Tangled

A tangled mess, that's what they were, the string of Christmas lights I took out of the attic. I guess I thought I could just get the lights and string them perfectly on the tree in five minutes and it would be beautiful and perfect. Instead I was trying to untangle the string for over ten minutes - and not joyfully at all. Then it struck me how our lives are just like these lights: tangled. While we would like them to be beautiful and perfect, simple, and organized, they are complicated, involved, complex, confused, messy, and mixed-up; and we are frustrated more than joyful. The Christmas music was playing in the background. I should have been singing along, remembering the reason I was decorating; but I wasn't! Then the words of a song I had been listening to in the car called "No Room", came to me.  It talks about how when Jesus was ready to be born, his parents could not find a motel room anywhere - there was "No Room".  The chorus goes like this: 

No room, no room 
Sorry but life's too full to let you in 
No space, no place for the Savior Jesus 
No room. 

 Are our lives so tangled that we have no room for Jesus?  We can get so busy, or so stressed, or preoccupied, that all of a sudden our string of lights is tangled and there is "No Room" for Jesus.  We might be getting our shopping done, our baking completed, or our house decorated, but   our days leave "No Room" for the reason we are celebrating.

Let's open the "inn" of our heart and let Him in. I want to be like shepherds, who hurried off to find Him and when they had seen Him, spread the word. Their lives were not tangled, and they were joyful and singing and praising God. They made room in their lives for a Savior. May we do the same.

Unstoppable

Unstoppable by Nick Vujicic

The subtitle of this book is "The Incredible Power of Faith in Action".  Incredible it is as Nick shares his own life experiences and the incredible people he has met traveling all over the world.  I was so inspired by the many stories of those hopeless, unlikely, or against all odds giving themselves to be used in powerful ways.

Nick's faith is contagious and encouraging.  His willingness to be real and raw about his failures and successes helps us trust and love him more.  He is never boasting but gives all the credit the Lord.  You come away thinking "if he can do it, so can I".  Having no legs or no arms, he has been through alot for a 29 year old.  The topics he addresses such as bullying, failure, depression, and surrender remind us how much we need to live God's way not our own. 

I absolutely love the stories of the people he has met in his travels.  It is so good to read about the Power of God in others and how if we surrender our lives, God does the most amazing, incredible, powerful things!  I had never heard of many of the people and the ministries they started and now I wrote them down so I can read and learn more about them and pray for them.

Nick said he prayed that the words of this book would open our hearts and minds in a fresh and dynamic way so we will puts our faith into action and then inspire others to do the same.  With God 1st, we can and will all be unstoppable.

I received this book from Waterbrook Press for review purposes.  Thank you.

Double blessings

Double blessings ....

Introducing Job & Liesl - grandchildren #12 & #13!

These pictures speak for themselves.

Need I say more.

God's Amazing, Yet Strange Ways

The Fourth Fisherman, by Joe Kissack

I’ve been reading in 1 Chronicles how David inquired of the Lord and then did exactly as the Lord told him, even when the instructions were strange and weird.  You could say the same thing about Joe Kissack’s story and journey in his book “The Fourth Fisherman”.  Kissack tells his story of finding life in Christ and interweaves his own story with his drive to find three Mexican fisherman who were lost a sea for nine months.  This is an intriguing story to say the least and will capture your interest.

 
Kissack is not the best writer in my book but gives us a book easy to read and tells an honest story.  With his own story and those of the fisherman, I think there is a lot unsaid.  He is telling his own story in a limited way exposing only some of the pain from an abusive father, the need to noticed and be loved by him.  A classic story of great success and drive where the world gives Kissack everything, but it doesn’t satisfy him.  His own story could have easily been one book, the fisherman another; yet I love how God weaves its together.  When God wants to connect His people, there is nothing that can keep those people apart regardless of where they live. 

 God knew the truth had to told about these fisherman; and used Kissack to tell it.  Kissack gives everything to tell it.  He chooses to follow the Lord and not the world; unlike the rich ruler in the gospels.  We meet Kissack’s wife through his eyes; but I’d love a book by her; a rare woman who stayed with her husband, committed through thick and thin.

For those who wrote a bad review I quote my favorite lines from the book:  “Deep down inside the tough exteriors that are worn like armor, each man has a heart that is tender, that knows the truth.  For many, the fisherman’s experience is beyond any realm of understanding, and because it doesn’t fit into a compartment we can fathom, we question what is true. When you haven’t experienced the miraculous, it’s hard to get your arms around it. We are pretty wired to the ordinary. That’s sad, because it leads us to dismiss the remarkable, the triumphant, the extraordinary, the supernatural. Those are compartments many of us don’t have.  As a result, we deprive ourselves of these dimensions to life.”
 
I received a copy of this book from WaterBrook Multnomah in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Quotes & A Song

Just sharing some of my favorite quotes  of the week and a favorite worship song.

Abstain from all thinking about other people’s faults, unless your duties as a teacher or parent make it necessary to think about them.  Whenever the thoughts come unnecessarily into one’s mind, why not simply shove them away? And think of one’s own faults instead? For there, with God’s help, one can do something. Of all the awkward people in your house or job there is only one whom you can improve very much. That is the practical end of which to begin. And really, we’d better. The job has to be tackled some day: and every day we put it off will make it harder to begin.   (C.S. Lewis)

God’s love for an educated but spiritually deprived generation is a powerful force against the carnal comforts of prosperity and secularism – powerful enough to transform the identity of a nation and continent.  (Alina Sayre)

God calls us to lay down our lives for the people behind the issues we support.  Heroism is an extraordinary feat of the flesh, and campaigns are occasionally won that way.  But not people. Holiness is the only power that not only defeats darkness but changes our lives, including the lives of those behind the issue we oppose.  Fighting and winning campaign may bring one personal glory, but fighting for souls in prayer and winning them to Christ brings glory to God.  (Joni Erickson Tada)

A private relationship of worshiping God is the greatest essential element of spiritual fitness.  (Oswald Chambers)

We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might remain.  (Paul, Galations 2:5)