First off, let me say I am a big fan of Christian schools. Are they perfect? No, there is always room for improvement, but they are tons better than a public school, and I am sorry my homeschooling friends - better than homeschooling. That said, on to my topic at hand, or as some as my friends call it, my "rant."
Our church has a great school that my nieces attend. They love it, we love it. But one issue we pretty much all have is with memorizing Scripture. We think the kids have to memorize too much. It is required, and is part of their grade. Too much of their grade.
Some kids are great with memorizing. Others are not. One of my nieces is not. It really annoys me and ticks me off that she gets lower grades because she can't memorize the required amount of Scripture. So here are some things I'd like to ask:
1) Should a kid - or anyone - be forced to memorize Scripture?
2) Should a school grade be affected by memorizing Scripture?
3) Is God really pleased by anyone memorizing His Word that only do it because they are being forced to?
4) And on the heels of that, is He pleased that they do it to get a grade in school?
5) And can it affect a child negatively to be forced to memorize Scripture?
I had to do it in school. In fact, sometimes we had to do it in front of the class, which I have so many wonderful memories of. Not. One memorable memorizing occasion was John 3: 1-36. Want to guess how much of that I remember? Verse 16. Ok, maybe 3 or 4 total out of that, but I can't quote that. I couldn't have quoted all of that a week later, so why force me to?
I am going to answer my own questions:
1) I don't think anyone should be forced to memorize Scripture. Sorry, but that is a big "NO"
2) No one should get a lower grade because they didn't meet the memorizing quota. It is totally unfair for kids who have problems memorizing, and I am sorry - is inconsiderate of any teacher who does so.
A possible alternative - extra credit for memorizing.
3) I think God is pleased when we want to memorize His Word, but no, I doubt He gets excited when anyone does it because they have to. Would you get excited if people were forced to read or memorize something you wrote?
4) I definitely don't believe God would be pleased that a kid could get a lower grade because of not memorizing His Word
5) Yes, yes, and yes. Every kid? No, but some kids are going to resent being forced to memorize Scripture. Resent getting a lower grade because they couldn't memorize the vast amount of verses being asked for.
We have great teachers, but some of them - maybe all - require too much at one time. Why 16 or 20 verses at one time? Why not 3 or 4? The 3 or 4 are more apt to stick than the 16 or 20. I think it is inarguable that what is memorized in smaller amounts will stick with us far better than large amounts. Disagree? Have someone write down a list of say 25 items. Try memorizing that. Two weeks from now, write down how many you remember. Now try it with 3 or 4. If I were a betting man, the results for the 25 are gonna stink - same with memorizing Scripture.
Shortly after my parents became Christians, they gave us kids verses to memorize. In small increments. They had some kind of reward system, we were not forced. And yes, a reward system might not be ideal either, but why not incentive instead of forced, while talking about why it is good to memorize?
And teachers...... instead of docking kids' grades for not memorizing your vast amount of required verses, why not give some extra credit or some other incentive for doing so. Be fair to we among you who cannot memorize well.
In closing, lest I be crucified, I do think memorizing Scripture is a great idea. The day may come when our Bibles are taken away. I just don't think anyone should be forced to memorize, or be asked to memorize more than they are able to at one time.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Memorizing Scripture
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Every Single Woman's Battle by Shannon Ethridge
It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!
You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
Today's Wild Card author is:
and the book:
WaterBrook Press; Workbook edition (August 16, 2005)
***Special thanks to Staci Carmichael, Marketing and Publicity Associate, Doubleday Religion/ / Waterbrook Multnomah, Divisions of Random House, Inc. for sending me a review copy.***ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Shannon Ethridge is a wife, mother, international speaker, and certified life coach. She is the author of numerous books, including the million-copy best-selling Every Woman’s Battle and Completely His. She has been featured on many radio and television broadcasts. Shannon is most passionate about her role as best friend to her husband of more than twenty years, Greg, and cheerleader to their two children, Erin and Matthew. Visit the author's website.
SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Remaining pure while single isn’t easy in a culture that encourages a woman to use her body to gain power, respect, and personal fulfillment. The longing for emotional and physical connection can gradually and subtly lead you into compromises you never intended to make. But you can resist the pressures—or reclaim your purity—by building a strong foundation of integrity.
This book, ideal for study with Every Woman’s Battle, is designed specifically for single women and will give you the tools you need to resist temptation and discover true fulfillment.
Product Details:
List Price: $11.99
Paperback: 144 pages
Publisher: WaterBrook Press; Workbook edition (August 16, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1400071275
ISBN-13: 978-1400071272
AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:
1 whose battle is it?
At one time I was having extramarital affairs with five different men.…Even though I wasn’t having sexual intercourse with any of these other men, I was still having an affair with each of them—a mental and/or emotional affair. My fantasies of being Clark Gable’s leading lady, memories of my romantic relationship with Ray, and fascination with Tom’s wit, Mark’s maturity, and Scott’s verbal talents affected my marriage in a way just as damaging as a sexual affair would have.
When I hear people say that women don’t struggle with sexual issues like men do, I cannot help but wonder what planet they are from or what rock they have been hiding under. Perhaps what they really mean is, the physical act of sex isn’t an overwhelming temptation for women like it is for men.
Men and women struggle in different ways when it comes to sexual integrity. While a man’s battle begins with what he takes in through his eyes, a woman’s begins with her heart and her thoughts. A man must guard his eyes to maintain sexual integrity, but because God made women to be emotionally and mentally stimulated, we must closely guard our hearts and minds as well as our bodies if we want to experience God’s plan for sexual and emotional fulfillment. A woman’s battle is for sexual and emotional integrity.
Paul understood our very human tendency to live in denial, closing our eyes to the things in our lives that may need to change. Change is hard work, and we would rather stay as we are. But this is not how God has called us to live. He wants to help us control our minds and our desires so that we can be more like Him. He wants to help us discover His plan for relational satisfaction. But we can’t do this if we insist on keeping our eyes closed to the compromise that robs us of ultimate sexual and emotional fulfillment.
PLANTING GOOD SEEDS
(Personally Seeking God’s Truth)
1. How important is the Word of God to you? Why?
As you seek to discover God’s plan for sexual and emotional fulfillment, plant these good seeds in your heart:
The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. (Galatians 6:8)
Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. (James 1:14-15)
2. What, if anything, in these verses feels like a threat or a warning to you? Why do you think you respond to the verses the way you do?
To increase your hope of winning the battle for sexual and emotional integrity, plant this good seed from 1 Corinthians 10:13 in your heart:
No temptation has seized you except what is common to [woman]. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.
3. What does this promise mean to you?
WEEDING OUT DECEPTION
(Recognizing the Truth)
In some way or another sexual and emotional integrity is a battle that every woman fights. However, many women are fighting this battle with their eyes closed because they don’t believe they are even engaged in the battle. Many believe that just because they are not involved in a physical, sexual affair, they don’t have a problem with sexual and emotional integrity. As a result, they engage in thoughts and behaviors that compromise their integrity and rob them of true sexual and emotional fulfillment.
4. Do you agree with the statement that every woman fights the battle for sexual and emotional integrity? On what do you base your opinion?
5. The author warns that it is not wise to think that sexual immorality can’t happen to any one of us. How prevalent do you think sexual immorality is among
Christian singles?
6. Circle how often you have engaged in any of the following:
Unhealthy Never Sometimes Often Always
Comparisons
Mental Fantasies Never Sometimes Often Always
Emotional Affairs Never Sometimes Often Always
Romance Novels Never Sometimes Often Always
Soap Operas Never Sometimes Often Always
Masturbation Never Sometimes Often Always
Inappropriate Never Sometimes Often Always
Internet Activity
Other Sexual Never Sometimes Often Always
Dysfunction(s)
To determine if you are engaged in the battle for sexual and emotional integrity, answer the following questions adapted from Every Woman’s Battle.
Yes/No
Is having a man in your life or finding a husband
something that dominates your thoughts? ______
If you have a man in your life, do you
compare him to other men (physically,
mentally, emotionally, or spiritually)? ______
Do you often obsess over who the “next man”
in your life could be? ______
Do you have sexual secrets that you don’t
want anyone else to know about? ______
Do you feel like a nobody if you don’t have a
love interest in your life? Does a romantic
relationship give you a sense of identity? ______
Do you seem to attract bad or dysfunctional
relationships with men? ______
Do men accuse you of being manipulative or
controlling? ______
Do you feel secretly excited or powerful when
you sense that a man finds you attractive? ______
Is remaining emotionally or physically faithful
to one person a challenge for you? ______
Do you often choose your attire in the
morning based on the men you will
encounter that day? ______
Do you find yourself flirting or using sexual
innuendos (even if you do not intend to)
when conversing with someone you find
attractive? ______
Do you have to masturbate when you get
sexually aroused? ______
Do you read romance novels because of the
fantasies they evoke within you or because
they arouse you sexually? ______
Have you ever used premarital or extramarital
relationships to “medicate” your emotional
pain? ______
Is there any area of your sexuality that you
would not want your future husband to
know about? ______
Do you use pornography—either alone or
with a partner? ______
Do you have a problem making and
maintaining close female friends? ______
Do you converse with strangers in Internet
chat rooms? ______
Have you ever been unable to concentrate
on work, school, or the affairs of your
household because of thoughts or feelings
you are having about someone else? ______
Do you think the word victim describes you? ______
7. What surprised you about your own answers? What scared you?
8. What particular question(s) hit home for you, and why?
9. Specifically, what effects have these types of activities had on your relationships with men? on your relationship with God? on your self-esteem?
By definition, our sexuality isn’t what we do. Even people who are committed to celibacy are sexual beings. Our sexuality is who we are, and we were made with a body, mind, heart, and spirit, not just a body. Therefore, sexual integrity is not just about physical chastity. It is about purity in all four aspects of our being (body, mind, heart, and spirit).When all four aspects line up perfectly, our “tabletop” (our life) reflects balance and integrity…[See illustration on next page.]
