Plan B: What Do You Do When God Doesn't Show Up the Way you thought He Would

This is a book review for BookSneeze. I received the book at no cost in exchange for an honest review.

I received this book as part of the BookSneeze program by Thomas Nelson in exchange for a review. I was supposed to release my review the day it was published but wouldn't you know it ... disaster struck.

New disasters in my life have recently come up and I figured now was the time to give this book another read. I was scared but I did it anyway.Not all of the content of this book is encouraging if you're looking for Christian platitudes to simply soothe your soul. Nor does it contain any steps to recovery (do this and God will do this sort of thing). And the title threw me, as I have always believed that we, God's people, are Plan A and there is no Plan B.

But that's not what this book refers to.There are no easy answers here. But there is hope. And although most of us who are followers of Christ already know, He is our hope. And as most of us who are followers of Christ often need that reminder, here it is.The greatest reminder, especially since our family is going through so much pain (we are both disabled and in deep trouble financially to the point that we don't always get our medications that we can't afford and our very home is on the verge of being lost), is that God is STILL RIGHT HERE. I've asked my husband, my friends, "Where is God?" and they've told me He's right here. I guess hearing a stranger remind me of that finally got through my thick head.

I'm not saying this book removed all of my doubts and fears, but it reminded to seek God and remember He is within those doubts and fears and somehow will see me through.And He'll see you through, too.

Facebook Contest

Go to this link: http://www.facebook.com/NewLivingTranslation , go to Sweepstakes, and win!

66 Love Letters by Larry Crabb: Book Review

66 Love Letters: A Conversation with God that Invites You into His Story both excited me and made me apprehensive at the same time. While I've always been a fan of Larry Crabb's, this was something different from his usual offerings. It is written as a conversation between reader (or is it just Crabb?) and God. If the conversation is just Crabb's, does that mean that the 'answers' belong to me, too?

I was pleasantly surprised to find it an enjoyable and enlightening read. Each book of the Bible (each 'love letter') begins with what God wants us to see in the book and how it all flows together and speaks to us personally. I'd have much rather taken the time to read it slowly, along with each coinciding book, as I think it would make a beautiful daily (or weekly) devotion. I also think that it would be a wonderful resource for those who are looking to write a topical (not historical) sermon or as a small group Bible study.

I appreciated that Crabb addressed difficult issues of the Bible, even venting his frustration to God and then letting 'God' speak, explaining the love that is behind some of the very passages that I struggle with myself.

I still left wondering if this was a devotional, a commentary, a well-written work of fiction (the conversations) filled with truth, or just a great book for encouragement and growth. Whatever you describe it as, if you, like me, have always been told that the Bible is God's love letter to us but could never quite reconcile some of the passages of the Old Testament in particular as love, pick up this book and enjoy the insights that Crabb provides.

Disclaimer: Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Nine Ways God Always Speaks*: Review and FREE BOOK GIVEAWAY CONTEST!

Nine Ways God Always Speaks*
*Offer only available in certain states
Authors: Mark Herringshaw & Jennifer Schuchmann
Publisher: Tyndale

Before reading this book, I was skeptical. It's typically my nature to be on my guard when reading books about "hearing God". I've been a Christfollower for about 30 years and have been exposed to many different teachings about hearing from God. Much of it was what I call weird, spooky, or even downright ridiculous.

Don't get me wrong. I hear from God myself in many different ways. Recently the topic came up in my own circle of friends about how do we know when it's God and not just wishful thinking or coincidence? Is this going to be another 'religious' book giving me step-by-step instructions -- if I do this, God will do that or if I don't do this God won't do that?

My fears and doubts were relieved right away with the first chapter.

The book is an easy read in contemporary and relevant language. Yet don't confuse an 'easy read' as not being challenging and thought-provoking. It most definitely is.

My eyes were opened to seeing the ways that God spoke to people during biblical times. Mary's excitement over the message that the angel spoke to her made me excited! This story, which I've heard and read hundreds of times since the time I was a child became truly human and alive by the authors' timely telling and language. All she could do was babble about God's goodness, His promise, and her love for Him. But what about Joseph? Here's a guy who is going to marry a 'good girl' who not only tells him some crazy story about being God speaking to her but that she is going to have a baby while still remaining a virgin. Can you imagine how Joseph must have felt? The doubts, the skeptism? Wouldn't that be our reaction as well? Yeah, right, sure, he must have thought.

