In the past, I would post only book reviews pertinent to worship, music in the local church, or general Christian leadership and discipleship. Recently, I've been studying many more general topics as well, such as history, economics and scientific thought, some of which end up as reviews here as well.
Tuesday, May 1, 2018 at 3:16PM 
I've read a few of Jack Deere's books over the years. I've heard him speak at conferences. I've even had the opportunity to ask him questions briefly at a break time at one of those events. His brilliant mind, kind demeanor and likeable character give you no inkling that he could be leading a real life pressed with all the struggles and sins each of us likewise fight against in our lives. This book is clearly proof that is not so.
While it contains extensive discussion from real examples of "show time" sins such as sex, money, alcohol and drugs, the reader is not exposed to these for titillation. Instead, they are mentioned for what they are: the fruits of deep pain and suffering in lives broken by the sins we don't want to talk about- abuse, incest, suicide, and pride.
This book shouldn't be hailed because of its events, but rather because the ones who've lived through those events have chosen to honestly and seriously speak about them in a public way. We don't need more tragic stories. But we do need people as brave as the Deeres who will tell their story and allow us to believe that hope and peace are on the path if we can face down our shame and let our Father God in.
I was riveted by this book, but even more by the clear-eyed honesty by which it is told. As unsettlingly painful as it is surprisingly hopeful, the book doesn't defend the author. It allows you to believe what you will about him and his family. But it does force you to consider that his reality is no more special than yours and mine. Conversely, it may mean that our healing and way forward may be possible as well. This is a gift. I am thankful. As will be anyone who ventures to journey through the entirety of this book.
Amazon book link: https://amzn.to/2FBKJyo
Review by Kim Gentes
Jack Deere, alcohol, family, forgiveness, ministry, restoration, sex, suicide in Book Review, Devotion, Family, Grief, Healing, Inner Healing, Leadership, Loss, Ministry, Prayer, Reconciliation Tuesday, October 8, 2013 at 11:53PM 
[Free Devotional Download "5 'Makes' of Great Relationships" from writer Dan Wilt- see at the bottom of the review.]
I've read a lot of books that deal with Christian topics, but many of them diverge into two camps:
A) theoretical advice that falls far afield from the reality of having to live here on earth, and
B) personal stories of victory and rescue that seem as foreign and contrived as movie fiction with no connection to what might actually help me.
What I love about Dan Wilt's book here is that he is our "everyman" talking about real life stories that meet you and I on the playing field of life, not some super-stardom miraculous happenings that never seem to happen to you and I. Dan talks about moms, dads, children, working, friends, struggles and real life- and shows the absolutely glorious rays of hope that shine into our lives from the source of true hope- God Himself. I won't share details of these stories because they are rich in their reading and well worth the individual time to digest one a day until you've filled up with the kind of life-giving inspiration Dan weaves with words. Dan's gift is story-telling, and judging from the 2 million listeners he speaks to each week, there is little doubt that his message is heard, loud and clear.
I've had plenty of tough times, personally, and the stories Dan tells are part of a diet of encouragement that our world is desperately in need of. And it's not just because they are clever stories. Rather, it is because the center of his hope-telling is the person of Jesus, in whom all Dan's stories source their glistening ray of light.
I love this book because I can read something reasonably sized for my busy day and just let it digest for 24 hours. Some times I feel like a story is good enough for a few days. But I like that the book is set up for busy people like me. The story is powerful but succinct. Each story has a theme, a real life application and a foundational scripture verse he ties things together with.
I can't recommend this book enough. Really, it is a great treasure.
Amazon Book Link: http://amzn.to/1fYNCut
Review by Kim Gentes
DOWNLOAD! Check it out below!
Be sure to chime in and let us know what you thought (post comments) and you are welcome to share this with friends on Facebook and twitter with your friends.
Free Devotional Download "5 Makes of Great Relationships" from author Dan Wilt
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book, chicken soup for the soul, christian, dan wilt, devotional, encouragement, hope, positive, review, story, story-telling, thirty stories in Allegory, Book Review, Community, Counsel, Devotion, Family, Grief, Healing, Jesus, Loss, Prayer, Reconciliation, Resurrection, Society, Theology Friday, October 4, 2013 at 10:52PM 
Personal finance books can sometimes sound about as exciting as an economic history textbook. But personal finance has a profound impact on the average person and family. Dave Ramsey is a radio show personality based in Nashville who has become successful as a speaker and author in the area of personal finance.
His first book, Financial Peace, has grown into a seminar, course and nationwide educational phenomenon having literally thousands of centers (mostly churches) that host the personal finance course called "Financial Peace University". The goal, as the title indicates, is to train people to gain peace in the area of finances.
