I’m going to give it to a friend, who just is just starting as a marketing director for a small company. I think it will give her an edge. Thanks to Thomas Nelson for making this book available.

My take away — moms make mistakes, daughters make mistakes. Moms and daughters: lavish grace on one another because the time is short. My mom just died, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to reconcile some of these issues with her before the “Sweet By and By” for her. In the end, forgiveness and salvation are the important issues, and Evans and Hauck “get it.”

I said “Amen” with Max Lucado, and closed his newest book, Fearless. The hairs on my arms and legs were standing on end, and I had tears in my eyes. That’s a first for me – and I read a lot of books!

In Fearless, Max Lucado somehow allows his readers to crawl into his lap and admit all the things that go “bump in the night” of our spiritual, emotional and physical lives. He addresses and dismantles those fears one-by-one, with the heart of a pastor, and with wonderfully picked scripture.

I started highlighting all the pithy quotations I wanted to use in my review, and found myself highlighting every page instead. In this 15-chapter page turner, Lucado exposes 13 of our fears, (as well as a few of his own) and puts them into beautiful context.

I loved an acrostic he used to help us stop worry in its tracks:

P ray first

E asy now

A ct on it

C ompile a worry list

E valuate your worry categories

F ocus on today

U nleash a worry army (of prayer warriors)

L et God be enough

Thanks to Lucado’s honesty, I don’t feel like a heretic when I sit in church teetering on the edge of fear and doubt. Apparently pastors go through that too. But the answer to our fears isn’t unbelief or total reclusiveness. Lucado says: “The worship of safety emasculates greatness. No wonder Jesus wages such a war against fear. His most common command emerges from the ‘fear not’ genre.” According to Lucado, of the 125 imperatives Christ issued, 21 of them urge us to take hold of our fears through courage, heart, and cheer.

This is an exceptional book. I’m sending one to each of my loved ones and keeping this one on my bookshelf for the next time I need an infusion of courage.

My friend Renae Brumbaugh asked me to review her first book, Morning Coffee with James. It was an honor and a delight to do so, and I’d like to share my review here before I post one at Amazon.com. You can pre-order her book there for only $10.39.  If you are fortunate enough to have a 7th grader at Cove Junior High this year, you might find out Renae is your child’s English teacher.  Here’s my review:

Morning Coffee with James is a delightful devotional that doesn’t read like a devotional! Since I do like to read my Bible with a cup of coffee, it fit my quiet time perfectly. The appeal of this book is in its format. Renae presents the book of James in five main chapters: What We Have, What We Do, What We Say, What We Feel, and What We Give.  Within those chapters, Renae provides morsels of truth that go so well with that cup of coffee.

The daily scripture is presented as the “first cup of coffee.” After the first cup, the “cream and sugar” is a self-reflection question, followed by an encouraging prayer. Next there’s the “second cup of coffee,” in which Renae teaches through cross references, to be finished to the “last drop,” which is a pithy quotation to finish that morning’s coffee.

Renae has a conversational style that teaches rather than preaches to the reader. And every few chapters she throws in some interesting coffee facts or recipes that are just fun to know.

I’m so glad Renae chose James as her first in this series, as it is such a good book to curl up and get to know. Maybe her next devotional book will be on “He Brews!”

Here’s an article from the Copperas Cove Leader Press in @ 2003.

By KRISTAN HALL
News editor – Halstead Elementary is overrun this year. Overrun, not with varmints, but with twins. Halstead has eleven sets of twins enrolled this academic year, a record number.

Aubrey and Alyssa Odum are seven-year-old twins who were born five minutes apart. Alyssa, who is older by five minutes, likes being a twin. “It gives me someone to play with,” she says.

Nine-year-old twins Breanna and Breonne Ande like being twins as well, though Breonne does admit, “Sometimes my mom calls me Breanna instead of Breonne.” Breanna is older by one minute.

Identical eight-year-old twins Maria and Anna Joseph love being twins. Says Anna, the younger twin – by one hour and one minute, “I love being a twin because when our brother is being mean, we still have someone to play with.”
Maria adds that it’s easier to talk to other twins. “Plus when you need to find one twin, you already know what she looks like,” she reports.

Although the girls say they aren’t mistaken for each other very often, Maria did pretend to be Anna once. “One time Maria told her teacher she was me,” says Anna. “It was funny,” giggles Maria. Until mom found out. Will Maria pretend to be Anna again? “Maybe not,” she says.

While eight-year-old twin Nisha Davis likes being a twin, her younger, by 11 minutes, sister doesn’t. “They always get me and her mixed up,” she grumbles. The duo are fraternal twins.

