BOOKS, WONDERFUL BOOKS
I've meant to write about the books I've been reading this year but the time has gotten away from me. So here's an end of the year list of the books I've read and some of the books I will attempt to read in 2008. I got some great ones for Christmas but they will require some serious effort to get through.
2007 Books
Feminine Appeal by Carolyn Mahaney - very good book. I've read a lot of books on biblical womanhood and this one was special.
Tired of Trying to Measure Up by Jeff VanVonderen - I didn't think I'd get much out of this book but as soon as I started the second half the Lord proved me wrong. I've been living half the gospel. I'd like to write about this soon.
Free At Last by Tony Evans - Again, I didn't think there was anything new in this book for me but God has used it in a powerful way. I've loved Tony Evans for a long time and he nails it in this book on who we are in Christ.
The God Who Pursues by Cecil Murphy - Very powerful book explaining how God has pursued various people throughout the Bible like Moses, Jacob and David. He still pursues us today.
Choosing Forgiveness by Nancy Leigh DeMoss - very good book defining what forgiveness means and what it doesn't.
The Heritage of Lancaster County Trilogy by Beverly Lewis - I didn't read much fiction this year but this series I just couldn't put down. It got a little trite by the end but it was a good easy read overall.
Raising Your Children Without Regrets by Catherine Hickem - I'm almost done this book. This lady is great and I've met her personally. Her main point in this book is to be an intentional mother who is aware of her children's value and potential.
Faithful Women and Their Extraordinary God by Noel Piper - This is the only Piper I read this year! I love biography and Noel Piper did a great job telling the story of some fantastic and godly women from Sarah Edwards to Helen Roseveare.
Tears in a Bottle by Sylvia Bambola - If you don't have a heart for the unborn you will after reading this passionate and well researched novel.
The next few books in the list may surprise some but I had a definite reason behind reading them. I've recently become convicted that I need to have a firm foundation underneath the beliefs I have. My oldest son and I have been following the '08 elections and decided to follow a specific candidate - Hillary Clinton. I wanted to have an accurate assessment of her so I wouldn't just be spouting something I heard Hannity or Limbaugh say. So I read four and a half books about her in about a two month period. It was very enlightening and I think I have an objective opinion about her now.
Hell to Pay by Barbara Olsen - This book is quite partisan in its tone but I trust the author who happened to be a lawyer on one of the many investigations into the Clinton administration. Tragically, she died on 9/11 when her plane crashed into the Pentagon. Her insights would be very interesting now.
A Woman in Charge by Carl Bernstein - This was the first book I read. I was hoping it would be objective but I soon learned otherwise. Mr. Bernstein attacks George W. Bush any chance he gets and prematurely decides that the Bush administration is the worst in history. I did get a very thorough history of Hillary's childhood though. Very enlightening.
The Case Against Hillary Clinton by Peggy Noonan - I really like Peggy and found her book to be well written. There's an especially great section where she writes about a meeting Hillary supposedly had with Hollywood elites telling them how they could clean up their act. Peggy is supposedly listening in on this conversation. The whole thing is so believable until the last second when she says it never happened. She wrote that pretend incident to show what Mrs. Clinton could do if she wanted to.
The First Partner by Joyce Milton - I found this to be the most objective book of the bunch. Mrs. Milton starts out as a fan but after her research she becomes very sour on the Clintons. I would recommend this book out of all the ones I read if you wanted to get a good background on the Clintons.
All Too Human by George Stephanopoulos - What's refreshing about this book is the humility and candor that is expressed by the author. George did not know the Clintons until 1992 and so he came into a relationship with starry eyed optimism for all he hoped Clinton could be and do. I only got halfway through because I realized I wasn't really getting much on Hillary. Plus, I had waded through the sewer enough and needed to get clean, if you catch my drift.
Christian in the Wake of the Sexual Revolution by Randy Alcorn - this book was great for me to renew my mind about how little the world understands sex the way God created it. Great book full of practical wisdom.