In reading through this book, I started off with a fairly critical perspective. I am not the kind of person who likes listening to radio personalities that publicly berate callers on the topic of their “expertise”. I knew that Ramsey had a public persona of hard-nosed and I feared his book would be pompous and self-aggrandizing. I was wrong. “Financial Peace Revisited” is a pointed book, for sure, but it is tempered with the care of a person who has lived through real life. Some of the book relates Ramsey’s personal story of rags to riches to rags and back again- including growing a successful real estate business that crashed and burned, and his later recovery and learning process out of personal debt into long term financial “peace”. It is from this personal experience that Dave Ramsey tells not only his story, but the touch-stones of common sense that led him away from the common American family cycle of financial mismanagement.
In his book, Ramsey articulates compact truths that he calls “peace puppies” that are the foundational points of his thesis. One can’t say that the points are revelatory- but good advice rarely is. “Financial Peace” expounds the simple and clear truths of personal finance that many know, but few actually live. This is Ramsey’s main contention- we don’t live out the common sense items that would allow our money and careers to work for us. Instead, we allow the borrowing of money (normally to buy unneeded things) become the master and driver of our lives. It is this borrowing cycle that drives American personal finances into common and regular ruin.
Ramsey’s biggest and most salient point in this book is the belief that debt (all debt) is to be avoided and countered. There are plenty of other items, but they all serve to address this primary issue. But the brilliance of Ramsey’s approach is not just the common sense, but the emotional recovery of the debt-laden Americans who work Ramsey’s plan to come to financial peace. The biggest of the “smart moves” that fuel a “can-do” attitude in Ramsey’s followers is his recommendation that they pay the smallest bills first, and as those smaller bills get paid off the amounts used to pay those off get rolled cummulatively into the next largest bill. His “debt snowball” is genius, but almost counter-intuitive.
But it works. By paying off small bills first Ramsey knows that his customers will be feeling the emotional encouragement of seeing bills actually paid off. This heightens their awareness of the positive outcomes of their actions, giving them emotional fuel to continue paying off debt and working their recovery plan. In addition, the monetary power of those small debts being paid off cummulatively gets unleashed on larger and larger bills. Practically and mentally, the momentum is placed in the realm of those who follow his plan. In fact, he challenges people not to try to do too much too fast, for fear that this will only cause them to hit the emotional wall when the recovery from financial distress begins to drag on for many months and years.
There are literally dozens of great points in this book, and few errors. The only complaint I have with this book is its outdated, and somewhat unrealistic “positive” saving scenarios. In the book, Ramsey expounds that compound interest works powerfully against the consumers- and this is right. He says that if we save we can reverse this trend not only by not building up more debt (breaking the cycle of increasing debt) but we can use interest bearing savings options to let the money work for the consumer. But his oft-repeated examples are nowhere close to reality. The books cites, in a few examples, 8-12% return on compounding savings, which isn’t true in any consumer bank in America (and hasn't been in recent modern history). It isn’t true in money market funds and it is barely even true in mutual funds these days. There has never been an era lasting more than a year or two when most consumers could get a reasonable return on savings (especially when compared against inflation) without playing the stock market through mutual funds, but this is not how Ramsey says it. The point is, this detail could easily be updated and adjusted to reality to give the book more credibility- and it would be good if it were. To Ramsey's credit, he does get into details about how to invest later in the book, dealing with various investment vehicles that could give the reader the returns he talks about. Just a bit more differentiation between "savings" and investment I felt were needed for the scenarios presented in the first half of the book to make sense.
Beyond that, the book is very nice to read, quick to understand and support to those who actually want to “do it”!
One very nice feature is the regular end-of-chapter summaries by Sharon Ramsey (Dave’s wife) who takes a spousal perspective on how the main points of each chapter effected her life. This is a very nice contrast to the “go get it” approach of the author and gives the book some balance. Overall, this is a very good book, that contains not only great personal financial advice but seems to have proven itself worthy of the thousands of people who have taken Ramsey’s advice and gotten themselves out of financial struggles.
Amazon Link: http://amzn.to/17G2EiI
Review by Kim Gentes
book review, christian, counselor, dave ramsey, debt, finances, financial peace, money, personal finances, radio in Book Review, Business, Counsel, Economics, Family, Leadership, Society Wednesday, March 13, 2013 at 10:33PM 
Review of "Naturally Supernatural" by Gary Best
View more about Gary Best.
Let me share a true story with you.