Identical five-year-old twins Hannah and Joanna Legare are often “mixed up” as well, they say. “I’m not Hannah,” states Joanna, the older twin.

Devin and Dane Parsons are the only twins that have one boy and one girl in the set. Eight-year-old Devin only likes being a twin sometimes, but loves being in a school with so many other twins. “You can make other twin friends,” he declares.

Other twins attending Halstead are four-year-olds Sebahn and Ayanna Baxter, four-year-olds Ryan and Aaron Brumels, six-year-olds Sydney and Taylor Phillips, five-year-olds Ashley and Asia Hemphill, and seven-year-olds Celia and Sonia Leslie, all identical.

Halstead Principal Coley Howell likes having a school full of twins. “It’s wonderful to have so many different sets of twins,” he states. The most sets of twins Halstead has ever had at one time is six, he says. He adds that the twins’ parents have been wonderful to work with.

I’ve been supporting Crisis Pregnancy Centers for about 20 years. It took me 15 years to work up the courage to actually volunteer at one. That’s what I’ve heard from fellow volunteers – they were drawn to the work, but it took them a long time to actually do anything about it. And those volunteers were women! If that’s how they feel about the work, can you imagine how much courage it would take for a man to volunteer?

So you can understand my surprise when a gentleman from my church, Carlos Rodriguez, started working at our Crisis Pregnancy Center! I knew him as an usher and deacon, who was forever escorting guests at our church to their various Sunday School classrooms and to the nursery. He and his wife Cathy were also participating in “Experiencing God Together” retreats at churches all over the country. Carlos was also a bereavement specialist at a local funeral home. He really didn’t need any more jewels in his crown, but that wasn’t what Carlos was about. He was about his Father’s work, sharing the gospel in as many venues and with as many people as he could.

He marched to the beat of the drums, and saw God working powerfully at the Crisis Pregnancy Center. Clearly, Carlos wanted to join God where He was at work. He started by teaching our “Dad U” parenting classes at night. Eventually we saw him during the day too, answering phones, and doing any task required. He had a servant’s heart.

Poor Carlos! We used him to do the “honey do” list that most girls hate. For example, he worked up in the attic, tirelessly moving boxes, and sorting donated items. One day, a passerby came in to tell us there was a dead rattle snake on our sidewalk. “CARLOS!”

The really neat thing about working with Carlos at the center was his interaction with the husbands and boyfriends who came in. While I would be counseling with a woman, Carlos would be in the waiting room talking to her boyfriend/husband. “Hello young man!” was the greeting. Then he’d sit down with them and just strike up a conversation. By the end of the meeting, many of the young men had given their lives to Christ even before the woman was done with her session! Amazing. But that’s what Carlos’ life, driven by the Holy Spirit accomplished on a weekly basis.

Did I mention that Carlos had leukemia? He struggled with it for years, but quietly and with dignity. He never complained or felt sorry for himself. He was more concerned with other peoples’ problems. For example, when I had to move my mom to assisted care, he was the one person who always asked me “How’s your mom?” Or when I was sick, Carlos would grab my shoulders and pray for me – without prompting. I started to look at him as my spiritual father at church. I felt I was his special friend. But I found out that many people felt that way. Carlos had a way of making everyone he knew feel like they were the center of his universe.

Carlos was faithful to attend our church’s Wednesday night prayer sessions. When it was time to pray, he was almost always first to pray for everyone. I felt my prayer requests being taken straight to the throne of grace when Carlos prayed.

Last summer I found out that Carlos was struggling with another bout of leukemia, but this time he couldn’t shake it. When I went to visit him in late July, he was already in a coma. When he heard the voices of his loved ones, I could tell he really wanted to come out and talk and pray, but he was too weak. It broke my heart.

A few days later, we drove to Colorado for a family vacation. After visiting Focus on the Family headquarters in Colorado Springs, I put in a prayer request there for Carlos. As we walked out of the building, I got the telephone call that Carlos had passed away. I cannot tell you the sense of loss and grief that came with that call. My friend had died and I would not even be at his funeral.

No one can replace Carlos. But I do have the comfort knowing that he’s not riddled with pain anymore, and that we will all meet again on that glorious day. In the meantime, he joins the ranks of the saints who make up the “great cloud of witnesses,” cheering us on to the work God has given us. Until we meet again, sweet Carlos.

As I drove in the funeral procession today and watched the oncoming traffic pull over to the side of the road to let us pass, I wanted to say to each one of them: Do you know who’s in that hearse? Did you know that Buck died Tuesday? Do you know this is S.C. Lee – the one our Junior High is named after?

