Hello, my friends. Finally, I have some found time to throw
promotions aside and put to words an article of informative celebration to
communicate from my human side that I so love doing. I am Jim Newton, author of
the book, WHAT DOES FAITH LOOK LIKE, in case you mistook me for George Clooney
or whomever :) (don't think that would ever be a problem). I would never be
mistaken for reserved and quiet and am sincerely honored, energized, and
blessed by the book's success and the too-kind readers. Too, there are certain
requisites that must be performed in the book publishing business that readers
may misconstrue as boasting, but are a necessity to the writer and publisher to
introduce them to people to whom they are unknown...please, forgive us if we
have taken that tone. Overall, it has been one of the greatest experiences of
my lifetime. However, I can be selfish, I like and miss my writing/thinking/talk-to-God
time to replenish my spirit once in awhile. Life for many months before and after the book
release has been lightning paced and, well, just plain busy with very long
hours, many all-nighters. Since release, the mountains of interviews, work on guest
posts, social media, 80 to 100 emails to sort through and answer each day, accounting,
post-release work in general, and work a job have taken a toll on me. I am not
a glamorous and exciting Hollywood star. I love my personal and
quiet/meditative time each day with God. I love being just nobody at times.
Finally, after the VCBA announcement was made and all the great things that
come with the award, God said, "Make some space, we need to talk." I
love my talks with God. And I love to get down to earth with readers to let
them know that my head is still normal size, but most of all to remind myself
what all this is about - God, not me. Though I have worked through the night on
this article, it has been a work of pure joy to be able to just talk with you,
who are such great and faithful servants of our Lord and a welcome respite in
the long and arduous journey of a book to market.
Thank you Father for
the chance to share what great blessings you have given to me and to many
others through their personal stories of faith, and thank you Father for the
forgiving readers with such soft hearts who gave this book, written by an
untested old fool, a chance. Amen
I wanted to give you
a brain-shot of what this book is not and what I intended it to be, among some
other thoughts of celebration of our faith and its accomplishments and power.
First, I am not a theologian or a member of the clergy. Our Lord has an
important purpose for people in those professions. I am a layman, pure and
simple. In the book, I set out to give snapshots of real faith as it influences
and affects people's lives in the forefront and in the background, with little
human awareness so often. God is always here and always working for us and
longing for us to talk with him, know him. This book is definitely not a Bible
study or a treatise on the important principles of the Bible with some profound
and very-very technical explanation of those principles filled with dogmatic
phrases that make me shout out, "I'm lost. Did God really mean for it to
be this way?" No, Jesus walked upon this earth and tore the Pharisees
apart for complicating and destroying the beautiful spirit of our Father's
simple yet divinely powerful message. Our Faith is for use every day and in
every situation that occurs in our lives upon this earth. Our faith and its
truths and guides are intended by God to be easily understood by even the most
uneducated of his children.
Then, what is this book about? It is about: With faith you
will know God is always here, always right by your side and ready to act,
comfort, give strength; God is fully aware that he hands out tough assignments
to his faithful. I wanted to inspire you, the reader, just as I am inspired
every moment of every day by our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ and God, our
Father. God desires that our Faith be very practical and useful (what good is
faith if not useful?) and applied every day and in every situation that occurs
in our lives upon this earth. This book is a series of snapshots of faith
working quietly or outwardly in everyday people's lives. All stories are based
on real-life stories. God doesn't mess around, he can and will bring action and
adventure into the lives of his faithful; a faithful that the secular world
seems to so often view as mundane and self-righteous. Hah! Most Christians
serve so humbly and quietly that the world rarely realizes God has his children
at work serving and loving without thought of any reward; often in hostile
environments where death is ever present. I wrote the book, but God inspired it
and gave me the words from his humble and loving instruments or the faithful
that serve him so faithfully. I'm just another instrument of his will, and a
very noisy one when the situation calls for it. I'm not boasting, that's my job
when I'm called upon. It's whatever God
wants me to do, not what I want to do. What's your job? What's your spiritual
gift? You need to discover your spiritual gift for we all have one and cannot
serve effectively without being aware of it. Turn to your church for help with
this matter...but do it. Paul addresses
this in 1 Corinthians 12...read it.
Yeah, life can be really rough around the edges and all in
between for countless numbers of our brothers and sisters. We lose someone
special, our lives are over and why me or why them, lord? We can take a hit,
turn our cheek, take another and another hit. It seems endless, our strength
ebbing. Why, Lord? Why, me? I can't see you. I can't hear you. Lord why have
you forsaken me (even our Lord Jesus cried out that statement on that horrible
cross)? God, you have let life rip the heart right out of me and left me to die
alone. Oh Lord, I'm finished, and you never cared, never lifted a finger to
help. I have no strength, no faith left. I'm totally empty. I thought you'd be
here when I needed you most.
He never said it would be easy. In fact, he promised it
would be tough as nails many times. but our Lord is right here longing for us
to lean on him for strength and comfort. Remember, we glorify him by facing and
overcoming trials non-believers would have succumbed to from the start, and
facing those trials with a joyful spirit with the knowledge that he honored you
by giving you this heavy load that he knew you could bear, because at the same
time God asks you to have faith in him, he has faith in you, what an honor.
Remember the promise, with faith and service comes the divine gift of eternal
life with him after serving his will during this tough physical life.