It’s no laughing matter when one of the “legs” of our sexuality buckles, because then our lives can become slippery slopes leading to discontentment, sexual compromise, self-loathing, and emotional brokenness. When this happens, the blessing that
God intended to bring richness and pleasure to our lives feels more like a curse that brings great pain and despair.
10. In your dating relationships, where have you set “the line” of sexual integrity? How far is it “okay” to go prior to marriage? Where does this belief come from?
11. If you ever crossed that imaginary line, were you able to back up and reestablish your previous standards? How did you do it or fail to do it?
HARVESTING FULFILLMENT
(Applying the Truth)
God…wants to help us control our minds and our desires so that we can be more like Him. He wants to help us discover His plan for relational satisfaction. But we can’t do this if we insist on keeping our eyes closed to the compromise that robs us of ultimate sexual and emotional fulfillment.
A Life of Balance and Integrity
SPIRITUAL
EMOTIONAL
PHYSICAL
MENTAL
12. If you were to allow God to control your mind and desires, what would be the result in regard to your love life? your relationship with God? your self-esteem?
GROWING TOGETHER
(Sharing the Truth in Small-Group Discussion)
13. What prompted you to pick up Every Single Woman’s Battle? What is the main thing you are hoping to gain over the next eight weeks as you read this book? as you participate in this discussion group?
While a man needs mental, emotional, and spiritual connection, his physical needs tend to be in the driver’s seat and his other needs ride along in the back. The reverse is true for women. If there is one particular need that drives us, it is certainly our emotional needs. That’s why it’s said that men give love to get sex and women give sex to get love.
14. Have you ever engaged in any form of sexual activity in order to get the love you were longing for? If so, did you get the desired result? How did the result affirm or challenge your behavior?
15. Obviously women have sexual needs as well as emotional needs. Have you ever felt you should not experience sexual desires? If so, how did that make you feel? Why?
16. What other beliefs about sexuality have shaped your emotions and behaviors around this topic? How do you discern which beliefs are false and which are true?
17. Do you think it is more difficult for men than for women to maintain sexual integrity? Why or why not?
18. Do you think it is more difficult for single women than for married women to maintain sexual integrity? Why or why not?
19. Does discussing the sexual temptations you face with mature, caring adults help you maintain sexual integrity? Why or why not? If not, what would help?
For a Christian woman, sexual and emotional integrity means that her thoughts, words, emotions, and actions all reflect an inner beauty and a sincere love for God, others, and herself. This doesn’t mean she is never tempted to think, say, feel, or do something inappropriate, but that she tries diligently to resist these temptations and stands firm in her convictions. She doesn’t use men in an attempt to get her emotional cravings met or entertain sexual or romantic fantasies about men she is not married to…She doesn’t dress to seek male attention, but she doesn’t limit herself to a wardrobe of ankle length muumuus, either. She may dress fashionably and look sharp or may even appear sexy (like beauty, sexy is in the eye of the beholder), but her motivation isn’t self-seeking or seductive. She presents herself as an attractive woman because she knows she represents God to others.
20. When is striving to look beautiful a sin and when is it not? How can we best evaluate our own motivations?
21. Share your conclusions about what you see as your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to being a woman of sexual and emotional integrity.
Jehovah Jireh, I trust You for my every
need. Please give me wisdom and courage
as I seek emotional and sexual
integrity. And above all, keep me connected
to You—draw me ever closer—
so that I may know where my true
fulfillment comes from. Amen.
At one time I was having extramarital affairs with five different men.…Even though I wasn’t having sexual intercourse with any of these other men, I was still having an affair with each of them—a mental and/or emotional affair. My fantasies of being Clark Gable’s leading lady, memories of my romantic relationship with Ray, and fascination with Tom’s wit, Mark’s maturity, and Scott’s verbal talents affected my marriage in a way just as damaging as a sexual affair would have.
When I hear people say that women don’t struggle with sexual issues like men do, I cannot help but wonder what planet they are from or what rock they have been hiding under. Perhaps what they really mean is, the physical act of sex isn’t an overwhelming temptation for women like it is for men.
Men and women struggle in different ways when it comes to sexual integrity. While a man’s battle begins with what he takes in through his eyes, a woman’s begins with her heart and her thoughts. A man must guard his eyes to maintain sexual integrity, but because God made women to be emotionally and mentally stimulated, we must closely guard our hearts and minds as well as our bodies if we want to experience God’s plan for sexual and emotional fulfillment. A woman’s battle is for sexual and emotional integrity.
Paul understood our very human tendency to live in denial, closing our eyes to the things in our lives that may need to change. Change is hard work, and we would rather stay as we are. But this is not how God has called us to live. He wants to help us control our minds and our desires so that we can be more like Him. He wants to help us discover His plan for relational satisfaction. But we can’t do this if we insist on keeping our eyes closed to the compromise that robs us of ultimate sexual and emotional fulfillment.
PLANTING GOOD SEEDS
(Personally Seeking God’s Truth)
1. How important is the Word of God to you? Why?
As you seek to discover God’s plan for sexual and emotional fulfillment, plant these good seeds in your heart:
The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. (Galatians 6:8)
Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. (James 1:14-15)
2. What, if anything, in these verses feels like a threat or a warning to you? Why do you think you respond to the verses the way you do?
To increase your hope of winning the battle for sexual and emotional integrity, plant this good seed from 1 Corinthians 10:13 in your heart:
No temptation has seized you except what is common to [woman]. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.
3. What does this promise mean to you?
WEEDING OUT DECEPTION
(Recognizing the Truth)
In some way or another sexual and emotional integrity is a battle that every woman fights. However, many women are fighting this battle with their eyes closed because they don’t believe they are even engaged in the battle. Many believe that just because they are not involved in a physical, sexual affair, they don’t have a problem with sexual and emotional integrity. As a result, they engage in thoughts and behaviors that compromise their integrity and rob them of true sexual and emotional fulfillment.
4. Do you agree with the statement that every woman fights the battle for sexual and emotional integrity? On what do you base your opinion?
5. The author warns that it is not wise to think that sexual immorality can’t happen to any one of us. How prevalent do you think sexual immorality is among
Christian singles?
6. Circle how often you have engaged in any of the following:
Unhealthy Never Sometimes Often Always
Comparisons
Mental Fantasies Never Sometimes Often Always
Emotional Affairs Never Sometimes Often Always
Romance Novels Never Sometimes Often Always
Soap Operas Never Sometimes Often Always
Masturbation Never Sometimes Often Always
Inappropriate Never Sometimes Often Always
Internet Activity
Other Sexual Never Sometimes Often Always
Dysfunction(s)
To determine if you are engaged in the battle for sexual and emotional integrity, answer the following questions adapted from Every Woman’s Battle.
Yes/No
Is having a man in your life or finding a husband
something that dominates your thoughts? ______
If you have a man in your life, do you
compare him to other men (physically,
mentally, emotionally, or spiritually)? ______
Do you often obsess over who the “next man”
in your life could be? ______
Do you have sexual secrets that you don’t
want anyone else to know about? ______
Do you feel like a nobody if you don’t have a
love interest in your life? Does a romantic
relationship give you a sense of identity? ______
Do you seem to attract bad or dysfunctional
relationships with men? ______
Do men accuse you of being manipulative or
controlling? ______
Do you feel secretly excited or powerful when
you sense that a man finds you attractive? ______
Is remaining emotionally or physically faithful
to one person a challenge for you? ______
Do you often choose your attire in the
morning based on the men you will
encounter that day? ______
Do you find yourself flirting or using sexual
innuendos (even if you do not intend to)
when conversing with someone you find
attractive? ______
Do you have to masturbate when you get
sexually aroused? ______
Do you read romance novels because of the
fantasies they evoke within you or because
they arouse you sexually? ______
Have you ever used premarital or extramarital
relationships to “medicate” your emotional
pain? ______
Is there any area of your sexuality that you
would not want your future husband to
know about? ______
Do you use pornography—either alone or
with a partner? ______
Do you have a problem making and
maintaining close female friends? ______
Do you converse with strangers in Internet
chat rooms? ______
Have you ever been unable to concentrate
on work, school, or the affairs of your
household because of thoughts or feelings
you are having about someone else? ______
Do you think the word victim describes you? ______
7. What surprised you about your own answers? What scared you?
8. What particular question(s) hit home for you, and why?
9. Specifically, what effects have these types of activities had on your relationships with men? on your relationship with God? on your self-esteem?
By definition, our sexuality isn’t what we do. Even people who are committed to celibacy are sexual beings. Our sexuality is who we are, and we were made with a body, mind, heart, and spirit, not just a body. Therefore, sexual integrity is not just about physical chastity. It is about purity in all four aspects of our being (body, mind, heart, and spirit).When all four aspects line up perfectly, our “tabletop” (our life) reflects balance and integrity…[See illustration on next page.]
It’s no laughing matter when one of the “legs” of our sexuality buckles, because then our lives can become slippery slopes leading to discontentment, sexual compromise, self-loathing, and emotional brokenness. When this happens, the blessing that
God intended to bring richness and pleasure to our lives feels more like a curse that brings great pain and despair.
10. In your dating relationships, where have you set “the line” of sexual integrity? How far is it “okay” to go prior to marriage? Where does this belief come from?
11. If you ever crossed that imaginary line, were you able to back up and reestablish your previous standards? How did you do it or fail to do it?
HARVESTING FULFILLMENT
(Applying the Truth)
God…wants to help us control our minds and our desires so that we can be more like Him. He wants to help us discover His plan for relational satisfaction. But we can’t do this if we insist on keeping our eyes closed to the compromise that robs us of ultimate sexual and emotional fulfillment.
A Life of Balance and Integrity
SPIRITUAL
EMOTIONAL
PHYSICAL
MENTAL
12. If you were to allow God to control your mind and desires, what would be the result in regard to your love life? your relationship with God? your self-esteem?