Well, that's 17 books. I know I left some out but I can't remember them right now. I'll do another post on books for 2008 and maybe another one on the read alouds I've done with my kids this past year. Blessings to all!
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Friday, December 21, 2007
CONVICTIONS PT.3 - HOMESCHOOLING
Years ago, when our oldest was a preschooler, we didn't have any pressure on us to send him to school. That decision was made for us because of the fact that we had only one car. There was no way he could go to preschool. We also didn't feel like it was worth the money. It was important to us that he stayed home. When it came time for kindergarten we put in an application with a local private Christian school. We had decided that our educational choices would be in this order - private, homeschool, public. I hadn't researched homeschooling at all because I assumed our children would just go to this great Christian school we'd been introduced to. Well, that decision was sort of made for us as well. When it came time to enter kindergarten my husband was in the middle of what would become 15 months of unemployment. Private school tuition was definitely out of the question. I remember the day I finally realized I would be homeschooling. I went out to the garage and cried my heart out to God. A flood of emotions came over me - fear, anxiety, and unwillingness. I didn't want to homeschool. I didn't know how to do it. At this point my conviction to homeschool had nothing to do with desire or a belief that it was the right thing to do. All I knew was that we had decided for some reason that it was better than public school. So I went to the library and got two books. One was The Field Guide to Homeschooling by Christine Field and the other was The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise. The more I read the more excited I got. The formation of a conviction had started. But the initial foundation was admittedly weak. I started out committing my usual error of being a sheep. I was a Well-Trained Mind sheep. I thought I had to do everything by that book. Decisions about curriculum didn't come from a well rounded study of what was out there combined with what would work best for my son. I just got everything the Well-Trained Mind said I should get. For a couple years that was how I did it. After a while I began to flesh out my convictions and read more about the benefits of homeschooling. I saw the benefits lived out in my first son who was able to read very quickly and didn't have to be held back. I was able to correct behavioral problems immediately and I didn't have to wake him up at the ridiculous hour of 6am. I was able to skip things that were just busy work and we had the freedom to study things he was interested in. When my second son started school I started to own my convictions more. I wasn't a sheep following the Well-Trained Mind mold anymore. This was out of necessity. My second son, as you might have read in a previous post, did not take to reading right away. He did not follow the prescribed plan in the book. This is where I saw the benefits of homeschooling in a different way. He doesn't sit still and has a hard time paying attention sometimes, but I don't have to worry that I'll get a call from the school saying that he should be tested for ADD. I realized earlier in the year that we were going too fast in reading and I had to go back 30 pages in the book. I had the freedom to go faster with my first son and slower with my second. My third child followed along the same path in that she wasn't a quick reader. But again, I had the freedom to not do much phonics instruction in kindergarten. I knew she wasn't ready. And that was OK. I've come to a point where I'm not beating myself up because she's not following the prescribed timeline in the Veritas Press catalog. (Has anyone else done that?)
When I first begin to form a conviction I can be a rather obnoxious zealot. I have been this way with homeschooling. I would look at other families and privately criticize them for putting their children in public school. I would get smug when I heard another public school "horror story" like how the local high school principal was embezzling money or how a local elementary school teacher couldn't show the true progress of a friend's daughter because she was going too fast and that didn't fit the bureaucratic forms she had to fill out.
I remember when my zeal started to soften. A friend of mine had been homeschooling her daughters for a couple years but at the end of one school year she found out her father had terminal cancer. The next school year was going to be very tough and she didn't know if her father would be alive by the end of it. So she and her husband decided to put the girls in public school for a year so she could spend as much time as she could with her father. I didn't really agree with the decision, but who was I to tell her differently?? I was not going to question such a hard decision. I think it was at that point where I began to be a little less zealous and little more compassionate. Each family is different and each one is responsible for making the best decision they can regarding their children's education. I can be a homeschool advocate but it is not my job to go into each family's homes and make their decision for them.
