Peace In The Face Of Cancer (book review)

May 9, 2017 — Craig T. Owens

My Mom has cancer. Chances are very good that you or someone very close to you will be rocked with a cancer diagnosis during your lifetime. What do you say? What do you do when it feels like the bottom just dropped out of your life? Here is an excellent resource you simply must have close at hand: Peace In The Face Of Cancer by Lynn Eib.

Lynn is both a cancer survivor and a long-time patient advocate in an oncologist’s office, so right from the opening pages you will feel the compassionate care and knowledgeable insight Lynn brings to those with this medical turmoil swirling around them.

Lynn is also a seasoned writer, so she brings her word craft to this book, making it accessible for anyone. Whether you are the one with cancer, a caregiver to a loved one with cancer, or just someone who wants to be an empathetic friend, Lynn writes in a style that benefits everyone.

And, most importantly for me, Lynn is a committed Christian. Her faith in Jesus Christ brought her a solid hope in the midst of cancer’s uncertainty, and she has a way of imparting this sense of peace in page after page.

Peace In The Face Of Cancer is written in 40 short chapters, each targeting a specific aspect of cancer that both patients and caregivers will find extremely helpful.

I am a Tyndale book reviewer.

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13 More Quotes From “The Broken Way”

May 8, 2017 — Craig T. Owens

Ann Voskamp’s book The Broken Way is a whole new way of looking at pain, disappointment, shortcomings and brokenness. You’ve got to read this book! You can check out my full book review by clicking here.

“The only way to the abundant life is to love the right things in the right ways.”

“The self is ultimately never really sacrificed in giving, but our real self is ultimately found.”

“Sacrifice isn’t so much about losing what you love, but giving your love on to whom you love more. When you sacrifice for what you love, you gain more of what you love.” 

“What matters most is not if our love makes other people change, but that in loving, we change.”

“Be the bread so broken and given that a hungry world yearns for more of the taste of such glory. Be bread so broken and given to a hungry world that your own hunger is filled in communion with God.”

“Until you see the depths of brokenness in you, you can’t know the depths of Christ’s love for you.”

“Reduce repentance to a single act at the beginning of your Christian life and you reduce your whole Christian life to an act.” 

“Relationships only get to exist as long as they keep breathing in the air of mutual forgiveness.”

“The best investment of your life is to love exactly when it’s most inconvenient.”

“The greatest danger to our soul is not success or status or superiority—but self-lies. When you listen to the self-lies hissing that you’re unlovable, unacceptable, unwanted, that’s when you go seeking your identity in success or status or superiority and not in your Savior. Self-lies are the destroyer of the soul because they drown out the sacred voice that can never stop whispering your name: Beloved.”

“Every belittling of self is a belittling of God, a kind of blaspheming of God’s sufficiency and enoughness.”

“Grace embraces you before you prove anything, and after you’ve done everything wrong. Every time you fall down, at the bottom of every hole is grace. Grace waits in broken places. Grace waits at the bottom of things. Grace loves you when you are at your darkest worst, and wraps you in the best light. Grace seeps through the broken places and seeps into the lowest places, a balm for wounds.”

“Believers in Christ are seen by God exactly as Christ is seen by God.”

You can check out the first set of quotes I shared from The Broken Way by clicking here.

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Inside & Outside

May 8, 2017 — Craig T. Owens

When God was about to deliver the Israelites out of Egypt, the last event that displayed His power is now remembered as the Passover. It was the night that anyone who followed God’s command to sacrifice a perfect lamb and apply the lamb’s blood to the doorposts of their house was spared His judgment. In other words, His judgment passed over that house.

How did an Israelite family know that God’s judgment had passed over them? Quite simply, their firstborn child was still alive the next morning.

Jesus described Himself as not only the sacrificial Lamb and the saving Blood, but He also said, “I am the Door.” When we place our faith in what Jesus did for us on the Cross, His blood is applied to our heart, we enter in His door and we are safe from God’s judgment.

But how do we know that God’s judgment has passed over us? Are there any visible signs?

