iF@ITH by Daniel Darling – Review by Miriam Jacob

New Hope Publishers
ISBN-10: 1596692944
ISBN-13: 978-1596692947
December 21, 2010

iF@ith by Daniel Darling connects with God in the 21st century through an in-depth study of the real people in the Bible who instantly communicated with God, heart-to-heart, in a personally intimate way. How do we connect with God in the digital age of pixels, bandwidth, high-speed and warp speed, when “we are always plugged in and wired to the digital revolution”, with instant answers at the tips of our fingers? How do we restart our prayer life to open a high-speed connection with God? We live in a connected generation, moving at warped speed, through a maze of intricate data, traveling swiftly at the speed of thought. We send digital messages by email and receive instant, real-time answers in the blink of an eye. Reading iF@ith will activate your faith and set you on a unique road in this connected generation in which life explodes with data racing ahead at the warp speed of thought. Leap on board and surf with iF@ith. Your life will never be the same!

God certainly has a digital mission for this millennium. Where does prayer fit into the fast-paced and ever-changing scenario of today’s technological revolution, where  people are constantly plugged in and wired, with instant answers at their fingertips? iF@ith is Daniel Darling’s perfect response to the digital generation of which he is an integral part. Practical prayer refreshes your prayer life and opens an instant, high-speed connection with God. Do the centuries-old, time-tested truths of Christianity connect with the modern expectations of the digital era? “We are an always-connected generation, weaned on warp speed, raised on instant formula, with life revolving around our ever-expanding devices, exploding with data traveling at the speed of thought.” We send instant messages, emails and texts to people connected in the world wide web and get instant real-time answers in the blink of an eye. As we send and receive information , we get instant answers, one-on-one, person to  person.

With the advent of the internet and “the rapid acceleration of communication” at the click of a button, the lost art of letter-writing was duly revived in digital format as we strive to paint a digital masterpiece, carefully weighing the pros and cons of each word and the significance of every phrase used to embellish our artwork. Gone are the days when letter-writing was an exquisite art, duly executed on paper, with words dexterously painted like a portrait, every word significantly weighed to convey the most accurate meaning.

This is the fast-paced digital age of pixels and bandwidth, rebooting and opening high-speed internet connections, faced with the urgent need to be always-connected, racing on fast-track from high-speed to warp speed, as we struggle to cope with vast amounts of data transmitted at the lightning speed of thought. Digital messages by text and email demand instant, real-time answers, as we send and receive information to  communicate personally, one-on-one. Global communication makes gigantic leaps across oceans, spanning countries and borders, transcending time zones. It is as easy as the click of a button.”Nobody is ever out of reach, unavailable or offline.” You will see Jesus form deeply in you and discover Him smiling at you through the all-important missives of emails, text and chat messages.

In iF@ith, Daniel Darling enriches your walk with Christ through practical, revealing insights into the lives and times of biblical characters, those giants of faith who inspire our faith beyond the eye of reason. Faith is based on biblical fact. “The heart has its reasons of which reason cannot know.” Christ died for us and His undying love for us is the reason for our faith. “Love’s strength lies in love’s sacrifice and He who suffers most has most to give.”

Review by Miriam Jacob

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AUTHOR PROFILE

Daniel Darling is the Vice President of Communications for the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. He previously served five years as Senior Pastor of Gages Lake Bible Church in Gages Lake, Illinois, USA. He is a contributor to Leadership Journal, Gospel Coalition, and a variety of other publications. He has written several books, including his latest, Activist Faith. He blogs at www.danieldarling.com

WAITING FOR WONDER – Learning to Live on God’s Timeline – by Marlo Schalesky

WAITING FOR WONDER – Learning to Live on God’s Timeline

by Marlo Schalesky

Publisher: Abingdon Press,

15 Nov 2016.

Paperback: 272 pages.

ISBN: 9781501820106. Price: $16.99

Ebook: 224 pages.

ISBN: 9781501820113. Price: $16.99

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marlo Schalesky is an award-winning author of 10 books, fiction and non-fiction, including “Wrestling with Wonder: A Transformational Journey through the Life of Mary” (Zondervan) and “Waiting for Wonder: Learning to Live on God’s Timetable” (Abingdon Press). Over 1,000 of Marlo’s articles are published in Christian magazines, including Focus on the Family, Today’s Christian Woman and In Touch. A graduate of Stanford University, she earned her Masters in Theology, with an emphasis in Biblical Studies, from Fuller Theological Seminary. Marlo is the founder and president of Wonder Wood Ranch, a California charitable organization bringing hope to a hurting community through horses.

