Serving Shepherd Press involves many different activities. The email that came from Bill Newton fascinated me. It was about a project he was working on—a book to help men to finish their lives in a strong position in the Christian faith. In fact, his desired title was Finishing Strong, but Steve Farrar (some years ago) had written a larger work using this title, so we would have to think of a different title.
I asked Bill if he would be prepared to tweak the work a little, so that he would also address some specifics that men face by way of militantly aggressive temptations, and straightaway he agreed to. With that in hand, I felt we had a really strong book to bring into the public arena, and, after taking the book through the editing process and playing around with some design concepts, we settled on a masculine-looking color scheme (grays, blacks, reds) using a truck tire as the central visual motif or metaphor for the concept of facing grueling trials, and yet sustaining significant tread life.
Bill, assisted by a good friend and colleague in ministry, has done a remarkable job in preparing a book for men to share with other men: as the back cover states, “Start, Stay, and Finish Strong… Too many Christian men start enthusiastically, then fall short. Falling short can be a public fall: Church-going husband has an affair. High-profile ministry leader gets caught in a scandal. Outspoken advocate is marred by hypocrisy.”
Alistair Begg endorses the book as “thoroughly biblical and intensely practical.”
Bill’s background is in the navy (he was a pilot based on a naval aircraft carrier) and in business before he entered the ministry in his more mature years. He states that he wants to “help men grow up.” He does a great job in ENDURE: A Christian Man’s Guide to Finishing Strong.
My good friend Dave Harrell is likewise what I might (in the best sense of the word) call a “man’s man.” I have worked with Dave on several other projects (a total of eight mini books and two full-sized trade paperbacks, all very important books, packed with truth and practical application). When he shared with me his burden to write a book on the challenges of modern ministry, my ears pricked up.
The book is titled WARRIOR PREACHERS: A Spiritual Call to Arms in an Age of Militant Unbelief. Being published under his own imprint, Shepherd’s Fire Media, it is a very substantial (but not intimidating) book of 232 pages. Date states that his aim in writing it is “to fortify and encourage pastors and church leaders who are committed to a God-centered, biblically integrated, and consistent ministry as they face the increased challenges of militant unbelief in our culture and apostasy in the church, and to enlist new recruits to join the fight.
Steve Lawson has written a very strong foreword, including these words: “The church has faced dark days in the past, and it has always been led back to the high ground of biblical fidelity by strong men. It will be the same for the church today. A new generation of preachers, raised up by God, is desperately needed to help return the church to the solid footing of sound doctrine that produces holy living. May God use this book to challenge you to stand strong as a ‘warrior preacher’ in this hour of spiritual warfare.” John MacArthur similarly asserts “Whether you are a minister or a lay person who wants to support and encourage your pastor, this book will edify and encourage you.”
Featured Image: Setting up Shepherd Press books at The Shepherds' Conference, Sun Valley, California.
The experts tell us that women, more than men, buy and read books. And so it is that publishers rightly keep women in mind as they prepare new titles for publication. In my responsibilities at Shepherd Press, two manuscript submissions came our way in recent years for publication, both written by gifted women, books written from the heart that addressed life issues with robust biblical fidelity and with a sense of warmth and sympathy on the part of the authors.
So I asked Sue if she would help in the editing of these books. Her response was immediate and positive.
She enjoyed working on both projects. Read a little more about them below:
If believers are not careful, church can be reduced to a mere social club. Barbara and Gina demonstrate how to find a cherished friendship through the process of discipleship. They have often observed, when women come to a new church, they seem to be on an endless search to “find a friend” so they can “feel” a part or “feel” connected. Often this leaves them discontent in their search. A more biblical and satisfying way is by developing discipleship relationships in the body of Christ.
Who Needs a Friend When You Can Make a Disciple? defines and highlights some practical “how-tos” to help women implement biblical ways to practice and sustain discipleship relationships.
Barbara and Gina’s aim in sharing their personal story is to show women the impact discipleship can have on their spiritual growth as they find a cherished friend.