It was 1987. I was visiting friends in Surrey, BC, Canada. One night, they invited me to go to a church class on praying for the sick. I went. At the end, the leader announced it was 'clinic time'. He invited sick people to get prayer. Brave man, I thought. He asked each person what was wrong, and taught others to pray for them. One person had to literally whisper because his throat had swollen so much over the last few days, it was causing him to barely be able to speak. The leader stopped, like he wasn't sure what to do. He looked at the class and said "Jesus often healed from compassion. Let's see who the Lord puts His compassion in their heart for this man."
As soon as he said the word "heart", my heart took one giant beat, feeling as if it was going to explode out of my chest. I'd never experienced this before. At the same time this happened I involuntarily and immediately gasped for air. The leader turned and looked straight at me.
"Oh no," I thought. I wasn't sure what was happening to me, but I didn't think it had anything to do with the meeting and I hadn't meant to get his attention. I quickly said out loud, "Sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you."
"No, that's ok. What happened?" he asked. I explained that the moment he said the word heart my own chest felt like it was going to explode. He smiled and asked me to come to the front to pray for the man. I was unsure and not filled with faith. After a few moments of following his instructions and praying for the old man with the throat problem, the man's eyes got wide and excited. He smiled, and his eyes began to tear up. He started speaking. The swelling had gone down and he was feeling completely better. I was shocked.
This was my first time meeting Gary Best. From that time forward, my life has been changed with a desire and faith see God's kingdom become present in my life. I became aware that God's love was ready to intervene, to heal and to confront the evil of this world with the power of His Spirit. This book clearly articulates the main points of Gary's thesis- that the Good News of the gospel of Jesus is really "good news"; and that we are to join in the mission of Jesus and the early disciples to see that same good news demonstrated today.
The book is well written and very easy to follow. Beginning with Gary's personal story of his reluctant introduction to the "Naturally Supernatural", the author traces through the gospel of Mark and explores the challenges of the equally confounded first century apostles who found stepping out in faith as mystifying, yet necessary, if they were going to follow Christ. The author explores a logical progression of his own building faith through trial and error as the book teaches the reader about the gifts, seeing what God sees, prayer, empowerment, reaching out and persevering.
The content and personal exploration (and humility) of the author with the topics make the book not only easy to read but enjoyable. If you are the type of person that is skeptical about "healing", I'd recommend this book to you. Not because it argues indepth about theological points and wins the day, but because it balances nicely between the concepts, the scriptural underpinnings and personal examples. More than any other book I've read, "Naturally Supernatural" clearly articulates the passionate, yet thoughtful approach that is the main-stay of the Vineyard church's kingdom of God approach to ministry. What makes the book wonderfully Christ-centered, in my opinion, is it's unrelenting focus on God's love. As Best puts it:
"Our great encouragement," I told them, "is that we can't heal anyone. If anything is to happen, the critical factor will be God's faithfulness. What we can do, however, is love and then simply reach for all that God will gift us to do."1
Gary Best never allows the gifts become the "toy" or trophy of his teaching or practice. In "Naturally Supernatural", the place of healing and all supernatural gifts are the subordinated functionaries given to spread the good news of God's love to a broken world.
After reading through this book, I realized how much of Gary's teaching had been a lifelong dedication to seeing God's good news become reality for others. What I had encountered back in 1987 was just a sample of how God has continued to use Gary over the last 25 years and, by God's grace on his continued ministry, travel and writing, the good news of Jesus has been flourishing.
If you haven't read this book, I strongly encourage you to get it and read it. Very good, and very worthwhile!
Let me end with another personal story.
I just finished reading Gary Best's "Naturally Supernatural". That night, my family decided to drive to a small chicken stop in northeast Nashville (a unique place called "Prince's Hot Chicken Shack", very spicy). While we were eating, a lady walked by our table, talking across the room to a friend about her recent battle with cancer. When we were done eating, my son Jared told me he felt like he should pray for the lady before we left. I encouraged him to go with that compassion. My other son, Jordan, joined him. They approached the lady and soon were welcomed at her table. They listened intently, and with compassion, to the lady's story of her battle with cancer. Then they prayed with compassion and asked God to heal her completely. She began to tear up and hugged Jared. Other members of the table shook his hand and embraced him as well. My sons had prayed in faith, taken a risk of showing love to a stranger, and left trusting that God's faithfulness would have to prevail for the woman to be healed. As a parent, you're never quite sure how your "words of wisdom" are being heard by your kids. But the things I'd been introduced to in 1987 have impacted my life and, later, that of my children. And what I have continued to learn, my sons had been learning too.