So how does he overcome these doubts? God speaks to him through an angel as well. Not only did he end up believing but he was obedient to God's command and didn't have sex with her until after the baby Jesus was born. Would any man, unless he was convinced that he heard from God, abstain from consumating his marriage with his new bride unless he was sure that it was God he heard from? Not only is this proof that Mary's story was true, it's proof that Joseph heard from God as well.

Rarely does God speak to us and ask such crazy things of us. But if He spoke to them and they were convinced it was God's voice, why is it so far-fetched to some of us that He still speaks to us today?

On page four the authors write,

"One reason people say they don't pray more is because they feel as if nothing happens when they pray, that God isn't listening, or worse, that He is not there at all.

A one-sided relationship isn't worth much.

If we're expected to talk to God through prayer, shouldn't we know whether He will talk back? And if He will, how will we hear Him?"

This book helps to answer those questions in practical, mysterious, logical, illogical, and meaningful ways. It asks as many, if not more, questions than it answers. This is a good thing as it encourages you to read and learn of the differnt ways that God speaks and recognize them when you encounter them. It doesn't tell you how God will speak to you, but that He does, and will if we are listening as it tells of many of the ways He does this. Only through listening and hearing other people's stories -- the ones that God told about in the Bible and the regular, every day people of today -- can we learn to be sensitive to God's voice, to discern what is Him and what is the noise of the world, what is real and what is, well, crazy.

In my own personal experience of hearing God so clearly that there was no denying it was Him -- dreams so vivid and full of knowledge and insights that I never would have know on my own (to one of my pastors at that!), to expected, to pictures that God gives me (I guess the common biblical term is visions), to visiting people in one area of South Africa where povety and AIDS is rampant, returning to the same area a year later to be greeted by joyful spirits and healthy bodies, seeing the lame walk a day after we prayed for them, teaching classes to South Africans in our native American language and having the interrepter come up to thank the teacher for speaking to them in the language of Zulu -- when she spoke English the entire time but they heard Zulu! The list of His amazing ways of revealing Himself and speaking to us and through us, through others, and through His word did not end after Jesus left this earth. It continues today and this book will encourage you, amaze you and make you hungry to hear more from our incredible God.

I want to listen. I want to know more. I want to hear God in all I do, think, act, and see.

Do you want to know, too? If so, this book can help you in your journey of learning to listen and hear God personally in your own life as well.

*** Want to learn more? Leave a comment stating your thoughts, or share a story of how God has spoken to you, maybe how you want to know if He is speaking to you, or anything that is on your mind about how God speaks today, or simply why you would like to have this book. There will be one randomly chosen winner. Open to residents of the US only. One entry per person please. Please be sure to include a way to contact you if you are the winner! Contest will end May 10, 2009. For more blog giveaways, click the button below to Mom Most Traveled. I look forward to your comments! ***

***AND THE WINNER IS ....
JUDITH!****

Thanks for all of your great thoughts and posts. A new copy of Nine Ways God Always Speaks* is on its way to Judith. Return soon for more reviews and giveaways. (And if you didn't win this book, I recommend you go out and buy a copy. You'll be happy you did.)

Still Relevant ...

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.

- Abraham Lincoln,
Second Inaugural Address (1865)

Maintaining Peace

The struggle to maintain peace is immeasurably more difficult than any military operation.

- Anne O'Hare McCormick,
first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for foreign correspondence

Love needs no words

She never said a word. Not to me. Not to anyone else. She didn't sing or respond to sound or music. I don't know her name. I don't know where she came from or who she belongs to.

And I fell in love with her.

Touch ... she responded to touch. She'd smile a shy little smile into my face when I took her on my lap and clapped her hands together. She'd just as shyly reach out to touch me when my attention waned and was focused on another beautiful child who wanted and needed it.

I met her on Wednesday. On Thursday, they bussed in all of the children that we had gone out into the township to spend time with and shower our love on during the week.

As the hundreds of children piled into the auditorium, there she was. She didn't run. She didn't skip. But she had a purpose in mind, and her little legs moved steadily and confidently. She didn't stop to get in line for a gift or craft or to play with a friend. She determinedly strutted all the way across the huge auditorium ...

... and stopped in front of me. Her little arms reached up to me and I eagerly scooped her up. I hated to let her go.

Love needs no words.

Peace is powerful

Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.

- Etty Hillesum,
died in Auschwitz in 1943 at the age of 29. From An Interrupted Life, a compilation of her diaries and letters.

Masses

They came in masses.