GROWING TOGETHER
(Sharing the Truth in Small-Group Discussion)
13. What prompted you to pick up Every Single Woman’s Battle? What is the main thing you are hoping to gain over the next eight weeks as you read this book? as you participate in this discussion group?
While a man needs mental, emotional, and spiritual connection, his physical needs tend to be in the driver’s seat and his other needs ride along in the back. The reverse is true for women. If there is one particular need that drives us, it is certainly our emotional needs. That’s why it’s said that men give love to get sex and women give sex to get love.
14. Have you ever engaged in any form of sexual activity in order to get the love you were longing for? If so, did you get the desired result? How did the result affirm or challenge your behavior?
15. Obviously women have sexual needs as well as emotional needs. Have you ever felt you should not experience sexual desires? If so, how did that make you feel? Why?
16. What other beliefs about sexuality have shaped your emotions and behaviors around this topic? How do you discern which beliefs are false and which are true?
17. Do you think it is more difficult for men than for women to maintain sexual integrity? Why or why not?
18. Do you think it is more difficult for single women than for married women to maintain sexual integrity? Why or why not?
19. Does discussing the sexual temptations you face with mature, caring adults help you maintain sexual integrity? Why or why not? If not, what would help?
For a Christian woman, sexual and emotional integrity means that her thoughts, words, emotions, and actions all reflect an inner beauty and a sincere love for God, others, and herself. This doesn’t mean she is never tempted to think, say, feel, or do something inappropriate, but that she tries diligently to resist these temptations and stands firm in her convictions. She doesn’t use men in an attempt to get her emotional cravings met or entertain sexual or romantic fantasies about men she is not married to…She doesn’t dress to seek male attention, but she doesn’t limit herself to a wardrobe of ankle length muumuus, either. She may dress fashionably and look sharp or may even appear sexy (like beauty, sexy is in the eye of the beholder), but her motivation isn’t self-seeking or seductive. She presents herself as an attractive woman because she knows she represents God to others.
20. When is striving to look beautiful a sin and when is it not? How can we best evaluate our own motivations?
21. Share your conclusions about what you see as your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to being a woman of sexual and emotional integrity.
Jehovah Jireh, I trust You for my every
need. Please give me wisdom and courage
as I seek emotional and sexual
integrity. And above all, keep me connected
to You—draw me ever closer—
so that I may know where my true
fulfillment comes from. Amen.
My review:
I actually don't have one. :-) There were 3 books in this series presented as a 3-day tour and I didn't read it well enough to see I could opt out of any of the three until I had committed already, so I am passing the book onto a single female friend.
I will say I heard the author speak a few years ago, and was very impressed by her, so I am sure she has some helpful stuff in this book.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Every Single Man's Battle by Steven Arterburn and Fred Stoecker
It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!
You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
Today's Wild Card authors are:
and the book:
WaterBrook Press; Workbook edition (August 16, 2005)
***Special thanks to Staci Staci Carmichael, Marketing and Publicity Associate, Doubleday Religion/ / Waterbrook Multnomah, Divisions of Random House, Inc. for sending me a review copy.***ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Stephen Arterburn is founder and chairman of new Life Clinics, host of the daily “New Life Live!” national radio program, creator of the Women of Faith Conferences, a nationally known speaker, and a best-selling author whose books have sold more than seven million copies. He lives in Laguna Beach, California.Visit the author's website.
Fred Stoeker is an author and conference speaker who challenges people to become sexually pure and to connect in true intimate relationships with their Father in heaven and their spouses and children on earth. Fred has written several books, including the best-selling Every Man’s series and his most recent book for single men, Hero, co written with his son Jasen. Fred and his wife, Brenda, live in Iowa.Visit the author's website.
SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:
As a man, you’re bombarded by sexual images and battle inner urges. You want to do right—in fact, you want to meet God’s standard of avoiding any hint of sexual immorality. But accomplishing that goal is a challenge.
If you are a single man struggling to remain sexually pure, you are not alone— there’s practical, hard-hitting help from the authors of the blockbuster Every Man Series. Every Single Man’s Battle guides you—or your men’s group—through an honest and clear exploration of God’s Word. You’ll undertake a personal journey into key scriptures, wrestle with questions for reflection and examination, and discover the practical tools and biblical strategies you need to live the pure life God calls you to—even while living in a sexually-soaked culture. Make a frontal assault on the temptation every single man faces. This book provides all the resources you need.
Product Details:
List Price: $10.99
Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: WaterBrook Press; Workbook edition (August 16, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9781400071289
ISBN-13: 978-1400071289
ASIN: 1400071283
AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:
1 where are we?
This week’s reading assignment:
the introduction and chapters 1–3 in Every Man’s Battle
Before men experience victory over sexual sin, they’re hurting and confused. Why can’t I win at this? they think. As the fight wears on and the losses pile higher, we begin to doubt everything about ourselves, even our salvation. At best, we think that we’re deeply flawed. At worst, evil persons. We feel very alone, since men speak little of these things.
But we’re not alone. Many men have fallen into their own sexual pits.
—from chapter 3 in Every Man’s Battle
EVERY SINGLE MAN’S BATTLE
(Steps Along the Path to Sexual Integrity)
Experts on pornography’s effects on brain chemistry recently testified at a Senate hearing about whether porn was a form of free speech that should be protected by the First Amendment or whether it was an addictive and toxic material that should be legally banned in America. Psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover stated that it was time to quit regarding porn as just another form of expression, because it isn’t. “[Porn] is a very carefully designed delivery system for evoking a tremendous flood within the brain of endogenous opioids,” Satinover said. “Modern science allows us to understand that the underlying nature of an addiction to pornography is chemically nearly identical to a heroin addiction.”
Dr. Mary Anne Layden, representing the Center for Cognitive Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania, explained how prurient pictures are burned into the brain’s pathways. She added, “That image is in your brain forever. If that was an addictive substance, you, at any point for the rest of your life, could in a nanosecond draw it up [and get high].”
The evidence the panelists presented to the Senate that day described the overwhelming harm that pornography brings into a man’s life. Still, we tend to minimize that damage from the raw visual sewage dumped into our minds and heart through our eyes. In exasperation some defenders say, Oh, they’re just exaggerating to scare everyone. Porn is just something men do to blow off stress, and they can stop anytime they want. They’re not affected at all like that!
How does porn affect you? We stated in chapter 2 that porn and masturbation inevitably inflict wounds on your sexuality. For instance, a man’s eyes begin to dominate his sexuality. A boorish clamoring for his own sexual intensity replaces his normal desire for interpersonal intimacy. Controlled scientific studies have proven what many have sensed in themselves for years.
Researchers like Professors Dolf Zillman of Indiana University and Jennings Bryant of the University of Houston have found that men register a major increase in the importance of sex without intimate attachment after regularly viewing porn. Sound familiar? What’s happening is that intimacy’s transmitters get fried by porn.
Because of our discussion, it probably comes as no surprise that men who use porn become more callous to female sexuality and that married men’s concern for their wives’ pleasure falls off significantly. But I (Fred) know something that will surprise you, and that’s how little porn is necessary to elicit such a dreadful, measurable change. All it takes is six one-hour weekly sessions, say the researchers.
Now look again at your life, my friend. How likely is it that porn, masturbation, and the other sensuality in your life have had no affect on your sexuality? You say none or very little? You can run to denial, but you can’t hide, especially if you marry someday.
Caroline discerned the damage in her husband, Cliff, in this telling way: “About six months into our marriage, I noticed our sex life losing momentum. The frequency had dropped markedly, and while this could have easily been explained away had it been the only sign of trouble, it wasn’t. We’d always been compatible—technique, frequency, timing—in every area.
“But now it was different. When we did make love, it felt like Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am, meaning Cliff got his satisfaction while I was left high and dry. I even have a journal entry that reads, ‘I feel like Peg Bundy when it comes to sex. I have to nag him to do me like a chore.’ It’s like he stopped caring about my pleasure at all, and in retrospect, that was my first clue that porn was breaking him down.”
It’s important to note that the assault on healthy sexuality doesn’t end at the borders of traditional pornography. The way our popular culture is set up these days—with scantily clad babes cavorting during commercials for football games, showing us their cleavage on billboards, and posing on magazine covers ranging from news magazines to sports—there’s enough eye candy out there to keep your sexual engines running at high idle most of the time. I’m sure you’ve also noticed that girls and young women dress revealingly today as well, so if the porn industry vanished tomorrow, you wouldn’t have to look far to take in a nice view. This lusting produces the same chemical hit to your brain as porn does, and it spins you just as easily into the same cycles of masturbation. Trust me, I know. I never did buy porn again after my wedding day, but I was just as bound in sin as I could be anyway.
You need to get serious and accept the truth. It’s time to quit regarding porn as just another form of expression, and it’s time to crack down on the lust of the eyes, that “carefully designed delivery system” that’s been flooding your brain with opioids for years. It’s time to flee sexual immorality—and time to get free.
EVERY SINGLE MAN’S TRUTH
(Your Personal Journey into God’s Word)
Read and meditate upon the Bible passages below that have to do with God’s holiness
and His call to purity. Let the Lord remind you that He is calling you to purity
because He has your best interest at heart. Also remember that He delights in you as
one who is made in His image and growing into His likeness day by day.
You have heard that it was said, “Do not commit adultery.” But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (Matthew 5:27-28)
Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died— more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?… No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:33-35,37-39)
“Come now, let us reason together,”
says the LORD.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool.” (Isaiah 1:18)
1. What do Jesus’s words tell you about His deep concern for your thought life?
2. What comfort do you take in Paul’s words to the Roman believers? How does this passage relate to your feelings of guilt when you’ve given in to lust?
