In our Sunday school class circle we were discussing Genesis 22, the account of God coming to Abraham telling him to take his beloved son, Isaac, and offer him as a sacrifice. "I have always struggled with this story," one man in the class said. "I just can't understand how God could ask Abraham to do that. It just seems so cruel."

Most of us have struggled to understand what seems like an outrageous request. And it is not only this command to Abraham that confounds us. We read about Jacob's wrestling in the dark with God throughout the night until finally God wrenched his hip, leaving him with a limp, and we wonder why God would do that. We read about God telling Hosea to marry a prostitute, to have children with her, and eventually to buy her back from the slave market even though she is already his, and we think we can hear Hosea's heart breaking. We read about God telling Jonah to go to Nineveh to call Israel's enemies to repentance, and when we get the full picture that these are the Assyrians who have slaughtered Jonah's brothers and sisters and hauled them off to concentration camps, we think this is simply too much to ask of any man.

We are a bit offended on their behalf. How could God ask this of them?

And we're also a bit afraid. Might God ask something like this of me?

Perhaps we're meant to feel a bit appalled. Perhaps it is not until we feel a sense of outrage over the seeming unfairness of these requests that we can be prepared to feel an appropriate sense of wonder when we begin to see what we're meant to see in these difficult-to-swallow scenarios. When we begin to see what God intends for us to see, our outrage gives way to adoration, consternation gives way to worship, and horror melts into humility before a God who, rather than asking the unthinkable of us, has done the unimaginable for us.

Why would God ask Abraham to offer his son as a sacrifice? Is God trying to teach us that we should be willing sacrifice what is most precious to us? No. This story is not recorded to inspire sacrifice to God. Instead, it paints in vivid colors the sacrifice of God. The point of this story is not to convince you that you must be willing to sacrifice to God what is most precious to you, but rather to prepare you to take in the magnitude of the gift when you see that God was willing to sacrifice what was most precious to him—his own beloved Son—for you.

When we read the story of Jacob and see him walking away with a limp, we're not meant to assume that God intends for us to suffer this way if we want to experience his blessing. Jacob, who wrested in the dark to gain a blessing for himself, points us to One greater than Jacob who wrestled in the dark of Gethsemane and was crushed by death itself so that he might gain a blessing for us. When we read the story of Hosea, we need not fear that God might call us to marry an unfaithful spouse just to make a point through our misery. Instead, we're meant to see that Jesus will join himself to an unfaithful wife—you and me—and make us his pure bride. He will go to the slave market of sin and buy us back at the cost of his own blood.

And when we read the story of Jonah and see him sent to people he has every right to hate because of who they are and what they've done, we're not meant to assume that God is going to require this of us, but rather that he will require it of himself. Jesus will leave heaven to go to a people who deserve to be treated with contempt because of who they are and what they've done, yet he will show them grace. Yet he will not be sad when they repent, but will, instead, shed tears over their refusal to repent.

If we read the Bible assuming that we are expected to follow in the footsteps of those who are featured in its pages, we will find ourselves always trying harder to sacrifice and obey, but never measuring up. We'll assume that God asks us to do things that will make us miserable just to put us through a test of our allegiance, diminishing, rather than magnifying God in our hearts. But when we read the Bible recognizing that it is not about what we must do for him, but about what he has done for us through Christ, rather than being offended by what we fear he may ask of us, we find rest in what he has done for us.

A couple of weeks ago I was preparing to speak to a small women's group about seeing Christ in the Old Testament. I intended to set the scene with Jesus' words on the road to Emmaus found in Luke 24, and to illustrate what I meant using numerous examples in the Old Testament. But as I prepared, I envisioned a sea of perplexed expressions on the faces staring back at me trying to make sense of what I was talking about, and more importantly, wondering how to incorporate it into their own study of the scripture.

Only a few years ago my own understanding of how Christ is seen in the Old Testament was mostly limited to prophecies of the coming of Christ and a few of the more obvious types and symbols that point to Christ. But I experienced a real breakthrough as I began to listen to Christ-centered preachers who presented Christ from every part of the scripture. And a real light came on for me when I heard Bryan Chappell, in his message "Communicating the Gospel Through Preaching" given at the Advance09 Conference, point out that the Old Testament points to the need for Christ by way of repeatedly leading us to dead ends. He suggested that we need to read the Old Testament as a Hebrew book that uses eastern, oriental thinking, working its way though the law, which the people could not obey, the time of the judges, when the people did what is right in their own eyes, the kings, who did not rule with righteousness, and the prophets, to whom the people did not listen. Chapell concluded that there is a sense of "not this . . . not this . . .not this," and then, in the coming of Christ, "but this." Only in the New Testament is there resolution to the unresolved tensions of the Old Testament.

But how to concisely and clearly communicate this to the group I had only 40 minutes with?

As I went through my list of examples of how the Old Testament points to and prepares us for Christ, I realized what was needed was every note-taker's dream: a numbered list. So I went to the experts—those practitioners who have taught me the most about seeing Christ in the Old Testament—and looked over their lists.

According to Sidney Griedanus, author of Preaching Christ from the Old Testament, there are seven ways of preaching Christ from the Old Testament including:

1. redemptive-historical progression
2. promise-fulfillment
3. typology
4. analogy
5. longitudinal themes
6. New Testament reference
7. contrast

In his seminar taught with Edmund Clowney at Reformed Seminary, "Preaching Christ in a Postmodern World," Tim Keller presents four ways of getting to Christ from the Old Testament:

1. theme resolution (i.e. image of God, Kingdom, Sabbath rest, judgment and justice-themes that only resolve in Christ),
2. law reception (focusing on the impossibility of keeping the law apart from Christ),
3. story completion (not just stories of individual people but also the story of the people of God i.e. life through death, triumph through weakness),
4. symbol fulfillment (i.e. Passover, bronze snake, prophets, priests, kings, sacrifices, temple, cleanliness laws).

In his paper, "Preaching Christ from the Old Testament," Sinclair Ferguson writes that while we want to develop an instinct to preach Christ, it can be broken down into four subordinate principles:

1. The relationship between promise and fulfillment
2. The relationship between type and antitype
3. The relationship between the covenant and Christ
4. Proleptic participation and subsequent realization.

All of these have been profoundly helpful to me and I'm sure to many others who seek to present Christ from all the scriptures. But I also knew that while these lists may be preacher-friendly, they would likely not be lay-person friendly, especially for those for whom the idea of seeing Christ in the Old Testament is a new concept. I needed a lay-friendly list of ways that the Old Testament points to and prepares us for Christ. Here's the list I came up with, and I welcome your suggestions for refining and improving upon it:

• A problem that only Christ can solve (the curse, our inability to keep the law, our alienation from God)
• A promise only Christ can fulfill (blessing, presence of God with us)
• A need that only Christ can meet (salvation from judgment, life beyond death)
• A pattern or theme that only comes to resolution in Christ (kingdom, rest)
• A story that only comes to its conclusion through Christ (the people of God, creation/fall/redemption/consummation)
• A person who prefigures an aspect of who Christ will be or what he will do by analogy and/or contrast. (Joseph, Moses, David)
• An event or symbol that pictures an aspect of who Christ will be or what he will do. (ark, exodus, sacrifices)
• A revelation of the pre-incarnate Christ (wrestling with Jacob, Commander of the Lord's Army)

The reality is that we need biblical theology not only preached from the pulpit on Sundays, but also taught and embraced in the men's and women's Bible studies that meet throughout the week. So we have to learn not only how to present Christ from all the scriptures, but also how to help our listeners to develop an instinct for seeing Christ throughout the whole of the Bible as they read and study on their own.

We've just experienced a glad Resurrection Day accompanied by glorious, triumphant music and bright celebrations of confidence that "He is risen indeed!"

But when we think about that first resurrection day, we realize that our experience is far different from that of Jesus' first followers. Luke's record of the discovery of the empty tomb is followed immediately, not by a joyous celebration, but by a disheartened conversation.

That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. (Luke 24:13-14)

After witnessing what happened to Jesus in Jerusalem they were confused and sad and disappointed that the One they thought had come to save them had been humiliated and crucified, and, in their estimation, soundly defeated by the political and religious establishment. "We had hoped he was the one to redeem Israel," they said to the stranger who began walking with them (Luke 24:21) not recognizing that it was Jesus. They had heard Jesus teach and seen his miracles and they had believed him. And now, they didn't know what to think. The one they thought would save them seemingly couldn't save himself. When we read how Jesus responded to these disciples, we perhaps detect a bit of frustation—the kind of frustration a parent has with a child who has been told something a thousand times but evidently he has never truly listened:

And he said to them, "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?" (Luke 24:25-26)

To these followers who had spent years as children studying the Torah under the Rabbi and years in the temple listening as the scrolls were opened and read from, Jesus was saying that if they had really listened to what the prophets wrote, and if they had gone beyond listening to examining it, processing it, and truly believing it, they could have understood that the One God promised to send would save them through suffering, because that truth is interwoven into the entirety of the Old Testament.

Jesus was saying that they should have understood that his crucifixion didn't negate his identity as the Messiah but confirmed it, because the death of the Messiah was predicted and pictured and patterned throughout the Old Testament. In fact, each portion of the Old Testament anticipates Christ's suffering and glory in its own way.

The very first promise in the Old Testament of an "offspring" or descendant of Eve, points directly to his suffering. God said that the serpent will, "bruise his heel." So from the first time a Savior was promised in the Old Testament, it was clear that the promised one would suffer, but would emerge from that suffering as victor, putting an end to evil and suffering.

Perhaps this promise is where Jesus began when "beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself" (Luke 24:27). Perhaps he continued in Genesis 22's account of Abraham preparing to offer up Isaac, helping them to see how it pictured his Father's sacrifice of his beloved Son. Perhaps he pointed to Joseph and traced his downward spiral of suffering in slavery and imprisonment as well as his glorious exaltation to power and showed them how Joseph, who became the savior for the whole world through suffering and humiliation revealed the pattern for how he would become the Savior of the world. Perhaps Jesus worked his way through Exodus, pointing out the death of the paschal lamb, through Leviticus and its system of sacrifices, through the writings of David who described his own suffering and exaltation in stretched language that went beyond his own experience to that of his greater son.

It was there for them to see. Suffering precedes glory. Humiliation comes before exaltation. The suffering of the cross and the tomb gave way to the glory of resurrection! And for those followers, foolishness gave way to belief. Confusion dissolved into understanding. Broken hearts became burning hearts. Sorrow turned to joy.

Today our Resurrection Day is very different than it was for those followers on the road to Emmaus and those hiding behind locked doors in Jerusalem. We not only have the entire Old Testament that prepares us to understand the suffering and glory of Jesus, but also the entire New Testament to expand our grasp of it. The whole of the Bible invites us to share in the suffering as well as the glory of our Savior even as it instills in us a solid confidence that our suffering will one day give way to great glory.

At the climax of the movie, The King's Speech, King George VI is finally goaded by his unconventional speech therapist into declaring, "I have a voice!" —a turning point in his battle to overcome his stammer so he might effectively lead his country in wartime. I suppose there is a sense in which we all have to discover that we "have a voice"—that we have something to say that is worthy for the world around us to hear and take note of. To speak up for someone who cannot speak up for himself, we have to find a voice and use it courageously. To speak out on matters of justice and mercy and righteousness, we have to find a voice and use it humbly. To give God the praise he is due we must find a voice and use it unashamedly. When the Pharisees wanted Jesus to silence those who were praising God with a loud voice upon his entry into Jerusalem he said, "I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out."

When I heard Colin Firth as King George VI declare in frustration, "I have a voice" in the movie, I couldn't help but think of something Bob Kauflin said in his message, "Words of Wonder: What Happens When We Sing" at the Desiring God 2008 National Conference. I've been thinking about ever since he said it.

"The question is not, ‘Do you have a voice?' The question is, ‘Do you have a song?' If you're redeemed by Christ's cross then you do have a song."

It would seem that saying, "I have a voice" is mostly about my ideas, my rights, my place in this world, harnessing my own power, and asserting my own opinion. But when I say, "I have a song" it is about celebrating the unfathomable grace and mercy of God that sought out and saved a sinner like me. It is about inviting him to wield his authority in my life, seeing myself in light of his place in this world, proclaiming his power and greatness, and allowing his truth to re-shape my entrenched perspective and overrule my strong opinions.

