that connection.  But we haven’t a clue how to get it.

In 40 Ways to Get Closer to God, MacGregor and Wyatt-Kent offer a practical (and very doable) plan for recognizing that the something more we want is an up-close and personal relationship with God, and that yearning for a connection to our Creator in our daily lives requires action–not from Him, from us.

Readers are given an opportunity in the form of a 40-day challenge to become active in their own transformation from one who lives distant and one who works to close the gap.  While God’s love is constant and unconditional, our relationship with God is two-part:  His and ours.  It’s our part that is the focus of this insightful book, and it is in those insights we find keys to our personal spiritual advancement.

Steeped in Scripture, shared wisdom from those who have previously made this journey, and from Macgregor’s personal journey, this book issues an open invitation to any who choose to embrace it.  That invitation is to make your own personal journey.  And should you accept, at its end what you discover is a new beginning. One where you have spiritually grown and you grasp your innate need to continue to grow.  A path where you walk closer with God.

Note:  This book is practical not preachy.  It’s conversational not authoritarian or lofty; more like a chat over coffee with a good friend than an instructional guide.  The challenges inspire, make you eager to tackle them, not overwhelmed at the prospect or intimidated into doing nothing.  It’s a book you’ll read and assess, then read again and again to digest.  For in its apparent simplicity is a wealth of wisdom.

Vicki Hinze