3. When it comes to a believer’s sin, how would you distinguish between rebellion and immaturity? What is the Father’s attitude toward us as we grow— and as we stumble—in our attempts to walk in holiness with Him? (If you are a parent, think about your relationship to your children.)
4. “White as snow” is the prophet’s imagery for God’s holiness. To what extent do you long for holiness and purity in your life? How are Isaiah’s words hopeful to you?
EVERY SINGLE MAN’S CHOICE
(Questions for Personal Reflection and Examination)
Pursuing sexual integrity, however, is a controversial topic.… We’ve been ridiculed by the world’s sophisticates who find God’s standard ridiculous and confining. That’s fine with us, because we have a bigger concern— you.
You’re in a tough position. You live in a world awash with sensual images available twenty-four hours a day in a variety of mediums: print, television, videos, the Internet—even phones.
After teaching on the topic of male sexual purity in Sunday school, I was approached one day by a man who said, “I always thought that since I was a man I would not be able to control my roving eyes. I didn’t know it could be any other way.”
5. Why do you think pursuing sexual integrity is such a controversial topic, especially for singles? How realistic is this pursuit for you?
6. How aware are you of the sensual images all around you? What has been your way of dealing with—or not dealing with—this bombardment of sexuality on a daily basis?
7. Have you ever considered your roving eye to be uncontrollable? In the past, when have you been most likely to lose control? What has helped you to exercise control?
EVERY SINGLE MAN’S WALK
(Your Guide to Personal Application)
8. Which situations in the stories of Steve and Fred can you personally identify with most? How common do you think these kinds of situations are among the Christian men you know?
9. Think about Steve’s car wreck for a moment. How much trouble have your eyes gotten you into over the years? What especially painful incident stands out to you at the moment?
10. Fred’s eyes were particularly vulnerable to sensual newspaper ads. In what situations are your eyes the most vulnerable? What steps have you taken so far to avoid such situations?
11. Recall that in chapter 3 Fred speaks of the price he was paying for his sin in his relationship with God, with his family, and with his church. In which of these areas of life—or others, such as friendships and dating relationships—do you think a man’s sexual sin hurts him most quickly and obviously? How is it with you?
12. In quietness, review what you have written and learned in this week’s study.
If further thoughts or prayer requests come to your mind and heart, you may want to write them here.
13. a. What for you was the most meaningful concept or truth in this week’s study?
b. How would you talk this over with God? Write your response here as a prayer to Him.
c. What do you believe God wants you to do in response to this week’s study?
EVERY SINGLE MAN’S TALK
(Constructive Topics and Questions for Group Discussion)
Discussion Questions
Addictive sex is devoid of intimacy. Sex addicts are utterly self-focused. They cannot achieve genuine intimacy because their self-obsession leaves no room for giving to others.… Addictive sex is used to escape pain and problems.
The escapist nature of addictive sex is often one of the clearest indicators that it is present.
When we’re fractionally addicted, we surely experience addictive drawings, but we aren’t compelled to act to salve some pain. We’re compelled by the chemical high and the sexual gratification it brings.
Another way of looking at the scope of the problem is to picture a bell curve. According to our experiences, we figure around 10 percent of men have no sexual-temptation problem with their eyes and their minds. At the other end of the curve, we figure there’s another 10 percent of men who are sexual addicts and have a serious problem with lust. They’ve been so beaten and scarred by emotional events that they simply can’t overcome that sin in their lives. They need more counseling and a transforming washing by the Word. The rest of us comprise the middle 80 percent, living in various shades of gray when it comes to sexual sin.
“When my husband and I talked about this, he was honest,” Deena conveyed, “and I was very angry with him. I was hurt. I felt deeply betrayed because I’d been dieting and working out to keep my weight down so that I would always look nice to him. I couldn’t figure out why he still needed to look at other women.”
Women told us that they struggle between pity and anger, and their feelings may ebb and flow with the tide of their husband’s battle. Let us direct this advice to women reading this book: Though you know you should pray for him and fulfill him sexually, sometimes you won’t want to. Talk to each other openly and honestly, then do the right thing.
A. Which parts of chapters 1–3 in Every Man’s Battle were most helpful or encouraging to you? Why?
B. How would you summarize the difference between normal sexual desire and addictive sex?
C. Do you agree that sex can be a way of trying to escape inner pain? What is your own experience with this?
D. How would you explain to another man what the authors define as fractional addiction?
E. To what extent do you agree or disagree with the book’s contention that, for most men, our sexual sin is based on pleasure highs rather than true addiction?
F. Imagine that a single friend of yours has admitted to you, “Okay, so I use porn. A guy like me has to have some kind of sex life, doesn’t he?” How would you respond?
G. How can indulging in visual sexual stimulation mess up a man’s dating relationships? How can it make him less ready if God should call him to marriage at some time in the future?
This week’s reading assignment:
the introduction and chapters 1–3 in Every Man’s Battle
Before men experience victory over sexual sin, they’re hurting and confused. Why can’t I win at this? they think. As the fight wears on and the losses pile higher, we begin to doubt everything about ourselves, even our salvation. At best, we think that we’re deeply flawed. At worst, evil persons. We feel very alone, since men speak little of these things.
But we’re not alone. Many men have fallen into their own sexual pits.
—from chapter 3 in Every Man’s Battle
EVERY SINGLE MAN’S BATTLE
(Steps Along the Path to Sexual Integrity)
Experts on pornography’s effects on brain chemistry recently testified at a Senate hearing about whether porn was a form of free speech that should be protected by the First Amendment or whether it was an addictive and toxic material that should be legally banned in America. Psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover stated that it was time to quit regarding porn as just another form of expression, because it isn’t. “[Porn] is a very carefully designed delivery system for evoking a tremendous flood within the brain of endogenous opioids,” Satinover said. “Modern science allows us to understand that the underlying nature of an addiction to pornography is chemically nearly identical to a heroin addiction.”
Dr. Mary Anne Layden, representing the Center for Cognitive Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania, explained how prurient pictures are burned into the brain’s pathways. She added, “That image is in your brain forever. If that was an addictive substance, you, at any point for the rest of your life, could in a nanosecond draw it up [and get high].”
The evidence the panelists presented to the Senate that day described the overwhelming harm that pornography brings into a man’s life. Still, we tend to minimize that damage from the raw visual sewage dumped into our minds and heart through our eyes. In exasperation some defenders say, Oh, they’re just exaggerating to scare everyone. Porn is just something men do to blow off stress, and they can stop anytime they want. They’re not affected at all like that!
How does porn affect you? We stated in chapter 2 that porn and masturbation inevitably inflict wounds on your sexuality. For instance, a man’s eyes begin to dominate his sexuality. A boorish clamoring for his own sexual intensity replaces his normal desire for interpersonal intimacy. Controlled scientific studies have proven what many have sensed in themselves for years.
Researchers like Professors Dolf Zillman of Indiana University and Jennings Bryant of the University of Houston have found that men register a major increase in the importance of sex without intimate attachment after regularly viewing porn. Sound familiar? What’s happening is that intimacy’s transmitters get fried by porn.
Because of our discussion, it probably comes as no surprise that men who use porn become more callous to female sexuality and that married men’s concern for their wives’ pleasure falls off significantly. But I (Fred) know something that will surprise you, and that’s how little porn is necessary to elicit such a dreadful, measurable change. All it takes is six one-hour weekly sessions, say the researchers.
Now look again at your life, my friend. How likely is it that porn, masturbation, and the other sensuality in your life have had no affect on your sexuality? You say none or very little? You can run to denial, but you can’t hide, especially if you marry someday.
Caroline discerned the damage in her husband, Cliff, in this telling way: “About six months into our marriage, I noticed our sex life losing momentum. The frequency had dropped markedly, and while this could have easily been explained away had it been the only sign of trouble, it wasn’t. We’d always been compatible—technique, frequency, timing—in every area.
“But now it was different. When we did make love, it felt like Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am, meaning Cliff got his satisfaction while I was left high and dry. I even have a journal entry that reads, ‘I feel like Peg Bundy when it comes to sex. I have to nag him to do me like a chore.’ It’s like he stopped caring about my pleasure at all, and in retrospect, that was my first clue that porn was breaking him down.”
It’s important to note that the assault on healthy sexuality doesn’t end at the borders of traditional pornography. The way our popular culture is set up these days—with scantily clad babes cavorting during commercials for football games, showing us their cleavage on billboards, and posing on magazine covers ranging from news magazines to sports—there’s enough eye candy out there to keep your sexual engines running at high idle most of the time. I’m sure you’ve also noticed that girls and young women dress revealingly today as well, so if the porn industry vanished tomorrow, you wouldn’t have to look far to take in a nice view. This lusting produces the same chemical hit to your brain as porn does, and it spins you just as easily into the same cycles of masturbation. Trust me, I know. I never did buy porn again after my wedding day, but I was just as bound in sin as I could be anyway.
You need to get serious and accept the truth. It’s time to quit regarding porn as just another form of expression, and it’s time to crack down on the lust of the eyes, that “carefully designed delivery system” that’s been flooding your brain with opioids for years. It’s time to flee sexual immorality—and time to get free.
EVERY SINGLE MAN’S TRUTH
(Your Personal Journey into God’s Word)
Read and meditate upon the Bible passages below that have to do with God’s holiness
and His call to purity. Let the Lord remind you that He is calling you to purity
because He has your best interest at heart. Also remember that He delights in you as
one who is made in His image and growing into His likeness day by day.
You have heard that it was said, “Do not commit adultery.” But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. (Matthew 5:27-28)
Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died— more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?… No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:33-35,37-39)
“Come now, let us reason together,”
says the LORD.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
they shall be like wool.” (Isaiah 1:18)
1. What do Jesus’s words tell you about His deep concern for your thought life?
2. What comfort do you take in Paul’s words to the Roman believers? How does this passage relate to your feelings of guilt when you’ve given in to lust?
