Spirituality for the Rest of Us by Larry Osborne

Spirituality for the Rest of Us: A Down-to-Earth Guide to Knowing God by Larry Osborne


My rating: 5 of 5 stars





I've been reading some really great books lately. This was no exception. Many times Christians get discouraged by the cookie-cutter approach to living the Christian life. A one-size-fits-all mentality does seem to pervade churches and the idea for how to best grow in the Christian walk. But how we are doing spiritually has to do with growing our relationship with God. And all relationships are not handled the same way. We are all different people with different abilities and skills and ways to relate. Thus each of us will have a different relationship with God based on our own strengths and weaknesses. This book takes us through growing spiritually without trying to follow some set formula or list of do's and don'ts. Very refreshing look at growing spiritually.

Hustling God by M. Craig Barnes

So many times we spend our time trying to get God's blessing. But it is not something that we can attain with our striving and trying. The author takes us through the life of Jacob in the Bible. He was promised the blessing before he was even born and yet so many times throughout his life he struggled to grasp the blessing in his own plans and ways. A good reminder that God is more interested in who we are than in what we do. He blesses us because of who He is and not because of what we do. He is faithful, a God of love and grace, and nothing that we do or don't do changes that.

Hustling God by M. Craig Barnes


My rating: 4 of 5 stars





Quotes:
“Why would you let what you do not have define you? You have already received the gracious love of God. Do you really need more?”
“The great idea that possesses you is your true vocation. It is the dream that focuses your life. It can’t be contained by a job, which is never more than a temporary means of fulfilling your dream.”

Read-a-Thon Wrap Up

I was able to get some more reading done before going to bed around 10:30. I finished another book - Spirituality for the Rest of Us by Larry Osborne. Great book! That was another 62 pages. Plus I got around 46 pages read in Green by Ted Dekker (Book 0 of the Circle trilogy) and another 6 pages in The Knight by Steven James. So another 114 pages from my last update. So 309 pages altogether. While that sounds like a very measly amount compared to most of the read-a-thoners, I am quite happy with how I did, especially with finishing 2 books!
Thank you to all those who stopped by with encouraging comments!

Read-a-Thon: Update #2

Well, I finished 1 book so far. Woo hoo! I finished Hustling God by M. Craig Barnes. The review will be posted later. Pretty good book overall.

Pages read so far (more or less):
101 (Hustling God)
61 (Spirituality for the Rest of Us)
33 (The Knight)

195 pages - cool! I may or may not check in again before going to bed. I don't plan to stay up the full 24 hours. But I'm pleased with how much reading I've gotten done. It's fun to read others' posts of how they are doing. Happy Reading!

Mini-Challenge: Collectors' Obession

From Caribousmom's blog:

Collection Obsession

Most obsessive readers are also collectors. Besides books, what do YOU collect? Here is your task:

1. Take a break from your reading and wander around your house.

2. Take digital photos of your non-book collections.

3. Post your photos or images and tell us a little about your non-book collections (just a few sentences is fine).

4. Come back here (to Caribousmom's blog) and add your link to your post in Mr. Linky at the bottom of this post (please use a DIRECT/perma-link to your post and not just to your blog).

Ooh, yes, we collect a lot of stuff. I think I already have pictures of our various collections on my Flickr account, so will post those. We collect plush giant microbes:

Various microbes that are blown up and made into plush toys. Pictured here are the cold virus, a bookworm, ebola, the bad breath bacteria, and other microbes.

And various versions of Monopoly:


And I like to collect giraffes (my favorite animal since I lived in Kenya):

An interesting bit of trivia - my online name is "Twiga" which is actually giraffe in Swahili.

Read-a-Thon: Update #1

Starting pages:
Hustling God - page 96
Spirituality for the Rest of Us - page 96
The Knight - page 11
Green - page 77
Ordering Your Private World - page 11

I'm making good progress in both Hustling God and Spirituality for the Rest of Us. They have easy-to-read chapters. I should be able to finish both of them today if nothing else.

Consumed:
1 cup of coffee
bowl of Honey-Nut Cheerios with milk
almost 1 can of Diet Dr. Pepper

About to have my lunch - chili with cheese, eaten with scoop chips. Mmmm!

The Read-a-Thon Begins

And so we're off! I might not even be awake yet, but decided to set this post to auto-post for the morning. I plan to get up when I'm ready, start with laundry and begin with the pile of books.

The "currently-reading" or "perusing" pile of books:


The potential pile (including some comic books):


The sustenance:


And just because it's new and I wanted to share - our new bookshelf!

TSI: The Gabon Virus

TSI: The Gabon Virus by Walt Larimore


My rating: 5 of 5 stars






An Ebola virus that is airborne - what a nightmare that would be! In this book that is what is encountered that must be fought against and stopped before it becomes a pandemic. The Time Scene Investigators research past plagues looking for clues to help with current ones.
This was a great suspense and quick read! I'm hoping there will be more books like this - maybe this is the beginning of a series?

Tomorrow is the Read-a-Thon and I am so NOT ready! AAGGHH! I've been sick a good portion of the week. I'm now feeling better but don't really have a pile of books ready to go for the Read-a-Thon. So I'm not sure how much I'll actually accomplish.

Connecting by Larry Crabb

Awesome, awesome book!

Connecting by Larry Crabb


My rating: 5 of 5 stars




Excellent book on connecting with others and using community to help heal each other and develop a deeper intimacy with God. We can be there for each other and encourage each other to grow through the trials and difficulties we encounter.

"So Adam, and all his descendants with him, struck out on his own, independent from God, dependent on self, all because he did not believe God could be that good. We have all since committed ourselves to seeing how we can manage without connecting with a God we don't fully trust."