How is it that "Bertie" was finally able to speak and shout and find his voice? It was by venting the hurt, frustration, and anger he had stuffed deep down inside his princely decorum over a lifetime of silence, which is what gave the film its R rating. But what is it I must give way to that will give voice to a song? I must let go of pride that keeps me concerned about the quality of my voice more than the glory of my Savior. I must let go of self-obsession that centers most of my thoughts and words around me and my concerns and my agenda. I must steward the voice that God has given to me to declare his glory among the nations, in my city, and in my home, and even inside my own head. Surely he is worthy of my highest and purest and strongest emotions that simply must give birth to song.

I have a voice. But more significantly, I have a song. "The Lord is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation" (Exodus 15:1).

"I have wanted to believe that my son's death caught God by surprise," she said through tears. "But now I realize he was not surprised at all." She and her husband had come to our most recent Respite Retreat, a retreat for couples who have faced the death of a child, and we had just finished discussing Jesus' words about himself in Revelation 1:18, "I hold the keys of death and the grave." In other words, no one goes through the door of death unless and until he opens that door.

We sang, "He gives and takes away, he gives and takes away, my heart will choose to say, ‘Lord, blessed be your name.'" To stand in a circle with twenty-four people who feel that God has taken away what is most precious to them and yet choose to bless his name is to stand on holy ground. Their tears evidence a breakthrough to trust.

Many of these couples, though they may have been in church their whole lives, come from traditions that do not embrace or celebrate the sovereignty of God. But the death of their child forces them to reckon with it if they want to come to peace with God. In my own experience, and as I interact with grieving people, I find that the sovereignty of God can initially be a very hard truth to accept—because if he is in control of everything, we wonder why he has allowed this universe to be ordered in a way that causes us such significant pain. Yet when we begin to think that "the God I know would never allow this," we have taken our first step toward discovering that God is not who we think he is. That is when we can begin to explore the wonder of his sovereignty seeking to know him as he is and not as we have reduced him to be.

Though God's sovereignty can be initially hard to accept, ultimately it is the only solid ground to stand on in this broken world, and eventually we realize that it is really a soft place to land. His sovereign power to redeem the suffering we experience in this sin-sick world is our only true hope and comfort. Without confidence in God's sovereign oversight of the universe, life becomes meaningless, hope for justice fades, and everything seems random. The truth is, if God is not sovereign, then we're in trouble. The sovereignty of God is a rock underfoot when the winds blow in our lives. It confronts what seems absurd in our existence. God's sovereignty is our greatest hope as we face an uncertain and unknown future.

A couple of times in some Tim Keller sermons I've heard him talk about "Benediction." Honestly, I've never thought much about what that word means. I've thought about it more in terms of a "goodbye" at the close of a worship service. But it is much more than that. The first benediction is spoken in Genesis 1 when God blesses his creation and pronounces it as "good." Benediction is "bene" which means good, and "diction" which means word. So a benediction is a "good word." We are given a good word from God at the end of our worship service as we have come to him, confessed our sin to him, experienced his forgiveness, worshipped him and are sent out to live confident in his blessing.

This idea of a benediction or "a good word" is guiding me as I work on a new project this fall. I'm working on a little book called the Abundant Life Daybook. This will be a small book with a short reading for every day that seeks to briefly open up a particular scripture to serve as a biblical reminder of a way in which God seeks to bless those he has called to himself.

God is a God of blessing and cursing. Of course we like the blessing part and would rather forget about the cursing part. But the good news of the gospel is that Christ has borne the curse of God in our place. So when we are joined to Christ by faith, we need no longer fear the curse of God because of sin. We stand under God's blessing. God desires to pour out his blessing on guilty but forgiven sinners like you and me. John wrote "From his abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another" (1:16).

Sometimes I think I am so aware of and so focused on the ways that I do not measure up to God's standards, and do not deserve his goodness, that I fail to enjoy the lavish riches he has poured out upon me. I fail to live as one who is no longer under his frown. These reminders of the goodness of God through Christ call me to worship, and invite me into joyful relationship. They help me to see his smile on my life because of Christ. And I hope that is what they will do for those who read it. You can look for Abundant Life to release in the fall of 2011.

When Rafael Afanador of the International Maranatha Foundation sent me a letter in January, 2009, asking me to come to Colombia to speak in several cities, I thought, "Who is this guy, and does he really think I'm going to hop on a plane and come to South America to travel around speaking in different cities?" Now I know who he is. And David and I got on a plane and then got in a Land Rover and traveled to four cities around Colombia over 12 days. I did media interviews, spoke to 11-16-year-old mothers in a government home , and in churches—from an open-air church near the jungle where guerillas kidnap young men and force them into their armies, to nice churches in the heart of Bogotá.

I spoke to 250 prostitutes who crowded in to hear me at a feeding center, to 500 injured and amputee soldiers on a Colombian army base, to 300 women in a women's prison, and to 140 business, government and military leaders at Colombia's most exclusive club. I can't speak a word of Spanish, but I had the help of translators. Smiles, hugs, and shared tears need no translation.

I told the wounded soldiers that Jesus is a real person who experienced physical pain and faced death, emerging from death with the keys in his hand. I told the prostitutes that Jesus can make us clean and new on the inside. I told the business, government and military leaders that the church and good works will not save us. I prayed and wept with women who have had their husbands kidnapped.

Firsts on this trip included:

• a dog walking across the front of the church while I spoke
• a mentally ill soldier charging the stage with his crutch
• a signed book being used as a bribe to a policeman
• the owner of Bogotá's notorious house of prostitution wanting to tell me how hard his life has been

Nearly everywhere I went I closed with a story about riding a zip-line to illustrate that we must put our full weight on Christ, depend on his promises, and push off in the life of faith. So we ended the week by zipping across a canyon between two mountains on one of the world's highest zip-lines. A fitting close to a thrilling adventure during which God taught me to trust him in completely new ways.

Over a number of years, music has slowly slipped out of my life. I used to sing but that muscle has long ago atrophied. (Can you say, "has been"?) And as so much Christian music all began to sound the same, and as I became more interested in theology, music has seemed to slip away in my life.

A couple of years ago at the Desiring God conference, Bob Kauflin said, "The question is not, 'do you have a voice?' the question is, 'do you have a song?' And that struck me. But I've been slow to do anything about it.

A couple of weeks ago I told David that I want music back in my life—that I have to work to find some music that speaks the truth and moves my soul. He got me a new i-pod for my birthday last week and an i-tunes card. So along with all of the sermons I have always loaded on my old ipod, I went looking for music to put on my new one.

A while ago I read Justin Taylor's blog post on a record by Ben Shive and listened to samples of the songs and really liked them. So I downloaded the album, quite sure that I would regret buying all ten as certainly some would be duds. But I was wrong. I've just gotten back to my desk after a walk in the park this morning during which I wept and lifted up my hands and enjoyed music again. It fed my soul. So thoroughly Christian without the Christianeze. Words and ideas are wonderful, but we also need the music to break our hearts and set our souls on fire with the truth.

I need some more recommendations. I'd love to hear what you love to listen to that feeds your soul.

Recently a woman I have worked with in Christian publishing for over 25 years died, and I went to her funeral. I always knew this friend was never quite comfortable with the lines that many of the authors she worked with drew around biblical faith. But I didn't know until the funeral how far outside those lines she had wandered. There were numerous things about the funeral that were troublesome and even alarming to me—the fact that no scripture was read as part of the service, and that the hope of resurrection was never mentioned to name only two. But it was one statement the female pastor made in particular that caused me to gasp. Looking back, I wish I had stood up and walked out when she said it. But I didn't want to dishonor my friend and I didn't want to play into the expectations of this church as an intolerant, old-fashioned Bible-thumper. Or maybe I was just more concerned about how I would appear than I was about how my Savior had been insulted. In my reticence to make a scene, I sat there as the Treasure of my life was diminished and as his greatest work was mocked—not somewhere out in the world, but in the sanctuary of a church.

The pastor was telling the story of a time my friend was at choir rehearsal, and they were singing an anthem prior to Easter that must have pointed to Christ taking the sin of mankind upon himself at the Cross, and therefore the wrath of God for sin upon himself. According to the pastor, my friend questioned whether or not they really believed this as a church. And when it was decided they did not, the anthem was set aside. Then the pastor said with a laugh and a sense of pride, "I guess I'm not one of those atonement gals."

It still makes me gasp—to belittle something so precious, to so casually dismiss the central and defining work of Christ— that Jesus paid the penalty for his people's sins by dying in their place as their substitute.

I didn't walk out that day, and maybe that wasn't the right thing to do anyway. But I'm here to say today, that I am most definitely an "atonement gal." Christ's offering himself in my place is not just a theological belief that I hold; it is the foundation of my hope, and the song I will gladly and gratefully sing into eternity.

Dear Pastors Benton, Filson, and Teller:
I know it has been a few weeks now since the big Glenn Beck rally in Washington. Most of the conversation about it has centered on Beck's Mormon faith. But that is not what prompts me to write to you. What prompts me to write is a statement Beck made on August 30 in an appearance on Bill O'Reilly's show, when he cheerfully celebrated that "240 pastors, priests, rabbis, and imams on stage all locked arms saying the principles of America need to be taught from the pulpit."

As I've continued to think about this statement, I'm moved to write today and say "thank you" for not being one of them. Thank you for your faithfulness in preaching Christ from the pulpit, not "the principles of America." Thank you for leaving that to others and reserving the sacred desk at our church for preaching, in the last few weeks, about the once-for-all sufficient sacrifice of Christ, about the privilege we have to approach God in prayer as Father, about Christ as the Wisdom of God, about Christ as the most valuable Treasure in the universe, worth trading everything to have.

I love my country and certainly I have concerns about where it is headed. But I also know that "this world in its present form is passing away" (1 Cor. 7:31). I know—as you quote it week-by-week—that "all men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever" (1 Pet. 1:24-25; cf. Is. 40:6-8).

So thank you for continuing to preach the word of the Lord and present the beauty of Christ, and for not being so short-sighted to preach the "principles of America." You keep calling me to love Christ more than my country, more than anything, and this is the word I need most to hear.

Joseph Bayly wrote, "Christians claim to believe that heaven—being present with God—is so wonderful, and yet act as if going there were the greatest tragedy."

In recent years, as I've come into more and more contact with people who are facing their own death, or the death of someone they love, I've realized that we as believers tend to know only one way to respond in faith to this reality—to pray for God to extend life. Most often we are only willing to speak of death like Paul—who described it as "far better"—only after-the-fact, betraying our true opinion that we really don't think it is better at all.

But it has not always been this way. As D.A. Carson says, "There was a time when Christians were known as people who knew how to die well. It was part of Christian concern to be known as people who know how to die well."

What does it mean to live and die like we believe the gospel is really true? That is the topic of the most recent anthology I've put together which will release from Crossway Books in the fall of 2010. It will be called O Love That Will Not Let Me Go: Facing Death with Courageous Confidence in God, and it will include writing by classic theologians such as B.B. Warfield and Jonathan Edwards, and contemporary theologians and Bible teachers such as Tim Keller, John Piper, R. C. Sproul, and Randy Alcorn.

I wrote in the introduction: "Death, for the believer, is no tragedy. And for the believer to die well—to live and die aiming to glorify God, confident that God will make good on all of his promises — is a thing of great beauty."

And here are a few of my favorite quotes:
Charles Spurgeon: "To labor through a blessed day and then at nightfall to go home and to receive the wages of grace--is there anything dark and dismal about that? It is not living that is happiness, but living with God: it is not dying that will be wretchedness, but dying without God."

John Owen: "The especial object of hope is eternal glory. The peculiar use of it is to support, comfort, and refresh the soul in all trials, under all weariness and despondencies, with a firm expectation of a speedy entrance into that glory, with an earnest desire after it."

John Piper: "For those who love Jesus more than anyone and long for the glory of God more than anything, the sting of death is gone and the power of death is broken, you can call death sweet names."

Jonathan Edwards: "A godly person on the day of his death enters into a better world than on the day of his birth When a godly man dies, he enters into a world that has better inhabitants, and where there is better company than the world that he entered into on the day of his birth. The godly person on the day of his death is received by a better parent than persons are received by on the day of their birth."

Joni Eareckson Tada: "A broken heart leads to the true contentment of asking less of this life because more is coming in the next."

R. L. Dabney: "Truly will the trembling soul need someone on whom to lean, some mighty, experienced and tender guardian, who will point the way to the prepared mansions, and cheer and sustain its fainting courage. That guide is Christ: therefore let us say, in dying: "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit."

Randy Alcorn: "One day we'll be with the Person we were made for, living in the Place we were made for. Joy will be the air we breathe. We will be forever grateful there for the persevering grace extended to us by Jesus, This assurance will help us here and now live self-controlled and disciplined lives of deferred gratification, knowing that eternal rewards await us in the presence of our Lord, the Headwaters of Eternal Joy."