Lisa Hughes likewise has experience in ministry that is valuable when shared with women. She has navigated challenging pastoral situations when it comes to understanding the disappointments people can face in life, so when her manuscript submission came along, I was particularly interested to see how she addressed it—and she addressed it with comprehensively biblical thinking and examples, and in a style that I sensed would engage with many readers.
Developing a cover for this was more challenging than for Barbara and Gina’s one, but, after thinking of prairie flowers and feminine icons, we landed on the idea of a woman walking to—who knows where? When Lisa shared this image with me (we got it from one of my favorite sources, DepositPhotos.com), I knew we had a winner as far as an apt visual metaphor was concerned.
Plain and simple, life doesn’t always turn out the way we imagined. Yet, we can respond in God-glorifying ways even when circumstances fall short of our desired hopes and expectations. With practical, biblical counsel from the Scriptures, we have the tools we need to put away sinful responses and be women who smile at the future (Proverbs 31:25). In reshaping how we think about disappointments, trials, and delays, we can grow in contentment, trust, and hope in the unexpected parts of life.
In each chapter we’ll look to the Scriptures for the life-transforming help only God can give. This book is designed to be an aid to growth, which is why inductive Bible study questions accompany each chapter, providing even more treasures from God’s Word for hope and encouragement.
“You want me to speak on what?”
I admit I was a bit lost at first when asked to teach on the subject of unmet expectations. But it wasn’t long before the suggestion took on shades of pure genius. I have wrestled with a few unmet expectations myself and I figured other women must have had similar struggles. It seemed like the perfect topic to tackle!
I couldn’t wait to dig into the Scriptures and see what God had to say about unmet expectations. As I thought, studied, and prayed, I made some encouraging and soul-searching discoveries. Before long, I felt as though I was an archeologist, unearthing expectations everywhere I dug. Some expectations were easy to find and identify, lying readily upon the surface of my heart, while others were buried deeper. My amateur digging soon exhumed different expectations I had about life, the Lord, my family, myself, the best route to the grocery store, and so on. Expectations were coming to light by the spadeful.
There’s nothing wrong with expectations in and of themselves. And it’s easy to see, when digging around in the soil of our hearts, that we have all kinds of thoughts and plans for our lives. All well and good. Expectations aren’t the problem. But when we come face to face with thwarted plans, dismantled hopes, and unanswered prayers, what then? Will we respond with gentle faith and trusting submission to God’s unfolding plans for our lives? Or will bitterness, anger, self-pity, fear, or depression emerge from the miry clay of unbelief?
We have so many thoughts about how things could be different, fine-tuned, tugged into place, fixed, or changed, that when things turn out differently than we anticipated, we may find our hearts waging quite a battle. It’s possible that the cantankerous beginnings of the contentious woman mentioned in Proverbs were the result of her unmet expectations. In fact, it’s more than possible that she grew into her peevish little self, when her life turned out differently than she thought it should. Before she even realized it, her husband preferred to live on their rooftop—in the desert—rather than stay in the same room with her continual nagging. If only she had sought counsel in God’s Word. If she had, she would have been known as the “contented woman” rather than the contentious one.
I doubt that you want to be known as a contentious woman. I sure don’t. And I’m not saying that experiencing unmet expectations automatically make us grumpy and difficult to live with, but the possibility is there. Thankfully, the key to responding well lies in the Word of God. And that’s where we’re headed, straight for the help that only God can provide for those times when we find it difficult to accept our circumstances as God-ordained and good.
When I was around eight or nine years old, I would walk to and from school. It probably wasn’t very far, maybe a few blocks, but it felt like a long way, especially on cold, wintry days in Idaho, when the wind would sting my cheeks and rush right through my jacket. Yet my little journey became bearable when I would imagine I was a pioneer girl, trudging across the prairie, seeking help for Ma and Pa, who lay sick at home in our sod house. Then the walk home from school became an adventure, instead of something to dread.