3. When it comes to a believer’s sin, how would you distinguish between rebellion and immaturity? What is the Father’s attitude toward us as we grow— and as we stumble—in our attempts to walk in holiness with Him? (If you are a parent, think about your relationship to your children.)
4. “White as snow” is the prophet’s imagery for God’s holiness. To what extent do you long for holiness and purity in your life? How are Isaiah’s words hopeful to you?
EVERY SINGLE MAN’S CHOICE
(Questions for Personal Reflection and Examination)
Pursuing sexual integrity, however, is a controversial topic.… We’ve been ridiculed by the world’s sophisticates who find God’s standard ridiculous and confining. That’s fine with us, because we have a bigger concern— you.
You’re in a tough position. You live in a world awash with sensual images available twenty-four hours a day in a variety of mediums: print, television, videos, the Internet—even phones.
After teaching on the topic of male sexual purity in Sunday school, I was approached one day by a man who said, “I always thought that since I was a man I would not be able to control my roving eyes. I didn’t know it could be any other way.”
5. Why do you think pursuing sexual integrity is such a controversial topic, especially for singles? How realistic is this pursuit for you?
6. How aware are you of the sensual images all around you? What has been your way of dealing with—or not dealing with—this bombardment of sexuality on a daily basis?
7. Have you ever considered your roving eye to be uncontrollable? In the past, when have you been most likely to lose control? What has helped you to exercise control?
EVERY SINGLE MAN’S WALK
(Your Guide to Personal Application)
8. Which situations in the stories of Steve and Fred can you personally identify with most? How common do you think these kinds of situations are among the Christian men you know?
9. Think about Steve’s car wreck for a moment. How much trouble have your eyes gotten you into over the years? What especially painful incident stands out to you at the moment?
10. Fred’s eyes were particularly vulnerable to sensual newspaper ads. In what situations are your eyes the most vulnerable? What steps have you taken so far to avoid such situations?
11. Recall that in chapter 3 Fred speaks of the price he was paying for his sin in his relationship with God, with his family, and with his church. In which of these areas of life—or others, such as friendships and dating relationships—do you think a man’s sexual sin hurts him most quickly and obviously? How is it with you?
12. In quietness, review what you have written and learned in this week’s study.
If further thoughts or prayer requests come to your mind and heart, you may want to write them here.
13. a. What for you was the most meaningful concept or truth in this week’s study?
b. How would you talk this over with God? Write your response here as a prayer to Him.
c. What do you believe God wants you to do in response to this week’s study?
EVERY SINGLE MAN’S TALK
(Constructive Topics and Questions for Group Discussion)
Discussion Questions
Addictive sex is devoid of intimacy. Sex addicts are utterly self-focused. They cannot achieve genuine intimacy because their self-obsession leaves no room for giving to others.… Addictive sex is used to escape pain and problems.
The escapist nature of addictive sex is often one of the clearest indicators that it is present.
When we’re fractionally addicted, we surely experience addictive drawings, but we aren’t compelled to act to salve some pain. We’re compelled by the chemical high and the sexual gratification it brings.
Another way of looking at the scope of the problem is to picture a bell curve. According to our experiences, we figure around 10 percent of men have no sexual-temptation problem with their eyes and their minds. At the other end of the curve, we figure there’s another 10 percent of men who are sexual addicts and have a serious problem with lust. They’ve been so beaten and scarred by emotional events that they simply can’t overcome that sin in their lives. They need more counseling and a transforming washing by the Word. The rest of us comprise the middle 80 percent, living in various shades of gray when it comes to sexual sin.
“When my husband and I talked about this, he was honest,” Deena conveyed, “and I was very angry with him. I was hurt. I felt deeply betrayed because I’d been dieting and working out to keep my weight down so that I would always look nice to him. I couldn’t figure out why he still needed to look at other women.”
Women told us that they struggle between pity and anger, and their feelings may ebb and flow with the tide of their husband’s battle. Let us direct this advice to women reading this book: Though you know you should pray for him and fulfill him sexually, sometimes you won’t want to. Talk to each other openly and honestly, then do the right thing.
A. Which parts of chapters 1–3 in Every Man’s Battle were most helpful or encouraging to you? Why?
B. How would you summarize the difference between normal sexual desire and addictive sex?
C. Do you agree that sex can be a way of trying to escape inner pain? What is your own experience with this?
D. How would you explain to another man what the authors define as fractional addiction?
E. To what extent do you agree or disagree with the book’s contention that, for most men, our sexual sin is based on pleasure highs rather than true addiction?
F. Imagine that a single friend of yours has admitted to you, “Okay, so I use porn. A guy like me has to have some kind of sex life, doesn’t he?” How would you respond?
G. How can indulging in visual sexual stimulation mess up a man’s dating relationships? How can it make him less ready if God should call him to marriage at some time in the future?
My review:
This is a workbook that is best used with the book Every Man's Battle, though it can be used indepedently from the book, as there is material to read in this book.
Each chapter is divided into these sections: Every Single Man's Battle, Every Single Man's Truth, Every Single Man's Choice, Every Single Man's Walk, and Every Single Man's Talk, with several questions to be answered throughout.
Sex is a big deal, and a lot of men have some sort of struggle with it. I think the authors did a great job of addressing the issue for single guys in this study guide/workbook. They get done to the gritty issues and have some excellent and sound advice, and the questions are great and cause deep thinking.
I didn't go through the book and answer all of the questions, but I did read it and read the questions, and this is truly a great book for single guys. I would recommend doing it while going through Every Man's Battle, but it can stand alone.
Thanks to Waterbrook/Multnomah Publishing and FIRST blogging group for the review copy.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
The Grandfathers DVD
The Grandfathers, a motion-graphics film about a young man’s struggle with his complicated heritage, completes a trilogy produced by EthnoGraphic Media (EGM) that includes End of the Spear and Beyond the Gates of Splendor. These first two films, also from award-winning director Jim Hanon and producer Mart Green, tell the unforgettable and inspiring story of the killing of five missionaries by a stone-age tribe deep in the Amazon jungle. The impact of this tragic event lives on today in families of these slain men as well as among those responsible for their deaths.
Steve Saint consulted with Hanon and Green to help bring the story of his father, Nate, to screen through the feature film End of the Spear and the companion documentary film Beyond the Gates of Splendor. These films trace events leading up to and including the deaths of these men. More than that, they show the impact these events played on the lives of both their survivors and their killers. When the widows and their children went to live among the Waodani—a tribe regarded as the most violent on earth—they became an integral part of an incredible redemptive journey.
The Grandfathers showcases both the burden and benefit of the Saint family’s legacy. Jesse Saint, Steve’s oldest son and Nate’s grandson, was not raised among the tribe like his father. He struggles to find his place under the weight of the memory of a famous grandfather he never knew and a heroic father he does not fully understand. This will all change after Jesse travels to the jungles of Ecuador with his family and gradually forms a special bond with Mincaye, one of the tribesmen who took part in his grandfather’s murder. Only then will he confront his family’s past and come to terms with his own destiny. And there he will find his place in this story.
The Grandfathers chronicles the personal quest for greater connectedness and significance. It is also a moving tribute to ordinary people living extraordinary lives in extreme situations. Hanon states, “Forgiveness is an awe-inspiring virtue that seems to have been passed on by the Saint family and is shared by many among the Waodani tribe—both demonstrate a profound capacity for forgiveness and healthy self-healing.” This inspirational film has been awarded The Dove Foundation seal of approval.
My review:
This DVD is a narrated documentary, totally different from End of the Spear, but still interesting in its own way. It is narrated mainly by Steve Saint and his son Jesse, son and grandson of Nate Saint.
I don't usually get into this kind of DVD, but I did enjoy it. They tell of how they went and lived among the very people who killed their father/grandfather. Jesse even calls the men grandfather who were the very same men who killed his own grandfather.
There is a lot of footage from when the Steve Saint family was living among the natives, which adds a lot to the DVD.
If you're wanting a movie experience, watch End of the Spear, but if you are wanting to know more about the natives who killed the missionaries, and how the Saint family lived among them, then watch this DVD. It is very imformative, educating, and shows how God can change the worst.
Watch the trailer here: http://thegrandfathers.com/
Thanks to B&B Media for the review copy.
Every Man, God's Man by Steven Arterburn and Kenny Luck
It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!
You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
Today's Wild Card authors are:
and the book:
WaterBrook Press; Reprint edition (April 5, 2011)
***Special thanks to Staci Staci Carmichael, Marketing and Publicity Associate, Doubleday Religion/ / Waterbrook Multnomah, Divisions of Random House, Inc. for sending me a review copy.***ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Stephen Arterburn is founder and chairman of new Life Clinics, host of the daily “New Life Live!” national radio program, creator of the Women of Faith Conferences, a nationally known speaker, and a best-selling author whose books have sold more than seven million copies. He lives in Laguna Beach, California.Visit the author's website.
Kenny Luck is the founder of Every Man Ministries and the men’s pastor at Saddleback Church, where more than seven thousand men are connected in small groups. He is an award-winning author and coauthor of more than fifteen books on men’s issues, including Risk, Dream, Fight, and Soar. He and his wife, Chrissy, reside in Trabuco Canyon, California, with their children
Visit the author's website.
SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Every Man, God’s Man is tailor-made for any man who may feel incomplete in his commitment to God. It’s for the man who wants to become even more authentic, more courageous, more intimate with God in every area of his life. It’s for every man who desires to walk in true spiritual integrity every moment of every day.
Like other books in the best-selling Every Man series, Every Man, God’s Man boldly gets into your head, gives you hope, and equips you to persevere in your individual pursuit of God.
Includes a comprehensive workbook for individual and group study.
Product Details:
List Price: $16.99
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: WaterBrook Press; Reprint edition (April 5, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307729508
ISBN-13: 978-0307729507
AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:
1 bogged down
in the red zone?