There is always great spiritual joy when someone finally
notices our Lord standing, sitting, or just lying beside them enjoying a sunny
day or patting us and lifting our spirit during one of those really tragic
periods...or just listening - saying, "It's tough, but nobody or nothing
can cause lasting harm to you when you reside with me." Then - there are
all the great adventures he lays on you when you really kick-back, relax, and
let that mustard-seed faith build trust in him and, with the security of our
lord around you unlocking all doors before you, dive head first into places and
situations the secular-world warning signs all say, "DANGER. But with God,
all things are possible. Not just some, all good things are possible with our
God. Just have faith, my brothers and sisters. We may be required to be humble,
compassionate, loving, but our faith should be built rock-solid tough. God Bless
you all. God is not only alive, but winning. Hopefully, you didn't think he had
any chance of losing, did you? He just likes to make things interesting for us,
his chosen. Who could be more exciting than God? And he wants us to know him
personally. Kick that faith up a notch or two.
If you are a
Christian with dusty thrown-in-the-back-of-the-closet spirit, if you are a
person who has realized a great emptiness in your life and trying to discover
what that missing something is, then I hope and pray that this book gives you
insight and the inspiration to take that giant first step toward faith in Jesus
Christ, our Lord and savior and the only way to our Father, God. When you
choose to learn, when you chose to dust off your faith, fire is going to erupt
inside of you. Do not fight it. Let it consume you. Learn to not fear but
embrace that spiritual feeling like a wild and untamed lion inside of you
fighting to get out and do God's loving and most holy will. Let that spirit
explode outward in love and serving others; Christians, non-believers it
matters not for God's gift of love is the most powerful and undeniable weapon
ever. God's love will transform you. Constantly, God's love will go against everything
you have been taught previously by society. Let it go. Do not attempt to
constrain it. All hate is powerless before the might of God's love coming from
within you through his divine gift of the Holy Spirit. Even when Christians
serve and give quietly, humbly as they most often do as commanded by our Lord, a terrific aura of God's power can be felt and
seen all around those serving and those being served.
Once you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and
savior with true faith, you are at once loved and hated. Loved infinitely by
God and hated by those forces of darkness that fight a losing battle against
the good and love of God. Fear not. When you are on God's side, you are always
on the winning side. Let the fire of the most holy love of God consume your
spirit. God forth with assurance that you will go into battle against many
great trials and tribulations, but God will always be by your side taking step
by step with you giving great strength and comfort through his divine love and
goodness. You will never be alone again. You will destroy the evil and hateful
designs of men filled with darkness by attacking them with God's love through
the Holy Spirit on fire within you and belching out God's love that will not be
denied.
If a person says to you, "I believe in Jesus, but
prefer to worship at home by myself and keep my faith to myself - private -
unknown to the rest of the world," that person does not truly have the
gift of faith and all the love that it brings for once you have truly
experienced God's love through a true faith, you are not capable of containing
it. In other words, God's love is freely given, and will be freely given by you
to others. That giving is unstoppable. The urge to give this divine love is beyond
your capability to control it. God's love is the most precious of wealth, yet
the more you give, the more you receive. So give it freely, as you have no
choice.
1 Corinthians 13:2
If I have the gift of
prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith
that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
Please, do not confuse my boisterousness with personal
boasting. I am totally consumed with excitement when I write, speak, or think
of my God and all this is for the glory of my God who loves all of us unconditionally.
Faith is the match that lights the all-consuming fire of a life within God's
grace. Leave your past sins or wrongs at
the door when you enter. Those sins are forgiven and their memories will not be
required nor accepted within the confines of God's precious and divine grace.
Strike that holy match my brothers and sisters.
When you, as a Christian acting with a loving faith, serve
the needs of our Father's will by serving those he chooses you to serve, you
are one, only, but while keeping in mind the knowledge that billions of others
are serving quietly and humbly at the same time throughout this world, you
begin to see and understand the quiet yet irresistible power of his loving
will. God's loving will cannot be denied. Join or renew your spirit in this
world-altering and peaceful movement that proclaimed exactly what it would
accomplish over two thousand years into the future through the work of their
leader, a powerfully simple carpenter's son. When we come to the realization
that God can turn a simple artisan's son with no occupation, other than serving,
loving, and spreading a message of Good News, into God upon earth and within a mere
thirty-two years upon this same earth, totally change mankind's course by giving
it a solid set of ethical standards, morals, forgiveness to all for merely
asking, change love from the exception to the rule, be raised from the dead three
days after that death, and dispense eternal life for faith in that
resurrection. Did it happen? Thousands
of people over two thousand years ago saw the risen Jesus Christ, and today,
over 2.5 billion faithful affirm their belief in that momentous event.
1 Corinthians
12:12-14
Just as a body,
though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with
Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body - whether
Jews or Gentiles, slave or free - and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.
Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.
It is time my brothers and sisters in Christ. Time to kindle
our spiritual fires for our Lord calls upon us as one body to finish the work
set out for us by Christ during his time upon this earth in human form. Let us
gather the kindling and the logs and make the fires large and powerful as he
commanded us to do. Let us work together
as one body under our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, to be the glory to God,
our Father, as Christ desired us to be.
God is Good, Dios es bueno, Dio e buono, Dieu est bon, Deus
e bom...get the general idea? God is good in every language, every person,
every day, every moment, all the time, and all the time God is good.
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