When Rivadeneira was disappointed by life, she didn't feel like shouting a hallelujah. But then it occurred to her . . . maybe she could grumble one! Sharing candid stories and inspiring Scripture, she encourages you to stop blaming yourself, circumstances, or God for the challenges you face---and praise him for things that make your life worth living.
I am sure we have all had that time when we really don’t feel like shouting for joy, but we know that joy is not supposed to be dependant on what we feel like.
Right?
This book focuses on the age old question of how to find God in the midst of suffering.
And it does it well.
The book is a great mixture of real life examples, and practical applications. Each chapter contains a little bit of both.
The author makes her story both interesting, and inspiring, without becoming too preachy or holier-than-thou.
I was a little worried it might seem too trite, but altogether it delivers on what it promises.
I think it is saved by how honestly the author opens up about her own shortcomings and difficulties. It makes it very heartfelt, and relevant.
3 stars out of 5.
I received this book free from the publisher through Tyndale book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
“FOLLOW ME.”
These two words echo the heart-defining call of our Lord Jesus Christ to his disciples.
Sadly, this life-changing invitation has lost much of its original meaning. Immersed in a society that worships success, we have succumbed to a trendy fixation with leadership.
In I Am a Follower, author Leonard Sweet explains how Christians in a twenty-first-century corporate-obsessed culture have shifted away from a Jesus art of following toward a popularized form of leading.”
I read this book, because I thought this sounded like a good principle: That we need to move away from a culture of leadership (actually it says cult of leadership) and focus on followership.
Which is a good idea.
However I felt that the author spent too much time focusing on why leadership is bad, and leaders are misguided, and how we need to stop focusing on leadership.
BUT HE NEVER DOES.
I would have preferred to hear more about how to develop as a follower, and less about how bad leadership is.
I agree with the basic premise of this book,that we all want to be leaders, when we are called to be followers. But I think we can't undervalue the gift of leadership as a calling, provided it is secondary to the followership.
I also found the book a little disjointed. It starts out with a very good prologue, which tells a story about a YouTube video. Of course it assumes you have seen the video, which I have, but it might make more sense if they spent more time explaining what happened in the video, not just what it means. Then it has a section which seems to be part of the prologue, that compares following to dancing. Then it has in introduction, which is actually about 25% of the book, so I think I would have called it something else, like “Followership”. Then it gets to the three areas it wants to focus on (The way. The Truth. The life) which read like short snippets from a sermon or thoughts for the day.
I guess it just confused me more than it enlightened me, because it made it hard to follow any logical thread other than “LEADERS ARE BAD”
Not a book I enjoyed, and not one I would recommend. I am however led to believe that his other books are quite good, so I will try another one at a later stage.
I will be focusing on the Books of the Old Testament during Lent. Not reading the whole Old Testament, because that would be insane challenging, but rather meditating on each book for a day.
If you are interested, you can join me here.
Not just thinking about it, but READING it.
Wow.
I chose the Old Testament for a number of good biblical reasons, but the best was probably because… there are 39 book in the OT, and 40 days in Lent, so the maths is easier than 27 books. 
Plus some other really valid theological reasons.
I like what they are doing though, and I might try it in the future. Maybe next year.
But one of the things I really liked about it was this from their instructions.
4. If you miss a day, pick up where you left off. No guilt. No shame. Just more Jesus every day!
I think that is good advice for our Christian walk in general, and all Bible study in specific.
If you miss a day, pick up where you left off.
No guilt.
No shame.
Just more Jesus.
Every day.
Hoo Ha Ha!
If you have been following my blog for a few years, you will know that I have a mixed approach to Lent.
I don’t do lent in the sense of fasting or giving up something. (Usually)
What I normally do is decide what I need to do or change about my life for the next 40 days that will help me to be more focussed on God, and feel closer to Him on Resurrection Sunday.
Sometimes that involves giving up something, like sleep or reading, so that I can use that time for prayer. Sometimes it involves just being intentional about focusing on something relevant to my walk with God each day.
This year, I will be revisiting an old project of mine. About four years ago, I wrote a Haiku for each book of the Bible. I called this project Biblios Hokku, because it sounded snobbish and pretentious. (Actually there were/are good reasons, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t also being pretentious.)
So this year, I will be looking back at each book of the Old Testament, one day at a time. I will spend some time meditating on each book, and on what it means to me as a part of the whole Bible. I will take the day to think about the message of that book.
In this way, I hope to get through the whole Old Testament by Easter.
(Not reading all of it, but looking at how it fits together.)
One of the interesting things that I noticed when I was reading the Bible to do the Biblios Hokku was how we often miss the recurring themes and messages of the whole Bible when we jump around and read some books and leave others. Being “forced” to consider them all, in order, makes new truths jump out, and reinforces old ones.
As usual, I will not be posting the Lent Posts here. Rather I will do them on a separate, dedicated, blog called FISH for Lent. If you are interested in sharing this journey with me, then I invite you to swim over there and have a look around.
