The Return Of Sherlock Holmes (book review)

August 23, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

I don’t read very many fiction books, but I am a huge fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s character Sherlock Holmes! So I just finished a wonderful collection of short adventures called The Return Of Sherlock Holmes.

Without being as wordy as some authors, Doyle paints such descriptive pictures of Dr. Watson, Holmes, his clients, his villains, and the crime scenes. I can “see” exactly how the characters look and “hear” how they talk, and can feel the emotions they are feeling. And the crime scenes are also painted in such vivid detail by Doyle, that I can catch all of the same details the Sherlock Holmes is taking in.

I cannot stand how some detective story authors “uncover” some hidden details at the very end that magically helps their protagonist solve the crime. The “magic” of Sherlock Holmes’ solutions is that Doyle allowed you to see everything Holmes saw. The real art is in the way Holmes uses his gift of deductive reasoning to solve the clues.

These mysteries are not always crimes. Often times they are simply perplexing problems. I’ve never been called upon to solve a crime before, but I certainly am called upon to find solutions to thorny problems. In that regard, I owe a debt to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for helping me learn from Sherlock Holmes how to deduce the most logical solution to my mysterious situations.

These are also great stories to read aloud, especially to your kids.

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Through My Eyes (book review)

August 22, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

Tebowmania has spread beyond the University of Florida, and even beyond the NFL, as Tim Tebow has captured the attention of so many around the world. Like me, you’ve probably heard way too many “talking heads” on TV or radio, or read countless reporters and bloggers, explain what makes Tebow tick. Here’s a better way to find out: Read Tim Tebow’s own words in Through My Eyes.

I’m a Tim Tebow fan, so I realize my opinion of his book might be slightly biased. I love this man’s work ethic, competitive fire, leadership abilities, and Christian testimony. But the question is: where did all of this come from?

In reading Through My Eyes you will learn about his tight-knit family who gave Tim a great foundation upon which to grow. You’ll see the inborn competitive spirit become more and more laser-focused on helping Tim accomplish what he believes is God’s plan for his life. You’ll relive the build up to the big games, the behind the scenes struggles and challenges, and how Tim responded to the wins and the losses.

Instead of letting others tell you what they think makes Tebow tick, find out for yourself as you see this outstanding athlete’s world through his eyes.

By the way, my 12-year-old son and I read this book together, and I found it to be a great conversation-starter for many of the issues he will face in his future. I could envision this book being used in a men’s Bible study or small group discussion, or even in a mentoring role.

An excellent memoir that was very well written.

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9 Quotes From “Praying Circles Around Your Children”

August 21, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

Attention parents and grandparents: You need to read Praying Circles Around Your Children! To help whet your appetite, here are nine quotes from this outstanding book by Mark Batterson (you can read my full review here) that caught my heart:

“Make sure your heavenly Father hears about your kids daily!”

“You’ll never be a perfect parent, but you can be a praying parent. Prayer is your highest privilege as a parent. …Prayer turns ordinary parents into prophets who shape the destinies of their children, grandchildren, and every generation that follows. …Your prayers for your children are the greatest legacy you can leave.” 

“We instinctively attach an ASAP to every prayer and ask God to answer as soon as possible. We need a paradigm shift. We need to start praying ALAT prayers—as long as it takes.”

“Please listen to me, parents: you are prophets to your children. Jewish philosophers did not believe the prophetic gift was reserved for a few select individuals. They believed that becoming a prophetic was the crowning point of mental and spiritual development. It was the natural by-product of spiritual development. It was the natural by-product of spiritual development. The more one grows in grace, the more prophetic one becomes. This doesn’t mean you will start predicting the future. It means you’ll start creating it. How? Through your prayers! Prayer is the way we write the future. It’s the difference between letting things happen and making things happen.” 

“One of your chief responsibilities as a parent is to be a student of your child.”