Richard Sibbes: "God will have it so, for the comfort of Christians, that every day they live, they may think, my best is not yet, my best is to come, that every day they rise, they may think, I am nearer heaven one day than I was before, I am nearer death, and therefore nearer to Christ."

Tim Keller: "Take your anger and grief and rub hope into it, the way you used to have to rub salt into meat to keep it from going bad. Rub hope deep into your grief and it will make you wise."

I grew up going to Sunday School . . . and vacation Bible school . . . and church camp . . . and training union (which was Sunday night's version of Sunday School). Along the way, I learned my share of Old Testament Bible stories. From the story of Adam and Eve I learned that I should not listen to the devil's lies. From Noah I learned that I should be willing to stand alone against an evil world. From Abraham I learned that I should be willing to sacrifice what is most precious to me. From Jacob I learned that I should expect to experience the consequences of my deceit. From Joseph I learned that I should run from temptation, and on and on.

Most of my life I have read and been taught the Old Testament as a series of life-lessons or faith-lessons. Its chief characters were held up as heroes to emulate or villains to disdain. I knew that the Old Testament spoke of Christ, but in my mind that was limited to the prophecies about the coming of the Messiah. I did not see that, in fact, all of the Old Testament is preparing us to understand who Christ is, and what he would do. I did not understand that the people in the Old Testament were not heroes. In fact the Bible takes care to expose their flagrant flaws. Their imperfections and limitations serve to point to the need for a true hero, a perfect son, a better provider, deliverer, savior, judge, prophet, priest, and king.

What I did not see is that the Old Testament tells a story that only finds its completion in Jesus Christ. I did not see that Jesus is the "seed of the woman" who will crush the head of the serpent. Jesus is the "ark" that protects the faithful remnant from judgment. Jesus is the fulfillment of all of the blessings promised to Abraham. Jesus is the stairway Jacob saw in his dream on which God comes down to earth. Jesus is the beloved son of his father, the greater Isaac offered as a sacrifice, from whom the knife was not stayed. Jesus is the greater Joseph whose suffering put him in place to become Savior to all who will come to him for food amidst the famine of this world.

And that is just a few highlights from Genesis.

Jesus is the reality to which all of the sacrifices and offerings and festivals point. He is the fulfillment of the tabernacle and temple. He is the greater Moses who brought his people out of slavery to sin, the greater Israel who was not disobedient in the wilderness, the greater son of David whose kingdom will last forever, the greater Solomon who is the Prince of Peace. He is the weeping prophet, the prophet who runs toward sinners rather than away from them, the Bridegroom, the Branch, the Child who is born.

According to Jesus, it is not just individual Old Testament prophecies or passages that point to him. It is the Old Testament Scriptures as a whole. Jesus said to the religious leaders, "You search the Scriptures because you think they give you eternal life. But the Scriptures point to me!" (John 5:39). Jesus was saying that in an all-encompassing way, the entirety of the Old Testament—it's history, it's promises, it's people, it's law, it's ceremony, it's song—it is all about him.

"If you really believed Moses, you would believe me," Jesus said, "because he wrote about me" (John 5:46). But where did Moses, author of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, write about Jesus? He is pictured in its people, he is the substance of its promises, the sufficiency to meet its deficiencies, the hope for its failures and despair. He is the solution to its unsolvable problems, the reality to which all of the symbols point. He is the one who gave meaning and validity to its events.

I've spent he past seven months on a quest—looking for the things in the Old Testament that Jesus might have pointed to saying, "This is about me," for a book that will release in the fall of 2010 called One Year of Discovering Jesus in the Old Testament. It has been a great adventure, and a lot of hard work. I have learned so much.

Here's one sample from the book:

The Curse Became His Crown
In the Garden as God originally created it, there were no thorns. But that changed when Adam and Eve sinned. God said to Adam:

Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. It will grow thorns and thistles for you . . . " (Genesis 3:17-18)

From that day on, when this instrument of pain intruded into the perfection of the original creation, every pricked finger, every overgrown field, every ugly thorn bush was meant to be a reminder of the frustrating pain of sin. But when Christ came, he transformed the thorn from a reminder of the curse into a reminder that he has broken the curse by taking it upon himself. John writes:

Then Pilate had Jesus flogged with a lead-tipped whip. The soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and they put a purple robe on him. "Hail! King of the Jews!" they mocked, as they slapped him across the face. (19:1-3)

What better symbol to speak of what was about to be accomplished on the cross could there be than a crown of thorns? "When he was hung on the cross, he took upon himself the curse for our wrongdoing" (Galatians 3:13).

A crown is a symbol of authority and honor, and for the soldiers it was a tool of humiliation. But on Jesus, in the sovereign plan of God, this crown of thorns became a symbol of what he accomplished in his humiliation. He wore the crown we earned by our rebellion and broke the curse of sin.

Revelation describes a day when we will be in a new garden where "no longer will there be a curse upon anything" (Revelation 22:3). Jesus will be there, wearing a crown—in fact many crowns—but no longer a crown of thorns. And because he wore the crown of our curse on the cross, we will be there too. We'll lay our crowns before him, saying, "You are worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power." The curse and its thorns will be gone forever, and Jesus will give us the crown of life.

Oh Jesus, I should be the one who feels the thorns pressing into my brow. I should be the one who bears humiliation and scorn. It is my face that should be spit upon, my back that should be beaten. But you have taken it all for me—every sting of the curse. And instead you give me the honor of being your child, your heir, and welcome me into your home forever.

In Isaiah 66:2, God says, "This is the one I esteem: he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word."

I don't want to be someone who merely uses God's word. And I never want to mishandle God's word. I want to tremble at God's word. And I am sobered by the responsibility entrusted to me when I stand up to teach or sit down to write. I am also humbled as I look back at something I've said or written that I wouldn't say the same way today, knowing what I know now.

I want to follow the instructions given to Timothy, to, "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth." For quite a while now I've been dreaming about going back to school—to seminary—to continue deepening my understanding of the bigger picture of who God is and what he is doing throughout the history of redemption. And as I continue to write and speak, I want to grow in confidence that I am presenting it rightly and faithfully. Recently I got to spend a day attending classes and chapel at Covenant Theological Seminary, and I'm getting ready to start my first class. I'll be taking mostly online courses with occasional one or two-week courses on campus in St. Louis.

I'm hoping I can remember how to be a student!

I was speaking at a women's conference yesterday when the pastor's wife came to me to talk. "As I hear what you are saying about how God uses suffering to refine and mature us, I think to myself that I want God to do that in my life. But I haven't had any big experience of suffering. Should I be praying God and asking him for that?"
It's a good question. And it showed me her heart ,which I believe is so pleasing to the Lord—a heart that wants more of God, even if it costs her comfort.

But I told her that there is no need for her to pray to receive an experience of suffering. It will come. It comes to everyone.
I also told her that perhaps the most significant suffering is dying to oneself a little more every day. It is choosing to put self to death. I encouraged her to open up God's Word and ask God to speak to her about areas in her life that need to change, to listen without defending or justifying, and then take steps of obedience toward God in that area.

I think this is where we experience the most significant breakthroughs in our walk with God—as we respond in repentance and obedience to conviction and welcome God to change us in regard to sin we've tolerated for too long. We welcome God's pruning shears to snip away at our self-life. And it hurts. But then we see fresh growth and fruitfulness. And later we look back and say the dying to ourselves was worth the pain.

There are some conversations in the Bible that we get a run-down on. But there are several we don't. These are conversations I would love to have the details on—word-for word.

I'd like to be able to read the back and forth between the twelve-year-old Jesus and the Rabbis in the temple when he stayed behind and his parents were franticly searching for him. Luke says that they found him sitting among the religious teachers, listening to them and asking questions. "All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers," (Luke 2:47). When Jesus set aside the privileges of deity in taking on flesh, it means that he had to learn the Torah. Wouldn't it be fascinating to know what questions he asked the Rabbis and how he answered their questions about the meanings of the ancient prophecies?

But the conversation I would most loved to have listened in on was when Jesus appeared to two of Jesus' followers on the road to Emmaus. Luke writes, "Then Jesus took them through the writings of Moses and all the prophets, explaining from all the Scriptures the things concerning himself." Wouldn't you love to hear Jesus himself open the book of Genesis and Exodus and Psalms and Isaiah and Song of Solomon and point to every shadow of himself in the story and in the words.

I'm hoping that is part of heaven. That we will get to sit down with Jesus and have him walk through the Bible with us helping us to see his glory on every page that we are too dull to see now. I will be on the front row.

In the last week I've been asked three times to pray for different people's dogs. Now I'm no dog-hater. Just ask my dog, Pepper, who wraps herself around my feet under my desk and takes me on a walk in the park nearly every day. It's just that when I think about all of the significant things I need to pray about today, all the things God would have me talk over with him, does the health of someone's dog find its place anywhere on the list?

Certainly God wants me to pray for what is on my heart. And I suppose if I care about my friends deeply, their concerns are heavy on my heart.

In thinking about this, I'm realizing it comes down to what prayer is all about. Who or what determines what we pray about? Am I obligated to pray toward the desired outcome someone asks me to pray for? Are we the ones who set the agenda in prayer? Or does God set the agenda for what we pray about? What do the prayers in the Bible teach us about what should shape and dominate our prayers?
When I read through prayers in the Bible—prayers by Moses, David, Jesus, apostles—I have a hard time imagining "and please heal my dog" fitting in there anywhere.

Here's what I'm thinking, and I'm open to being wrong here. If you ask me to pray for your dog, I'm going to pray for you, not your dog. It's not because I think you are ridiculous to ask for prayers for your dog, but because I think your heart in this matter is what God cares about most, and I want to pray about what matters most to God. Isn't the question in everything, how can God be glorified in this? So I am going to pray for you—that you will have wisdom to know what to do, and more significantly, that God will use even this to cause you to depend on him more, and love him more. I'm going to pray that even if the worst happens and your dog dies, that God will use even that to convince you that he can be trusted and that his glory being revealed is what matters most.

Last week David and I had dinner with a lovely couple who have experienced the loss of a child in an excruciating way. The agony of it takes my breath away. It was such a sweet joy to talk though some of the questions they have about God's role in their loss and lives, about how their marriage is doing under the crush of grief, and the ways they sense God calling them to steward their grief and experience.
And it gave me an idea—to hold a retreat for couples who have lost children. Over and over we've found that those who have lost a child feel such a sense of relief from being around other people who have been there and uniquely understand their sorrow.

So we floated the idea to a few people for input, secured a beautiful 12-bedroom lodge outside Nashville for the first retreat, put together a flyer and sent it out a few places, and we're on! Respite, a healing retreat for couples who have faced the death of a child, will take place over Labor Day Weekend 2009. We're hoping this will be the first of many retreats to come! If you or anyone you know would be interested in this retreat or any future retreats, send me an e-mail on the contact form.

In the introduction to Hearing Jesus Speak Into Your Sorrow I wrote:

There is a significant birthday coming up at my house, and I'm finding myself thinking about it quite often. When I do, I feel a lump forming in my throat, and tears begin to burn behind my eyes. Soon the day is coming when our daughter, Hope, would be ten. Ten somehow seems significant—more significant than nine or eight and some of the other numbers that have gone by barely acknowledged.

Our daughter's life was marked by days rather than years; she lived 199 days. In other words, there were not nearly enough of them, in my accounting. And as I'm anticipating what would have been her tenth birthday, I'm also anticipating the day that comes 199 days later—the day that will mark a decade since I have held her and known her. It feels like an ever-widening chasm as the years take me further away from her, even as they bring me closer to her.

Today is that day. 199 days later. It hurts. But not like it once did. Part of me is so relieved that these days don't hurt like they once did. But then part of me is disappointed that these days don't hurt like they once did.

I'm trying to remind myself of something I've said over and over to grieving people who find themselves in that tyranny of thinking that feeling better is a betrayal to the one they love who has died. I've often said, "Your love for the person you have lost is not defined by your on-going misery."

Last week at church, a friend stopped me and David and said that someone who lost a child told him that the pain never gets better, that you just learn to cope with it better. "That hasn't been my experience," was all I could say. I think that when we find healthy ways to drain our souls of the storehouses of grief inside, when we choose to embrace life and the living, when we refuse to allow our loss to shape our identity, the load of pain loses its weightiness and its ability to constantly crush us.

So today I say, "My love for Hope is not defined by my ongoing misery. Better let it be defined by my cherished memories of her and more significantly by my glorifying God in how I live as a person who lost her."

