Book of the Month for May and June

Good “Rainy” Day to you!


I know the rain is a pain, but we sure need it. So I am thanking God for it even though I’m having a great hair day that the damp weather will eventually mess up! LOL

Well the Lord has blessed again with the books for May and June. They are listed below.  One of the books, No Other Gods is only available on Christianbooks.com. I tried to get it yesterday at Lifeway Christian books, but they informed me it was no longer in print. I called Christianbooks.com and they said they have plenty in stock. Orders are due by April 17th so the books will have time to come in before our meeting on April 28th.

So how is this month’s book reading going? Are you enjoying it? I pray you are learning something from it!

May’s Book
Power Suit: The Armor of God Fit for the Feminine Frame
By: Sharon Norris Elliott

June’s Book
No Other Gods: Confronting Our Modern-Day Idols
By: Kelly Minter

March's Book Club Meeting and April's Challenge

Good Morning Girls! What a wonderful discussion we had last night at book club! I enjoyed it so much. To those of you who didn’t make it, we missed you greatly!


Last night we discussed what our personal wildernesses are. We explained them and asked the group to pray for our areas of need. If you weren’t there and would like to add your wilderness journey and prayer request, you can do so below in the comment section or email them to me and I’ll see everyone gets a copy.

April is going to be a very busy month. So I’m issuing a challenge to each of us, myself included, to finishing Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World before our next meeting. We are blessed to have an additional week in April to read because our meeting isn’t until the 4th week, April 28th.

Gold star for all those who finish their book!!!

Please pray with me about the book selection for May and June. I normally have to books picked out by now, but so far I haven’t had clear direction from the Lord. I hope to post what our next books are in the next week or so. I’ll also have order forms soon if you would like to order the book through www.christianbooks.com.

Thank you again for an amazing club meeting last night. I love you girls like crazy!

The Brief Journey?

We’ve reached the development stage of the book. The Israelites are out in the wilderness working their way towards…..the promise land? Once they were free from Egypt they had about a 150 mile journey to reach the promise land. A trip that should have only taken them about a month but God had other plans. “They had prepared themselves both mentally and physically for a fairly brief journey.” (p. 60) I fear I did the same when I began my journey thought the wilderness too. Like the Israelites, I thought that once I realized that I had a problem with food that God would just snap His Holy fingers and “poof” I’d be free of it. Not! He has other plans for me.

God planned to use their time in the wilderness to teach them about Him and to cleanse them of their mental bondage to Egypt. This process was going to take time. On page 66 Priscilla made this statement that I’ve substituted my name and situation into, “Deliverance from the power food has over me was designed to set Kimberly’s heart on serving and worshipping the God of her fathers. The wilderness phase was (is) the stage of development designed to cement Kimberly’s heart in total trust and confidence in His ability to provide for her. It wasn’t (isn’t) enough the Kimberly heard all those stories about Him; it was time for Kimberly to know the Storyteller for herself. It was time for the stories to be about her for a change.” Substituting my name into this statement made it even more powerful.

At the end of the chapter Priscilla enlighten us to our job in the wilderness. It is simple to yield. I’m praying for the strength to do that day by day.

One in a Million-Part Three

Chapter four opens with a look at our religious environment. Priscilla asks us to evaluate this environment. Is it holding you back? Is it limiting your view of God? Do the people you associate with hold you back from worshiping God as you feel appropriate? “God is sometimes just too big for church people.” (p.38)

Rain. I enjoy a good rain storm. Curling up on the couch with a good book while the window is open- as it pours- is one of my favorite things to do. Like our Pastor, I am thrilled by the weather. Watching storm clouds roll across the sky excites me. I enjoy watching the rain, but not getting caught in it. I’m just weird, but I don’t like to be wet. At all! So Priscilla’s story of getting caught in the rain made my skin crawl! Yuck! LOL!

Spiritually, however, I want to learn to love being caught in the rain. I don’t want to pray for rain and when it happens, run home. “We pray with boldness that the cloak of complacency will be removed, that the windows of heaven will open and He will display His glory and power to us and through us. We anxiously await His wonders in our everyday living, but when His move ends up moving us, we aren’t too sure anymore. Running in the rain is a tad uncomfortable.” (p.41)

So like Priscilla, my prayer is, “Lord, let it rain, and give me the courage to stand under the heavens when it does. Cause me to be willing to go where You take me, even if the path is unfamiliar. Tear down any man-made religious walls that may keep me from seeing You fully. Forgive me for always running back home.” (p.42)