I believe there's a wise and a foolish way to advocate for your convictions. I admit to being a fool in the past and sometimes still in the present as regards homeschooling. But I've also learned to be wise in how I speak. It's very easy as homeschoolers to bash public schools, especially when we're together. I need to watch this tendency. There are other people listening, including my children. My children can become prideful and arrogant if I'm not careful with my tongue. I don't want that to happen. The main point for me is this - do I want to win an argument and prove I'm right OR is it more important to love another person and show them compassion and understanding? Winning the argument glorifies me but treating other people with respect and compassion glorifies God.
Years ago, when our oldest was a preschooler, we didn't have any pressure on us to send him to school. That decision was made for us because of the fact that we had only one car. There was no way he could go to preschool. We also didn't feel like it was worth the money. It was important to us that he stayed home. When it came time for kindergarten we put in an application with a local private Christian school. We had decided that our educational choices would be in this order - private, homeschool, public. I hadn't researched homeschooling at all because I assumed our children would just go to this great Christian school we'd been introduced to. Well, that decision was sort of made for us as well. When it came time to enter kindergarten my husband was in the middle of what would become 15 months of unemployment. Private school tuition was definitely out of the question. I remember the day I finally realized I would be homeschooling. I went out to the garage and cried my heart out to God. A flood of emotions came over me - fear, anxiety, and unwillingness. I didn't want to homeschool. I didn't know how to do it. At this point my conviction to homeschool had nothing to do with desire or a belief that it was the right thing to do. All I knew was that we had decided for some reason that it was better than public school. So I went to the library and got two books. One was The Field Guide to Homeschooling by Christine Field and the other was The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise. The more I read the more excited I got. The formation of a conviction had started. But the initial foundation was admittedly weak. I started out committing my usual error of being a sheep. I was a Well-Trained Mind sheep. I thought I had to do everything by that book. Decisions about curriculum didn't come from a well rounded study of what was out there combined with what would work best for my son. I just got everything the Well-Trained Mind said I should get. For a couple years that was how I did it. After a while I began to flesh out my convictions and read more about the benefits of homeschooling. I saw the benefits lived out in my first son who was able to read very quickly and didn't have to be held back. I was able to correct behavioral problems immediately and I didn't have to wake him up at the ridiculous hour of 6am. I was able to skip things that were just busy work and we had the freedom to study things he was interested in. When my second son started school I started to own my convictions more. I wasn't a sheep following the Well-Trained Mind mold anymore. This was out of necessity. My second son, as you might have read in a previous post, did not take to reading right away. He did not follow the prescribed plan in the book. This is where I saw the benefits of homeschooling in a different way. He doesn't sit still and has a hard time paying attention sometimes, but I don't have to worry that I'll get a call from the school saying that he should be tested for ADD. I realized earlier in the year that we were going too fast in reading and I had to go back 30 pages in the book. I had the freedom to go faster with my first son and slower with my second. My third child followed along the same path in that she wasn't a quick reader. But again, I had the freedom to not do much phonics instruction in kindergarten. I knew she wasn't ready. And that was OK. I've come to a point where I'm not beating myself up because she's not following the prescribed timeline in the Veritas Press catalog. (Has anyone else done that?)
When I first begin to form a conviction I can be a rather obnoxious zealot. I have been this way with homeschooling. I would look at other families and privately criticize them for putting their children in public school. I would get smug when I heard another public school "horror story" like how the local high school principal was embezzling money or how a local elementary school teacher couldn't show the true progress of a friend's daughter because she was going too fast and that didn't fit the bureaucratic forms she had to fill out.
I remember when my zeal started to soften. A friend of mine had been homeschooling her daughters for a couple years but at the end of one school year she found out her father had terminal cancer. The next school year was going to be very tough and she didn't know if her father would be alive by the end of it. So she and her husband decided to put the girls in public school for a year so she could spend as much time as she could with her father. I didn't really agree with the decision, but who was I to tell her differently?? I was not going to question such a hard decision. I think it was at that point where I began to be a little less zealous and little more compassionate. Each family is different and each one is responsible for making the best decision they can regarding their children's education. I can be a homeschool advocate but it is not my job to go into each family's homes and make their decision for them.