Then I said out loud, partly to God, partly to myself: “Our world is a little bit worse today because Buck Lee is gone.”

We’ve only lived in this small town for 11 years, so we’re newcomers. The cemetery where they laid Buck to rest today held graves of citizens from 150 years ago. Some of their “kin” still attend our church. I can’t imagine having roots in one place for so long. A lot of them were related to Buck.  His parents were some of the original founders of our church, after all.

At the funeral today people talked about Buck’s lovely wife, Lynette, who died before we got here. Buck loved Lynette deeply, and couldn’t wait to be with her in heaven. I learned that Buck could cook, and people loved his banana pudding, pecan pies, and peach cobbler. Our family never got to sample those things or even visit him in his home.

But we were still blessed, because we worshiped with Buck and his family, even if it was for a short time. Buck drove himself to church well into his 80s. When we dropped off our children at Sunday School, we would see Buck sitting in the hallway, taking roll for the children’s department. That was one of the places he felt most comfortable in his 74 years of church membership. And the children loved him.

He told funny stories, mostly about himself. One story that stuck with me was about when he was the Sunday School Superintendent. He said he put out a suggestion box for people to comment about the quality of the Sunday School department. After several weeks with no responses, he practically begged for suggestions. He said he finally got one scrap of paper in the box, and it said “Get a new Sunday School Superintendent!”

When we sat near Buck in church, I would steal glances at him because I kind of hero-worshiped him. He was so kind to everyone. He had a smile for all reasons, for all seasons, no matter how old or stooped he got. Christ lived in him.

When we visited Buck in the nursing home, he was as interested in our children as their own grandparents. He often said he wanted to steal our twins. It made us all feel special.

Yes, the world is a LOT worse today because S.C. Lee died. See you in heaven, dear Buck.

I love these Verizon network ads, where someone can be just about anywhere in the world and get cell phone coverage. We get the ideas that there is an army of Verizon employees “behind” every cell phone call, eliminating any communication “dead” zones.

As Christians, we have an even bigger army making sure our communication with God is crystal clear. First and foremost, we have Jesus Christ, who is always interceding for us. Then we have a network of angels fighting in the heavenly realms on our behalf. Finally, we have each other, providing prayer cover and support.

Wow! What a network!

Fort Hood is open to the public in certain places, which makes for some great shortcuts to areas of our town. I drive onto the installation daily, and use back roads to take the children to school. Just recently, this sign was erected at both entrances to warn of the dangers of driving on an Army post.

The first time I saw the sign, I thought: Wow! Maybe they’re firing artillery close to these roads! I looked around and drove cautiously for a few days. I knew the dangers before the signs went up. I could see the tank trails for crying out loud! But for some reason, the sign made the danger seem more real to me. As with most warnings, however, now that I’ve traveled safely for a week, I cross my fingers and forge ahead, knowing that nothing terrible could possibly happen to me.

But if something did happen, wouldn’t people say: “They warned you! Didn’t you see the fine print that said ‘By Order of the Commanding General?’” Or maybe some would say: “I can’t believe that nice family was hit by artillery fire when they were crossing the tank trails on Fort Hood! What an injustice!”

Either way, we’d be hurt, even though we were warned.

Isn’t it like that with our Christian walk? Before we were saved, we lived lives filled with danger, but were supremely unaware. But after salvation, we’ve been given all kinds warnings to keep us out of danger.

We have the testimony of the Holy Spirit speaking directly into our minds and hearts. We have the Word of God telling us of specific dangers. We can’t claim to be unaware. In fact, God speaks to us in military terms about the tactics our adversary, Satan, uses and how to avoid being hit by his artillery.

Ephesians 6:11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. ¹²For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.  ¹³Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.  ¹⁴Stand firm therefore, HAVING GIRDED YOUR LOINS WITH TRUTH, and HAVING PUT ON THE BREASTPLATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, ¹⁵and having shod YOUR FEET WITH THE PREPARATION OF THE GOSPEL OF PEACE;  ¹⁶in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.

Again we see a warning about the devil’s tactics in 2 Corinthians 2:11, and are told to see to it “that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes.”

Will we cross our fingers and forge ahead, thinking: That’s just the Bible – nothing’s going to happen to me? Or are we willing to join David, who said “I delight to do Your will, O my God; your Law is within my heart.” (Psalm 40:8)

When trials come, I’m going to avoid shortcuts, heed the warnings and obey the orders of my Commanding General, so I won’t be hit by artillery fire.