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REVIEW BY MIRIAM JACOB

Sarah, wife of the Biblical patriarch, Abraham, waited for wonder in her wilderness. Weary and worn-out with endless waiting, she had given up all hope of ever seeing God’s promises fulfilled in her life. With rich insights and refreshing hope, this book transforms Sarah’s deep-rooted weariness into stunning, eye-opening wonder to see God’s sacred plans and purposes unfold in her personal wilderness of waiting. Sarah’s decades-long, wearisome wait for God’s promises to happen in her life is heartrending and utterly riveting. New hope springs up in her heart to see God at work, hemming her in with wonder, as she waited for God’s wonder-working power to unfold, when life’s trials hit home mercilessly, threatening to engulf and submerge her in its devastating deluge. Waiting for Wonder is all about hope in the midst of despair as we read Sarah’s passionate story of agonizing heartache, bitter struggle and seemingly endless waiting upon God.

God’s timing is not our own. We believe God when His promise is new but as the long, seemingly endless years pass by and nothing really changes, desperation strikes our hearts. Yet, as we are Waiting for Wonder, God calls us to experience the Wonder of Waiting. We miss the wonder of God’s plan when we struggle to wait. Abraham’s wife, Sarah knew what it meant to wait. God gives us strength to hope against hope and pray for the desires of our heart to be fulfilled. Waiting for Wonder takes us into the heart of God to ask questions and discover God’s answers, to appreciate God’s plan for our lives and refresh our spirits, to rekindle our hope and renew our trust in God’s promises, and to learn to wait for God’s time.

Rich spiritual insights in this life-transforming book will fill you with wide eye-opening wonder as you clearly see God’s divine purposes in your wilderness of waiting. Are you Waiting for Wonder? As you wait for God’s promises to be fulfilled in your life, fresh new hope will spring up in your life, when God hems you in with wonder on every side. This inspiring book touches our hearts as we are Waiting for Wonder from God. It is all about hope, faith, love and trust. The Bible’s real life story of Sarah’s bitter heartache, struggle and forever waiting on God turns into a precious lesson for us to trust Him with our lives. If God wants us to wait as Sarah did, we must learn the lessons she did. This engaging story inspires us to come closer to God, dig deeper into faith and trust even more deeply in the God who will never let us down. In today’s instant world, waiting is considered to be a waste of time. But in God’s world, waiting is a priceless treasure to be discovered. .

In ‘Waiting for Wonder’, Marlo Schalesky’s deeply soulful and insightful wisdom is revealed as she passionately probes the unexplored landscape of Sarah’s wilderness journey, in the hollow canyons of the mountains and deep valleys of waiting, exposing the everpresent barrenness teetering at the precipice of doubt and despair. Sarah’s life is a silent testimony to how she fervently hoped against hope, trusting and believing in the endless years of waiting, that God would find a way out to illuminate the pure wonder of waiting, until He fulfilled His glorious promise to her.

Marlo Schalesky’s hard-won courage, wrested from the heart of despair, lights our hearts with love, inspires us with hope and illuminates our eyes to the pure wonder of waiting. Waiting for Wonder helps us to understand God, whose ways are not our ways, and trust Him still. Marlo sees very human people behind Bible characters, studying their lives for soul-transforming truth, saying it gracefully in all humility. Waiting for Wonder reveals Marlo’s devotion to the truth of God’s Word as she discovers wonder-filled moments of God’s grace. The spiritual truths in this book open our eyes in breathless wonder to see God in our waiting.

At the heart of Marlo Schalesky’s “Waiting for Wonder: Learning to Live on God’s Timeline”, lies an important spiritual truth. In our waiting, God calls us to more. Waiting is hard and learning to wait well, even more so. At first, we all wait well, with new-found faith and hope, expecting God to meet us at our point of need, to answer our persistent questions and bring our fledgling dreams to life. But what happens in God’s timeline, when troublesome days turn into wearisome weeks, tiresome months, and seemingly endless years? Do we still wait well or flag in zeal and become discouraged? Waiting on God is where we all want to be. Though we believe God when a promise is new, it gets so much harder as the long years pass by with no significant changes. That’s when desperation strikes and plans backfire, causing tremendous pain and distress. In the midst of all this waiting, God calls us to more.

Studying the life of Sarah, Abraham’s wife, who learnt to wait the hard way, we glimpse the character of God, as He works in the lives of Sarah and Abraham in their long wait for the child of God’s promise. Like them, as we wait for wonder, we wrestle with wonder. As Marlo Schalesky wisely points out, in our lives, God loves to redeem the deepest sorrow, the worst guilt, the most agonizing pain, transforming them into platforms for His glory to be revealed. When we are so deeply hurt that we feel the pain will never pass, so bitterly frustrated to see the fragments of our carefully planned lives crumble into dust, can we trust God to bring overwhelming good out of the devastation of evil. This awesome and inspiring biography of Sarah will encourage and refresh your soul as you wait for the God of all hope to reveal His glory in your life.

In ‘Waiting for Wonder’, Marlo gently dislodge deeply-wedged rocks of doubt and despair to transform our understanding of Sarah’s eventful life into the fullness of God’s glory. Gifted with the unique God-given ability to bring Biblical characters to life, portraying them as very humane people, Marlo sifts through their lives to glean rich gems of truth, revealing her selfless devotion to God’s Word, and her ability to discover life’s transforming wonder.