A few weeks ago, a group of women from Houston Lake Presbyterian Church in Warner Robins, GA who were wrapping up their study of Hebrews using Hoping for Something Better invited me to join their group using Skype. They set up a computer in the room where they were meeting and we connected via Skype, which allowed us to not only talk to each other, but see each other. They shared things they had learned with me and asked questions they still had. It was awesome!

Would you like to have me join your group via Skype? I'd love to! Just send me a message on the contact page with dates and time that would work with your group.

About ten years ago, I read Dennis Rainey's book, The Tribute
(now published under the title, The Best Gift You Can Ever Give Your Parents). In the book, Dennis writes about the "forgotten commandment"—honor your parents. He encourages readers to write and present a written tribute to their parents, saying that all parents long for affirmation from their children and that children need to give it. I knew I needed to give this to my parents. Following is the tribute I wrote and had typeset and framed for them:

To Mom and Dad
With a Heart of Gratitude

I know you were hoping for a boy on that day in September when I was born. But I suppose you were glad to see me, crooked foot and all, after all mom had gone through to carry me for nine months. On that day, you began a lifetime of sacrifice on my behalf—sacrifice for which I have rarely thanked you. The truth is, I am who I am today, in large part, because of how I was parented by you. So, today, I want to say "thanks."

There are so many things I'm grateful for as look back through my life—a life marked by so many good things. I have such great memories of float trips down the Current River, snorkeling in the Caribbean, throwing snowballs in Colorado in July, and even throwing up in the back of the airplane. What adventures we had landing at small-town airports and hitching a ride to find something to eat. Surely I had more opportunity to explore the world and new situations than most. You have always had an excitement about exploring the unknown that filled my growing up with adventure.

I'm grateful for all you've taught me about working hard. From washing white walls to standing on a box to reach the cash register, to making Easter baskets in the basement, I learned a strong work ethic that continues to bring rewards into my life. Just the other day someone told me I had excellent phone skills, and I told them it was because I learned early to handle phone calls in the drugstore in a professional way. I learned how to serve people by watching you go the extra mile to serve your customers. I guess I also learned how to face hardship—with a smile. You showed me how to start over without looking back and without bitterness or blaming.

In addition to teaching me how to work hard, you taught me how to handle carefully the money that I made. You showed me how to live within my means, how to save, and the benefits of paying cash over credit. You have provided a stellar example of wise investing and spending as well as generosity. I can't count the number of times I've seen you provide resources to people in need, from bringing home people you picked up along the side of the road for a meal and a place to sleep, to providing funds to family members who needed money to adopt a baby, to opening your home to students who needed a place to live. You are the kind of givers who quietly provide a piano for the choir and dental work for the delivery boy. Today, I love to give because I saw your joy in giving.

Perhaps the most important blessing to come to me by being your child, is the opportunity I had to grow up in a home where faith in God and love for the church was simply a given. My earliest memories include my Sunday School classroom at Gashland Baptist Church and sitting on the second row in church. But you not only took me to church, you showed me what it means to be committed—from Mom directing VBS and teaching 4-year-olds to Dad getting a thorn stuck under his kneecap mowing the church lawn. Perhaps that's why I have such a hard time saying "no" to requests made of me to serve my church. I just inherited a willingness to say "yes" to the church, and to God.

It was probably true what they said about you—that you were the strictest parents at church. But I'm glad you stood firm in doing what you thought was best for us. Your rules kept me on the straight and narrow and protected me from problems. The gifts of character and common sense are now mine because of your model and your direction.

Because you loved me, you let me go. You taught me how to make it on my own. Only now do I realize how hard it must have been to let go when I started driving, went to college, moved to a city by myself, then got married. You have always had so much confidence in me, that I've never questioned I could handle any situation on my own.
You didn't ever have to teach me how important it was to be committed to marriage. You just lived it by loving each other. Your partnership and friendship goes so deep, I have never had to worry that anything would shake it. Your example of caring for each other and building a life together inspires me.

Perhaps nothing has inspired me, however, as much as watching you care for your own parents. Truly you have honored them in the way you have served them so unselfishly. You have carried the burden of their care without complaint, handling many less-than-glamorous tasks to make their lives more comfortable and more meaningful. I am moved by it. I only hope I can live up to your example when I'm called upon to care for you.

Today, you bring me so much joy through the love and generosity you extend to David and to Matt. Matt loves to come to your house where he is so free to be himself and have fun. You have been so generous to work your schedule around ours to care for Matt whenever we have asked. You are wonderful in-laws and special grandparents and I'm grateful.

I know I haven't always been easy to parent—even as I've become an adult. So I want you to know that I'm grateful—grateful for all the times you said "no" to your own desires to say "yes" to me, grateful for all the excitement you've shown at the milestones in my life, grateful for all the forgiveness you've extended my way when I haven't deserved it.

I know I've taken far too long to tell you, but I want you to know. I love you and I honor you, and I'm grateful to be your daughter.

Love, Nancy

The new collection of writing on the Cross and Resurrection I put together called Jesus Keep Me Near the Cross has just been released. I dedicated the book, to Estelle Hudgins Teeter, who was my sixth grade Sunday School teacher who now lives in Oklahoma City, OK. When I figured out that I probably wouldn't be able to get there to surprise her by presenting the book to her myself, I contacted Roy Moody, the Senior Adult Minister at her church who agreed to make a presentation to her in one of their services. Here's the letter I sent:

Dear friends I have not met at Quail Springs Baptist Church:

Everyone needs an Estelle Hudgins Teeter in his or her life. I'm quite sure my life would not have been the same without her initiative and example in mine.

Estelle was my Sunday School teacher at Vista Baptist Church in Olathe, Kansas thirty-something years ago when I was in the sixth grade. I had never had a teacher who seemed to have such a solid grasp on the Bible, nor one who seemed to find so much joy in God and in his Word.

Estelle and her husband, Carl, managed the Circle C Youth for Christ Camp and they let me come and work there starting with dishwashing in the kitchen and working in the snack shop. I would spend weeks during the summer and weekends during the year working at the camp and then spending the night with Carl and Estelle in their trailer where Estelle would make me cheese toast for breakfast. It was there in her kitchen that I first saw someone privately worshipping and enjoying God. I can still see Estelle with her hands lifted to God in praise standing over her sink with praise music playing in the background. I didn't know what it meant to love Jesus in that way, but I wanted to.

Soon Estelle invited me to come along with her and Carl on weekly trips to high school youth for Christ clubs. Early on she had me give my testimony. I thought it was a disaster, and I'm sure it was in human terms, but God used it. That launched in my life a boldness for sharing my experience of God's grace that continues to this day. Thank you, Estelle, for inviting and pushing and encouraging.

This is why it is such a joy to me to dedicate my most recent book to Estelle, a collection of classic and contemporary writing on the cross and resurrection called Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross. I do so because I want to honor her and thank her for who she is and what she has meant to me. And I know I am not alone. I'm sure that many of you at Quail Springs Baptist Church have many of your own stories you could tell of Estelle's love for Jesus, boldness for the gospel and tireless service to others. The dedication reads:

Fondly dedicated to Estelle Hudgins Teeter

My 6th grade Sunday School teacher who is still teaching and giving—

In whom I saw radiant joy in knowing Christ, the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him...

You made me want to love Jesus like you do.

I wish I could be there in person to give Estelle a hug along with presenting her with this book dedicated to her, but since I can't I will depend on you for that. I hope you will love on her today for me.

Gratefully in Christ,
Nancy Guthrie

Estelle wrote me and told me: "I was just sitting there on the front pew (my pew) and Roy was talking about honoring someone (I thought one of our 38 staff people) when all of a sudden I realized he called my name! People were applauding and standing, and I was in shock!

Books that Changed My Life Along the Way:
The Living Bible (that old green padded one I read in my room as a teenager)
Decision-Making and the Will of God by Gary Friesen (David and I both read it and wrangled with the theology of this in our college years. It set me free from believing there is some sort of dot that is God's perfect will for my life that I have to try to figure out.)
The Tribute by Dennis Rainey (in the mid-90s)
Where is God When It Hurts? and Disappointment with God by Philip Yancey (after Hope was born)
Desiring God by John Piper (in 2004, given to my on my birthday by Melinda Perry. THANK YOU!)

Some of the best or most interesting books I've read in the last couple of years:
Far As the Curse is Found by Michael Williams

Money, Posessions and Eternity by Randy Alcorn

Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore

Sin Boldly by Cathleen Falsani
Give Them Wings by Carol Kuykendall
Young, Restless, Reformed by Collin Hansen
Dangerous Surrender by Kay Warren
This Momentary Marriage by John Piper
The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer
Authentic Christianity by Gary Thomas
Crazy Love by Francis Chan
unChristian by Dave Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons
Becoming Conversant with the Emergent Church by D.A. Carson
The Reason for God by Tim Keller
Crazy for God by Frankie Shaeffer

Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers

The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom
Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner

Books in my stack to read this year:
The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis (I am SO illiterate. I've never read ANY of C.S. Lewis' novels)
Keeping Sabbath Wholly by Marva J. Dawn (I've had this one for a while but keep avoiding it because I'm afraid it will require that I change. Ouch.)

Getting the Message by Daniel Doriani

Books I couldn't get through or just don't get the fuss about:
Walking with God by John Eldridge ("If I had prayed first, and asked God if I should go horseback riding that morning, I wouldn't have had the accident on the horse"? Please.)
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (Once again, I have no appreciation for fine literature I suppose. It bored me.)
Sex God by Rob Bell (Some interesting connections and insights, but...)

Books I loaned out and regret that I never got back:
Letters to Karen and Letters to Philip, signed personally to me by Charlie and Martha Shedd when David and I got engaged. Irreplacable. I loaned them to one of Matt's babysitters when she got engaged and she moved off to Alaska. Gone forever.
Children are Wet Cement, signed to me by Anne Ortlund when she had lunch with me at my house when Matt was about 3 weeks old. I don't want to bug my friend I loaned it to since she said she looked and couldn't find it, but there's a part of me that would like to snoop through her basement boxes of books to see if it is hiding in there somewhere.

I've wanted to go to a Desiring God National Conference for years. Last year Matt had some airline miles that were about to expire so we cashed them in for some tickets to Minneapolis and David and I went to the conference in September. I could not begin to relate what a blessing it was to me to enjoy the teaching. David and I also had a profound experience that we won't forget.

It was lunchtime and everyone was pouring out of the convention center to find a place to each lunch. Walking along the downtown street, a large, very intoxicated black man with brilliant white teeth and blood-shot eyes began to engage us.

I never know what to do in these situations. I didn't want to ignore him. That would have felt like a denial of the very gospel we were there to learn more about. But neither did we want to give him money that we knew would likely be spent on alcohol. At one point David said, "I'm not going to give you any money . . . but I could pray for you." We expected he would blow that off. But he didn't. His whole demeanor changed. So David and I put on hands on his shoulders there on the sidewalk and David began to pray for him—that he would come to know Jesus, that he would be freed from the bondage of addiction, that he would be restored to his family. That's when David and I, with our heads bowed, but eyes open, saw tears splashing on the sidewalk. This rough man whom we thought would scoff at the suggestion of prayer was moved by David's prayer for him in his brokenness.

"We're heading down to Panera Bread to get some lunch, would you like to come with us?" I asked him after David said amen. As we waited in line at Panera Bread, KO (his nickname, as in Knock Out) didn't exactly fit in with the crowd from the conference. He didn't smell good. And he was strange. Obviously intoxicated. But we waited in line and got our lunch and then we sat with him and learned about his three daughters he hasn't seen for years. We wrapped up most of his sandwich to take with him since the alcohol has robbed him of an appetite for food and pretty much anything except alcohol. Then we said goodbye.

Usually I avoid and rush by. I don't engage. This time we did. And we were glad.