"We experience fear (maybe I don't have what it takes), rage (it's just not fair that I am not able to get what I need), and demandingness (someone better come through!)."

"...basic life strategy, continuing to do whatever creates personal pleasure and working hard to avoid whatever brings pain."

"We are strongly inclined...to depend on ourselves and prove that we have something of value within us, to come up with a manageable plan to handle life's challenges, to protect ourselves from whatever might frustrate that plan, and to experience a sense of internal well-being that we were designed to enjoy. And these four sets of pressing passions lie behind our more visible problems."

"As we give up what we wrongly depend on to maintain our sense of well-being, we're dying to death, but it seems as though we're dying to life."

"We are instructed to die to the flesh, to identify, despise, confess, and resist whatever urges are within us that direct us to something or someone other than Christ for the experience of life."

"Our souls were built for a satisfaction that only heaven can provide. Then the ache will finally be gone."

"Our fiercest battles are fought when we seek with all our heart to trust God so fully that we see every misfortune as something he permits and wants to use, to know him so richly that we turn to no one and nothing else to experience what our souls long to enjoy, to love him so completely and with such consuming passion that we hate anything that comes between us and eagerly give it up."

A Taste of Fame (Potluck Catering Club novel)

Taste of Fame, A: A Novel by Linda Evans Shepherd


My rating: 4 of 5 stars






The Potluck Catering Club is back and this time they have been chosen to be contestants on a tv reality show. In the usual style of each chapter being from a different character's viewpoint, the women meet these new challenges together and with their dependence on God to get them through. Another great read!
And recipes are included in the back of the book for all you cooking fans!

The Sacred Romance by John Eldredge & Brent Curtis

The Sacred Romance Drawing Closer To The Heart Of God by Brent Curtis


My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Wonderful book! So uplifting and inspiring for the Christian journey that we are on. A reminder that this world is not all that there is, we are on a journey to a better place. The longings we often feel are that we were made for more than this. This is a re-read for sure, a continuing reminder to have eternity as my focus in my walk with God.
I got this book out of my church library, but I think I might have been the one to donate it there.

Anniversary Trip

October 10th is Jono's and my anniversary. We celebrated 12 years this year. To celebrate we decided to go up to Frankenmuth, MI for an overnight and have a little getaway. We took Friday off work and headed up. After spending some time at Bronner's we headed over to Birch Run to check out the outlet stores. There we discovered that there was a $5 Christian Book Sale outlet store!! Check out my loot!


For dinner, we ate at Zehnder's and had their famous chicken dinner.


On Saturday, we had a great breakfast at our hotel, the Drury Inn & Suites

and then headed out to River Place shopping malls. It's a cute little shopping area in downtown Frankenmuth.

There we tried out the Mirror Maze - what a blast! Trying to find your way through this maze, and you keep running into mirrors. It was a lot of fun.






We got some fun stuff at the shops, including some cute socks (I love reading and Cat socks).

Also got me some football pants and Vikings socks

A Vikings doll

and a hilarious mini traffic cone (saying is "Next Mood Swing in 6 Minutes")


We had lunch at Bavarian Inn Restaurant and then headed home. All in all, it was a great weekend!

Fantasy Football Update

Well, we've passed the Week 4 mark in the fantasy football challenge. It's been quite interesting for me this year being in 3 different leagues and keeping track of my players. I have an Excel spreadsheet set up to show my different leagues and which players are in which and what their bye weeks are. Then I have to pay attention for potential injuries as well. I didn't realize that Frank Gore was out injured and I have him in 2 of my leagues. Oh well!

The amazing thing is that I am actually 4-0 in the Facebook fantasy league. I had to do some rearranging this week since Frank Gore is out injured and another of my running backs has a bye week. My back-up running backs are not that great, so I did some dropping and adding of players this week. Not sure what that will do to my winning streak, but we'll see how it plays out in Week 5. In the NFL league that I'm in, I am 2-2, with a Loss the first week, then a Win, then a Loss, then a Win in Week 4. That puts me in 3rd place in my division. Then in my church league through Yahoo, I am also 2-2, with a Loss, 2 Wins, and a Loss. That puts me in 4th place in that league.

I have been having so much fun playing fantasy football this year. I enjoyed it last year, but this year I have really been getting into it. This is definitely a hobby I plan to continue each year.

The Read-a-Thon Is Coming, the Read-a-Thon Is Coming!

Mark your calendars for October 24! The Read-a-Thon is back. To sign up, visit the official site - Dewey's Read-a-Thon.

Medical Thriller: Microbe by Bill Clem

Oh good grief! Don't even bother with this one! My word, it was dry and not well-written at all. Typically I probably wouldn't have even bothered to finish it but I wanted to find out what exactly the green slime was that was killing so many people. The plot was 'eh', the character development was pretty much non-existent and the grammatical errors and typos were distracting. One glaring error was a reporter was called Bill at one point in the book and then Ian later on. I think they were referring to the same character but not exactly sure.

I gave this one 2/5 stars. At least I can count it toward the Medical Mystery Madness 09 challenge since I finished it. I think I'll pass on reading other books by this author.

The Surrogate

The Surrogate: A Novel by Judith Henry Wall


My rating: 4 of 5 stars





Interesting read on a surrogate relationship gone wrong. When Jamie's grandmother dies she is left with no money and not much prospect for the future or being able to finish college. When the opportunity arises to be a surrogate mother for a wealthy televangelist, she decides to do it. But the conditions of her surrogacy turn out to be more difficult than she anticipated.
There were parts of the book where it seemed like it dragged a bit, but my interest was piqued enough to continue and it would pick up again. I'm not sure what genre this would fall under - maybe drama. Good book overall.