What encourages me about Gary's book is that it's message is something that can be a teaching tool and lens through which people can better understand the kingdom of God and its practical application of the good news of Jesus.
If you are interested in reading something that will encourage you in learning about those things, I strongly encourage you to consider this book.
Amazon Link : http://amzn.to/13XrKcn
or
Order from the author directly at : naturallysupernaturalthebook.wordpress.com
Also, if you are interested in more about the author, or contacting him you can do so at this link: Gary Best.
In Christ's love,
Kim Gentes
1. Best, Gary (2005-03-01). Naturally Supernatural (Kindle Locations 1290-1291). Vineyard International Publishing. Kindle Edition.
continuationist, gary best, healing, kingdom of god, ministry, naturally supernatural, power, prayer, supernatural, theology, vineyard, wimber in Bible, Book Review, Family, Healing, Jesus, Ministry, Mission, Prayer, Resource, Theology Friday, February 22, 2013 at 2:25PM 
There are few Christian writers that have had as deep and ongoing impact in the last century as C.S. Lewis. One of his most celebrated books has been "Mere Christianity". Originally written in 1944 from the texts of various radio broadcasts, Lewis compiled and revised this collection of thoughts into his seminal work that preserves both his legacy as a great thinker and his profound skill as a writer.
While I had originally read this book in the mid-eighties, I knew it was time to revisit it. So, the last couple of weeks I re-read this classic Christian book a couple of times. In fact, reading it once actually was somewhat painful. I kept scouring the book and furrowing my brow as Lewis would make his knife sharp points at the end of each chapter. By the time I had completed one pass through the book, I knew immediately I must run through it again. The insights, and even more, the narrative flow are sparkling examples of great writing, from a master of language.
The more I read Lewis, the more it occurs to me that he is first and foremost, a writer. A brilliant writer, to be sure, but that primarily. In fact, Lewis makes this point in this book and tries to derail people who try to come at this book as theological treatise. This didn't strike me at first as being important, but the more I talk to others about this book, the more I realize it is true. I often hear others talk about "Mere Christianity" as though it were a theological defense. It is not. That isn't to say it is bad theology; rather that it isn't really written as a theological book (one in which Biblical texts are used as the centerpoint of building a case for a Christian perspective).
In one sense it is a Christian apologetic, but it doesn't come from the perspective of arguing Christian points against alternative religions or even atheistic ones. Instead, Lewis approaches the concepts much more broadly, dealing with the (universe, humanity and reality) and eventually narrows his scope to point at which the "big questions" of life are asked. Into that stream of thought, the author presents his thesis that the Christian God is not only the Creator but the ultimate Father of our eternal souls. But Lewis goes there in very deliberate, progressive steps, making sure to explore the thought process and objections of people who might be learning of the Christian faith.
Along that path, from investigation to discovery to comprehension to obedience (and all along the way, transformation), Lewis plants some of the most succinct and powerful phrases about the nature of man, the Creator and the universe we live in. For example:
In reality, moral rules are directions for running the human machine. Every moral rule is there to prevent a breakdown, or a strain, or a friction, in the running of that machine.1
Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbour; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.2
There are literally dozens of quotable passages in this book- and pastors and authors have been quoting them for decades. In some ways, this book contains an expanded version of some of the core facts that Lewis writes in his famous sermon "The Weight of Glory"- but here he expands and draws a usable entrance way to non-believers to understand the Christian claims and follow and intelligent discourse about it. To be sure "Mere Christianity" is more meat than the sermon as well, and Lewis uses that storyboard to gradually move a reader from an unintelligent and lost world into a comprehension of the plan and love of God through His Son, Jesus Christ.
Lewis travels the distance from talking about a grand Cosmic Mind who is not only the author of the moral code, and behind the extance of all things, but who becomes the personal 3-in-One God who stands beside us (in Jesus), acts from within us (in the Holy Spirit), and opens grand arms to recieve us (in Father God) all as part of his program of love to draw man out of his death-ridden self into the life of being "sons of God".
The author does a spectacular job of answering the questions we all wonder about, but don't or can't find our way through the philosophical jungle of competing or amoral reasoning to find the truths we seek. With Lewis as our guide on this philosophical journey, we are in good hands, indeed. His mind, his writing and his raw humanity ask the tough questions and graciously walks us through both false and proper narratives to funding the likewise conclusions. It would be silly to say this book is a classic- everyone already acknowledges that. And yet it is that. It belongs alongside the best writings in Christian history.
Amazon Book Link: http://amzn.to/X0aUE3
Review by Kim Gentes
