Happy New Year 2016! As you reflect on all God has brought you through in 2015, let me leave you with these random thoughts:

This (and every day in 2015, as well as those coming down the pike in 2016) is the day that the Lord has made! We can rejoice in each day!

His strength is made perfect in our weakness. If he chooses to bring weakness our way in 2016, let us embrace it as an opportunity to rely on His strength.

We ought to walk circumspectly, because the days are evil, and there is an enemy who longs to see us fall away in 2016.

A man's heart deviseth his way, but the Lord directeth his steps. No matter what your plans for 2016, and you should make plans to serve Him and stretch yourself in some way in the coming year, remember that the Lord, in His lovingkindness, is the ultimate authority on your accomplishments. As you surrender to Him, may you be blessed, and may you find new and better ways to bring glory to the name of the one by whom we live, and have our being.

Happy New Year!

Failing to plan is planning to fail...

A friend asked me a question today, and I thought I'd put the same question to you. Have you thought through your devotional plan for 2016 yet? If you wake up on January 1 wondering what you should read, it will be easy to get bogged down in the many choices before you, or to be distracted by the holiday festivities. Either option could find you discouraged and missing days before you know it.

I subscribe to a couple of emails and FB groups that let me know about free or discounted Christian books. Two I've found this year are on my short list for 2016. One is Designed for Devotion by Dianne Neal Matthews. While I'm not familiar with this book, it purports to highlight Old Testament stories, give close-up looks at Christ in the Gospels, and review the historical background of each book of the Bible. I'm looking forward to enjoying these short excerpts as part of my spiritual journey starting this weekend. The other book I've discovered this year, and plan to start into in January is A Woman's Guide to Reading the Bible in a Year by Diane Stortz. It is organized by week, and gives readings that can be done in any version of the Bible you choose.

If you'd like to come along with me on this journey, you can find either of these books on Amazon at the above links. They're both on sale for 99 cents right now. Use the comments below to let me know what you're planning for your time with the Lord in 2016. I'd love to hear, and maybe we can sharpen one another spiritually. :-)

***Stay tuned for the first installment of "My Year in Books" coming later this week!

Book Review: "Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus" by Nabeel Qureshi

Today I finished an incredible book that I simply MUST share with like-minded friends. If you can find this book at your local library, RUN, don't walk, to check it out and read it!

This book follows a young man through an almost idyllic childhood founded upon the faith of generations before him, the peaceful Islam found in his particular sect. His parents, both born in Pakistan, have emigrated to the US before his birth, and he is raised as a flag-waving son of a U.S. Navy officer.

As a young college student, the events of 9/11 shock him as much as they shock his classmates. He is appalled to discover that the Islam that created those attacks shares so many founding beliefs with the Islam he has been raised to accept as truth.

God brings a good friend into the life of the author during his time as a med student at Old Dominion University. Over the following years, the author recounts many of their conversations, and gives incredible detail of specific surah (portions of the Qu'ran) that he used to discuss theology with this friend. The notes on these portions are excellent and detailed. Finally, as the title suggests, the author finds incontrovertible proof of Christ's claims and accepts Him as his savior.

I would have liked to see more detail of how the author was accepted as a Christian both in the Muslim community and in that of the protestant community in his hometown. Additionally, I would have liked to see the story come full-circle with the author telling his college friend of his conversion. But these are simply my own preferences to give some living qualities to what is a very deep theological discussion. Several times, I put the book down and walked around the house for a few minutes to let the issues meld in my mind. It is not a book that can be read in a quick sitting!

One more disappointing part of this book relates to textual criticism. In a discussion between the author and his Christian college friend, the author asks about two sections of Scripture, "the end of Mark" and John 7:53-8:11, referring to them as later additions to Scripture, as a result of his google research on the subject. (At this point the author is still a Muslim trying to convert his friend by undermining the Bible and holding up the Qu'ran as the perfect example.) The Christian friend says simply, "Oh, most Christian scholars agree that those are not authentic. But the fact that we know that further proves that the Scripture is accurate, because at least we know and admit where additions have been made." No further discussion is offered, and as a life-long believer and apologist for the whole Word of God, I was concerned about this statement being included. In fact, this ONE statement is the thing that would keep me from being able to recommend this book to my children and others who may be less firm in their faith than they should be. I would never want a book I had recommended to be used by Satan to place doubt in their hearts about the authenticity of every word of Scripture, since our faith puts the Word of God in such an important place.

This book was convicting to my heart as a Christian parent as I saw how clearly these Muslim parents communicated to their very young children the reasons behind their beliefs, and even more importantly their calling (by Allah, of course) to be proselytizing for their faith. Beginning in middle school, the author engages his friends in doctrinal discussions that inevitably leave him even more convinced that Islam is stronger than other faiths, and the Christian students around him flailing under talking points that failed to answer close scrutiny. As a Christian parent, I was reminded once again of my responsibility to teach my children not only the whys and wherefores of our belief system, but even more, the importance of being able to draw others to our Christ as a result of lovingly challenging their thinking.

If you choose to read this book, please let me know. I think it is an incredible piece of writing that will challenge your heart and reinforce your faith that our Christian belief system holds up to the intense scrutiny it was subjected to by this med student who desperately wanted Islam to win the battle in his own heart. I want to hear from you if it impacts you as it did me!

Meditations on Ballast

Earlier this week, I read this book.

Usually, historical narratives don't leave me meditating on spiritual truths. But this one did. Besides all the fascinating minutiae about different sizes of frigates and sloops, and the politics governing each nation's choices in the war, there was a LOT of talk about ballast.

Are you familiar with the concept of ballast? Wikipedia defines ballast as "heavy material, such as gravel, sand, iron, or lead, placed low in a vessel to improve its stability." Ballast is something I've heard about for years, but it never impacted me the way it did this time.

Heavy material is present in the ship of each of our lives. Maybe you're struggling right now with a battle that is out of your hands: the choices of a loved one, infertility, a divorce, a physical challenge.  The designers of each ship in the War of 1812 had determined what amount of ballast, or heaviness, would work best for their particular design. Whatever the heaviness is in your life, the first thing to remember about ballast is that It was designed by God.

Something else I had not given much thought to was how ballast is used. I always thought of it as a stack of bricks or sandbags, heaped in the hold of a vessel and never thought of again.

In reality, the battles in this book were filled with examples of how a captain saved his ship, or lost it to the enemy, depending on how he used his ballast. It is moved around even during a challenging time, in order to give the ship an advantage of position in the water, or a better angle for the sails to catch the wind. The same is true of the heaviness in your life. Not only was this ballast designed by God, but It is there to help you.

Look again at the definition. Ballast is placed low in a vessel... doesn't it seem like the heaviness that overwhelms us hits us in our weakest point?...and its purpose is to improve stability. Remember the verses in II Corinthians about glorying in infirmities and distresses? Verse 10 reminds us that "when I am weak, then am I strong." That's right. Just like so many other principles in God's kingdom, this one is backward. It is in our time of greatest heaviness that God intercedes with HIS strength. Because really, which of us can make lasting progress in our own strength? Isn't it more effective to rest in His strength? He designed the heaviness in our lives to exactly match the design of our "ship." He gave it to us to help us, and most importantly, It can bring us His strength, if we let it.

So what is your response to the ballast in your life today? Are you fighting it? Are you scouring the hold of your life for anything that doesn't please you, and throwing it overboard in a fit of self-confidence? I encourage you to embrace the heaviness, the weariness, the illness, the unanswered questions, the heartache that God has placed in your life today. Thank Him for offering you His strength for your weakness. It's the best way to live.