This chapter deals with our view of God in respect to what we’ve been taught. She warns us to be cautions of limiting our views based on a domination. “Each of us carries around a box that contains our views about God. These are not necessarily incorrect views. They’re simply the ones we’ve been compiling and gathering over time. Some of the things in our box have come from our traditions and upbringing, some from what our church teaches, some from what we’ve read in the Bible and experienced in life. The problem is not that we have a box. The problem is that we have the nerve to put a lid on it. We dare to shut God into our man-made, predetermined, limited notions about His nature and His ability.” (p.49)

Okay, I’ll admit that I have done that. In my early 20’s I worked at First Christian Church School (now known as Real Life Christian Academy) with teachers from all different religious backgrounds. I closed myself off to their religious ideas, fearful they would sway my opinion of God. I thought that my “baptist” way had all the right answers and their religions were way off base. How little did I know! While as I am always cautious to test what I learn from my friends who have different religious backgrounds by God’s word, I’m more open to their experiences with God then I was 20+ years ago. “One-in-a-millions aren’t confined to one church or domination. While they are fully committed to their church and denomination, they don’t turn up their noses at others. They know their box has something to gain from others who love the Lord just as they do, even if they’re a little different.” (pp. 50-51)

I don’t want to live my life fighting against what God is letting me experience just because it dosen’t line up with what I think I know of how God works. I’m learning as I plead with God to deliver me from my Egypt, with all it's tempting foods, that I have to be open to the ways He is delivering me. As God cleansed the palette of the Israelite they became resistant to what freedom required. “The balked at challenge. They seized up at the first sight of being stretched. God wasn’t staying in His box. And they weren’t really sure they wanted an experiential relationship with Him if He had more in mind for their deliverance than just the simple transaction of liberation for Egypt.” (p. 50) It’s my prayer that I won’t do the same.



One in a Million-Part Two

“For people born in Egypt, raised in Egypt, and schooled in Egypt, the only way to taste the milk and honey is to get out of Egypt.” (p. 23)

It was about this time that the Lord really began speaking to me about my problem with food. Chapter three-Change of Taste was just one of the things that seemed to use food and desires as it’s illistration. The message was all around me. God was trying to get my attention.

Priscilla uses some great anologies. The Egyptian Tour Package is one of my favs. I laughed out loud when I read it! “Yet every now and then, especially when life gets unusually hard and when I feel restless from the sameness and boredom of a particularly dull patch, the enemy tries to remind me of the so-called perks that came with my Egyptian tour package.” (p. 28) My “tour package” would be all those yummy high calorie foods that offer empty calories and no healthy benefit. (Nachoes, candy bars, milk shakes, chips and dip….. okay I have to stop now. Egypt is calling my name a bit to loudly!)

But just like the children of Israel who had to learn to come off of the rich food that Eypgt offered, I have to learn to turn away from those high calorie foods that offer empty calories and no healthy benefit. “But when they started to realize that the open road was a daily exercise routine in trusting God to provide what they needed, it wasn’t long before they lost themselves in the seafood-scented nostalgia of Egypt’s dietary plan.” (p. 28) The Israelites begin to long for the food they had back in Egypt. Even though that food came with a price. I face the same dilimia. The food I crave isn’t the best for me. It hurts me physically in the long run.

“We’re not always totally convinced that God has a match for some of the things that made bondage feel deceptively satisfying.” This is another statement from the book that rocked me to the core. Do I trust God to truly satisfy me? Do the truths I know about God really hold up? I had to re-read the statement several times to “see” that it is deceptively satisfying. Have you noticed, like I have, sin leaves you feeling flat later? “What are some of the aromas from your past that have a way of wafting through your living room, enticing you right in the middle of your journey from Egypt with soft memories of what made salvery so hard to forsake?” (p.29)

Bam! “Like us, they tended to forget that Pharaoh’s only reason for infusing any form of enjoyment into their day was to make his slave population strong enough to be useful in building his ‘storage cities’ (Exod. 1:11)” (p. 29) That sound you heard was another rock being tossed at my core. God is surely getting my attention.

Pricsilla boils it down to what the problem really is. “The problem is with wanting what the enemy offered instead of the now thing God is providing.. The problem is in letting the satisfaction of physical appetites take priority over what God is trying to teach us about being satisfied in Him.” (p. 30) Ouch!

It’s amazing how God works things together. In Lysa TerKurest, book and Bible study, Made to Crave, her catch phrase is “Made to Crave, satisfying your deepest desires with God, not food.” The whole study revoloves around this idea. So reading this book at the same time was by God’s timing!