I've been working on a third anthology to follow up Come Thou Long Expected Jesus and Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross. The new one, Be Still My Soul: Embracing God's Purpose and Provision in Suffering will be a collection of writings on suffering and will be available in February 2010. Following is the table of contents along with one of my favorite quotes:

Part I: God's Perspective on Suffering
1 Suffering: The Servant of Our Joy—Tim Keller
2 The Gift of Pain—Philip Yancey
3 God's Plan A—Joni Eareckson Tada
4 Trusting God Who Knows Why—Os Guiness

5 Such Thing As Senseless Tragedy?—R.C. Sproul
6 Illumined by the Light of Divine Providence—John Clavin

7 A Profound Answer to the Pressing Question, "Why?"—Wilson Benton
8 Bearing Suffering—Dietrich Bonhoeffer

9 No Sorrow Like Jesus' Sorrow—John Newton

Part II: God's Purpose in Suffering
10 The God We Had We Lose—Abraham Kuyper
11 When Cost Becomes Privilege—Helen Roseveare
12 Prepared for Usefulness—A.W. Tozer
13 The Test of a Crisis—Martyn Lloyd-Jones

14 Too Good to Suffer?—St. Augustine

15 Faith Tried and Proved—Charles Spurgeon
16 Choosing Trust—Jerry Bridges
17 Dying Well—D. A. Carson

Part III: God's Provision in Suffering
18 Just What You Need, Just in Time—Corrie ten Boom
19 Dark Valleys—Sinclair Ferguson
20 Hoped-for Healing—J.I. Packer
21 Happy in Affliction—Thomas Manton
22 Power in Weakness—John Piper

23 An Example to Imitate in Unjust Suffering—Martin Luther
24 Learning to Be Content—Jeremiah Burroughs
25 Refuge and Rest in Christ—Jonathan Edwards

One of my favorite quotes from Near Unto God by Abraham Kuyper, a Dutch theologian in the late 1800s:

"At first what our heart feels is that we cannot square this with our God as we imagined Him, as we had dreamed Him to be. The God we had, we lose, and then it costs so much bitter conflict of soul, before refined and purified in our knowledge of God, we grasp another, and now the only true God in the place thereof.

We fancy ourselves the main object at stake; it is our happiness, our honor, our future⎯and God added in. According to our idea we are the center of things, and God is there to make us happy. The Father is for the sake of the child. And God's confessed Almightiness is solely and alone to serve our interest. This is an idea of God which is false through and through, which turns the order around and, taken in its real sense, makes self God, and God our servant.

Cast down by your sorrow and grief, you become suddenly aware that this great God does not measure nor direct the course of things according to your desire; that in His plan there are other motives that operate entirely outside of your preferences. Then you must submit, you must bend.

This is the discovery of God's reality, of His Majesty which utterly overwhelms you, of an Almightiness which absorbs within itself you and everything you call yours. And for the first time you feel what it is to confront the living God. And then begins the new endeavor of the soul, to learn to understand this real God.

I meet every week with a group of women in a discipleship group and this fall we were working through a module on marriage. One weekend we went away for an overnight retreat with our husbands. It wasn't a typical marriage retreat where we were focused on learning skills together to improve our marriages. The primary purpose was to bless our husbands. On Saturday morning, as 20 of us sat around the fireplace, we each took turns publicly affirming our husbands. It was moving and really quite sacred. Here is some of what I said to David—

Integrity—You are a man of integrity. I love it that you will do what you say you will do. Because of your integrity, I believe you will be faithful to me. I expect you will grow old with me. I don't fear being embarrassed by your failure to do what is right to other people or to me.

Growing—You haven't stopped becoming. You are always learning new things. At 50 you are becoming more like Christ—more patient, more kind, quicker to give grace. It is the fruit of the Spirit spilling out of your inner life and it draws me to you.

Servant Leadership—I love it that I can look to you to lead in our home—because I trust your wisdom and judgment, but also because of they way you consider me. As you are growing older, you are becoming even more of a servant in our home, seemingly looking for ways to help in practical ways—like emptying the dishwasher before I can get to it. You make yourself available to me to listen to me and encourage me and help me.

Perseverance in Adversity—You have been a solid rock of strength in the heartbreaks we have faced. I have watched you start a new business and persevere through disappointment. You have faced discouraging things, but you haven't become discouraged. Thank you for not giving up and giving in to fear.

Freedom—I am grateful for the support you give me to be who I am and pursue God's calling in my life. You provide helpful criticism but you don't criticize me. You know my insecurities and you are careful to encourage. Rather than wondering if you think I'm crazy when I try something new or pursue something that seems out of my reach, I always know that your attitude is "Go for it. You can do it." Your belief in me helps me believe in myself.

Fun—You make life so much fun and so comfortable for me. No one can make me laugh like you do.

Home—Last week Marty Scudder talked to me about going to Ukraine and I told her I just can't be gone for two weeks without you—that I want to go to Ukraine, but I need to do it when you can come with me. Because if you are with me, I can stay as long as they need me to. If you're with me, I'll be at home.

Tim Keller spoke at my church last week. I expected to enjoy what he had to say. I did not expect to be so challenged and convicted by what he had to say.

Tim had two primary themes. The story of the prodigal son and elder brother, and what it means for the church to be a family and not a collection of elder brothers. He said that the reason there are so many prodigal sons is that the church does not do very good being a family.

Probably the most significant insight I gained in the prodigal son story was Keller's statement that if the elder brother truly loved his father, he would have seen his father's heart breaking over the estrangement of the prodigal son. And he would have gone after his prodigal brother to do everything he could to bring him back home. Instead, he shows how he really feels toward his father in his unwillingness to join in the celebration when his brother finally comes home.

"The younger brother sought to get the father's wealth by being outrageous, disobedient, and rebellious," Keller said. "The way the elder brother is going to get control of the father's wealth is by being dutiful and compliant. On the outside he obeys the father and does what he wants. But ultimately he wants the father's things, not the father. He is alienated from the father just like the younger brother."

At the end of the parable the bad boy is saved because he comes in and the good boy is lost because he won't come in.

Then he explained that Jesus is the true elder brother—the elder brother we all want and need, the elder brother who went to the cross so that we could come back home.

Okay, I've spent five days working on a footnote for my new book, Hearing Jesus Speak Into Your Sorrow. Because it is a footnote, it might seem like it must be an unimportant detail. But I've realized it is the crux the entire book rests upon: Does God actually send suffering to those he loves, or does here merely allow it? Many people are comfortable only saying that God "allows" evil and suffering in our lives, but that to say that he "sends" it or "causes" it would make him responsible for it and less than perfectly good.

You'll have to wait until the book comes out to read my final footnote. So far I've re-written it too many times to count and I'm waiting on some feedback from someone I respect on what I've written. But I can say this: God is good. Period. Everything he does is good. Even when he uses things that could never be described as good and are not good for his purposes, those purposes are good. And God is sovereign. From the big events to the small details of my life, he is in control, and "every day of my life was written in his book." This is the solid hope I'm holding on to and resting in.

P.S. It ends up that when I got someone I respect to give me input on the footnote, he said, "My only complaint about your footnote is that it deserves to be part of the main text. It is not of secondary importance, but primary." So when you read the book you won't find a footnote—you'll just find it in the text of the chapter.

I think senioritis is what they call a student's inattention to classroom responsibilities during his senior year. For today, I'll define it as that sick feeling you get in your gut when you realize your son has started his senior year—that next year this time he will be living in a college dorm room far away from you, and will not be walking in the door saying, "Hey mom," every night. I have a serious case of it, but I'm trying to treat it with doses of reality—"He will be gone, but not gone forever . . . He will still need me at least a little . . . we'll still text and e-mail and talk . . . my life is more than just being Matt's mom . . . I'll have all kinds of new freedom, less to clean up, less ESPN, fewer shoes to trip over in the kitchen, and absolutely no good excuse to make chocolate chip cookies." I'm also trying to treat it with large doses of letting the unimportant stuff go, like harping about keeping his room clean and asking if he's done his homework. I don't want this sickness to be passed along to him. I want to send him off with full confidence that his mom could not be happier about what is ahead for him outside her home. But I'm sure there will be some tears ahead when we drive off from dropping him off. The Senioritis will be gone but there will have been a painful amputation.

I e-mailed a few friends a brief report from the Alaskan cruise I took with my family a couple of weeks ago:

• Entertainment—bawdy
• Food—mediocre
• Family—fun
• Scenery—stunning
• Balcony—peaceful
• Salespitches—endless
• Me—snobbish

My parents were so generous to take our whole family on an Alaskan cruise to celebrate their 50th anniversary. It was very cool to all be on the ship together for a week but to have our own rooms and the schedule freedom a cruise provides. We had a special night of celebrating their anniversary for which my brother and sister and I came up with 50 things we are grateful for in our parents, and it was sweet to share that with them.

But I must admit that at times I felt like we were immersing ourselves in the natural beauty of Alaska and dragging the rest of the world with us. The barrage of promotion for the on-ship casino, alcohol, buying jewelry and artwork, and the lure of the 24-hour buffets gave me a sense that the cruise was stocked to feed all of our unhealthiest obsessions.

The best times were spent on the balcony of our room in the quiet of the morning as we glided through the water, hearing my niece and nephew asking questions on the balcony next door, and my parents on the next balcony over. The beauty itself was a blessing, reminding me of the grandeur of God.

I've been listening to a sermon series by Jean Larroux this summer on the Lord's prayer. He calls it the hardest prayer you'll ever pray. Amazing since so many of us recite it almost without thinking. I download the sermons and listen to them on my ipod while walking in the park and throughout this series I've shouted out "Yes, yes!" as I walk along so many times. And I've also wept at the insights. One of the most impactful insights in the series to me was from the sermon on "Give us this day our daily bread." He told the story of how his dad, who lived in another city, would come to visit him on the fourth of July when there was a carnival in town. His dad would buy a long string of tickets for the rides but would give him only two at a time. He had to keep coming back to his dad to ask for more. If he'd given him the whole string, he would have been gone for the night on his own. He related this to the children of Israel in the desert who were given manna in the wilderness, but only enough for that day. It couldn't be stored up. Jean said that God is teaching us daily dependance—that when we say "give us this day our daily bread," we are asking only for what we need today so we can depend on him again tomorrow.

My husband said something the other day that I've been thinking about since—especially when I go to someone's blog or website. He made the observation that a website or blog page is a place where we can carefully craft an image—not only by what we say about ourselves, but by what we don't say. Not only by the pictures we post, but those we don't post. He noted that people list the books they are reading and the other blogs they like to visit and the music they listen to —obviously seeking to shape what others will think of them—usually trying to give the impression they are intelligent, in-the-know, and of course, cool.

It got me to thinking . . . what do I put on this site or not put on this site in an effort to craft some sort of image that may or may not be true? Certainly I'm not above it. (And if anybody who has a website or blog suggests that they are, they're not being honest). I put information about my books because I know that's why many of you came to my site in the first place. I have information about my speaking so that you can come if I'm speaking in your area, and so you can listen to a sample message. I put photos of my children who have died because so many of you have read about them and find it sweet to see them. And I have pictures of our life now so that those of you who are grieving and wondering if the cloud of grief will ever lift from your family will be encouraged by seeing our joy. But just so you know what's missing—I'll tell you. I leave off the pictures that reveal certain bulges and curves that are not bulging and curving where they should. I leave off some of my personal opinions that may cause you to make assumptions about me or reject me. I don't publish the letters and e-mails I receive from people because I don't want you to think I'm using your correspondence for promotion. I'm afraid to tell you the book I read this summer that I found the most fascinating because it might offend you. I don't listen to much music these days, and the fact is I'm really not very cool. I suppose I include this random thought so you'll know that I'm just like you, far too concerned about what other people think of me, not concerned enough how the real me behind the image needs to be transformed into His image.

I'm just starting to work on my next book which I'm calling Hearing Jesus Speak Into Your Sorrow. Whereas Holding On to Hope walked readers through the book of Job and his experience of suffering, Hearing Jesus Speak Into Your Sorrow will walk readers through the ministry of Jesus, his experience of suffering as well as his perspective on it. Each chapter will examine a key phrase spoken by Jesus that is especially important for the person who is hurting to understand and apply—statements such as:

"My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and watch with me."

"My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will."

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me."
"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."

"Do not be afraid. . . . I hold the keys of death and Hades."

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."

Like so many other projects, writing this book is an exercise and adventure in trusting God—trusting that he will meet me as I study his Word, that he will illumine it and give me understanding and insight.

I just got back from leading a trip for 15 women from my church to go down to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi to help Lagniappe church put on a combination women's conference/work project. About 130 women from around the Southeast came, staying in the bunkhouses at the church (which houses regular teams of volunteers who come to rebuild houses in the city only beginning to recover from Katrina). We spent Friday evening and Saturday morning together looking at what the book of Job has to say to us about holding on to hope. Then we spent Saturday afternoon all around the city landscaping newly built homes, planting containers for the porches of homes not ready for landscaping, painting, hammering, cleaning and having fun. I would hardly know where to start in listing the highlights, but the list would have to include getting to know the staff members at Lagniappe, many of whom are empty nesters who have moved to Bay St. Louis since Katrina to give their lives away to the broken people there. Another highlight was our late-night game of Apples to Apples in our bunkhouse. I haven't laughed that hard for that long in a very long time.