Actually, God gives us two assurances that we have been saved from His judgment:

  1. The inner witness of the Holy Spirit
  2. The outward evidence of our new life in Jesus

The Apostle Paul talked about his inner turmoil when he tried to live a life he could control (note the prevalence of me, I, and my, and the absence of any mention of Jesus in Romans 7:14-24). His bottom line conclusion—O what a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

But then he discovers the power of Christ: Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord, and as a result of this he discovers…

  • there is no more condemnation
  • there is no more death
  • there is no more hostility
  • there is no more fear
  • there is now life
  • there is now freedom
  • there is now assurance of God’s love

How? By the Holy Spirit’s inner witness in his heart (see Romans 8).

With this inner witness, a new lifestyle (the outward evidence) begins to show, as Paul begins to live a brand new life. This brand new life on the inside shows on the outside. Paul says it’s a life full of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

So here’s the new cycle for a Christian that an assurance of salvation from God’s judgment, and gives an encouragement to live a life that glorifies Jesus our Savior:

The inner witness of the Holy Spirit assures me of God’s love ➞ I want to live a life that pleases Him ➞ the Holy Spirit internally approves or corrects my outward lifestyle ➞ I continue to live outwardly in a way that is showing more fruitfulness …. and on and on and on it goes. 

All for the glory of God!

If you are a Christian, do you have that inner assurance? If you do, are you acting on it outwardly so that people can see the difference Jesus has made in your life?

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Poetry Saturday—In Heavenly Love Abiding

May 6, 2017 — Craig T. Owens
Wherever He may guide me,
No want shall turn me back;
My Shepherd is beside me,
And nothing can I lack.
His wisdom ever waketh,
His sight is never dim:
He knows the way He taketh,
And I will walk with Him.


Green pastures are before me,


Which yet I have not seen;


Bright skies will soon be o’er me,


Where the dark clouds have been.


My hope I cannot measure:


My path to life is free:


My Savior has my treasure,


And He will walk with me. —Anna Laetitia Waring










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God’s Plan For His Church

May 4, 2017 — Craig T. Owens 




“God has called His Church into existence to be a Body so filled with His presence, so luminous with His glory, so moved by His goodness and love, and so empowered by His Spirit, that the peoples of the world will be eager to learn from the Church how they, too, might become part of such an admirable and praiseworthy endeavor (cf. Micah 4:1-8). God intends to make His Church an object of the world’s praise. And to do this, He is placing people on the walls, so that they can see the world as it exists without, and the community of faith as it struggles within; and so that, elevated above both, they can cry out day and night, taking no rest and giving Him no rest, until He does what He intends to do in making His Church a praise in the earth once again [Isaiah 62:6-7]. … When it comes to seeing God’s people revived, His churches renewed, and the world awakened for the Gospel, the power of God will flow in response to the prayers of His faithful people, or it will not flow at all.” —T.M. Moore






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Thursdays With Oswald—A Dangerous (But Vital) Prayer

May 4, 2017 — Craig T. Owens 




Oswald ChambersThis is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Oswald Chambers. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Oswald” in the search box to read more entries.


A Dangerous (But Vital) Prayer


     No one but a fool or a sincere soul would ever pray this prayer—‘Search me, O God’ [Psalm 139:23-24] … Any soul who prays that prayer will be answered. … 


     If you want to know what the scrutiny of God is like, listen to Jesus Christ: “For from within, out of the heart of man, evil thoughts proceed…” [Matthew 15:19], and then follows a rugged catalog of things few of us know anything about in conscious life, consequently we are apt to be indignant and resent Jesus Christ’s diagnosis—“I have never felt like a murderer, or an adulterer, therefore those things cannot be in me.” To talk in that way is proof that we are grossly ignorant of ourselves. If we prefer to trust our ignorant innocence we pass a verdict on the only Master of the human heart there is, we tell Him He does not know what He is talking about. The one right thing to do is to listen to Jesus Christ and then hand our hearts over to God to be searched and guarded, and filled with the Holy Spirit. … 


     Jesus Christ has undertaken through His Redemption to put into us a heart so pure that God Almighty can see nothing to censure in it, and the Holy Spirit searches us not only to make us know the possibilities of iniquity in our heart, but to make us “unblameable in holiness” in His sight.