“Pray about what to pray about. …The purpose of prayer is not to outline our agenda for God; the purpose is to get into the presence of God and get God’s agenda for us.”

“One of our primary responsibilities as parents is helping our children identify their life themes. We need to help them find the sweet spot where their God-given gifts and God-ordained passions overlap.”

“Great parenting doesn’t just mean teaching your kids; it also means learning from them. Think of it as reverse mentoring.” 

“Your prayers will shape the destiny of your family for generations to come.”

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Praying Circles Around Your Children (book review)

August 20, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

Launching off his excellent book on prayer—The Circle Maker—Mark Batterson shares with parents and grandparents the incredible blessing of taking the initiative to pray for our children in Praying Circle Around Your Children.

Mark opens the book with these words:

“Make sure the heavenly Father hears about your kids daily! … You’ll never be a perfect parent, but you can be a praying parent. Prayer is your highest privilege as a parent.”

Just as The Circle Maker opened my eyes to new insights on prayer (you can read my review by clicking here), Praying Circles Around Your Children challenged me to step up into my privilege of being a prayerful Dad.

I loved the simple straightforward message in this book: Keep on praying for your kids.

  • Do you feel like you don’t know what to pray? Use the Scripture to help you find biblical promises to pray over your kids.
  • Do you feel like your prayers for your kids have been unanswered? Recommit to pray for them as long as it takes.
  • Do you feel like your prayers lack power? Find ways to pray with your kids where you keep them close, even laying your hands on them.
  • Do you feel like it’s too late to pray for your grown children or grandchildren? It’s never too late to talk to God about your (grand)kids.

This is a short book that you can easily read in one sitting, but the concepts you learn can be applied for the rest of your life.

I loved this book so much that I’m going to buy a copy for every family in my church. If you are a parent or grandparent, I cannot urge you strongly enough to pick up a copy of Praying Circles Around Your Children.

I am a Zondervan book reviewer.

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12 Quotes From “Greater”

August 16, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

This is an excellent book! Here are a dozen quotes that especially caught my attention…

“Jesus isn’t calling us to be greater than He is. He’s calling us to be greater with Him through His Spirit within us.”

“Most believers aren’t in imminent danger of ruining their lives. They’re facing a danger that’s far greater: wasting them.” 

“I talked about how many believers are stuck in mediocrity because they settle for good enough. But I think, just as often, we miss out on what God wants to do through us because we listen to the voice of the enemy telling us, You’ll never be good enough. And God could never use someone with your weaknesses, hang-ups, secret struggles, and dysfunctions.”

“God doesn’t see you through eyes of disapproval or disappointment. His presence is not a sign of condemnation. It’s actually an invitation. God is present with you, through His Holy Spirit, because He intends to uproot you from the tyranny of the familiar, shatter the monotonous life you’ve had, and take you on an adventure.”

“You can’t expect God to entrust you with a big dream if He can’t trust you to make a small start. You can’t have the Apostle Paul’s walk with God overnight. Big dream. But you can pray ten minutes a day beginning tomorrow. Small start.”

“It’s not what we do for God. It’s what we say to God—yes or no.”

“I can’t tell you where the greater life will ultimately lead you, but I can tell you where it starts. It starts where you are. You have everything you need to do all that God is calling you to do right now.”

“We often excuse ourselves from God’s greater vision because we believe we don’t have enough for God to work with. …All God needs to take your life to a higher level is all you have.” 

“Instead of always praying, ‘God bless me with more,’ dare to pray, ‘God, use what I have. Take what little I have and make it overflow.’”

“I’m learning that I don’t have to put my unfulfilled dreams and unanswered prayers in the column labeled Wasted. I don’t have to write them off as losses at the end of each year. I can trust in the Lord with all my heart and not lean on my own understanding, because He’s my Trustee (see Proverbs 3:5). …If you don’t see the results you’re praying for and you’re praying in faith, then, according to God’s will, He must be putting your prayers in a trust fund. …Everyone experiences what seem to be unanswered prayers. But in God’s economy, no one’s faith is ever wasted. God is working on our behalf even when our prayers don’t seem to be working at all. Maybe one day we’ll see that the greatest setbacks in our lives were actually the greatest setups to seeing God’s glory in places we didn’t even know to look.”