David has really done it. He has launched a new children's music publishing company. Their first release, Life School Musical, is being done in hundreds of churches this spring, including megachurches such as Prestonwood Baptist in Dallas, Bellevue Baptist in Memphis, South Tampa Fellowship, First Baptist Church of Jackson, MS, and Champion Forest Baptist in Houston. You can listen to the entire musical online at www.littlebigstuff.com

First, the official review I wrote for CBA Retailers & Resources, a magazine for people who run Christian bookstores:

I must admit that I never like it when I am seemingly the last person to learn about a hot new book. The other thing I should admit is that I have a stubborn streak about reading books that "everybody" is reading. But when a friend told me "everybody" was reading The Shack by William P. Young and my high school age son told me the next day that people at school were talking about The Shack, I put it on my Christmas list. A few days later I went in my local Christian store and it was by the front counter. When I asked the owner what he knew about the book, all he knew was that "everybody" was asking for it, and he asked me to read it and let him know what I thought of it. Here are my thoughts.

First you should know that the book starts with a long list of endorsements by a very broad group of endorsees. Perhaps the most intriguing is the one on the cover from the esteemed Eugene Peterson who says, "This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress did for his. It's that good."

I agree that this is a book written for our generation—a generation longing for a deeply personal, life-changing experience with the supernatural, a generation that is oftentimes more likely to give credence (read: authority) to a powerful personalized dream than to scripture. We are a generation who longs for a passionate, intimate relationship to God that goes beyond church-going and religious duty and touches us in the areas of our greatest hurts. I think that's why so many readers find The Shack so appealing.

The shack is a novel—which I had to remind myself of along the way—as it reads like other stories we've read about people who tell stories of supernatural experiences. The story centers on a man named Mackenzie whose youngest daughter has been abducted and murdered leaving him deeply sad and questioning God. Then a note from "Papa" (the name his wife uses for God) appears in his mailbox inviting him to come to the shack in the woods where his daughter died. At the shack he has an experience (or was it a dream, we're not sure) with the three members of the trinity. The Father is personified by a large black woman; Jesus, as a thirty-year-old Hebrew man; and the Holy Spirit as an Asian woman. About 80% of the book is the conversations Mack has with these three over several days during which they discuss the role of God in suffering, forgiveness, heaven, and much more. Perhaps the most profound sentence in my estimation is where Papa says: "The real underlying flaw in your life, Mackenzie, is that you don't think that I am good. If you knew I was good and that everything—the means, the ends, and al the processes of individual lives—is all covered by my goodness, then while you might not always understand what I am doing, you would trust me. But you don't."

Who will like this book? People who love Piper's 90 Minutes in Heaven and Miller's Blue Like Jazz. Who will not like this book? People who are sticklers for theological precision and those who have a hard time with any writer who puts words into God's mouth that we don't find in scripture (especially when those words are sometimes laced with sarcasm). Some readers will struggle with hints of universalism, the cameo of Sophia, who is the personification of God's wisdom, some cynicism about the organized church, and seemingly inconsistent explanations of God's sovereignty over human suffering. But many more seem to be finding in The Shack, a soul-hugging experience of the wonder of God's love for imperfect people and his desire to draw us to Himself.

After reading the above review, one retailer told me he couldn't tell if I liked it or not. My point in that review wasn't to give my opinion of it, but equip retailers to sell it. So what do I really think of it?

I had to force myself to finish reading The Shack so I could write the review. I felt a bit manipulated by it. I know that puts me in the minority. Most of the people I talk to absolutely love it and think it is one of the most important books they've ever read. I think the book is especially appealing to people who come from a legalistic background or upbringing that has given them a picture of God that is very harsh and demanding. Seeing God as loving and even fun loving helps them to love him more. And I think that's valuable.

I guess what bothers me is that while God created man in his own image, this book seems to try to recreate God in man's image—reshaping God into people who are palatable to modern Americans. It seems to paint a picture of a God we can accept rather than challenging us to accept God as he has revealed himself to us.

It is always dangerous to put words in the mouth of God that he hasn't really said as recorded in scripture, and in chapter after chapter of conversation, the author does just that. And while I think he often hits the mark, there is so much that just seems like pandering to me (like when God says he doesn't want to punish sin, or when Jesus says he would have died for Mack even if Mack had been the only one he needed to die for).

My copy is very underlined. Some of the statements are underlined because I love what it says. Some of the underlined portions are statements that I was dumbfounded by their lack of theological underpinnings. Interestingly, some paragraphs had both.

David noticed that I have been responding to all of the people who ask me what I think about this book with a bit of annoyance and I've tried to figure out why. I think it is that I'm frustrated that so many people are reading this book and recommending it when I think there are so many of more significant and sound books to sink your teeth into and to want to talk about. So please don't e-mail me challenging what I've said and asking me to talk about it some more. If you enjoyed it I'm glad.

By the way, the best review I've read of The Shack is by Scott Lindsey at Mark Driscoll's theresurence.com website. You can download a pdf of the review here www.theresurgence.com/files/The Shack Review.pdf.

One of the favorite things I do in my business is produce audio books. Sometimes I just create the abridgement for the author to read and record. Sometimes I oversee the whole production. Recently I got to produce the audio version of an amazing book, Same Kind of Different as Me, the true story of Ron Hall, a wealthy art dealer, and Denver Moore, a homeless black man who grew up as a sharecropper. Barry Scott, who read the part of Denver Moore, simply took my breath away with his brilliance. My friend, Dan Butler, who read the part of Ron Hall, did a fabulous job too. Then I got to spend an afternoon in the studio with Buddy Green who came up with a different little jig on his harmonica that fit between each chapter. If you haven't read or listened to this amazing book, you simply have to. You can read more about the story at www.samekindofdifferentasme.com.

On my list of heroes, Joni Eareckson Tada is way at the top. Years ago, I stood at the back of a hotel ballroom listening to Joni Eareckson Tada speak, and said to my friend, Dan Johnson, "It is her suffering that causes people to lean in and listen to her. Her suffering gives her credibility." Years later, one month after Hope died, I got to meet Joni. I told her that I was reading her book on heaven because my daughter had just gone there. I also told her that I was hoping that God might use the suffering in my life in meaningful ways like he has hers. That began a precious friendship.

A few months back Joni asked me if David and I would be willing to be interviewed for a new television show, Joni and Friends TV. Of course we were honored that she thought we had something to contribute. The show premiered on the NRB Network available only on Direct TV in October and this month it has started to air on the TBN Network, which is much more broadly available. Each episode can also be purchased on DVD via the www.joniandfriendstv.com website. As David and I watched the show each week leading up to the week in January when our interview aired, we had two significant responses. One was that this show is what Christian television should be—high quality production, authentic faith expression, and amazing people. It was that last one—amazing people—that began to make us feel like "the weakest link." Honestly, we feel so privileged to be included in this group of people—from Nick Vujicic, who has no arms or legs but enormous faith and joy that he spreads around the world, to Vicky Olivas, who has forgiven the man who shot her as he attempted to rape her, leaving her paralyzed, to Robin Hiser, a woman with Down's Syndrome and simple, sweet faith who gives herself away at Joni's Family Camps, and many more. We wish Joni could have an event at which we could meet all of the other people featured on her show. We would sit at their feet and learn from them.

In my small group, we are reading A. W. Tozers The Pursuit of God. I'm pretty sure I read this in college but I sure don't remember it this way. As someone who has worked in Christian publishing for over twenty years, I'm thinking that this may be the only Christian book anyone ever really needs to read—including mine!

A passage in today's reading was especially penetrating to me as someone who works with the media in regard so many well-known Christian authors and speakers and as someone who is an author and Bible teacher myself:

"To be specific, the self-sins are self-righteousness, self-pity, self-confidence, self-sufficiency, self-admiration, self-love and a host of others like them. They swell too deep within us and are too much a part of our natures to come to our attention till the light of God is focused upon them. The grosser manifestations of these sins—egotism, exhibitionism, self-promotion—are strangely tolerated in Christian leaders, even in circles of impeccable orthodoxy. They are so much in evidence as actually, for many people, to become identified with the gospel. I trust it is not a cynical observation to say that they appear these days to be a requisite for popularity in some sections of the church visible. Promoting self under the guise of promoting Christ is currently so common as to excite little notice."

This last line really got me as I've seen so much of it in others and in the mirror. Lord, forgive me for entertaining the sin of self-promotion and fooling myself and others into thinking I am promoting Christ. I wonder what Tozer would think of a website called nancyguthrie.com? More importantly, I'm wondering what Christ thinks about it.

Having worked in publishing so long, I've grown accustomed to getting books for free. So it is painful for me to fork over my cash for a book. But in the last couple of months I've bought three copies of UnChristian by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons www.unchristian.com because I keep giving my copies away. I think it is one of the most important books published in our generation. It has a message we need to hear that is honestly very hard to hear, and somewhat difficult to know what to do with, but none-the-less essential. Their point: Christianity has an image problem. Outsiders see us a judgmental, anti-gay, too political, hypocritical, etc. They think we are out to save people but don't really care about people. And in so many ways, they are right.

I like the conclusion Gabe Lyons comes to which I find challenging personally:

Christians in the older generation will need to work hard at rediscovering what it means to follow Christ in today's culture. It may start with an honest admission that some of what you may have called Christianity has no connection to the faith at all. It may require letting go of the baggage that surrounds ardent denominationalism, or decisively stepping away from the comfortable Christian subculture. It could mean taking the risk of being labeled "worldly" or "liberal" because of a biblically based commitment to advocate for cultural issues like social justice and caring for God's creation. Maybe it's a willingness to consider how much your faith has become entangled with Western values that are at odds with the heart of Christianity, such as consumerism and materialism. Overall, it requires openness to the idea that you may be living an incomplete or inaccurate version of the faith.

I found insight after uncomfortable insight throughout this book. And I found balance as well. I wondered if these two marketers would ask the church to change for the purpose of becoming more palatable to the outsiders we want to sell ourselves to. Instead, they suggest we become more faithful to who God has called us to be so that outsiders will see authenticity and genuine compassion and want to be a part of it.

It is raining today. Really raining after no rain for weeks. What a relief. It is like a birthday present from God.

I woke up this morning and began to count my blessings as I lie in bed. I love my life. I have a husband who has always been a great husband and who, over the past year, has become an even better husband. And he loves me. I have a 17-year-old son who talks to me and laughs with me. I see such signs of spiritual life sprouting in his life and there is no better gift I could get for my birthday. I have the greatest friends that I love to laugh with and talk about stuff that matters with.

I decided to give myself a day off yesterday as a birthday gift to myself—a day to do what I want. David and I went out for an omelet at Bread & Company. Then Matt and I wondered around Tuesday Morning looking for bargains. Then I spent three hours with a new friend that I don't know very well but want to know and the time flew by. Then I went to the bookstore and bought three books—Bible Doctrines by Wayne Grudem and Jeff Purswell, Hard Sayings of Jesus by F. F. Bruce, (both as aids for the daily devotional for families I am writing) and Created for Contentment, the biography of A. Wetherall Johnson who founded Bible Study Fellowship. Can't wait to read it. Then I went to the mall to look for some new red shoes. But then I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror in the department store. Part of my "day off" was that I didn't wash my hair. When I saw how bad I looked, I slinked out of the store and went home and took a shower—my birthday gift to everyone around me!

Lagniappe Presbyterian Church is in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi on the Gulf Coast, which was devasted by Hurricane Katrina. In the spring of 2007, the pastor of Lagniappe Church spoke at Christ Pres offering a memorable message called"The Chicken Truck of My Heart"He explained the unique name of his church: Lagniappe (pronounced lan-yap) saying that nobody from Bay St. Louis needs an explanation. "Say you're buying five pounds of shrimp, and the guy at the market gives you an extra handful for free—that's lagniappe, known elsewhere as the baker's dozen. That's it. Free.

That's grace in other words. I love that.

His ministry there is one of restoration—houses and lives— and he seems to spend as much time overseeing teams of volunteers to rebuild houses as he does preparing sermons. I was intrigued when he said that when people ask him what they can do if they come and volunteer at Lagniappe, he instead asks them, What do you do? So I e-mailed him later and told him that I love to teach the Bible and asked if he had any need for that. One thing has led to another and now we're in the process of putting together a weekend for women from around the PCA to come to Lagniappe February 22-24, 2008 for a Restoration Project that will include teaching on how God restores broken lives as well as beautification of Bay St. Louis as the women who come spread out to do planting around the city one afternoon. That's our basic plan that is still being developed. I'm so excited to see what God is going to do.

David and I had the priviledge of sharing our story at the local chapter of Compassionate Friends in August. This group of parents who have lost children meet once a month in most cities around the country for support. It was so sweet to sit in a circle of people who've experienced so much pain and share their sorrow and have them to share ours. Many there have found hope in their sorrow in Jesus. Some have not. David and I had some meaningful conversations with many of these grieving parents. This is the club no one wants to join. But I'm glad it is there to give these parents a safe place to be sad and say their child's name out loud.