From The Soul Of A Christian


Are you willing to really pray this prayer, listen to what the Holy Spirit says, and then allow Christ’s work of redemption to make you unblameable in holiness?


Or, Chambers asks, “Are we willing to let God scrutinize us, or are we doing the worst of all things, trying to justify ourselves?”


It’s your choice.






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8 Quotes From “Born After Midnight”

May 3, 2017 — Craig T. Owens 




A.W. Tozer’s writings are nearly five decades old, but they still ring with prophetic truth for this generation. Check out my book review of Born After Midnight by clicking here. Below are a few of the quotes from this book.


“It may be said without qualification that every man is as holy and as full of the Spirit as he wants to be. He may not be as full as he wishes he were, but he is most certainly as full as he wants to be. … The problem is not to persuade God to fill us, but to want God sufficiently to permit Him to do so.”


“In of book of Acts, faith was for each believer a beginning, not an end; it was a journey, not a bed in which to lie while waiting for the day of our Lord’s triumph. Believing was not a once-done act; it was more than an act, it was an attitude of heart and mind that inspired and enabled the believer to take up his cross and follow the Lamb whithersoever He went.”


“I am afraid we modern Christians are long on talk and short on conduct. … Our Lord and His apostles were long on deeds. The Gospels depict a Man walking in power, ‘who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with Him’ (Acts 10:38). The moral relation between words and deeds appears quite plainly in the life and teachings of Christ; He did before He spoke, and all the doing gave validity to the speaking.”


“We settle for words in religion because deeds are too costly. It is easier to pray, ‘Lord, help me to carry my cross daily’ than to pick up the cross and carry it.”


“‘Whoever will be great among you, let him be your minister,’ said our Lord (Matthew 20:26), and from these words, we may properly conclude (and the context strongly supports the conclusion) that there is nothing wrong with the desire to be great provided (1) we seek the right kind of greatness; (2) we allow God to decide what is greatness; (3) we are willing to pay the full price that greatness demands; and (4) we are content to wait for the judgment of God to settle the whole matter of who is great at last.”


“God may allow his servant to succeed when He has disciplined him to a point where he does not need to succeed to be happy. The man who is elated by success and cast down by failure is still a carnal man. … God will allow His servant to succeed when he has learned that success does not make him dearer to God nor more valuable in the total scheme of things.”


“While we cannot determine circumstances, we can determine our reaction to them. And there is where the battle is to be fought and the victory won.”


“To ‘accept the universe’ does not mean that we are to accept evil conditions as inevitable and make no effort to improve them. So to teach would be to cancel the plain teaching of the Scriptures on that point. Where a situation is contrary to the will of God, and there are clear promises concerning it in the Scriptures, it is our privilege and obligation to pray and labor to bring about change.”


More quotes from this book are coming soon…






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Born After Midnight (book review)

May 2, 2017 — Craig T. Owens 




A.W. Tozer spoke and wrote with a prophet’s voice. Though many of his books are nearly a half-century old, they ring with a timely message to which the church today must take heed. Tozer’s Born After Midnight is one of his most hard-hitting, but needed messages.


Tozer notes that many revivals in church history were born after midnight. Not that there is anything super-spiritual that takes place in the wee hours of the morning, but really this is a call to perseverance. Tozer spoke out strongly against cushy Christianity, against those who thought becoming a Christian was their key to an easy life, or those who expected God to work for them.


Those Christians who are ready to roll up their sleeves and go to work for Christ, Tozer preached, were those who were more in line with the very first Christians of the Bible. Tozer reminds us that “taking up a cross” to follow Jesus isn’t popular, nor is it a road to accolades from the world. But those who will persevere with Christ—even working late into the hours after midnight—will reap the blessings of God’s presence.


A.W. Tozer pulls no punches, but he doesn’t purposefully go out of his way to wound people either. His tone is both confident and humble. Listen to his words as he opens this book:


“To sit even for a moment in the chair of the teacher and write that which may affect the life and character of numerous persons is not only a lofty privilege but a grave responsibility as well.


“The only qualifications I bring to the writing of these pages are love for the Triune Godhead and a sorrowful concern for the spiritual welfare of the church, which our Lord purchased with His own blood.