During the past several years, I (Kenny) have witnessed men commit to becoming God’s man through Every Man Ministries. I’ve found that it’s not about asking guys to do more; it’s about asking them to be more. It’s not about asking them to pursue a plan or respond to a cool idea or even to a dare. It’s about convincing guys, deep down, that being God’s man is worth the risk. Why is that?
Doing more puts a man in control.
Being more puts God in control.
Doing more is a safe style for men.
Being more is risky.
Doing more implies there’s an end to it.
Being more is a process—fluid and unpredictable.
Doing more lets a man pick the changes he needs to make.
Being more allows God to reveal the changes a man needs to make.
Doing more requires trying harder.
Being more relies on training humbly.
Doing more engenders spiritual pride.
Being more produces humility through surrender.
Doing more is about correcting behavior patterns.
Being more is about connecting with God’s character.
Doing more attaches to the public persona.
Being more reaches the private self—the man God wants to reach.
So here’s the bottom line of this book: The men’s movement of the last two decades has been challenging men to love more, say more, pray more, read the Bible more, discipline themselves more, love their wives more, and serve their kids more. Men have wanted all those things, but the majority of them are failing over the long haul. The men’s movement has asked men to do what their hearts and characters cannot deliver. Author Dallas Willard got it right: What’s needed is a renovation of the heart before a renovation of lifestyle.
I know there was a time when I needed an overhaul. It happened years ago when I was a credit-card company’s dream customer—young and stupid enough to believe that a piece of gold plastic “had its advantages” and would connect me with some special fraternity of the financial elite. My gold card fed my appetite for all sorts of “needs.” Clothes, birthday and anniversary trips, and lavish dinners out were all benign events for which I supplied perfect justifications. Christmas gifts, home improvements, and repairs on my snazzy foreign sports car became part of my lifestyle. And just as reality should have slapped me in the face, additional lines of credit would mysteriously arrive.
My family’s rise in discretionary spending came after we moved to Orange County, California, in the go-go 1990s. I started to earn more money, but I also started to believe my own rationalizations regarding my finances. I trusted our credit cards more than I trusted God. I certainly didn’t have the faith to believe that if we gave our 10 percent, He would make the other 90 percent work for us.
Ten years ago I was a credit-card
company’s dream customer.
So I gave less to the church and spent more on myself. I refused to deny my family any desire—including a nice home in an upscale neighborhood. After all, I had great credit. I ignored my wife, Chrissy’s, urgings to tighten our financial belts, which only accelerated our insidious spiral into financial bondage. All of the turmoil caused tremendous amounts of anxiety that remained invisible to outsiders but was visibly and verbally incinerating our home and marriage at the end of every month.
SLAVE TO CREDITORS
One night, following a lively discussion with Chrissy about our messed-up finances, I happened to open my Bible. My eyes fell to these words: “The borrower is servant to the lender” (Proverbs 22:7). Seven words, seven tons of impact. I was a slave—to my creditors. I had also enslaved my family because of my inability to say no to myself. Worse, my character deficiency had moved God away from the center of my life and replaced Him with financial anxiety. This, I felt, was a form of idolatry. That truth kindled my repentance and a desire to change, which I confessed to my wife.
I also sought help from friends. Not financial help, but prayer and counsel regarding our precarious financial situation. I can remember weeping in front of my close friends after I disclosed that we had rung up twenty thousand dollars in credit-card debt. I was embarrassed in every way, but I was past caring. I was determined to do what it took to get honest with myself and with the mess I had created. The only way I knew to accomplish that was to humble myself before God, my wife, and my buddies and ask for their help. I never felt so humbled. I had been a Christian for thirteen years; during five of those years I was a missionary making a fraction of what I now earned in my California job. I should have been content and debt free, but I wasn’t.
God’s solution had been there all along. It was only a matter of my trusting in His proposition. All I had to do was live within my means and give the first 10 percent back to God. Oh, I had heard my pastor say over and over that we can’t out give God, and a part of me wanted to believe that. Like the rich young ruler of the Gospel accounts, however, I hedged my bets, preferring my own way over God’s way. My arrogance was astonishing. I could not let go.
Finally unable to buy another thirty days, and with no magical miracle bonuses in sight, reality hit. I had to drive my wife’s minivan to work, since that was the only car in working order, but that left her stranded. The stress on our marriage was enormous, and when I finally mustered the courage to get honest with myself, I gave it over to God. I remember saying, “Whatever it takes, Lord.” Simply put, if that meant living with one car, so be it. If it meant giving to the church when it made no sense, I would give. If it meant submitting myself to an austere monthly budget for two years to get out of debt, that, too, was what I would do.
God’s solution had been there all along. It was
only a matter of my trusting in His proposition.
That day, the last major bastion of control fell into God’s hands, and His victory was both humbling and liberating. Although I was awash in debt, I became the richest of all men because, deep inside, I was committed to the course.
What bastions have you erected against God’s goodness and blessing in your life? Most men can name them in a nanosecond. God has already been speaking to them, convicting them that their priorities are seriously out of line. God’s message, and mine, is that those walls have to fall—for the sake of His kingdom. Or, to use a football analogy (remember Steve’s story?): God isn’t looking for a man’s man to break up the Enemy’s line. He is looking for a God’s man to drive the ball home.
I wasn’t being God’s man. Under the blitz of financial pressure, my drive toward victory in Christ’s kingdom stalled. At a time in my life when I should have been chewing up serious yards of turf in my service to Him, I bogged down in a financial quagmire and fumbled the ball. But this book isn’t about finances; it’s about bogging down spiritually when our offense should be in full attack mode to score for Him. This imagery reminds me of another piece of turf I love so well—the green stretch of grass known as the “red zone” at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.
IN THE RED ZONE BUT STUCK?
Every fall, like the swallows that return to the San Juan Capistrano Mission not far from our Southern California home, our family makes its annual return to the Rose Bowl, where the UCLA Bruins play their home football games. Unlike my writing partner, Steve Arterburn, I love football, but maybe that’s because I wasn’t crazy enough to suit up in high school. (Actually, Steve loves football—he just hated playing it.)
Anyway, Chrissy and I are huge UCLA boosters, but that’s to be expected, since we both graduated from UCLA. Chrissy was one of those cute cheerleaders who wore white sweaters and pleated skirts and shook Bruin pompoms back in the mid-eighties when both of us were enrolled on The Westwood campus.
These days we love taking our three children—Cara, Ryan, and Jenna—to several games each fall. From the opening kickoff, I always edge up in my bleacher seat when the Bruins reach the red zone, that patch of grass between the twenty-yard line and the goal line. Everyone knows UCLA has a great chance to score when they reach that zone. The offense is in full attack mode while the defense stiffens in a do-or-die effort to hold the Bruins to a field-goal attempt. As my father-in-law likes to say, “It’s mano a mano in the RZ,” and he’s right. The red zone is all about the heart and desire to drive the ball all the way in.
I’ve long felt that the red zone is an apt metaphor for our spiritual journeys. Early on, we think we’re moving the ball for God, but it’s really more like losing a few yards here and gaining a few there. As we spiritually mature, however, and reach the red zone—where we can score against Satan and for the kingdom—all too often we fail to take the ball all the way in. For one reason or another, we never completely reach full attack mode. For me, finances bogged the drive. But there are any number of reasons to explain why this happens: We lose focus, Satan gets us too busy, we fall into sin, or we lack the experience to make the right call in a hotly contested domain of our lives.
You don’t want to be in a hurry-up offense when you’re in the red zone. But all too often we live in a rush, rush, rush, shoving aside the time to read God’s Word or invest in relationships with other Christian men or volunteer for God’s work. For many men, this lack of time is a major source of disconnection. One guy in the church where I teach a men’s Bible study spoke for thousands of others when he told me, “I’m always running late! I wake up late, I leave the house late, and I arrive at work a little late—really late if the traffic is bad. I must not be prioritizing my time well.”
In football, a blitz is intended to distract and disrupt the opposing offense. In life, Satan has been calling in spiritual blitzes on each of us. “Hurry the man” is one of his most effective drive-stuffers for men in the red zone. Or he may blitz our thought lives, leaving our offense spinning its wheels in muddy sensuality. Whatever it takes, he’ll blitz us with any behavior or distraction that limits us to no gain or the equivalent of spiritual field goals instead of touchdowns.
So what can be done about it?
Like a good football team, we must read the blitz and adjust. We’ll explore some adjustments in the coming pages. Look, I’ve been sacked more than once in the red zone. I know that my relationships with Chrissy and the kids have been shortchanged by a state of perpetual hurriedness. More important, I’ve fumbled away my intimacy with God by choosing my own way rather than adjusting according to the gifts and the training He’s given me.
Every Man, God’s Man will help you make better calls when you’re feeling blitzed from all sides. You’ll learn how to complete your drive toward spiritual maturity and lead a fulfilling, God-driven life. By the time you finish reading this book, you’ll be trained to handle any defensive scheme that Satan or others will throw at you. You’ll be able to complete the drive that God has been training you for—to possess a heart that is completely His.
Far too many men do not give themselves
fully to being God’s man. It’s like going
three-and-out in a football game.
I started Every Man Ministries in 1999 to help other men in their spiritual walks and in building better marriages and strong families. That quest has taken me to every part of the country, where I’ve spoken before thousands of men at various men’s conferences. When I’m home in Southern California, I sit down each week with one hundred men to study God’s Word, which often leads to numerous counseling sessions. The chance to be a listening ear, offer advice, and pray with these men has been an awesome privilege. As a pastor friend once said: “If you reach a man, then you reach every relationship he has.”
All of this man-to-man experience has convinced me that far too many men do not give themselves fully to being God’s man. It’s like going three-and-out in a football game; they make three lackluster attempts to run or pass the ball, then they punt away their opportunity.
