Having spoken just yesterday about the fine line between self-promotion and hiding one’s light under a bushel, it might surprise you that I would share a video at the begining of this post in which  Terry Virgo (who incidentally has recently joined Facebook) begins his slot recommending books at the Brighton conference by commending mine. There are a number of reasons why I feel very comfortable doing this, however.

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, Terry’s book review segments have been a major part of my conference life for three decades. No one who has ever heard him passionately commend a book could ever forget the very helpful way he does this. After all, this is the man who single-handedly sold the entire first UK print run of Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology with one announcement. Pastors would do well to watch this video and learn how to really persuade your people to get a hold of a book. One leader who seems to have learned from Terry’s skill in this matter is my own pastor Tope Koleoso, who sold 100 copies of Raised With Christ in 10 minutes! I want to permanently house a video of Terry at his memorable best.  This is a man who’s love for Jesus spills over into a love for books.

During such recommendation slots in the past Terry has routinely mentioned his own and his wife’s books. He does it always in a disarming way, for example saying “and this is a book by my wife’s husband…”   He does it humbly but boldly because nobody invests the ridiculous amout of time it takes to actually write a book unless they believe passionately in its message.  I make no apologies for suggesting that you buy my book.  I know that many of my regular readers have yet to get a copy (though the publisher is happy with the sales).  I know that considering the resurrection and all it’s implications can do you great good in your Christian walk.  The only reason I can think of that you should not get ahold of a copy is if you are already reading another book about the resurrection. 2010 has a few months to run yet, so please consider making sure this is the year that you read a book on the glorious victory of Christ and what it has accomplished for us.

If cost is an issue, then right now there is a great deal of 25% off at Amazon.com or over 40% off at Amazon.co.uk At those prices, why not get some copies for your church bookstore, or as gifts for friends.  Just think, you could get some Christmas shopping done early this year!  Before you say it, remember, this is not a book just for Easter time, any more than great books on the cross should only be read at such a time of year.

Finally, Terry also commends some other fine books that you should consider getting. The first is  Tom Schreiner, Magnifying God in Christ which Terry says gave him great confidence in a rickety airplane.

Next is a book called Planting Missional Churches by Ed Stetzer, who according to Terry has “five personalities pumped into one body.” Ed is well worth listening to and reading and serves us all well.

Finally my good friend Phil Moore’s books are all commended from his Straight to the heart of series. Available so far are Matthew, Acts, and Revelation

All of the above books along with many other helpful resources are available at the Newfrontiers online store

Following just over a month of this self-imposed near-total break from my online life (obviously not including my paid work!) what have I discovered?

1. Wordpress’s auto-publish feature is bullet-proof and a real gift
2. You hardly missed me as a result of 1. and my kind guest bloggers. Indeed, traffic remained pretty high considering it was August.
3. Phil Moore is better than I am at explaining why digital fasts are so important.
4. A week is definitely not long enough It took me much longer before I even began to experience digital withdrawal symptoms.
5. It really is hard to stay away from the Internet for several weeks. My “fast” wasn’t total as the weeks drew on. I did scan-read Twitter, Facebook and a couple of blogs a little towards the end. I also started to write this post 20 minutes or so before my deadline,  and last week even wrote a couple of tweets ready for publishing later when my wife had gone away (the observant may have noticed that they appeared in my Twitter stream and were quickly deleted!) I also and scanned and deleted most of my accumulated emails on the same day. Finally, I started an Omnifocus to-do list to capture a small handful of ideas for things to blog about when they began to hit me about a week or so ago.
6. The harsh truth is that I really don’t care about what my readers think about me as much as I thought I did (despite 5)   I trust I will continue to remember this and make sure that I take more care over being kind to my wife and children than I do over looking after you all!  Funily enough, I somehow suspect that the more I focus on pleasing my God and family, the more benefit I may be to you in any case.
7. Learning more about how to not believe your own publicity is a vital result of such a break.  I can’t improve on what I said about this last year. Running a blog can appear to be self-serving at first glance. There has to be a good balance, however, between arrogantly pushing oneself forward, and on the other hand hiding whatever one can share with others under a bushel.  I am not sure I always navigate that tightrope entirely correctly, but, you have to believe me that I know that of myself I have nothing to offer you.  I will not ever apologize for shouting about my savior, and his death and resurrection for us. I know that if I can point you towards him, and to good resources that will help you in your spiritual journey I will have fulfilled one of the roles that God has for me in this life.  It is not the most important one, however.  That is clearly being a husband and father, which is much harder than helping at least some of people who read this blog for a few minutes a day.
8. I remained really quite busy with secular work, preached three times, was on the radio once, and yet removing the digital piece resulted in me now feeling remarkably rested and refreshed. I may need to find some ways to lessen some of the burdens I carry.  Perhaps I need a secretary or something!
9. Just hanging out with the kids in the evenings watching TV, playing Scrabble & Risk with them on the iPad, and being beaten at chess by my 11 year old son is a whole lot of fun. I need to carve out more time to do this better even with the blog up and running. If I could be a better husband and father and a worse blogger that would be fine with me.
10. Having a break has made me itch to write again, and I have really enjoyed writing this post.  I won’t be giving up permanently any time soon!