“If there is anything here good or helpful to the children of God, it must be attributed to the operation of the Holy Spirit who often condescends to work through unworthy instruments. Whatever else may be found here is due to human weakness and is better forgotten.”


This is a fantastic book for our age, and I urge all Christians to read it.


I am a Moody Press book reviewer.






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Much Needed God Time

May 1, 2017 — Craig T. Owens 




“Jesus’ prayer time was not alone time but Father time. He was always escaping into boats, up mountains, to the water, into the desert—anywhere to grab a moment with God. These were not retreats. These were advances. The soul needs two things as a tree needs water and light: solitude and society. Together they form a barbell that the soul lifts to get strong and healthy.


“Solitude is not solo time but time with God. Solitude is a relationship word, another name for a relationship with the self and with the Source. Solitude is not a time-out from relationships, for relationship is central to solitude. Aloneness is not soulful sophistry but sophistication and maturity of relationship with God. A lot of ‘spiritual problems’ are not struggles with God but with self. A lot of mental torments and tossing and turnings of the soul could be solved by a good night’s sleep … or a good day’s diet … or a good long walk … or a good hug … or some deep solitude. But true spiritual struggle needs God-time.” —Leonard Sweet, The Bad Habits Of Jesus


For more quotes from this book click here and here.






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New Name = New Nature

May 1, 2017 — Craig T. Owens 




All throughout the Old Testament we find hints about Jesus. Then as the New Testament dawns, the brilliant light of Jesus makes sense of all the hints we had previously seen.


One of the way God hints at the arrival of Jesus and what He would do for mankind is found in the names of people. Hebrew names are interesting things. Sometimes they are quite literal. For instance…


    

  • 

      

    • A baby who was born at one of Israel’s lowest points was named Ichabod = God’s glory has departed.
      • 

    • A baby who was born with quite a lot of hair was named Esau = hairy baby.
      • 

    • Esau’s twin brother was hanging on to his heel when he was born, so they named him Jacob = the one who grabs the heel.
      • 

    

    • 



At other times God tells parents what to name their babies before they are born. These names tell a story in themselves of what is coming…


    

  • 

      

    • After a time of upheaval in Israel’s history, God directed the parents to give their son two names: Solomon (which means peace) and Jedidiah (which means beloved by God). This brought reassurance to the parents and to the country.
      • 

    • When God was about to bring a quick answer to a problem, He directed the parents to name their son Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz, which means God will bring the reward sooner than you think.
      • 

    

    • 



But what is most interesting to me is when God changes someone’s name to reflect the new nature in their life.


Abram’s name meant exalted father, but God changed his name to Abraham, which means father of a multitude. His wife’s birth name was Sarai (princess) and it was changed to Sarah (a noble woman).


In these name changes, two things happened (see Genesis 17:1-15):


    

  1. God put His own name into theirs. God’s name means I AM. We sometimes pronounce it Yahweh, but that is only a guess since the Jews wrote His name without the vowels. That means His name was the unpronounceable YHWH, sort of a breath-sound. So Abram became Abrahaaam and Sarah became Saraaaaah. 
    2. 

  2. God took the burden off them and put it on Himself. It was no longer Abram’s responsibility to become an exalted father, or Sarai’s responsibility to make herself a princess. God said, “Only with Me in you can you become who I want you to be!”
    3. 



As you follow Abraham and Sarah’s descendants, you will see time and time again God reminding people: You can’t do it on your own. You must have Me in you in order to live the life I have for you!


Hoshea was born as an Israelite slave in Egypt, yet his parents gave him this name that means deliverer. Before God could use Hoshea to bring the Israelites into the Promised Land, He first changed his name to Joshua, which means God is the ultimate deliverer.


Joshua in the BC Hebrew language is the same as Jesus in the AD Greek language.


Jesus Christ is the ultimate example of being able to fully deliver people not just from physical slavery, but from the eternal consequences of sin. Man cannot save himself, but Jesus Christ can.


That’s why when you surrender to Christ and allow Him to be your Lord and Master, He puts His name in you: CHRISTian! A new name, and a brand new nature because of what it means to have Christ in you.


Check out this video where I explain the cool story behind more name changes—








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