“Greater isn’t an automatic, permanent position; it’s an intentional daily decision.”

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17 Quotes From “What Matters Most”

August 14, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

What Matters Most is sure to be a thought-provoking, conversation-starting, paradigm-challenging book. You can read my full review of Leonard Sweet’s book by clicking here. To help whet your appetite for this book (that you’re going to read very soon, right?), here are 17 quotes that especially caught my attention…

“To save the world we don’t need the courage of our convictions. We need the courage of our relationships… Especially the courage of our relationship with the Creator, the creation, and our fellow creatures. Our problem in reaching the world is that we’ve made rules more important than relationships.”

“Western Christianity is largely belief based and church focused. It is concerned with landing on the right theology and doctrine and making sure everyone else toes the line. The Jesus trimtab, in contrast, is relationship based and world focused. It is concerned not so much with what you believe as with Whom you are following.” 

“Relationship is one of the things that distinguishes Judaism and its radical Christian revision from other religions: God calls us into a relationship. Christianity is much more than a wisdom tradition or a moral system or a path leading to higher states of existence.”

“We don’t follow Jesus because we understand Him or because we know the truth about Him. We follow Jesus because He is the Truth, and He leads us into truth through our relationship with Him. …The Jesus call to discipleship is an invitation to enter a relationship with the person doing the teaching, not simply an intellectual encounter with the principles He taught.”

“The postmodern quest has been misunderstood as an abandonment of the quest for truth. It is far from an abandonment, but is rather a rerouting of the quest for truth along more relational and less rational paths.”

“If we shift our focus away from truth as right teaching and correct doctrine, and instead center our lives on truth as a Person and faith as a relationship with that Person, what does this do to evangelism? Evangelism shifts from an attempt to indoctrinate a skeptic into a new belief system and makes the gospel proclamation a process of inviting others into a relationship with God. Evangelism is as much invitation as it is proclamation. It is inviting others into a relationship with God so that the Holy Spirit can make Christ come alive in them and live in them and they can live in God’s fullness and providence. Evangelism is not leading people into right beliefs about Jesus. It is introducing people to a relationship with Jesus the Christ.” 

“Obedience, in the biblical sense, is not ‘doing what you are told.‘Obedience is living relationally, even ‘indivisibly,’ with the Holy One so that we honor, uphold, receive, and follow all that God is and all that God is calling us to become.”

“It’s time to end the theological error of talking about how to make the Scriptures ‘come alive.’ The Word of God is alive. It’s we who must ‘come alive’ to the Scriptures.”

“I can either be right, or I can be in a relationship with my neighbor.”

“The Holy Spirit is not a gift to individuals. The Holy Spirit is a gift to the body of Christ.”

“Relationship, not numbers, show if growth is biblical, healthy, and truly fruitful. Perhaps it’s times to declare a moratorium on statistics in the church. What if the only thing we reported was the answer to this question: ‘Is spiritual fruit in evidence in your church? Give me the stories, not more statistics.’ My dream for the church? God’s people telling more God stories than golf stories. An authentic Great Awakening is when people can’t stop talking about what God is doing.”

“James Hillman defines deepening growth as ‘work in the dirt.’ Plants can’t grow heavenward without first growing downward. Colorful blossoms are the byproduct of bland, down-and-dirty roots. Relationships that blossom are knee-bending, hands-dirtying digs into the bedrock issues. …If our relationships are to bear fruit, they first must become rooted in the soil of the Spirit. …If you’re concerned about your dignity, think about this: Where’s the dignity in being hung naked on a tree? Where’s the dignity in kneeling down to wash the dirtiest parts of someone’s body? Where’s the dignity in being born in a manger?”