Today’s is the second guest post from Ami Loizides Pruett of this summer season. Do follow her blog for more of this engaging material.

This past weekend for me was spent in the hospital (nothing serious!) and the night I got out I found myself praying and kind of apologising to God for not having spent time with Him. My prayers came to a standstill as my mind churned and I thought back to the drama and fears of the last few days…hold on a second! I realised that a) there’s grace and God totally understood that I was really ill and b) whenever I was about to undergo another scary test or have another needle stuck in me, I felt closer to God than I have in a while! In my desperation and fear I cried out to Him and He answered with His everfaithful peace and comfort – despite me not having had a ‘quiet time’ or studied that day. Something happens when we grow desperate and uncomfortable – God wraps Himself around us in a way that we perhaps don’t feel everyday. I think that if we’re in a position where we are extremely comfortable we lose our sense of desperation for God – which can hinder our faith in Him. What I mean is this: if you’ve come to a spiritual halt in your life where you’re not feeling the presence of God as you want to, the reason could be that you need to ‘get out of the boat’! Stick your neck out, take some risks! My husband and I live by the mindset that if we’re not crying out to God, if we’re getting complacent and too comfortable, something needs to change. Because at that stage the doors are wide open for pride to flood in and we think ‘Hey, we can make it on our own’ thus losing our sense of need for God. We as Christians should never want to be in a position where we think we don’t need Him – we rely on Him for our every breath and if we suddenly decide that we don’t, that can be a huge detour in our spiritual lives and the growth of our faith can be stunted. Whether you’re too comfortable in your finances, your job, your relationships or even your church – that needs to change! If it’s finances, give it away – bless someone anonymously, give extra to your church’s gift day, finance an initiative for work with the poor. If it’s your job - work as if you are working for God, ask God for fresh ideas and inspiration. In your relationships – start up a friendship with that new person in your small group, open up a bit more with your friends, share the gospel with your non Christian friends. In your church – serve more, give more, love and support more. Whatever is out of your comfort zone and forces you to cry out to God more, it’s going to grow and expand upon your faith. The whole Bible is covered with testimonies of God surrounding his people in times of trouble when they cry out to Him – let us get uncomfortable and never lose our sense of desperation to see His face!

• Abby Enck, Age 8: Social Entrepreneur: This post is from Brett and Alex Harris, those dynamos who keep reminding k… http://bit.ly/abbKZb #

This post comes from my friend Andrew Fountain, pastor of New Life Church Toronto:

Some of us were brought up in a legalistic environment where it was a fearful sin to eat food without first “saying grace”.^✱ I remember hearing of one woman who wanted to know how much food she there needed to be for her to have to give thanks. She was told that no grace was required for a cookie, but a coffee and doughnut required it.

Those of us who have come to enjoy God’s grace and understand that we are no-longer living under an Old-Testament legal system sometimes react in the opposite direction. We are so afraid of a formal religion that giving thanks for food is reduced to a brief “thank you God”, if we do it at all.

When I recently studied “thankfulness” in the New Testament, I was shocked to see how many of the references were to giving thanks for food. If you leave out the general prayers of thanks, there are more specific prayers of thanks for food than all the others put together!

In some places thanks is mentioned even when is seems unnecessary to the storyline, e.g. John 6:23 “Other boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks.”

