Terribly Interesting

In God Gave Us Christmas, we see the beautiful story of the true meaning of Christmas unfold before us. As a mother bear takes her young cub on a journey to find God and the meaning of Christmas, we see the wonders of God all around them. This adventure reminds us that Santa is not the author of Christmas. God has written a beautiful love story to His children and Lisa describes it beautifully. Laomai and I give this book four thumbs up! This book was provided for review by the WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group. Buy this book !

God Gave Us Love is a cute book that takes the reader on a journey with a grandpa and a young cub. The grandpa explains the types of love God gives us and how God desires for us to love others. My daughter and I enjoyed reading this book together and talking about love. It delivers an easy to understand description of love for young and old audiences alike. It gives a beautiful reminder to love others no m atter how we feel. We recommend this book to you. This book was provided for review by the WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group. Buy this book.

The idea behind Leigh's book is to know God by the things He might choose to keep in a treasure box. I thought it was an interesting idea and that is why I chose to review this book. Unfortunately, I could never get into the story. I hate to even say it. It didn't seem to flow. I struggled through the shallowness of comparing the life of Joseph to being evicted from a duplex. It lost me at the lengthy description of a love affair with Harry Potter. Perhaps I am expecting too much from a book about Christ and His treasures. Sadly, I cannot recommend this book to you. This book was provided for review by the WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group. Buy this book.

Denbigh asked me a few weeks back if I felt a greater sense of urgency of late. Is anyone else feeling the birth pains of revival? I do. In these days when the enemy is trying to scatter, discourage, and confuse us, we must stay about the work. In fact, we must be more about the work than we have ever been before. I came across Bryan Padgett's post the other day and my heart started beating fast. I asked him if I could post it and he graciously agreed. Let's be about the Father's business. What is God calling you to do with what you hear? How is God calling you to support this vision? "I heard the above quote last week during a training in Phoenix, AZ. I love it because it is truth. For so many years now, a weak, tame and small god has been preached week in and week out in churches all across this land. The result: Christians who are scared to death to take chances for the King because of the dangers that they could endure. We have become like that which we worship. We...

On Friday, Denbigh and I had the honor of accompanying Robert Barge, author of the Jesus test to Killeen to give away copies of his book to soldiers. Armed with 500 books, we started handing them out. There are those who did not want a copy and I am sure a few who saw Jesus and thought we might be Jehova's Witnesses or something else cultish. With every book that was taken from one of our hands, I teared up. I don't know about you, but the tragedy at Fort Hood really got to me. I thought about my own dad serving in the military. It could have been any number of people we love. I desperately wanted to do something, anything to show God's love. One beautiful story that we heard was from a man who told us that his son had been estranged from him and had told him he never wanted to talk to him again. That young man was scheduled to be in that room that day and something happened so that he wasn't. That night, he called his dad. Blessings to you, Robert Barge. Thank you fo...

What if you went to dinner with a friend and she was trying to share with you a story about a wonderful trip she went on with one of her children and you continually stopped her and asked her how the story applied to you? What if you constantly stopped the story to try to get something out of it for yourself, some bullet point to live by? Would she ever want to go to dinner with you again? We do this to God. We are always trying to break apart the story to get the most out of it for ourselves. We are trying to obtain the 8 steps to have a better life from the book of __fill in the blank__. Perhaps, God just wants you to listen. Jesus was a story teller. People sat at His feet to listen. It was the main way He chose to reveal Himself to those around Him. We try to dissect every word we read without ever listening to the story all the way through. The funny thing is, that the principles we glean don't change us. The story changes us. Listen . ©stephaniecherry.com

In a time when people are losing the things they have worked so hard for, Dr Jeremiah sets out to call us to the confident life we can have in Christ. The world is more caustic than it has ever been, but we can have faith that God is in control and has a game plan for His chosen people. I had a love hate relationship with this book. The pages are rich with stories of survival and dependence on God coupled with scripture that reminds us who and what we are in these dark times. He casts vision of the call of God for us to remain awake and aware. I thoroughly enjoyed the things in the book, but I drudged through it. It felt like an old Sunday school lesson that wasn't very well planned out. I didn't feel much at the end. I wanted to. I kept trying to convince myself to like it. There are good things contained in it, but my spirit rarely connected to them. This is rare. I like most every book I read . © stephaniecherry .com

On Tuesday night I had the joy of hearing Donald Miller speak about his new book at First Baptist Church in Georgetown, Texas. I enjoyed the drive there on the glorious toll road 130. Upon arriving, I see some of my dearest friends, Cosmo and Suzi who were coerced by my husband to join me. It is always a joy and a blessing to see them. We laughed at the opener, Susan Isaacs . She was funny, and angry, and funny. Then, the Donald , as I like to call him, came out and shared. I enjoy his writing. I enjoy his insight which makes me stare deep within into what I think and believe about God. His story telling causes me to search out God for myself. One point that the Donald made was about conflict. I wrote about this idea in my book review several posts back. He told us that there was conflict in the Bible before the fall. Adam was naming all of the animals and he was lonely. This could have taken Adam up to one hundred years to name all of the animals on earth, so you can see he would sta...

A friend of mine sent me this note which was resultant of his prayer time. I thought it was interesting. What do you think? Good Samaritans in Life You know I get so frustrated in life seeing Christ followers whose actions differ so much. You have those who are walking down the path, but instead of focusing ahead on God and Jesus, they are walking backwards, focused on the things of the world. They may be walking the right direction, but only in motion. You have those who are following the path and their sole focus is God and Jesus. They are so focused on this goal they actually will never reach of their own doing. They do not let their eyes waver from the goal. Though there are others walking the same road, they ignore them and kind of push past them. Those who are walking along backwards will cross their gaze every once in a while and they mutter something under their breath and quicken their pace a bit so as to hurry and get past them. Without realizing it they accidentally bump tha...

The other day I was reading the account of Peter walking on the water in Matthew 14 and I saw a beautiful picture. We hear this passage preached about how Peter got discouraged and began to sink because he took his eyes off of Jesus. I even heard one preacher say it was about losing faith in yourself (this I think is misguided, unlike the aforementioned truth). I saw a parable, a promise, and a prophesy. Peter wants to believe that Christ is coming and says, "if it is you, call me to you." Jesus says, "Come." Peter begins walking and gets distracted by the wind and begins sinking. Jesus catches him. This to me was a prophesy of the failure of Peter, perhaps all of our failure. Jesus was showing him clearly that he was going to lose faith and get distracted by the conditions around him. That he did when he denied Christ three times. I saw a promise that as we seek Christ that He is poised for rescue even before we know we are sinking. Jesus was giving Peter a picture...