“Prayer doesn’t plunge us deeper into ourselves, but deeper into others. The early church looked at prayer as a conversation with God that brings us into greater intimacy with God and others. Prayer is not what you do to get God’s attention. Prayer is what you do to bring yourself to attend to God and to pay attention to others.”

“For Jesus it was not ‘Poor people and other outcasts, find yourself a church’; it was ‘Church people, find yourself the poor and the outcasts.’” 

“Sadly, the church is too busy connecting people with the memory of Jesus, the Jesus Who ‘once was’ or the promise of a returning Christ Who ‘is to come.’ Meanwhile, the church is neglecting the Jesus Who ‘is right now,’ the Jesus Who lives all around us in the lives of the poor, the sick, the disabled, the persecuted, and the dying.”

“Being a Christian is more about relationship with God than beliefs about God; more about the presence of God than the proofs of God; more about intimacy with truth than the tenets of truth; more about knowing God’s activities than knowing God’s attributes. It is time to move from a religion that seeks to comprehend God to a relationship that seeks to encounter and be a home for God.”

“God does not come to us offering rules; God comes offering relationship. Truth is not found in the solving of difficult theological riddles. Truth is found as we get lost in the mystery of faith. You can maintain your bearings while getting lost… if Jesus is leading the way.”

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The Greatest Thing In The World (book review)

August 13, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

If you’ve been around Christian circles for any length of time, you probably have heard people talk about the “love chapter” (1 Corinthians 13). And if you’ve heard anyone talk about this love chapter, you probably think you’ve heard all that there is to hear about it. But think again: The Greatest Thing In The World by Henry Drummond will open your eyes to new insights on love.

D.L. Moody heard Henry Drummond share these thoughts live in 1884, and said, “It seemed to me that I had never heard anything as beautiful.” Moody then asked Drummond to not only share this with his congregation but then requested that principals in his schools read this to the students every year.

There are some wonderful insights on love that I think you will thoroughly enjoy in this short book.

If you have a Kindle, you can download The Greatest Thing In The World for free by clicking here. If you don’t have  Kindle, you can read it online for free by clicking here. And be sure to check out some of the quotes I shared from this book by clicking here.

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What Matters Most (book review)

August 13, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

The Old Testament prophet thundered out, “Thus saith the Lord!” and called the people back into a right relationship with God. The prophet’s words were not always well-received or well-liked, but they were always proved correct by God Himself. In many ways I felt like I was hearing a prophet’s voice in Leonard Sweet’s thundering words in What Matters Most, words calling us back into a right relationship with God.

The subtitle of the book is dead-on: How we got the point but missed the Person. Wow, how true that is! Christians and the Church today have so focused on getting the point of Christianity right, that we’ve missed the central point of CHRISTianity: Jesus Christ!

Leonard Sweet reminds us that we weren’t created to follow the rules of religion in isolated, solitary lives, but we were created to be in an intimate relationship with the Creator and with His creation. Sweet writes:

“What makes us human is the same thing that makes us created in the image of God. We are not isolated entities, self-contained, existing apart from God or from one another or even from God’s creation. We are made for “community” and “communion” and “ecology” …. We are judged by the world not on the basis of how “right” we’ve gotten what we believe but on how well we’re living it—on how we love God and people.”

So in What Matters Most Leonard Sweet focuses on those living relationships that should be the hallmark of Christians. Things like our relationship with…

  • our faith
  • our Creator
  • other people of faith
  • other people outside the faith
  • creation
  • arts
  • the unseen spiritual world

As I wrote earlier, often the prophet’s message was not received well initially. This is how you may feel when you first read What Matters Most. But if you will prayerfully read through this book, I think you will find (as I did) how these words resonate with the “Thus saith the Lord” tenor of Scripture and cause you to reevaluate your relationship with God and others.