I spent two days in August in a local women's prison as part of Bill Glass Ministries' Weekend of Champions. This was WAY out of my comfort zone. But then, that's partly the reason I did it. I wanted to minister to the women in the prison. I wanted to go where I think Jesus would go if he lived in Nashville, Tennessee in 2007. Honestly, I believed that I would be blessed more by my time there than I would bless anyone there.

How was it? It was hard. It was literally hard—every surface was hard from the steel stools around the tables to the miniscule mattresses. The schedule was hard—up for breakfast at 4 a.m., lunch of baloney sandwich on white bread with chips and kool-aide at 11(every day the same thing), dinner at 4. Our assignment felt hard to me. We spent about 6 hours each day in a pod with about 50 women making conversation. Various speakers, singers, entertainers and bikers worked their way through each pod giving gospel presentations which we followed up by going through a simple plan of salvation with groups of women who gathered around us. It was hard for me in that it seemed simplistic and canned. But it was true. The gospel is true and it is simple. I did my best to make it authentic. . It was good for me to figure out how to talk about Jesus and the difference he makes in very real ways. And it was good for me to go where nobody knew who I was and my credentials were meaningless.

So many of these girls grew up in church. They know all the words and phrases and say they believe in Jesus with their hearts. Yet their teeth were rotting away from drug use, many were pregnant and still longing to get out and do more drugs. I prayed with many of them to repent of their sins and ask Jesus to make them new. It is challenging for me to trust God with whether or not any of it was real or lasting I find myself thinking about these women a lot now as I go through the day—when I go to the refrigerator to get whatever I want to eat, when I crawl into my comfortable bed, when I hug my son and enjoy the warmth of my husband. My life is not hard. God has filled my life with so many soft places.

David and I lead a little Sunday School class at our church. We don't teach; we lead a discussion about the sermon. And it is always such a blessing. Even when I think the sermon didn't give us much to discuss, somehow the water always seems to turn into wine. The best thing about it is how real it is. We disagree with each other and challenge each other. We weep together over prodigal children and lost parents. We've persevered through difficulties in the life of the church that we've seen from different perspectives. We're learning what it means to love each other. This week the sermon was on Jesus' instruction to love one another. And we asked the question about where "like" fits in. One person suggested that we can't deny our personal preferences in people. Another pointed out that the Bible doesn't address "liking" people—that it doesn't make allowances for preferring some people over others. We all agreed that our tendency to dispense love exclusively to the people we like reveals the depth of our sinfulness. I'm grateful for all that God teaches me week-by-week through these people that I love—and even like.

I've never worn a bikini. I have nothing against them; I've just never had the body for it. But putting a new book out there feels like strutting out in front of a crowd in a bikini—like my thoughts and ideas are on display and everyone can see all of my flaws and weaknesses. I just received my first copies of my new book, Hoping for Something Better and as I look through it and read through it some, I feel that sense of vulnerability.

I also feel a sense of anticipation for how God will use the book. He has used my previous two books in the lives of people so far beyond what I could have ever imagined or expected in spite of their weaknesses and flaw, so I have to let go of my fear and release this book out there for God to use too. I can't wait to hear about women's Bible studies using the book to study the book of Hebrews.

I just returned from speaking at the Umbrella Ministries Conference. This was a retreat at a beautiful hotel in Orange County just for women who have lost children. That seemed hard as I thought about it, but it was vague until they sent me a list of the registrants that included their names, the names of their children, and their cause of death. It took my breath away. I wasn't sure what to expect at the conference. But what a wonderful group of women. And what a sweet experience for them to be with other women who truly understand the depth of their sorrow. I was inspired by so many of them to hear their stories of how God has met them in this hard loss and used it for good.

Saturday was June 9th, the eighth anniversary of Hope's death. David and I had breakfast at Waffle House with our friends, John and Marty Coates, and then we went to the cemetery. There we talked about the fragility of life. A couple of hours later I got a call from the husband of a close friend that she had been in a terrible accident and was in ICU in New Orleans. I got on a plane a few hours later and went to New Orleans to help. The whole story is at www.caringbridge.org. Type in the site name "carmenthompson".

The prognosis is very difficult for her future as her spinal cord is severed. It hurts. It's so hard to live in this broken world, isn't it? It sends me back to going over the bedrock beliefs about God and his goodness and his control and his good purposes for suffering. Now Carmen and I will share the same date that we can each call "the worst day of my life." David wrote in Psalm 139 that, "every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed." So I have to believe that June 9 was written in his book for me and for Carmen, and that it has not caught him off-guard or off the job.

This was one of those weeks. Someone said something that hurt my feelings. Then later I said something stupid I regretted. But while my friend was quick to apologize to me for her thoughtless words, I was slow to confess mine. I'm prideful, and don't like to admit that I am wrong. I want people to understand my true heart and give me some grace. I want to think I'm above saying hurtful, thoughtless things to people. But I'm not. I suppose I never will be in the here and now.

But how good it feels for a friend to ask forgiveness and to grant that freely. How good it feels to just confess my stupid words and be forgiven by my friends.

Forgiveness seems to be the ongoing work of life in relationships doesn't it? It is not easy work on either side of the equation, but it is what keeps giving us a fresh start with each other. It lightens our load.

It was a year ago Christmas when a friend recommended I read Watch for the Light, an anthology of readings for Advent. So early in December when I was in our local Logos store and I saw a large display of the books on the shelf, I purchased a copy and began to read it.

While some of the readings were interesting and inspiring, some left me cold, and others left me confused. But when I came to the December 16th reading, I just set the book aside. In a piece discussing differences in the accounts of the birth of Jesus in the gospels I read:

Our Christmas pageants usually combine the two stories, but when biblical scholars attempt to reconcile the conflicting material they can't. Raymond Brown suggests that we might do better to recognize that the Holy Spirit was content to give us two different accounts and that the way to interpret them faithfully is to treat them separately. Not try to force a harmony out of some mistaken notion that if scripture is inspired it has to be historical as well . . ."

I began to think about how much I would enjoy a similar book with short readings on Advent/Christmas themes from a number of different writers I trust and respect that reflected a higher view of scripture and put the incarnation in context of God's unfolding plan of redemption. And so I'm putting it together myself and Crossway will publish it in 2008. I'm also putting together a collection of readings on the Cross for the Lent/Easter season. I have drawn from a number of sources including books, other writings, and sermonic materials from the following: Martin Luther, John Piper, Alistair Begg, C. J. Mahaney, R. Kent Hughes, Charles Spurgeon, Adrian Rogers, John MacArthur, John Owen, Martin Lloyd-Jones, Skip Ryan, J.C. Ryle, Phillip Ryken, R.C. Sproul, James Boice, John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Ray Ortlund, Jr., Francis Shaeffer, Saint Augustine, Joni Eareckson Tada, Stephen Olford, J.I. Packer, Randy Alcorn, Tim Keller, Ligon Duncan. I'm now in the process of requesting permissions from these various writers and their publishers. So look for these books in 2008.

I've had an idea percolating in my head—a daily devotional for families. I proposed the idea to Tyndale and they have accepted it, so I am now working on writing a new devotional for their One-Year line of devotionals. I'm calling it the One Year Book of Dinner Table Devotions & Discussion Starters. The family dinner table is the one place that most families come together on a daily—or at least regular—basis. By titling the book this way, it provides a natural impetus for families to open the book and work through it at this key time of the day.

Whereas most devotionals designed for use with children focus on Bible stories or on practical, moral lessons, the uniqueness of this book will be its focus on Biblical themes, concepts, words—even doctrines, but in terms that are understandable to children without talking down to teens. The short devotions are followed by three discussion questions that are designed to turn the devotional time into a family discussion rather than a lecture or reading.

My deadline is October 15. As of mid-June I've written one month's worth of devotions—I started at the end and wrote a month of devotions for Advent. So I have plenty of work to do over the summer and into the fall to get this devotional completed. So far it is easier than it was to write the One Year Book of Hope. I think it will be something families can really use. I hope so. I just have to keep on writing . . . and writing.

That's what my friend and mentor, Ernie Owen, who has worked with authors for over fifty years asked me when I told him that David and I are writing a book together. But I am pleased to say that David and I have turned in the manuscript and our marriage is none the worse for wear. This book will be published by Focus on the Family in the spring of 2008. Our working title is Getting Your Family Through the Loss of a Loved One but that will likely change. It is a straight-talk survival guide for families dealing with the emptiness, awkwardness, and fearfulness of a death in the family. Because there are so many hard things about losing a family member that we haven't had to face personally, we've included interviews with other people who've experienced losses different from our own—the loss of a wife, a husband, a child through suicide, a mother, a father, a sibling—people who have incredible insights gained through their experience. We've also included interviews with experts in education, psychiatry, parenting, and counseling on the topics of greatest concern to families who are grieving.

One of the Christmas things that didn't happen this year was sending out Christmas cards. So I put together a little report on the year that I e-mailed to our out-of-town friends on New Year's Day. You can access it here: Happy New Year From the Guthries

I decided this would be my verse for 2007. For one thing, after going carefully through our finances recently to figure out how much we're spending in various categories, I decided we have been spending too much on clothing. So instead of stopping at the mall and clothing myself that way, I want to pour more energy into clothing myself with strength and dignity. Not my own strength, but the strength I find in resting in Christ, relying on Christ. Not dignity that makes me aloof and prideful, but dignity that flows from my connectedness to King Jesus. And as I face 2007 with less financial security as David starts a new business, I don't want to face the future with fear. I view the coming year as a new adventure of trusting him in new ways and seeing his faithfulness. I want to "laugh" at the time to come. I'm smiling. Are you?

My neighbors must think I'm Scrooge or just don't care about Christmas. Fortunately David and Matt brought the tree upstairs and we decorated it along with hanging the stockings. Aside from buying a couple of poinsettias from Sam's we just didn't have much Christmas decorating at our house. I'm not good at it and it is so much work!

I spent a lot of time this month writing on a new book I'm working on with David. We are writing a book that is tentatively titled, "Getting Your Family Through the Loss of a Loved One." When I called our friend, Ernie Owen, who was the publisher at Word Publishing when I worked there, his first question was, "Who is your divorce lawyer going to be?" I guess couples that write books together have a bad track record of marital strife. So far no strife. But then we're not very far into it. I've done most of the writing so far. I will say that the little bits David has written so far are fabulous. They moved me. I've also been interviewing people who've had losses different from ours to bring in other perspectives and experiences as well as numerous experts. The writing is all coming very easy because these are the issues I've talked to so many grieving people about throughout these past eight years. We're hoping to have it done early in the year. I'll keep you posted.

During the week before Christmas, FamilyLife Today re-aired a five-part interview they taped with David and me four years ago. We listened along day-by-day. In some ways I felt detached thinking, "Those people sure do have a sad story." But I also felt very grateful for the spiritual strength God has supplied to us when we've needed it. Similarly I listened in to the re-broadcast of a two-day interview I did with the Bible Answerman, Hank Hannegraaff last January that re-aired December 21 and 22. It's been long enough that I couldn't remember the questions Hank and callers asked me or my answers, and as I listened to the questions I found myself wondering how I was going to answer the hard questions. Both interviews made it clear to me that God gives us the grace we need when we need it—in this case, the insight and wisdom for answering hard questions. Obviously then, when I had a good answer, it was not because I'm brilliant, but because the Holy Spirit supplied what I needed when I needed it.

So we see the story of the scandal of Ted Haggard's fallenness plastered on the TV screens this week. It has made me sad. I'm sad for his wife and kids as they plummet from being respected and happy and secure to unsure about who their dad/father really is, injured in their reputation, and anxious about the future. I'm sad for Ted Haggard who must be trying to figure out how he let this happen, and how he will overcome it and rebuild his family and future.

But honestly, mostly I'm sad for how all of this has brought injury to the cause of Christ, and dishonored the name of Christ in a culture that is already so skeptical about whether or not Jesus really makes a difference. I keep thinking about the prayer of Jesus—"hallowed be thy name." And I'm sad that so many of us who call ourselves by the name of Christ, bring shame to that name by rejecting the "power in the blood" that has freed us from being a slave to our own sinful desires. But I know that there but for the grace of God go I.

From a whole other angle, I've mentioned to a couple of media people I've talked to this week, that what they don't understand in covering this story is that Ted Haggard is a complete unknown to the majority of evangelicals that they keep saying he is a leader to. Just because he pastors a large church, and because he was chosen as the president of the National Association of Evangelicals does not mean he leads all those who would identify themselves as evangelical Christians. He has put himself out there to the media with the appropriate title, and the general media just doesn't understand that while Christians are sad to see a prominent evangelical disgraced so publicly, most have never heard of him before.