Just a little something to whet your appetite…
Biblios Hokku
By faith, for service
our worth only in His eyes
we are saved for Him.
If you want to find out what this poem means for me, visit http://lentfish.blogspot.com
Join my little Lent Group…
I know what you are thinking, and you are probably right. This seems like a stupid question. After all, the answer is obviously… No. (Isn’t it?)
Let me tell you a hypothetical story about a young man, his name was… uh…. Jacques Bate. Yes, let us call him Jacques Bate.
That sounds good. 
Jacques went to the airport to pick up a family member last week. (Hypothetically of course. This may not have happened.)
While he was there, he arrived behind a nun driving a tiny car. Do they drive any other kind? She was clearly waiting for someone on the same flight as he was, and when he went to pay for his parking on the way out, he was in the queue behind the two nuns at the automatic pay machine.
The nun who had come to collect the other one was quite distressed. She has paid her money, and received her ticket back. Now she wanted a receipt for the R10 she had just paid. (To put this in perspective, R10 is the cost of a small fries at McDonalds.)
The problem was that you could only get a receipt if you pressed a button marked “receipt” before you paid your money.
She had failed to do so, and now could not figure out why she could not get a receipt. So they gave up and walked away.
Mr Bate quickly paid his R10, and requested a receipt. Now he had arrived at the same time as the lady, and left at the same time as well. So their tickets were almost identical.
The problem was… if he offered the receipt to the nuns, would they accept it? It is not like they would be cheating anyone; they had really paid the R10, and just made a mistake. But taking it would be lying, wouldn’t it?
So Jacques gave it to them, and told them it had got stuck in the machine, and he assumed it belonged to them.
They took it without question, and walked away relieved. (Clearly even nuns are afraid of other nuns, and the convent book-keeper must be a real terror.)
Now this post is not to tell you what a wonderful person JB is. This whole thing might be hypothetical, remember.
It just got me thinking… is it actually wrong? Technically it is lying. Even if the motive is good. And nobody was hurt. And somebody was helped. And the truth was not damaged. (The receipt was for a real payment.)
But JB knew that they would not be able to accept the receipt with a clear conscience, so he made a decision to be the one who told the lie.
What do you think?
Hypothetically of course.
In South Africa, we have the oldest regularly-used large-gun in the world. What that means is that we have a big cannon that has been fired every day since 1806.
Why?
It is called the Noon Gun, and it is fired from Signal Hill in Cape Town every day at precisely noon. It has only failed to fire once in the last 200 years due to a technical hitch.
Timing guns were very important years ago to let the sailors calibrate their Maritime Chronometers. It was important that the Chronometer be re-set and checked regularly as a delay of even half a second could mean that you were not able to navigate accurately and you would be lost at sea. So every ship would make sure they were up to the second when they were in port.
For two centuries, the sound of an explosion echoing across the city has been a reminder to all as to what time it was, and for years you could see residents check their own watch at 12h00, and smile to see that they were only off by a few seconds. If it was more than a few seconds, they would frown slightly and adjust their own watch.
Of course the Noon Gun is more accurate than ever these days. The gun is fired electronically by a signal from the Southern African Astronomical Observatory, which is timed to even take into account the millisecond delay as the signal is relayed by telephone lines. The SAAO is synchronised to the Atomic Clock, making the Noon Gun one of the most accurate time announcement devices in the world.
BUT…
When the gun goes off these days, people reach for their ‘phones or look at their watches, not to check their own watches, but to check the gun! If their watch doesn’t agree, they shake their head sadly…. and leave their watch, assuming that the gun is late today.
After all, their watch/phone/p.d.a .can’t be wrong. If it disagrees with the gun, then the gun must be at fault. Their world is never wrong.
Unfortunately I think that is how a lot of people treat the Gospel these days. In the past, we would allow the Gospel to shape our understanding of the world. Now we try to shape the Gospel to our understanding of the world. Once upon a time if we heard God speaking to us, we would listen and obey, even if it made no sense.
Now we say to ourselves, “That doesn’t make any sense, I must be wrong.”
We try to change the Gospel by saying “It obviously doesn’t mean that, because that is illogical.” or “It can’t mean that, because that wouldn’t be fair.” or “God can’t mean us to do that, because it violates somebody’s freedom of choice.”
We think that God, and the Gospel, need to change to suit the modern world, instead of trying to make the modern world change to suit God.
We ignore the never changing, always correct sound of the Noon Gun, and try to follow our own devices. We just assume that if there is a problem, it is with God and the Bible, and so we change the message. We soften the blow. We try to make it “fit”.
But God didn’t call us to make His Word fit. He called us to make his word known. He called us to speak the truth. He called us to live lives that don’t always make sense to us, or those around us; and often fly in the face of what the world preaches.
HE called us to never stop listening for his voice, daily, and adjusting our own lives to match.
Are we doing that?
Are we being Faithful, and True?
Are we Faithful In Serving Him?
I am trying to be. How about you?
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