I am a Waterbrook book reviewer. Check out some of the quotes I shared from this book by clicking here.

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9 Quotes from “Grant: Savior Of The Union”

August 8, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

Grant: Savior Of The Union was a very eye-opening biography to read (you can read my full review by clicking here). Here are nine passages that especially caught my attention:

“This I don’t want you to read to others for I very much dislike speaking of myself.” —Grant, in a letter to his father about the accomplishments of his soldiers 

“The first day out the regiment made it five miles. However, the next morning at six o’clock when Grant resumed the March, his men were unprepared to move. He allowed them time to rise and eat breakfast this time, but the following morning when the men were again not ready to march, Grant left without them. It must have been a sight to see half-dressed soldiers running after their commander. The remainder of the trip to Quincy was conducted in relatively good order. Grant boasted to his father that ‘my men behaved admirably and the lesson has been a good one for them. They can now go into camp and after a day’s March and with as much promptness as veteran troops; they can strike their tents and be on the march with equal celerity.”  —Mitchell Yockelson

At one battle some officers advised retreat. Grant replied, “Retreat? No. I propose to attack at daylight and whip them.”

When some in Washington, D.C., wanted to replace Grant with someone more experienced, President Abraham Lincoln said, “I can’t spare this man; he fights.”

A friend observed that at a banquet where toasts and speeches were made to honor Grant, “his face never changed its unmoved expression. It never lit up with excitement. …His silence was a native endowment, nothing studied, nothing acquired. … His greatest enjoyment was manifestly with [his wife and children]. Their presence and happiness made his face beam as nothing else would.” 

When Grant was given the rank of Lt. General—a rank no one had held since George Washington—Grant’s acceptance speech was very gracious:

“I accept the commission with gratitude for the high honor conferred. With the aid of the noble armies that have fought on so many fields for our common country, it will be my earnest endeavor not to disappoint your expectations. I feel the full weight of the responsibilities now devolving on me and know that if they are net it will be due to those armies. And above all to the favor of that Providence which leads both Nations and men.”

After Robert E. Lee signed the surrender agreement for the armies of the South, word spread to the Union forces, and celebration erupted. “Grant ordered the cheering to stop. He did not want the Union army to gloat and in any way insult the defeated Confederates. ‘The war is over,’ Grant told a staff member. ‘The Rebels are our countrymen again.’”

“It will be a thousand years before Grant’s character is fully appreciated. Grant is the greatest soldier of our time if not all time… he fixes in his mind what is the true objective and abandons all minor ones. He dismisses all possibility of defeat. He believes in himself and in victory. If his plans go wrong he is never disconcerted but promptly devises a new one and is sure to win in the end. Grant more nearly impersonated the American character of 1861-65 than any other living man. Therefore he will stand as the typical hero of the great Civil War in America.” —William T. Sherman

“Of all the American generals of the nineteenth century, it seems to me that Ulysses S. Grant better understood the role of the military in democracy than any other.” —John S.D. Eisenhower, historian and son of Dwight D. Eisenhower

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Morning And Evening (book review)

August 7, 2012 — Craig T. Owens

Charles Spurgeon was called the Prince of Preachers for good reason. And with his amazing one-year devotional book Morning and Evening, I think he should be called the Prince of Authors as well.

Some people are powerful public speakers, but struggle to make the transition to the written word, but this is definitely not the case with Charles Haddon Spurgeon. This devotional book offers two devotional readings for each day (one for the morning and one for the evening), that are not lightweight, cotton candy thoughts. Each devotional is a thought-provoking mini-sermon that stuck with me throughout the day, and gave me a wonderful prayer point each evening.

If you haven’t read anything from Spurgeon yet, this is a great place to start. If you are familiar with Spurgeon, this is a great place to continue your discovery. If you are looking for a soul-enriching devotional, you can’t go wrong with Morning and Evening.

What a great year-long journey I had with this masterpiece!

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