• News
  • Southern Christian Writers Conference
    
  • Interview with Dr. Dalton-Smith
  • Two chances to win!
• Book Review - Freedom Tools by Andy Reese and Jennifer Barnett
• Book Review - The Spiritual Gifts Blueprint by Andy Reese
• Patricia Bradley's Fatal Witness
• Issues of the Heart: Inward Focus
  
• Meditation Moment
• Upcoming Events

Southern Christian Writers Conference

Debbie and I attended the Southern Christian Writers Conference in Birmingham earlier this month. 

Kudos to Cheryl Wray and her team, several of them family members, for putting on such an enjoyable and uplifting event. You know their heart is in the right place when you see them serving up food at lunchtime.

Debbie and I were grateful to listen to content that challenged us, mix with other like-minded authors, and sell a few books. We were particularly impressed with Grace Hitchcock, a rare combination of credibility, smarts, poise, and humility. She delivered no-fluff presentations that were meaty, transparent, and beneficial without reading from scripts. I still can’t believe it was her first speaking gig.

Grace Hitchcock is a successful author of historical romance who writes to provide alternative entertainment to girls and women that is clean and more uplifting than much of what we see coming out these days.

Interview on "I Choose My Best Life Podcast"

I love the name of Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith's podcast. We do get to choose, even if only a good attitude amid difficult life circumstances.

Our interview covers a little of my story, the inspiration behind The Persistent Road, and the genesis of Wheels of Wisdom, which I coauthored with Debbie.

You can find Dr. Dalton-Smith's podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon Audible, and iHeartRadio. Or on her audiobook distributor's website.

It's Time for Summer Reads

What better read for summer than a novel about a summertime bicycling adventure? Celebrate Lit is kicking off summer with a contest promoting over thirty inspirational titles. Enter to win The Persistent Road, plus books from other authors who write from a Christian perspective. Click here.

Enter to Win 20 Inspirational Books and Cash

Booksweeps is back promoting inspirational books and authors. This promotion asks entrants to follow the authors on either Bookbub or Amazon. I've chosen to build my Amazon following. Twenty authors are participating in this promotion. To check out the books, including our own Wheels of Wisdom, and enter to win, click here. 

My Take on Freedom Tools

Andy Reese and Jennifer Barnett have written a practical resource for Christians to enhance their ministry. It’s called Freedom Tools (Chosen Books, Revised and Expanded Edition, 2015).

“Freedom tools” are techniques to foster open communication between a hurting individual and his Creator. These tools recognize God as the healer and the Christian as His vessel. With attentive listening, they can draw out hidden sources of distress and barriers to spiritual growth. What some people label a mental illness may simply be a smokescreen for a spiritual problem.

Freedom tools equip laypeople to share face-to-face the love and supernatural power of Jesus to address the spiritual decay around them. Pastors, who primarily equip saints, can only do so much. God wants all of us to share His love with a world in dire need of it.

The premise behind Freedom Tools is the active battle between good and evil. I’ve seen this as an online coach who chats with people bound in invisible shackles. Those didn’t come from God.

What I like most about Freedom Tools is the heart behind it. It gives instructions, as one might find to assemble new furniture, on ministering to people and inviting Jesus to the conversation. Scripture, prayer, and discerning the subject’s impressions and train of thought can reveal festering wounds, entanglements, unconfessed sin, misconceptions about God, and even demonic activity. Reese and Barnett’s tools prod gently to keep the discovery process alive.

Coauthored by an engineer, you may find yourself rereading certain text. But what better mind to devise an instruction set than one that can disassemble the brokenness in people and point to God’s lead in putting them back together, complete with diagrams and flowcharts! I urge readers to stay the course because the payoff is worth it.

I highly recommend Freedom Tools. Each believer has a unique style and capacity to minister to others. How you and I fulfill our calling may differ from the approach in this book. But for those trying to jumpstart their service to others or take it to the next level, it provides a worthy toolkit to unleash fellow travelers to a more joyful oneness with their Creator and a deeper understanding of life.

For more information on how these tools are applied in ministry, see https://freedomprayer.org/.

My Take on The Spiritual Gifts Blueprint

In The Spiritual Gifts Blueprint, released in 2023 by Chosen Books, Andy Reese brings an engineer’s structure and mindset to a topic that has left many of us in the church scratching our heads. If you are wondering which spiritual gifts delineated in Scripture are inside you, this book may help.

Reese proposes that spiritual gifts synchronize with personality types. He constructs a wheel similar to an Enneagram and assigns to a pie wedge on that wheel each of the seven gifts he extracts from Scripture – prophecy, teaching, exhorting, mercy, serving, giving, and leading. The wheel doubles as a teeter-totter, with speaking and serving ministries on opposite sides. The gift of leading, applicable to either ministry type, balances at the fulcrum.

Reese’s construct is well thought out. He suggests individuals can miss out on what God has for them if they don’t recognize the unique stamp He placed on them at birth. Coming to that realization will often free people to actualize God’s plan for them by operating out of their strengths. Reese serves up a quiz to launch the reader into a deeper understanding of what specific purposes God made them for.

I must confess I bristle at attempts to categorize people and label them. Although I agree trends exist with people’s gifts and personality types, we shouldn’t allow tendencies to stifle an individual’s God-given potential. The Creator is creative, and He has made us in His image. He doesn’t impose limitations on what we can accomplish in His power.

Nevertheless, Reese’s blueprint is a thoughtful guide for anyone wrestling with their God-given calling. It is chock full of Scripture. As its back cover implores, “It’s time to discover why you were created—and experience a deeper relationship with the One who created you.”

For more information on Andy Reese and The Spiritual Gifts Blueprint, see https://andyreese.org/.

Do you remember the explanation of the emergency protocol on your last flight? You must secure your own air supply before you can be of use to anyone else.

Life can be difficult. We come into this world with nothing, but we can't survive on it. So a struggle ensues to learn how to function and earn our keep. Some people have it easier than others, but we all need to learn how to provide for ourselves and our families at some level.

Once we've become proficient at managing our affairs, we develop discretionary time, headspace, and maybe even money. What we do with those resources will be determined, in large part, by whether our thoughts are focused inward or outward.

Do we orient to self, to others, or to God?

Have you ever asked yourself, Why did God make me? Do I have a purpose beyond loving my family and friends and being a productive member of society and a model citizen?

We can't answer those questions, let alone ask them, if we're only thinking of our own affairs. Their answers involve how we serve other people.

I have chatted with individuals online who are so inwardly focused I can't begin to engage them to help them see why certain people in their lives react to them as they do. They're obsessed with their own unmet desires (more so than needs) and usually blame God for them. The last resort is often to be very direct with them, which sometimes gets their attention but more often is blown off before they storm away angry. It's sad. Do you know people like this?

We all have personal needs and should attend to them. But if we don't make room for God and the needs of others around us, our own needs will consume us until we're smoldering ashes. If we put God first, He will rearrange our priorities and seal them with peace.

How much of your thought life is focused on obtaining your own needs and wants or those of your family? Have you filtered your to-do list, separating actual needs from wants and assigned each the appropriate priority?

Meditate on these passages as you consider the above questions:

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”

—Psalm 23:1 ESV

“Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.”

—Colossians 3:2 NIV

“Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

—Psalm 37:4 ESV

“Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.’”

—John 6:35 ESV

“You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

—Ephesians 4:22–24 NIV

“Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

—Matthew 20:27–28 NIV

Order Your Copy Today!

If you've not yet picked up your copy of The Persistent Road, you can do so at these online booksellers.

Available in print, e-book, and audiobook formats.