Let’s look first at the times Jesus gave thanks. Two major events were the feeding of the five thousand and of the four thousand, In both cases there seems to be an emphasis on the thanks/blessing. Matthew and Mark recount the first event:

When John tells it, he interchanges “thanks” for “blessing”, and then repeats this fact later in v.23:

Matthew and Mark tell us of the feeding of the four thousand

In three of the Gospels we read how Jesus instituted “Breaking Bread”. (The New Testament rarely calls it communion or the Lord’s Supper.) Every time giving thanks/blessing the food is to the forefront:

And in fact, it was at the point that Jesus broke the bread and said the blessing that the two disciples recognized him:

The early church continued this practice. Sometimes we are embarrassed to give thanks in a public place such as a restaurant. Paul didn’t have a problem doing this in front of a group of pagan sailors and soldiers!

What is really interesting is that the freedom that the Christian has to eat all foods seems to be based on the fact that we are giving thanks:

Far from being a legalistic ritual, in these verses “giving thanks” is the very basis for our New-Covenant freedom.

Why food? Of course God wants us to be thankful for everything, but there is something special about the way food is both enjoyable and necessary to sustain us, which makes it uniquely suitable as an opportunity for thankfulness. “Saying Grace” is not so much a ritual as a trigger for joyful and vocal thanksgiving.

So how did doing this study affect me? Following Jesus’ example in this way is much more important in my life and now I love to give thanks for my food!

^✱ This was not my personal experience but I know many for whom it was.

Today’s blog comes from a new friend of mine, Purple Claire. Do go read her blog if you like her writing style:

If I were the obsessive compulsive type – say, the kind of person who carries books around in their original Amazon packaging and shudders slightly when someone asks to borrow one, in case they break the spine – if I were that kind of person, I would have planned it: I started reading One Day on 15th July. For those not yet on the bandwagon, it’s a novel which charts the ups and downs of a friendship over twenty years, taking 15th July of each year as a marker. It’s a great concept, and actually a bit of a page turner (ideal beach reading if you are not that person with the Amazon wrappers) and despite what I felt was a disappointing ending, I’d still recommend it.

Here, I suspect, is why I loved it: Emma could be me. She has a good degree from a reputable university but is adrift in a sea of vague possibilities, never quite settling on what to do with her life, dabbling in teaching before realising in her early thirties that all she has ever wanted to do is write.

Like me, she lies in bed on spring Saturday mornings listening to lilac envelopes thud onto the carpet, announcing yet another wedding; like me, she hovers somewhere between boredom and something uncomfortably like envy every time she hears of another pregnancy among her friends.

But here’s where we differ, and please forgive me if it sounds glib (or basic). It is not meant to be glib. It’s my rock, actually: for we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.

What that purpose is, for my life, I couldn’t tell you. Time was, I could have recited a ten-year plan; now I can barely see past Christmas. Life has not turned out the way I wanted or hoped or assumed or imagined. I may, like Emma, have met the love of my life at university, but he was not a Christian, and so that was the end of that.

But how comforting, how inspiring, how exciting it is that Someone knows. That the threads of my life are being woven into a beautiful tapestry by Someone who has been doing it for thousands of years with millions of lives. Someone who somehow orchestrated emotions like jealousy and events like the selling of a brother into slavery in order to feed a nation.

I am not going to pretend that I never feel adrift in life; that I now whoop with unfettered joy when tearing open the lilac envelopes; that my eyes don’t fill with tears when I listen to a young mum talking about the challenges and loneliness of it all, thinking inexplicably that is what I wanted and hoped and assumed and imagined that my life would look like.

But how very glad I am that were someone to write a novel about my life, the central question would not be: does she get the guy? That my value is not determined by that, or by success in that elusive career, or even by how many books I get published and sell. That I live for something different, something bigger, that I live for Someone who sees the end from the beginning, who is threading together my eclectic bunch of passions and the seemingly random events of my life for His purpose.

This post is from Brett and Alex Harris, those dynamos who keep reminding kids that they can achieve great things with their life:

Abby Enck is only eight-years-old, but her story provides an excellent blueprint for rebelutionaries on how to make a difference. This shy girl found a cause close to home (supporting her brother who has cerebral palsy) and took one small step to meet that need (raising $4.50 selling lemonade to buy crayons).

Once she had developed a successful model, she multiplied it (buying crayons for other kids too and equipping other people to sell lemonade) and that is only the beginning . . .

Read MORE at The Rebelution: Abby Enck, Age 8: Social Entrepreneur.