GE T BA C K I N ZO N E MO D E
I want you to get back into the game and advance the ball downfield, pierce the red zone and ram it home, and enjoy greater intimacy with God as you connect with His plan and purposes for your future. God’s goal is to finish the work in you—to have you stride into the end zone, legs kicking high—“that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6).
So let me tell you where we are going with this book. You may be aware that Every Man, God’s Man is part of the series that includes Every Man’s Battle, Every Young Man’s Battle, and Every Man’s Marriage. Those three are what I call tactical books—filled with strategies, plans, and perspectives to help men overcome temptation, grow in sexual integrity, and become truly intimate with their wives. This book is different. We’re going to come alongside you and talk about what we see along the way to becoming God’s man.
This isn’t as easy as it sounds. It’s easy to be frank with a guy when you are talking about his penis or his wife. A man is attached to both. But for most men, God does not have this same kind of proximity. Men, in general, are not spiritually deep and don’t possess the same connection to spiritual issues as they do to sexual and marital issues.
Automatic connections with spiritual truths are not as easy to come by. It usually takes someone you respect getting into your space and telling it like it is—no sugarcoating. Our goal in Every Man, God’s Man is to identify what God is specifically saying to you in ways that will allow you to get it and get back into a red-zone mode that moves you forward with enthusiasm and joy in the Lord. In coming chapters, you’ll learn about:
• the personal benefits of having an undivided heart toward God
• how to stop resolving to change and instead experience a revolution
inside
• how to move against fear and replace it with faith
• how there is no such thing as a “double agent” believer because
one agent is always compromised
• how to deal with the “mole” within that bids you to indulge the
dark side
• how winning or losing a spiritual foothold changes the tide of war
• how and why “80/20” thinking fails; that is, doing things
80 percent God’s way and 20 percent your way
• the importance of “marinating” your mind
• why having other men watch your back is nonnegotiable
for God’s man
• how confession releases God’s power and bloodies the
Enemy’s nose
• how to partner effectively and practically with the Guide—
God’s Spirit
• the source of real spiritual power and how to tap it
• why perseverance is the mark of God’s man
• the purpose of building and staying within well-marked boundaries
• the need to jettison the baggage in your life
• mastering your spiritual motivation once and for all
So there’s a bare-bones description of the yardage ahead of you. Along the way, I will be telling stories about myself (except for his Texas
My review:in the red zone?
During the past several years, I (Kenny) have witnessed men commit to becoming God’s man through Every Man Ministries. I’ve found that it’s not about asking guys to do more; it’s about asking them to be more. It’s not about asking them to pursue a plan or respond to a cool idea or even to a dare. It’s about convincing guys, deep down, that being God’s man is worth the risk. Why is that?
Doing more puts a man in control.
Being more puts God in control.
Doing more is a safe style for men.
Being more is risky.
Doing more implies there’s an end to it.
Being more is a process—fluid and unpredictable.
Doing more lets a man pick the changes he needs to make.
Being more allows God to reveal the changes a man needs to make.
Doing more requires trying harder.
Being more relies on training humbly.
Doing more engenders spiritual pride.
Being more produces humility through surrender.
Doing more is about correcting behavior patterns.
Being more is about connecting with God’s character.
Doing more attaches to the public persona.
Being more reaches the private self—the man God wants to reach.
So here’s the bottom line of this book: The men’s movement of the last two decades has been challenging men to love more, say more, pray more, read the Bible more, discipline themselves more, love their wives more, and serve their kids more. Men have wanted all those things, but the majority of them are failing over the long haul. The men’s movement has asked men to do what their hearts and characters cannot deliver. Author Dallas Willard got it right: What’s needed is a renovation of the heart before a renovation of lifestyle.
I know there was a time when I needed an overhaul. It happened years ago when I was a credit-card company’s dream customer—young and stupid enough to believe that a piece of gold plastic “had its advantages” and would connect me with some special fraternity of the financial elite. My gold card fed my appetite for all sorts of “needs.” Clothes, birthday and anniversary trips, and lavish dinners out were all benign events for which I supplied perfect justifications. Christmas gifts, home improvements, and repairs on my snazzy foreign sports car became part of my lifestyle. And just as reality should have slapped me in the face, additional lines of credit would mysteriously arrive.
My family’s rise in discretionary spending came after we moved to Orange County, California, in the go-go 1990s. I started to earn more money, but I also started to believe my own rationalizations regarding my finances. I trusted our credit cards more than I trusted God. I certainly didn’t have the faith to believe that if we gave our 10 percent, He would make the other 90 percent work for us.
Ten years ago I was a credit-card
company’s dream customer.
So I gave less to the church and spent more on myself. I refused to deny my family any desire—including a nice home in an upscale neighborhood. After all, I had great credit. I ignored my wife, Chrissy’s, urgings to tighten our financial belts, which only accelerated our insidious spiral into financial bondage. All of the turmoil caused tremendous amounts of anxiety that remained invisible to outsiders but was visibly and verbally incinerating our home and marriage at the end of every month.
SLAVE TO CREDITORS
One night, following a lively discussion with Chrissy about our messed-up finances, I happened to open my Bible. My eyes fell to these words: “The borrower is servant to the lender” (Proverbs 22:7). Seven words, seven tons of impact. I was a slave—to my creditors. I had also enslaved my family because of my inability to say no to myself. Worse, my character deficiency had moved God away from the center of my life and replaced Him with financial anxiety. This, I felt, was a form of idolatry. That truth kindled my repentance and a desire to change, which I confessed to my wife.
I also sought help from friends. Not financial help, but prayer and counsel regarding our precarious financial situation. I can remember weeping in front of my close friends after I disclosed that we had rung up twenty thousand dollars in credit-card debt. I was embarrassed in every way, but I was past caring. I was determined to do what it took to get honest with myself and with the mess I had created. The only way I knew to accomplish that was to humble myself before God, my wife, and my buddies and ask for their help. I never felt so humbled. I had been a Christian for thirteen years; during five of those years I was a missionary making a fraction of what I now earned in my California job. I should have been content and debt free, but I wasn’t.
God’s solution had been there all along. It was only a matter of my trusting in His proposition. All I had to do was live within my means and give the first 10 percent back to God. Oh, I had heard my pastor say over and over that we can’t out give God, and a part of me wanted to believe that. Like the rich young ruler of the Gospel accounts, however, I hedged my bets, preferring my own way over God’s way. My arrogance was astonishing. I could not let go.
Finally unable to buy another thirty days, and with no magical miracle bonuses in sight, reality hit. I had to drive my wife’s minivan to work, since that was the only car in working order, but that left her stranded. The stress on our marriage was enormous, and when I finally mustered the courage to get honest with myself, I gave it over to God. I remember saying, “Whatever it takes, Lord.” Simply put, if that meant living with one car, so be it. If it meant giving to the church when it made no sense, I would give. If it meant submitting myself to an austere monthly budget for two years to get out of debt, that, too, was what I would do.
God’s solution had been there all along. It was
only a matter of my trusting in His proposition.
That day, the last major bastion of control fell into God’s hands, and His victory was both humbling and liberating. Although I was awash in debt, I became the richest of all men because, deep inside, I was committed to the course.
What bastions have you erected against God’s goodness and blessing in your life? Most men can name them in a nanosecond. God has already been speaking to them, convicting them that their priorities are seriously out of line. God’s message, and mine, is that those walls have to fall—for the sake of His kingdom. Or, to use a football analogy (remember Steve’s story?): God isn’t looking for a man’s man to break up the Enemy’s line. He is looking for a God’s man to drive the ball home.
I wasn’t being God’s man. Under the blitz of financial pressure, my drive toward victory in Christ’s kingdom stalled. At a time in my life when I should have been chewing up serious yards of turf in my service to Him, I bogged down in a financial quagmire and fumbled the ball. But this book isn’t about finances; it’s about bogging down spiritually when our offense should be in full attack mode to score for Him. This imagery reminds me of another piece of turf I love so well—the green stretch of grass known as the “red zone” at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.
IN THE RED ZONE BUT STUCK?
Every fall, like the swallows that return to the San Juan Capistrano Mission not far from our Southern California home, our family makes its annual return to the Rose Bowl, where the UCLA Bruins play their home football games. Unlike my writing partner, Steve Arterburn, I love football, but maybe that’s because I wasn’t crazy enough to suit up in high school. (Actually, Steve loves football—he just hated playing it.)
Anyway, Chrissy and I are huge UCLA boosters, but that’s to be expected, since we both graduated from UCLA. Chrissy was one of those cute cheerleaders who wore white sweaters and pleated skirts and shook Bruin pompoms back in the mid-eighties when both of us were enrolled on The Westwood campus.
These days we love taking our three children—Cara, Ryan, and Jenna—to several games each fall. From the opening kickoff, I always edge up in my bleacher seat when the Bruins reach the red zone, that patch of grass between the twenty-yard line and the goal line. Everyone knows UCLA has a great chance to score when they reach that zone. The offense is in full attack mode while the defense stiffens in a do-or-die effort to hold the Bruins to a field-goal attempt. As my father-in-law likes to say, “It’s mano a mano in the RZ,” and he’s right. The red zone is all about the heart and desire to drive the ball all the way in.
I’ve long felt that the red zone is an apt metaphor for our spiritual journeys. Early on, we think we’re moving the ball for God, but it’s really more like losing a few yards here and gaining a few there. As we spiritually mature, however, and reach the red zone—where we can score against Satan and for the kingdom—all too often we fail to take the ball all the way in. For one reason or another, we never completely reach full attack mode. For me, finances bogged the drive. But there are any number of reasons to explain why this happens: We lose focus, Satan gets us too busy, we fall into sin, or we lack the experience to make the right call in a hotly contested domain of our lives.
You don’t want to be in a hurry-up offense when you’re in the red zone. But all too often we live in a rush, rush, rush, shoving aside the time to read God’s Word or invest in relationships with other Christian men or volunteer for God’s work. For many men, this lack of time is a major source of disconnection. One guy in the church where I teach a men’s Bible study spoke for thousands of others when he told me, “I’m always running late! I wake up late, I leave the house late, and I arrive at work a little late—really late if the traffic is bad. I must not be prioritizing my time well.”