I believe there's a wise and a foolish way to advocate for your convictions. I admit to being a fool in the past and sometimes still in the present as regards homeschooling. But I've also learned to be wise in how I speak. It's very easy as homeschoolers to bash public schools, especially when we're together. I need to watch this tendency. There are other people listening, including my children. My children can become prideful and arrogant if I'm not careful with my tongue. I don't want that to happen. The main point for me is this - do I want to win an argument and prove I'm right OR is it more important to love another person and show them compassion and understanding? Winning the argument glorifies me but treating other people with respect and compassion glorifies God.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
CONVICTIONS PT.2
Years ago I was a baby Christian and got invited to a bible study. The person who invited me was a friend and I was excited to participate. Everything was great until the end. We had group prayer and suddenly there were strange things I had never heard before coming out of people's mouths. After the bible study I found out what those sounds were - some of the people were speaking in tongues. I was more than intrigued. I was confused. Was this biblical? Thus began my first experience in navigating the non-essential issues of the Christian faith. I dove in head first. I talked at length with a friend who was firmly convinced and confident that speaking in tongues was strictly a first century gift that had passed away. He showed me verses and gave me a book by John MacArthur called Charismatic Chaos. I was in college at the time and worked at the library. In between checking out books I searched the computer catalog for books on glossolalia (fancy word for speaking in tongues). After a while I came to the conclusion that speaking in tongues was not biblical and the people I knew who did it were just faking. An experience of another friend confirmed my conclusions. He attended a prayer meeting where he felt pressured to speak in tongues. He said he faked it and nobody was any the wiser.
Fast forward almost 16 years. What do I believe now? Surprisingly, I've changed my opinion on the issue. I've read more on the issue and studied a little more and I'm just not so dogmatic about it. I used to be, and still tend to be, very concerned about getting all my convictions "right". I need to make sure I have all my theological ducks in a row. The orthodoxy (what I believe) needs to be correct AND the orthopraxy (how that belief is lived out) needs to be correct too.
It has been very easy for me to be a sheep and follow whatever new thing is out there. One of the main reasons for this is a fear of man and a perfectionism that is rooted in a works based faith. I will form my convictions based on what someone I respect is doing. If their family or their marriage looks great then I will buy whatever book they've written and go to whatever conference they're speaking at. Or maybe this pastor or teacher or author is totally on my wave length theologically. I can tend to adopt his/her views on a variety of issues without studying them on my own. That is not the way to form convictions.
Romans 14 speaks about principles of conscience. In the first century the questions were about whether to eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols or whether to honor one day over another. Today we are confronted with decisions about education, birth control and a host of others. Paul's point is still the same though. He says that you must be firmly convinced in your own mind remembering that we live and die for the Lord and one day we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. That should sober us. We can get so myopic and miss the whole point. "So then let us pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another." (Romans 14:19) Are we ever told in Scripture to make sure everyone else holds the same convictions that we do? No, I don't think so, but we are told many times to love one another, accept one another, pray for one another, forgive one another, bear with one another, etc.
Without fail, whenever I have gotten so myopic and self-centered about my convictions, love for others has been the first thing to go. Satan grabs the foothold I've offered through my pride. I begin to regard others with contempt instead of compassion. My first reaction is not mercy but criticism. Paul called this being fleshly and acting like mere men in 1 Corinthians 3. They were boasting of being of Paul or Apollos. I boast of following Piper or the classical method of homeschooling. What is this other than jealousy and pride?
It is perfectly fine to be fully convinced of your position on non-essential issues. Romans 14:5 and 14:22 say just as much. In my opinion the trouble comes when confidence in your position elevates that issue to the level of an essential. There are some who are so convinced that homeschooling is right and biblical that they will almost declare those who don't homeschool to be in sin. They don't say it outright but their tone has the aroma of judgment and contempt. I raise my hand and confess that I've been guilty of the same thing in more than a couple areas, not just homeschooling.
