I just loved this video (from Christine Sine) and I hope it can serve you too as a tool for a renewed and refreshed awareness of God’s holy presence. Give yourself 5 full minutes to listen, enjoy, and worship.
Have a Blessed Advent Season.
Category: Authors
Featuring authors of interest and insights.
Free for the taking…
YEP. Good news about free stuff!
Right after we feast like mad and express our gratitude and thankfulness we charge out to buy and shop! I’ve always thought this was the strangest thing…But, the sales do seem unbeatable, right?
Confession: I can’t handle the bustle. I grow weary so fast from shopping, let alone doing it amid crowds and while fighting chock-a-block traffic. What about you?
Perhaps Cyber Monday is a different kind of bustle?…nevertheless….
I have some things for you. It won’t cost anything. And you don’t have to get “malled” or drive anywhere.
Click “Kindle Bookshelf”. (4 FREE books)
On Monday 11/26/2012 all four of my digital (Kindle) books are free for the taking. ONE Day only. (One of the four has not been offered for free until now, and it won’t happen again anytime soon.)
Here’s a secret! If you DON’T have a kindle or a kindle app, you can still click to buy, and Amazon houses them for you, for whenever you want them, on which ever device you choose. So, if you’re getting a kindle for Christmas, click to get them now, and enjoy them later.
I do hope you enjoy them.
If you would please leave an Amazon review, I would be most grateful! I have lots of people reading, but hardly anyone leaving reviews yet. So, I need your help!
Season’s Blessings!
-Lisa
P.S. Spread this good news with a Tweet or two, please?
(If you miss your chance, don’t fret. Each is only $3. Way less than a latte at Starbucks. Amazon lets you read sample pages. Try each one and see what you like!)
Publish on Kindle, like I did.
I have some excitement brewing because I’m affiliated to give you something from Jeff Goin that has really helped me with my writing.
I listened to this audio about how to publish on Kindle and within a week I had 4 digital books housed on the Kindle Store and over 600 downloads! These new readers juiced up my website hits. I thought it would be much harder to make my writing into a digital book. Jeff lays it all out clearly and simply.
I’m so thankful the technology for publishing is now finally easy enough for anyone with a computer to do.
Anyone with a Kindle App or a Kindle Reader can read your stuff with ONE Click. (that’s a ton of people) Plus, there’s the huge benefit of Amazon acting like a search engine and promoting your work. That, my friends, is a coup!
You can do it too, and you’ll be happy you did.
You should know that this Black Friday weekend, there’s an EXTRA 25% off deal running. Click here for the details link get promo code.
(It’s just for the weekend, so grab it now while you can.)
(Yes, the image shown here is like something out of the mid-1990s, with the CD image…but don’t be fooled, Jeff’s advice is easy to understand and it’s up-to-date. There’s no CD; you’ll listen to the audio and be able to digitally publish your stuff in a just few days, just like I did.)
Click here to view more details
(As an affiliate, I will directly benefit from your decision to get this resource.)
90 Seconds to a genuine inner gaze
Two things that don’t really go together are SPEED and Introspection.
But in 90 seconds, I think you can get off the blocks and make that crucial first step to the kind of growth that can only happen by linking up with the transcendent through your unique humanity. An inner gaze has to start somewhere. If not, we get stuck.
Be warned, once you look inward it can be painful. This is one reason why it happens too infrequently. The point though is to get started. Sometime during the holiday weekend I’ll post something of a followup. Creating a useful tool for yourself…the spiritual autobiography (which is something I too will be doing for my Masters class work. I hope you’ll join me).
For now, follow these simple steps:
- 1. Get paper and a pen
- 2. Jot down the first things that come to you mind as you read the list below. (Don’t linger on this list. Be speedy.)
- 3. Put away your paper for 1-3 days.
- 4. Revisit your notes in 1-3 days when you have 20 minutes or more. (I’ll remind you, here at the blog.)
Consider these questions:
-
Look at your failed or troubled relationships and list similarities, and note what makes you angry about them, or things you fear.
-
Examine past patterns and recurring themes in your thoughts and behavior. Note any patterns that you see.
-
Uncover the commonalities in your interpersonal difficulties. Do the same troubles with others come back again and again? Note them.
-
Label areas of stagnation in your life, (i.e. work, relationships, poor habits, etc.).
-
Consult with trusted friends and objective sources to ferret out problem areas. Okay, this takes some time, so for now jot down a few names.
-
Include a list of your good qualities/strengths, and places or ways you find encouragement. [This should be easy, because it’s the feel good part. Briefly, look for all the good you can and mark it down.]
(So, what did you think about these questions? Was it hard to do?)
Snippets from the Dr Miroslav Volf seminar
The air was electric… a cross between a speech and rock concert…a nerdy electricity.
My school (where I now work) is small. Small but strangely mighty. Blessed.
And thankfully it is committed to excellence and honest inquiry. This quality is more rare than you might imagine, in liberal and conservative institutions alike.
Yesterday, Dr. Miroslav Volf was the featured speaker at the annual Ritter-Moyer Lecture. Go ahead, click on his name if you haven’t of him.
I’m still reflecting on his message and a richer response in warranted.
But, I can say this….His message seemed radical…but only because Christians have too often loved so poorly.
They were convicting words, for me, for those who claim to forward the Gospel, and also sadly–for most of humanity. The Gospel it turns out is highly subversive and radical because it turns the all too common bad bits of human nature upside down and refutes them. Love and Grace are downright scandalous. We get Grace wrong. Almost all the time.
But the lecture was far from depressing. It was heavily laced with hope. His topic revolved around honor.
I hope to revisit the themes, but for now here’s an anemic glimpse of the approx 3 hour lecture (yes, there was a 20 min break involved in the middle).
QUOTES:
“We have a religious duty to honor everyone.” (including those who persecute us)
“Misplaced fear is one of the primary reasons we fail to honor. We should replace the fear of each other with the fear of God.”
“The [American] founding is not a pretty story. It’s an ambiguous story. It’s drenched in injustice but also suffused with ideals and institutions that can be affirmed (by Christians). It’s also the story of our own hearts. We have no excuse and we have to own our own divided history.”
” [Grace means] I am not the sum of my deeds.”
“Everyone who loves or wants to be loved distinguishes between person and deed. Forgiveness is “unsticking” the deed from the person.”
”Fear undermines honor.”
”Forgiveness presupposes that sin & sinner are distinctive from each other”
“How do we know that we are speaking the truth in love? We are gentle.”
“We bear false witness (to the Gospel) when our words don’t match our deeds.”
“Peace is not agreement. It is sacrificial love…The means is the end.”
”1 Peter: command: “Have tolerance with others when (you are) persecuted.”
“But, more than tolerance, we must honor (and respect) them.”
“Gentleness is a servant of respect.”