In football, a blitz is intended to distract and disrupt the opposing offense. In life, Satan has been calling in spiritual blitzes on each of us. “Hurry the man” is one of his most effective drive-stuffers for men in the red zone. Or he may blitz our thought lives, leaving our offense spinning its wheels in muddy sensuality. Whatever it takes, he’ll blitz us with any behavior or distraction that limits us to no gain or the equivalent of spiritual field goals instead of touchdowns.
So what can be done about it?
Like a good football team, we must read the blitz and adjust. We’ll explore some adjustments in the coming pages. Look, I’ve been sacked more than once in the red zone. I know that my relationships with Chrissy and the kids have been shortchanged by a state of perpetual hurriedness. More important, I’ve fumbled away my intimacy with God by choosing my own way rather than adjusting according to the gifts and the training He’s given me.
Every Man, God’s Man will help you make better calls when you’re feeling blitzed from all sides. You’ll learn how to complete your drive toward spiritual maturity and lead a fulfilling, God-driven life. By the time you finish reading this book, you’ll be trained to handle any defensive scheme that Satan or others will throw at you. You’ll be able to complete the drive that God has been training you for—to possess a heart that is completely His.
Far too many men do not give themselves
fully to being God’s man. It’s like going
three-and-out in a football game.
I started Every Man Ministries in 1999 to help other men in their spiritual walks and in building better marriages and strong families. That quest has taken me to every part of the country, where I’ve spoken before thousands of men at various men’s conferences. When I’m home in Southern California, I sit down each week with one hundred men to study God’s Word, which often leads to numerous counseling sessions. The chance to be a listening ear, offer advice, and pray with these men has been an awesome privilege. As a pastor friend once said: “If you reach a man, then you reach every relationship he has.”
All of this man-to-man experience has convinced me that far too many men do not give themselves fully to being God’s man. It’s like going three-and-out in a football game; they make three lackluster attempts to run or pass the ball, then they punt away their opportunity.
GE T BA C K I N ZO N E MO D E
I want you to get back into the game and advance the ball downfield, pierce the red zone and ram it home, and enjoy greater intimacy with God as you connect with His plan and purposes for your future. God’s goal is to finish the work in you—to have you stride into the end zone, legs kicking high—“that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6).
So let me tell you where we are going with this book. You may be aware that Every Man, God’s Man is part of the series that includes Every Man’s Battle, Every Young Man’s Battle, and Every Man’s Marriage. Those three are what I call tactical books—filled with strategies, plans, and perspectives to help men overcome temptation, grow in sexual integrity, and become truly intimate with their wives. This book is different. We’re going to come alongside you and talk about what we see along the way to becoming God’s man.
This isn’t as easy as it sounds. It’s easy to be frank with a guy when you are talking about his penis or his wife. A man is attached to both. But for most men, God does not have this same kind of proximity. Men, in general, are not spiritually deep and don’t possess the same connection to spiritual issues as they do to sexual and marital issues.
Automatic connections with spiritual truths are not as easy to come by. It usually takes someone you respect getting into your space and telling it like it is—no sugarcoating. Our goal in Every Man, God’s Man is to identify what God is specifically saying to you in ways that will allow you to get it and get back into a red-zone mode that moves you forward with enthusiasm and joy in the Lord. In coming chapters, you’ll learn about:
• the personal benefits of having an undivided heart toward God
• how to stop resolving to change and instead experience a revolution
inside
• how to move against fear and replace it with faith
• how there is no such thing as a “double agent” believer because
one agent is always compromised
• how to deal with the “mole” within that bids you to indulge the
dark side
• how winning or losing a spiritual foothold changes the tide of war
• how and why “80/20” thinking fails; that is, doing things
80 percent God’s way and 20 percent your way
• the importance of “marinating” your mind
• why having other men watch your back is nonnegotiable
for God’s man
• how confession releases God’s power and bloodies the
Enemy’s nose
• how to partner effectively and practically with the Guide—
God’s Spirit
• the source of real spiritual power and how to tap it
• why perseverance is the mark of God’s man
• the purpose of building and staying within well-marked boundaries
• the need to jettison the baggage in your life
• mastering your spiritual motivation once and for all
So there’s a bare-bones description of the yardage ahead of you. Along the way, I will be telling stories about myself (except for his Texas
This is the first of 3 reviews in 3 days of 3 different books in the Every Man Series.
This book, Every Man, God's Man, focuses on encouraging men and giving pratical advice to help guys live for God.
The writing style in the book makes it very easy to read, yet it is not a light fluffy book. There is a lot of great advice and information given that men need to read.
At the back of the book is a workbook to do as you read through the book which can be used in a group study, or alone.
I enjoyed this book a lot. It gave me a lot to think about and is a great tool. I'd recommend it to any man who is struggling to be the man and Christian he should, or to any guy who just wants some help to make sure he doesn't slip up.
Thanks to FIRST blogging group and Waterbrook/Multnomah for the review copy.
Monday, April 4, 2011
The Complete Guide to Understanding Homosexuality by Dallas & Heche
One of the hot–button issues of our day is fully addressed in this comprehensive new resource on homosexuality. This well–researched and highly readable guide is the perfect go–to manual for families, church workers, counselors, pastors, civic leaders, schools, and those who themselves struggle with same–sex attraction.
Readers will find the answers to these and many more important questions:
•What is homosexuality?
•Is the tendency for homosexuality genetic?
•How should the church respond?
•What’s the proper response when a relative or friend announces they’re gay?
•What are the legal and civic ramifications of homosexuality?
•Should homosexuals serve openly in the military?
•What about gay marriage and adoption?
Authoritative authors Joe Dallas (Desires in Conflict, When Homosexuality Hits Home) and Dr. Nancy Heche (The Truth Comes Out) tackle the hard questions about same–sex attraction in this helpful volume.
My review:
I was rather surprised when this book came in the mail and I saw how big it is. It comes in at a whopping 501 pages, which includes an index.
Some books like this that has so much information can get boring and dry, but the authors did a great job of presenting a lot of information while keeping it interesting and relevant.
This is a book every pastor should read, and a lot of people in the church should also read. The topics are many, from what causes homosexuality, to gay marriage, and counseling people struggling with the issue themselves.
The book is sub-titled A Biblical and Compassionate Response to Same-Sex Attraction, and that is exactly what the book is. Yes, the authors hold the view that living a gay lifestyle is wrong, they talk about why gay marriage is a bad idea and wrong, yet they don't do it from an attacking mode. I learned a lot by reading the book, and it is obvious that the authors know what they are talking about, with both having person experiences in their own lives.
It did take me a while to read this book. It is the type of book that is more of a resource book, but yet one that is easy to read. I recommend it for anyone who has a friend or relative living the lifestyle, and/or struggling with same-sex attractions, and for people in the church who just want to know more about this hot topic. With it being so prevalent today, we all need to know more about it.
Joe Dallas, past president of Exodus International, lectures extensively at churches and seminars and directs a biblical counseling practice in Tustin, California. He is the author of Desires in Conflict; The Gay Gospel?; and When Homosexuality Hits Home. His articles have been featured in Christianity Today, Christian Research Journal, and the Journal of the Christian Association of Psychological Studies
Author Website
www.genesiscounseling.org
The Complete Guide to Understanding Homosexuality is available from Harvest House Publishers.
Thanks to Harvest House for the review copy.
Eye For Glory by Karl Bacon
Michael palmer is a good man, a family man. But honor and duty push him to leave his comfortable life and answer the call from Abraham Lincoln to fight for his country.Karl Bacon is a first time novelist, but long time student of the Civil War. He and his wife, Jackie live in Naugatuck, Connecticut.
This “citizen soldier” learns quickly that war is more than the battle on the field. Long marches under extreme conditions, illness, and disillusionment challenge at every turn.
Faith seems lost in a blur of smoke and blood … and death. Michael’s only desire is to kill as many Confederate soldiers as he can so he can go home. He coldly counts off the rebels that fall to his bullets. Until he is brought up short by a dying man holding up his Bible.
It’s in the heat of battle at Gettysburg and the solemn aftermath that Michael begins to understand the grave cost of the war upon his soul. Here the journey really begins as he searches for the man he was and the faith he once held so dearly. With the help of his beloved wife, Jesse Ann, he takes the final steps towards redemption and reconciliation.
Using first-hand accounts of the 14th Connecticut Infantry, Karl Bacon has crafted a detailed, genuine and compelling novel on the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.
Intensely personal and accurate to the times, culture, and tragedy of the Civil War, An Eye for Glory may change you in ways you could have never imagined as well.
My review:
I enjoy reading about the Civil War, so this book caught my interest right away, and I was happy to be able to get a copy to review.
The author did a great job on this book. It is written in the first person, and the author used firsthand accounts of the 14th Connecticut Infantry, which helps with the story being more real and realistic. While reading the book, I almost felt like I was there.
There is a lot described about the battles and fighting, but the book also deals a lot with the main character, Michael, and how the war changes him for the worst. How he becomes obsessed with hating and killing the enemy.
War is a necessary evil, but this book shows just how terrible the Civil War was. Christians killing fellow Christians, brother against brother. I really enjoyed the story, and it was moving to see how Michael finally found redemption and found his way past hate.
I truly hated to see the book end, it was a great historical journey through one of our nations worst wars, and a refreshing look at what went on during that time. Highly recommended. This is a great novel of the Civil War.
Karl Bacon is a first time novelist, but long time student of the Civil War. He and his wife, Jackie live in Naugatuck, Connecticut.
Author Website:
http://www.kbacon.com/
Book trailer:
Eye For Glory is available from Zondervan Publishing.
Thanks to Zondervan for the review copy.
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