I'm having so much fun helping to teach through Revelation at my church. Over the last couple of weeks I taught Revelation 4 and 5, which relates John's vision of heaven. What an amazing picture of ultimate reality that sets everything this world says is real and valuable on its head. Here's a couple of thoughts from the teaching:

From Revelation 4: 2,3: "there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it . . . a rainbow encircled the throne." In the heart of the universe, in the place of ultimate reality, God is on the throne reminding us of his love and commitment to us and showing us in living brilliant color that he will be faithful to us.

The centerpiece of heaven is not mansions or streets of gold. It is not angels playing harps on clouds. And I say this gently to those of you, who, like me, look forward longingly to seeing those you love one day in heaven, that the most compelling part of heaven will not be seeing those who have gone before us that we love and miss. The centerpiece of heaven, the focal point of this universe of ultimate reality is God on the Throne. What will captivate our hearts when we look into heaven is God on the throne.

This world is not ruled by the forces of random chance. The sovereign, omnipotent Creator of the Universe is sitting on His throne as its ruler. He is the centerpoint, the centerpiece. But I have to ask you, is he your centerpoint? Is God on the throne at the center of your life? Of your thought life? Is he in the focus of your affections? Do your opinions revolve around who he is and what he declares is right and true in his Word? Does your schedule revolve around him?

Or are you really at the center of your universe? Does your life revolve around you? Your needs? Your opinions? Your schedule? Your preferences

From Revelation 5:6: "Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne . . ." So John lifts his gaze to look for the Lion. What he saw must have been a surprise after the words of the elder in verse 5. Because what does he see? He sees a Lamb, not a lion. Mary's little lamb.

Interestingly the Lamb is standing, alive, and yet looks "as if" He had been slain. What makes him look "as if" he had been slain? He has scars on his brow where the thorns had been and prints in His hands and feet where the nails had been. These are the only scars that are visible in heaven because the memory of Calvary is precious in heaven.

This world looks at suffering and can't make sense of it—especially in terms of God. They think, "If God is good and loving, why doesn't he do something about all the suffering in the world."

He has. At the center of reality is One who has suffered—a lamb who was slain so that in God's perfect timing suffering and death will be destroyed forever.

I'm sad the "What is Reformed Theology?" class I've been taking this fall has come to a close today. I have learned so much about things like the sovereignty of God, the reliability of the scripture, irresistible grace and the perseverance of the saints from various pastors in our presbytery. One of the most helpful things I learned came from my pastor, Ray Ortlund, Jr. I asked him, "How would you explain what reformed theology is to the average evangelical Christian who is not reformed in a sentence or two? Here was his answer, "We love the same Lord. While your primary urgency is to get others to chose Him. Our primary enjoyment is that he chose us. The focus is not on the fact that God loves you, but on God's love for his own glory."

"It was thrilling to be used by God in this way. We had no sooner hit the ground in Kiev (roughly in the middle of this large country – the second largest in Europe) than we were packed into a van and hurtling west, almost to the border with Poland, to the city of L'viv. We spoke 2 evenings to leaders of that church, and spent part of the day with some of their key folks visiting teenage inmates in a prison near there. Then, back to Kiev for a 2-day pastor's conference at a retreat center near the city. It was a powerful time as God used Ray to open the eyes of many pastors there to the Old Testament, how it points to Jesus, and how the New Testament can't really be understood outside the context of the Old. Many evangelicals there believe the OT is unnecessary, and pastors rarely preach from it.

I spoke to the pastors about helping their people through grief. I shared some of our story of loss, and of growing through that experience. I used our personal experience to give them practical suggestions on how to minister to people in the midst of great loss. Several sought me out to discuss difficult situations regarding death that they are dealing with right now. Many let me know that what I shared with them from Scripture and my own experience was very important and meaningful to them, and something that is not often discussed.

I've returned happily exhausted, and grateful to God for both allowing me the experience, and for using me for His glory. What a great deal!"

David has spent this past week in Ukraine as part of a team doing two pastors conferences and prison ministry. Connecting by phone has been spotty as has our text messaging. So for two people who are used to spending the day connected by e-mail messages, phone conversations and personal companionship, it has been hard. It was fine the first few days, actually. But now I'm ready for him to come home.

He's speaking to this group of pastors tomorrow about how to help people in their congregation who are going through grief and having introduced that that is what he will be talking about, he said he already had numerous meaningful conversations with pastors today who are dealing with people who've experienced deep loss. They tell him that they comfort these people with the truth of heaven but they are still miserable and they don't know where to go from there. Pain and loss and the questions they raise about God's role and God's love are the same around the world.

This year I'm having such a thrill helping to teach Revelation at my church. But to tell the truth, I kind of drug my feet committing to it. Revelation has always seemed intimidating and so hard to understand. As I read through it in The Message, two verses jumped out at me that God used to show me that this was a tremendous opportunity that I should not say "no" to. The first is Revelation 1:3 which says, "How blessed the reader! How blessed the hearers and keepers of these oracle words, all the words written in this book! Time is just about up."  The second was at the end of the book in chapter 22, "Don't seal the words of the prophecy of this book; don't put it away on the shelf. Time is just about up." I realized that there was a part of me that wants to put Revelation "away on the shelf."

This week I taught Revelation 1:9-21 and had the time of my life! I realized that Jesus of Nazareth as we know him through the gospels was reduced so that deity might be squeezed into flesh. But Revelation 1 shows us what Jesus looks like now, glorified in heaven.

I loved getting to hear Paige Benton teach twice this past weekend at the PCA Women's Conference I went to in Atlanta. Here are a few quotes that have been echoing in my head and challenging my heart:
"The point is not to be active in church, but to be equipped there to engage the world."

"Go where the kingdom is weak and help to make it strong rather than going where the kingdom is strong to be comfortable."

"God doesn't ‘need' us to build his kingdom. He has willed to do it this way. It is slower and sloppier involving us. He doesn't need us; we need to be a part of it. The work itself is a grace-gift of being involved in his cosmic purposes."

Some years I seem to want to be with all my friends and laugh and talk and have a day that is all about me.

For some reason, I don't feel that way this year. I've just wanted to let it slip by with little notice (although I did ask for and receive a specific gift—Bliss lemon and sage body butter and shower soap—mmm it smells good!). Breakfast at waffle house, a little loading up a cart at Sam's, getting my mums planted while listening to John Piper preach on my iPod, soaking in the tub (continuing to listen to John Piper), and grilling some steaks is suiting me just right for celebrating 44.

I'm thinking about Acts 17:28: "For in him we live and move and have our being." In Him. Who could ask for a greater gift on your birthday or any day than to be in him? Who could ask for a greater purpose or pursuit than to be found "in him"? As Paul wrote in Philippians 3:9, " . . . that I may gain Christ and be found in him . . ." My birthday prayer: Lord, over the coming year may I find my home and satisfaction and joy increasingly in you. Teach me what it means to abide in you. May I hold on to nothing that keeps me from being found in you. I want to live in you and move in you and define who I am in you.

What makes a birthday happy? Not being celebrated and made much over, but enjoying the richness and reality of celebrating another year of being found in him.

I get so many letters from people who tell me they admire how strong I am. I'm not sure if I'm strong. Perhaps I give the impression at times in my writing and speaking that my grief is a thing of the past that I am able to manage and meet with faith at all times, so perhaps you should know that today was a day of tears that seemed to come out of nowhere and require their full release. It is no special day although tears began to flow during my visit to the OB-GYN. As I sat there, I remembered what it was like to bring Hope and Gabriel along with me for my six-week check-up looking at all the other moms in the waiting room with babies that had so many years ahead while mine had only weeks. And when the technician asked me, "How many pregnancies have you had and how many live births have you had?" I felt the profound emptiness of three births and only one big, beautiful kid to show for it. So this afternoon I gave into the tears till I fell asleep and was awakened by the telephone and tried to sound professional. Sometimes, you just have to let those tears out, don't you?

Here is something my husband wrote in a letter today describing how God is at work in our circumstances:

"The day before being told that my job at Word had come to an end , I grappled in my men's discipleship group with A. W. Tozer's prayer at the end of the second chapter of his book The Pursuit of God: "please root from my heart those things I have cherished for so long, and which have become a very part of my living self, that Thou mayest enter and dwell there without a rival." Honestly, when I read it, it bothered me a bit. But now I am seeing that God is answering that prayer in an unanticipated way. I see very clearly that this period of my life is providing me with a rare opportunity to evaluate what God would have for me next."

I love life with this man more all the time.

Why is it that problems seem to come in multiples? I remember when we had Hope and the refrigerator stopped working and we dented the car. And David and I found that as strong as we were for the "big" problem, it was the little things that could easily do us in, steal our joy, make us completely crazy.

So why is it when David lost his job the roof sprang a leak? Yesterday it was a drink spilled on the bedspread and today the motherboard of the family computer seems to be a goner (of course I'm upstairs typing on my computer and David is sitting downstairs shopping for a new computer on his laptop so maybe I need to get some perspective here).

And wouldn't you know I just finished writing an article this morning for Covenant Companion magazine on the sufficiency of God's grace. I wrote eloquently that God delivers his grace in the form and quantity and in the exact timing that we need. Today we need it for adjusting to life with water stains on the ceiling, one less computer in the house, and a spotted bedspread in the bedroom. I know these things sound petty, and are petty, but can you relate that these are things that can easily send you over the edge? God, will you give us the grace to endure these "small things" with peace and joy? I believe you will as I allow you to.

A few days after David's job at Word ended, he turned 50. The whole job thing kind of helped take away the sting of turning 50, I think. We made a quick trip to Chicago and saw the Blue Man Group (Which I highly recommend. I loved listening to David laughing beside me after a hard week.) We had some great food. And on Sunday morning we went to Holy Trinity Church. I had spoken at a women's retreat for the church a few months ago and one of their two services meets in downtown Chicago. I loved this church! The pastor, David Helm, was preaching from Nehemiah 6 where the enemies of the rebuilding work of the wall sent messengers to Nehemiah to ask him to come down from working on the wall to meet with them. Nehemiah knew it was a trick—that they meant to distract him from his work, discourage him, and harm him. So he said, "I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down."

Then Pastor Helm took us to Mark 15, where mockers at the foot of the cross said to Jesus, "Come down from the cross and save yourself!" But Jesus, in essence, by his actions said, "I won't come down. I'm doing a great work."

His message drew a picture of this scene in my mind —Jesus on the cross, doing a great and important work, bearing my sin and your sin—and I've been thinking about it ever since. And I can't help but think of the final words of Jesus, "It is finished!" The great work for God on the cross was completed. Thank you, Jesus, for not coming down!

This week, as Matt and I were sitting at home having lunch, David called to let me know that after 21 years at Word Music, his position was being eliminated. That's the kind of call that takes your breath away. Since then, we've been going through the mixture of emotions that this kind of transition brings—grief, relief, fear, excitement. David and I met at Word working down the hall from each other and so much of our lives has been intertwined with the company. Many people have been e-mailing David and saying something like, "But how can there be a Word Music without David Guthrie? You ARE Word Music!" It's been a good opportunity for David to ask himself if that is true. What defines his identity? It is the position he holds or the reputation he's developed? And it has been a good opportunity for us to ask ourselves, what supplies our security? Is it his paycheck and company-supplied health insurance?

In my upcoming book, I Was Hoping for Something Better, I write about Hebrews 12 which talks about the coming "shaking" of the earth and ends with this affirmation, "Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire."

These uncertain days are giving us the opportunity to live out our belief that the source of our identity is who we are in Christ, and the source of our security, when our world is being shaken, is Jesus Christ.

With a great sense of excitement and relief I pushed the send button to submit my manuscript for I Was Hoping for Something Better to my publisher today. After returning from meeting with them in Colorado and getting some helpful input, I re-wrote the introduction and one of the chapters and it seemed to make everything fall into place. Now comes a lot of behind-the-scenes work—including finalizing the title and the jacket statement/description, developing the cover, and lots of waiting for a release date a year from now—in July, 2007.

July 16, 2006

I can hardly believe Gabe entered the world five years ago today featured prominently on the pages of Time Magazine. I wrote a quick note to David Van Biema who wrote our story for Time so beautifully and who I can always count on to share my sorrow genuinely on such days. Actually I haven't felt tremendously sad. I feel more joy remembering how happy I was to hold him on that day and how grateful I was that day and continue to be that God seemed to infuse his limited life with purpose and meaning.