In the next section of the chapter, Priscilla goes on to reveal that God’s manna was His soloution for the Isrealites. And for us. God’s daily manna was a symbol of Jesus Christ. “ He is our “bread of life” (John 6:48). He is heaven’s ultimate manna. And while the manna of the wilderness could not provide eternal life, the living “bread” (v.50) did and will to anyone who will receive it. He is God’s miraculous portion given not to bore us but to show us a little more of Himself every day.” (p. 33) A verse I’ve memoried in my wilderness journey is Lamentations 3:21-25

“This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. 22It is of the LORD’S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. 23They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. 24The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. 25The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.”

The longer I travel this wilderness road the more I am learning that God’s manna is satifying. It will take a while for my fleshy desires to disapate, but in the meantime I am willing to learn. “God seemed eager, didn’t He, to get the taste and desire for sin out of their lives-just as He desires to get it out of ours-so that we can become “wise in what is good and innocent in what is evil.” (p. 34) I’m thrilled that God is so eager to cleans me of the sin that I have held on to. I’m thankful that Christ died so that this sin wouldn’t separate me from Him for eternity.

One in a Million-part one

Balance- to equal or equalize in weight, number, or proportion. That was Kenric’s message last Wednesday night. And I needed it. My life sometimes gets out of balance and I have to let some things go in order to make time for others. That has been the case with blogging this month. My health needs attention so I’ve put aside blogging in order to do the Made to Crave Bible Study but I will admit I miss blogging greatly. So I’m squeezing in a little time to blog this week since our book club is Thursday night. Blogging always helps me get my thoughts about the book in order. It brings balance to my thinking!

I want to start by saying thank you again for taking this journey with me. Each book brings something new to my relationship with God. It’s so amazing how God has placed each book during a certain month so it will correlate with other things I’m studying. I hope God is doing this for you too. Last week in Beth Moore’s Bible study she talked about having different circles of friends. This book club is my “12.” And I am very thankful for you all!

Now on to the book…..

One in a Million has been amazing! Pricilla is such a wonderful writer. The Lord has blessed her with a great insight into the journey through the wilderness. In chapter one Priscilla awakes our need for more than the status quo Christian life. She ignites the soul to want more, to want an abundant life. My soul was stirred right off the bat with the desire to be “one in a million.” Her goal for us is “I want the pew to reach the pavement. I want the things you hear and see and believe on Sunday to be the things you hear and see and experience all week long.” (page 12)

Fleeing Egypt!

This was one of my favorite chapters. I found so many great nuggets of truth. First, the illustration of the elephant wowed me. She’s so right about how we have been chained down by sin since birth. As babes we aren’t strong enough to break the chain so we grow up accustom to it. “People who’ve been trained by sin, as all of us were, require some reprogramming if we’re going to break out of our natural patterns and our usual ways of doing things.” (page 19) This statement hit home for me. I struggle with food. I use it in place of God. I turn to it for comfort and reward. For everything really. So the Lord has moved in major ways to get my attention regarding this issue. He’s used this very book in that process. I know that I am in a wilderness right now and He is teaching me valuable lessons. He is leading me away from Egypt to my promise land.

The Biblical typology she uses was another reason I enjoyed this chapter.

1. Pharaoh correlates to the role of Satan.
2. Egypt is equivalent to a life in bondage to sin.
3. Moses is a forerunner of Christ and His deliverance.
4. Canaan represents the abundance to life in Him.

So just like Pharaoh wanted to keep the Israelites in bondage so they wouldn’t rebel and conquer Egypt; Satan wants to keep me in bondage to food so I won’t find the strength to live for Christ as I was meant too. And just as God sent Moses to the Israelites to free them from bondage; God sent Christ to deliver me from my bondage to food. It’s a humbling thought. Thank you Lord that the power of sin was broken at the foot of the cross!

But Satan won’t be defeated in this area easily. “Our enemy, our taskmaster, knows our strengths and weaknesses. He knows what it takes to keep us humbled and under his thumb, to keep us living as though we’re still slaves back in Egypt- redeemed saints living ‘in lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God.’ (1 Thess.4:5)” (page 21) And boy does he know my weaknesses. It’s a daily battle. So I am claiming 1 Peter 2:11! "Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul;"  Hey I just noticed that Peter called us pilgrims!  I'm a pilgrim on a journey through the wilderness. See? God is so good!

So that’s my wilderness. Are you in the wilderness with me? Maybe your wilderness looks all together different than mine, but none the less we’re in it together.

photo by Nick Garbutt- http://www.nickgarbutt.com/photo-galleries/environmental