Recess with Jesus
Published: October 8, 2011ISBN: 9781466414884
Games are not a new dynamic between man and God. From the first round of Hide and Seek in the Garden, we have been playing with Him. Thousands of years later, our game is the same.
Recess with Jesus invites us to experience God's willingness to meet us here and play alongside us with a new strategy, a new set of rules, and a victory that maybe doesn't count for much on this playground but promises a greater prize.
This is not a book of answers. This is not a step-by-step guide to God and faith. This is not one of those books that asks us to step into David's or Martha's or Jonah's shoes and attempt to find their God just the way they experienced Him. God wants to meet us in our own shoes - or barefoot in the grass.
He wants us to look around our playground and understand the offense of our defense of our games. We were never meant to play this way. We play to win, but for all our winning, we lose.
The familiarity of the playground opens us to a new way of looking at our relationship with Christ by starting at a place we all know, love, and fondly remember before pushing us deeper into discipleship. Each chapter is framed by Scripture and perfect for a quick read...but never a quick think. The powerful metaphor and thought-provoking twists of word in each familiar playground game catch us off-guard and stir us toward something more.
Who knew Four Square was a matter of the heart?
Recess with Jesus is available for purchase from the author's eStore and Amazon.com. Available in both print and Kindle format. You can read a few chapters for free by clicking here.
Unfolded Hands
Published: August 2013
ISBN: 9781492152491
ISBN: 9781492152491
It's a fair question. Prayer is the one Christian discipline that doesn't seem so clear-cut. If we go to church, there we are. If we read the Bible, here it is. If we give, love, serve, worship, we know that we have done these things. But how do we know if we've prayed?
To help us understand this word, pray, we have ritualized the practice of prayer. We fold our hands, bow our heads, close our eyes, and ramble for a while until we find ourselves at an amen. Then we're left to wonder if God has heard us.
It rarely seems He has. The ritual of prayer has all but taken the relationship out of our personal time with God. Prayer is a set of standards; we've lost the intimacy of the Infinite. And we're longing to get it back.
Unfolded Hands is not another set of rules. It's not another book of guidelines for how we do this thing called pray. It is an invitation. It is an opportunity to set aside ritual and go back to the heart of prayer - talking to God. Having a conversation. Hearing Him speak. It is permission to pray the way your heart already wants to. The way God's people have always prayed.
These are the stories of men and women praying powerful prayers, with unfolded hands ready to receive the answer. These are the stories of men and women in the Upper Room, in the lower valley, in the wilderness, in the Temple, on the streets of Jerusalem and anywhere else God would meet them who took the chance to call on His name, open their hands, and reach out to touch Him. These are the stories of a God who reaches back.
Will you open your hands and pray?
Unfolded Hands is available for purchase from the author's eStore and Amazon.com. Available in both print and Kindle format. You can read a few chapters for free by clicking here.
The God Character
Coming Soon.
Simple, Messy Faith
Simple, Messy Faith
Does the Bible have something to say to us everyday about how we should live? Is there something practical on every page, something we can put into practice right away that will improve the righteous life we're aiming for? That will make us better at living, at loving, at giving, at worshiping, at serving, at being? I believe the answer is "yes."
This 366-day devotional journeys through the Bible, from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. It includes a plan for reading the Bible through in a year's time by reading roughly the same amount of Scripture each day. That means you can plan your devotional time. None of this stuff where you're reading five minutes on Monday and forty minutes on Tuesday and you never know what it's going to require of you; this plan divides the Bible into same-sized pieces so that you know exactly what you're getting into.
Then, each day, I draw out a small passage of that day's reading, quoted at the top of the day's page in case you're in a hurry, and discuss in detail what it tells us about how we should live. And that's the focus. I could have chosen something else - what each day's reading reveals about God, for example, or tracing the story of His people from one place to another - but I believe theology is meant to be practical. It's meant to lead us into the abundant life Jesus promised us. Not after we die, but while we live. And that's why every day's devotional is about how to live better, how to love better, how to actually be a person of faith in the world we actually live in. It's simple, though it's not always easy, and that's why it's messy.
Simple, Messy Faith is available in paperback and Kindle versions at Amazon.
Simple, Messy Faith is available in paperback and Kindle versions at Amazon.