Hundreds and hundreds of children. Children in need ... in need of love, attention, affection, laughter, physical care, shoes, homes, in need of HOPE.

They lined up for hours for a sparkly star on their face, a crown made out of construction paper, to draw pictures with new paper and crayons, for balloons, for specs and bracelets and doo-dads made out of pipe cleaners ... stuff that cost mere pennies, yet brought such joy to these children. You would have thought everything they lined up for was made of gold.

What can I give them? I felt so helpless and useless. Other teams were off doing the "real work" -- planting food gardens, holding medical clinics, building homes. What did I have to offer?

Then I realized that love really is more valuable than gold. Jeff said it best ... he didn't know before going over how time with these children, these precious and beautiful children, would change the world. But he learned that these children will remember the time that the Americans came over and showered love on them. They will remember that they are not forgotten or forsaken. They will remember that they are loved by the Americans who came to bring meager gifts and all of our hearts.

Love can change things. I know their love changed my life. I trust and believe that our love will change their lives. It has to.

Please, it has to.

(You can see Jeff all the way in the back of this picture with his Reds cap on ... surrounded by hundreds of precious, valuable, beautiful, and worthy children.Click the picture to enlarge.)

We're back!

I have a million stories to tell and don't know where to start. For now, I know that we can change the world one act at a time and that love trumps all.

Mamelodi prayer requests

Well, Jeff and I will be boarding our plane to Mamelodi, South Africa in less than 2 weeks! We fly out on November 20! Amazing!

We will both be working on the kids' team which is so exciting to us! We will be traveling out into the township to different sattelite churches of their main campus, Charity and Faith. Two of those churches are tent churches! We will be with the 3-5 year olds in the mornings (who don't speak any English! We all speak the language of God's love though!) and with the older, schoolaged children in the afternoons. On our last day, all of the children will be transported to the main campus where we will have a huge celebration together.

It will be an amazing, joyful, and heartbreaking experience. We have no idea how God will use us in the lives of these children but we know that He will and will do so mightily.

We ask you to please pray for all aspects of the trip for the entire teams that are going, over 400 people and literally tons of supplies! We ask you to pray for their safety and their health and that they would experience God in a way like never before. We also ask you to please pray for each person that we will be encountering in Mamelodi, that God will do miraculous and healing work in each one of their lives. We ask you to pray that we will all be a blessing to the people there.

We ask that you please pray for Jeff and I personally as well. We both have health issues that have been flaring up lately, yet we are confident that our God who has called us will deliver us. We have no doubt in this. We ask you to pray that we will be strong and painfree. We ask you to pray for our safety. We ask you to pray that God will use our hands and feet as His very own to be a blessing. We ask you to pray that our eyes will be open to see Him in all we do. We ask you to pray that our hearts will be open to receive all that He has for us and that they will be filled with His love and compassion for the people of Mamelodi.

Thank you so much for your faithful prayers. I'm looking forward to sharing with you pictures and stories when we return.

Just do it

Don’t tell me what you hope for. Tell me what you are doing to bring it. Then you will know both patience and justice.

- Joan Chittister

It's one of those days

Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.

- Martin Luther King Jr.,
Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, Dec. 11, 1964.

Fair Questions for Sarah Palin

From "God's Politics: A Blog by Jim Wallis & Friends"
by Jim Wallis
09-17-2008

After Sarah Palin was selected by John McCain as the Republican vice-presidential candidate, reporters asked me whether the pick was desperate, brilliant, or risky. I said, “yes.” Only time will answer the question about the wisdom of McCain’s choice. But soon after the announcement, the firestorm began. I said that it was a double standard to criticize this mother for running for high office because she had five children, including a special needs child and a pregnant teenage daughter. Unless we are also going to ask men (fathers) the same question, we should not ask it of a working woman who decides to run for political office. Families in public life certainly need to take good care of their kids, but that is a mutual and family responsibility, not just for the mom.

And then some media started going after Palin’s faith and church. One night I watched Keith Olbermann of MSNBC say something like “Sarah Palin goes to a church where they speak in tongues, believe in the Rapture, and think you can pray away the gay.” Please Keith, you may not understand religion, but don’t offend evangelicals and Pentecostals who either like Palin’s politics or don’t, but see nothing wrong with their religion. Palin was a curveball to the Obama campaign, which at first had no real idea as to how to respond. But while they made many mistakes, they didn’t resort to the attacks on her family and faith that some in the media did.

