NEW COVER and an Excerpt!!

Hi Friends,

So excited to show you the new cover for REACHING FOR WONDER, Encountering Christ When Life Hurts. So here it is:

And here is a short excerpt to encourage you today (from the chapter on the Samaritan woman at the well):

That’s the power of the truth spoken by Jesus into our lives. The power to transform our deepest shame into our greatest tool for his glory, for drawing others to him. She spoke only the tiniest truth, “I have no husband.” But spoken to Jesus, it was enough to help her face the whole truth, and instead of destroying her, it set her free.

So why are we so afraid of the truth? Why do we so want to hide? When my children were little, they would put their hand over their eyes and believe that we somehow couldn’t see them. I have a horse who will hide his face in the corner of his pen and think that he has been rendered invisible. The truth is, we’re all like that, especially if we’ve done something we’re ashamed of. We cover up, we hide, and we think somehow we can’t be seen.

But God sees. God knows. And instead of condemning he wants to restore.  He wants to give us the gift of aletheia. In New Testament Greek, aletheia is the word for truth, but it comes from the root word meaning unhidden. So when Jesus says, “the truth will set you free,” he means that this freedom he offers includes this gift of grace: We don’t have to hide anymore. We don’t have to be ashamed.

         Too often we think we bring others to Christ by how much we know. But this encounter with Jesus by a shamed Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well tells us that aletheia is what calls people to “come and see.” It’s the unhiddenness, the truth, of who we really are. All the scars, all the mistakes, all the mess … we need not point to Jesus around it, we must point through it. Because there, like a mosaic of broken glass, we find that Jesus has taken our shards and made them into something beautiful. He has made his light to shine through in beauty and amazing wonder.

You can pre-order the book on Amazon by clicking here: REACHING FOR WONDER