Well, that's enough for now. Next time I'll write about some specific convictions I have and how I've come to have them and express them.
Please tell me what you think and what your experiences have been. I'll leave you for now with Romans 15:2-3 ~ "Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to his edification. For even Christ did not please Himself..."
Years ago I was a baby Christian and got invited to a bible study. The person who invited me was a friend and I was excited to participate. Everything was great until the end. We had group prayer and suddenly there were strange things I had never heard before coming out of people's mouths. After the bible study I found out what those sounds were - some of the people were speaking in tongues. I was more than intrigued. I was confused. Was this biblical? Thus began my first experience in navigating the non-essential issues of the Christian faith. I dove in head first. I talked at length with a friend who was firmly convinced and confident that speaking in tongues was strictly a first century gift that had passed away. He showed me verses and gave me a book by John MacArthur called Charismatic Chaos. I was in college at the time and worked at the library. In between checking out books I searched the computer catalog for books on glossolalia (fancy word for speaking in tongues). After a while I came to the conclusion that speaking in tongues was not biblical and the people I knew who did it were just faking. An experience of another friend confirmed my conclusions. He attended a prayer meeting where he felt pressured to speak in tongues. He said he faked it and nobody was any the wiser.
Fast forward almost 16 years. What do I believe now? Surprisingly, I've changed my opinion on the issue. I've read more on the issue and studied a little more and I'm just not so dogmatic about it. I used to be, and still tend to be, very concerned about getting all my convictions "right". I need to make sure I have all my theological ducks in a row. The orthodoxy (what I believe) needs to be correct AND the orthopraxy (how that belief is lived out) needs to be correct too.
It has been very easy for me to be a sheep and follow whatever new thing is out there. One of the main reasons for this is a fear of man and a perfectionism that is rooted in a works based faith. I will form my convictions based on what someone I respect is doing. If their family or their marriage looks great then I will buy whatever book they've written and go to whatever conference they're speaking at. Or maybe this pastor or teacher or author is totally on my wave length theologically. I can tend to adopt his/her views on a variety of issues without studying them on my own. That is not the way to form convictions.
Romans 14 speaks about principles of conscience. In the first century the questions were about whether to eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols or whether to honor one day over another. Today we are confronted with decisions about education, birth control and a host of others. Paul's point is still the same though. He says that you must be firmly convinced in your own mind remembering that we live and die for the Lord and one day we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. That should sober us. We can get so myopic and miss the whole point. "So then let us pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another." (Romans 14:19) Are we ever told in Scripture to make sure everyone else holds the same convictions that we do? No, I don't think so, but we are told many times to love one another, accept one another, pray for one another, forgive one another, bear with one another, etc.
Without fail, whenever I have gotten so myopic and self-centered about my convictions, love for others has been the first thing to go. Satan grabs the foothold I've offered through my pride. I begin to regard others with contempt instead of compassion. My first reaction is not mercy but criticism. Paul called this being fleshly and acting like mere men in 1 Corinthians 3. They were boasting of being of Paul or Apollos. I boast of following Piper or the classical method of homeschooling. What is this other than jealousy and pride?
It is perfectly fine to be fully convinced of your position on non-essential issues. Romans 14:5 and 14:22 say just as much. In my opinion the trouble comes when confidence in your position elevates that issue to the level of an essential. There are some who are so convinced that homeschooling is right and biblical that they will almost declare those who don't homeschool to be in sin. They don't say it outright but their tone has the aroma of judgment and contempt. I raise my hand and confess that I've been guilty of the same thing in more than a couple areas, not just homeschooling.
Well, that's enough for now. Next time I'll write about some specific convictions I have and how I've come to have them and express them.
Please tell me what you think and what your experiences have been. I'll leave you for now with Romans 15:2-3 ~ "Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to his edification. For even Christ did not please Himself..."
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