Waiting for Wonder ponders Biblical truths to reveal how God infuses wonder into waiting. Sarah’s life was filled with decades of promises still not come true, of desperate prayers of long, agonizing months turned into endless years. Sarah’s heart ached with the hope of a whole world blessed as she wrestled with the wonder of waiting. Who is this God of waiting who makes impossible promises, then asks Sarah and Abraham to wait, without even a glimmer of hope, and only the myriad stars to see in the silent sky? Who is this God of long intervals, painful delays, and yet-unanswered prayers?

To grasp the wonder of the God of the waiting room, we must find Him in the wilderness of waiting, where He seems most absent. Is anything too difficult for the Lord? He brings laughter when it seems too late. He is the God of wonder-while-you-wait. Sarah’s life is a soul-seeking journey of disappointment, doubt, and detours to discover God in the wilderness of life, believing in His commitment to bless all the families of the earth through her. Like Sarah, God calls us to wait for wonder, to laugh in the face of the impossible, to claim a blessing for the whole world, as we patiently wait for His time. Discover this God of waiting, of a whole world blessed through Sarah’s amazing life story, in “Waiting for Wonder” by Marlo Schalesky.

Miriam Jacob

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GOODREADS – WAITING FOR WONDER – Review by Miriam Jacob

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SACRED LOVE by Claudia Cantrell with Kim P. Davis

SACRED LOVE

by Claudia Cantrell with Kim P. Davis

New Hope Publishers

6 February 2017

Do you ever long for a deeply soul-satisfying love and a fulfilling sense of belonging to the only One who can give you the blissful joys of a happily-ever-after life? Sacred Love is the truthful, heartfelt and poignant love story of how a precious child of God can find triumphant victory over utter brokenness. Overwhelmed by the most distressing, traumatic and turbulent circumstances, you come face to face with an ultimate crisis of belief and a numb distrust of everything in life. Unable to carry the heavy burdens anymore, you surrender the bitter, painful past to God. By surrendering to the One who loves you the most, you learn how to live life more abundantly through Christ. Sacred Love compels you to run to Jesus Christ, your heavenly Bridegroom, your happily ever after. He is your own true love, the only One who can transform a sad life into a most joyful one. Jesus is our only reason for living. In Him, we live and move and have our being. When Claudia rekindled her first love for Jesus Christ and made a firm decision to love, cherish and obey His will in her life, God healed Dr. David Cantrell’s grieving heart and gave Claudia to him as his bride. Today, Claudia and David serve Christ together in the Cantrell Ministries.

Miriam Jacob

A ROYAL CHRISTMAS WEDDING – by Rachel Hauck

A ROYAL CHRISTMAS WEDDING

by Rachel Hauck

Zondervan

18 October 2016

Rachel Hauck’s engaging novels about love, forgiveness, and new beginnings out of the ashes of despair unite the storylines of several generations of families. Here is well-done historical fiction at its best. Raw, hidden emotions are carefully concealed in well crafted and gorgeously rendered stories, so incredibly realistic that they resonate with readers, striking a rich, poignant chord in the heart. It is breathtaking to see the heartbeat of God pulsating throughout her novels, as she explores the trauma and love of the human heart, revealed in inspiring romances about uplifting, emotionally rewarding modern-day tales of the power of true love. Engaging characters spring to life as enchanting stories come alive with bold flavor and tender insight. Contemporary romances are interwoven with history and a strong spiritual thread with a divine touch. Rachel Hauck skillfully weaves real life truths into modern and engaging tales with well-developed characters, entertaining with a quirky touch. Rachel Hauck’s portrayal of the Holy Spirit is brilliantly executed as she writes with a dramatic flair that underscores themes of God who equips those He calls to fulfill a divine purpose. It is a spiritual awakening with an incredible purity.Here is an excellent blend of uplifting tales with a mystical twist and a touch of real life mystery. It is interesting to see that love does not come easy but it settles down happily ever after.

(Compiled by Miriam Jacob)

PRAYERS FOR AN ANXIOUS HEART – Compiled by Barbour Staff

PRAYERS FOR AN ANXIOUS HEART

Compiled by Barbour Staff

Barbour Publishing, Inc.

1 August 2015

Can you connect to your Creator? These inspiring prayers hug you close to God as you discover a deep understanding and love for Christ who loves you above all else. When our anxieties are too heavy to let go of, God gently asks us to hand them over to Him who cares so deeply for us. Give everything to God, talk to Him, praise Him and seek His will. Rejoice always, pray constantly and give thanks in all circumstances. This is God’s will for you. God will give you sure footsteps in your paths so that you will not slip and fall. Our Lord is always aware of you. He knows exactly where you are. He has a perfect plan for your future. God is our everlasting Rock whom we can lean upon and who catches us when we fall. He is our peace and strength. He answers when we call. In Christ we find rest for our anxious hearts. These prayers will guide you into the heart of God.

Miriam Jacob