But now Republicans are crying crocodile tears and accusing anybody who questions Palin’s record, experience, or readiness to lead as part of the liberal cultural elite that is just out to get ordinary people like Palin and the rest of us. Yesterday I spoke to a newspaper columnist, a committed Christian, who knows he will be attacked as anti-Christian if he focuses on the political facts of Palin. Is she the reformer she claims to be? What is her knowledge of the world, of foreign policy issues, of the complicated relationship between the use of diplomacy and force in conflict situations? Do her statements and positions on energy and economic policy comport with the facts and with what is needed to make major changes in direction on both? And most of all, does her experience, knowledge, and perspective give her the judgment, competence, and prudence to become the next president of the United States should something happen to the president?

Those are entirely fair questions for Palin, Joe Biden, John McCain, or Barack Obama. They are about the facts, the issues (not the personalities as I discussed in my last post), and the leadership qualities (which is different) needed to govern the country.

http://www.sojo.net/blog/godspolitics/?p=2111

James Carville at his finest

This is a quote from last night's Larry King Live. I almost spit my drink out laughing so hard.

Now one of the things that I understand is she never had a passport until she was governor. She's has only been out of the country to -- she went, honorably, to visit the troops in Kuwait and went to Germany. And so I don't know how many times she's even been out of the country.

But it's supposedly that she had to get a passport to do that.

And we're going to have her be vice president of the United States based on a 15 minute conversation she had with Senator McCain?

I mean I'm -- this is -- she was touted experience as mayor of this town in Alaska. This is a picture of the city hall. It looks like a bait shop in South Louisiana, all right?

This is executive experience to be vice president of the United States, to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, to have to take over the country when we're fighting three wars, where we have the biggest credit crisis we've had in this country?

I mean in the entire Republican Party, this is the best that they could come up with? -- James Carville

You too?

I know it's wrong, but ...

... I couldn't help myself. I've been so saddened by the number of hopeful people that have flocked to "have an encounter with God" under this guy's leadership. Now that it's been discovered that he's had more than one "inappropriate relationships", he's stepped down from his 'ministry'. There is a previous post about his revival and my issues with it a few posts back.

Although I'm sad that it had to come to this kind of incident to expose him, I'm glad that he's been exposed.

Here's just one out of hundreds of articles about this latest news here.

By the way, I'm still resting and healing, but I couldn't help but respond to this news considering the strong stand I took regarding this in an earlier post.

Resting

I've had a heck of a week. It's been terrifying, beautiful, and absolutely crazy.

God is so good. His love is amazing. I have so much to write and tell!

But for a little while, I'm going to take a rest. I'm going to learn what it feels like to let the Good Shepherd tend to me and I'm going to rest in the shadow of His presence.

But when I post again ... oh, I'll have so much to share!

See you in a while. Stay tuned.

No More Shame: A Story of Healed Wounds

I was a heroin addict in my 20s. I shot up as many times as I could a day. They left terrible track marks up and down my arms and hands. When I finally got clean, I was left with a lot of scars.

These scars all but faded over the years. But I have one very ugly, very obvious scar that remains on my right wrist. One day I was talking to God about it. I asked Him, "Lord, you have removed all of the other scars from me. This one stares me in the face every day. Others can see it clearly. I know you can remove it. Would you please remove it for me? I'm ashamed of it."

Very clearly and very gently, I heard God say to me, "Look at that scar. Do you remember the conditions that caused it? Do you remember the pain?"

"Yes,I do", I replied.

Then He said to me, "Touch it. Does it hurt? Do you feel pain now?"

"No", I said.

"That scar is there to remind you of how I healed you. Scars are a sign of healing, evidence of where I took your wounds and stitched them up. Everyone that you encounter has scars, Joyce. Many of those scars are on the inside but everyone has them. But scars don't hurt. Open wounds do. I stitched your open wounds up, inside and out."

As I continued to look at it and receive that as truth from God, He spoke again. "Don't you ever be ashamed to show and tell people of how I healed you. That scar isn't about you. It is about what I did for you and is to be used to share my hope and glory".

I've never been ashamed of that scar again.

Ambassadors of God

People who are in need and are not afraid to beg give to people not in need the occasion to do good for goodness' sake. Modern society calls the beggar bum and panhandler and gives him the bum's rush. But the Greeks used to say that people in need are ambassadors of the gods. Although you may be called bums and panhandlers you are in fact the ambassadors of God. As God's ambassadors you should be given food, clothing and shelter by those who are able to give it.
--Peter Maurin