So, here’s my proposal. Will you go on a pioneer-girl journey with me? As we study God’s Word together, we’ll discover that, though life may turn out differently than we expected, God always intends our good. We’ll look at unmet expectations from a biblical perspective, consider ways we’ve engaged in wrong thinking, repent of sinful responses, and look to the Scriptures to provide the sure footing we need to continue our trek. As we do so, we’ll gain a deeper and better understanding of the Lord and His perfect ways. Just like the pioneers, who were forever changed by their expedition west, we too will be changed through the study of God’s Word.
You may well be thinking, “Wait, wait. Hold it. I don’t want to do the pioneer-girl thing! I don’t have a problem with expectations. They’re not something I struggle with.” Don’t worry. You don’t have to put on a bonnet just yet, but I’d love to have you join me in the adventure, just the same. As we get underway, you may discover— as I did— areas of sinful struggle stemming from unmet expectations. It’s my hope and prayer that, as we press on together, we’ll gain encouragement and strength from the Lord Himself to respond with obedient faith and growing love for His faithful work in our lives.
Let’s embark on a journey together, a journey of growth, discovery, and change. I can’t guarantee it will be easy; real heart-growth rarely is. It is my hope that you’re not the kind to give up easily and my prayer that your love for the Lord will drive you to discover how you can give Him the most honor and glory possible, no matter what your circumstances. Are you ready?
Excerpted from Unmet Expectations: Reshaping Our Thinking in Disappointments, Trials, and Delays by Lisa Hughes, now available to order from Shepherd Press.
“If we don’t leave now, we could miss the flight,” I urged.
With one final, last-minute inspection to confirm that our home was as secure as possible, we climbed into our trusty Volvo station wagon and reversed on to the road.
“We’re on our way!” exclaimed Matthew.
Fifteen minutes into our drive to the local airport, GSP, Sue spoke up, her tone anxious: “On, no, I left my cereal in the fridge. And I don’t think we can turn back now, can we, Jim?”
“It’s going to cut it fine if we do,” I answered tersely. “Do you think we can get something in Britain that you can easily digest?”
“Guess that’s all I can do,” Sue replied. Sue had been facing a challenging health-and-diet-related condition for some years, and was only now just beginning to get enough strength to embark on a one-week visit to Britain–a long overdue one–but then everyone appreciates what COVID did to international travel.
A few hours later, on a comfortable layover in Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport (one of the busiest in the northern hemisphere), we reflected on how providential circumstances had worked to bring this day to transpire the way it was. My mother, Jean Alison Holmes, had passed from this life to the next more than a year earlier and it had been almost impossible to make travel arrangements for her funeral at that time. She had requested that I would speak at her funeral (which I was able to do remotely by a video recording) but I felt it only right to be present at the sprinkling of her ashes.
Several hours into the transatlantic flight, I found myself musing on what it might be like to be back in Britain after some years. Life in America is lived briskly, conveniently, and efficiently, so the idea of having to navigate narrow streets, busy motorways, and drive a car without automatic transmission played somewhat on my mind. And what would it be like to face Britain’s warmest weather on record? That seemed counterintuitive!
“So glad that you made it safely.” Jan’s voice was warm, if a little metallic-sounding on WhatsApp as I updated her from Heathrow that we had our feet well and truly on British soil. But some hours were yet to elapse before we could all embrace after what felt like a lengthy drive to her hometown a little south of Birmingham, made not a little difficult by the low-tire-pressure warning light that flashed on as we made our way along the motorway toward Oxford. “We’ll add some air,” I announced, sounding more optimistic than I felt as I broke the news to Sue and Matthew as we pulled into a motorway services location. But each terminal I tried to get compressed air from failed to operate, notwithstanding my insertion of different one-pound coins to claim my little extra portion of compressed British air. “Well, let me check the spare tire, anyway,” I said, as I wanted to be sure we could at least keep mobile, especially if what was maybe a slow leak turned more catastrophic. Opening the trunk, I looked to see where the tire was–presumably in a sub-compartment. “Hmm: no sub-compartment,” I muttered. “Let me look under the car,” I said to myself, thinking the spare would be suspended there in the cavity space. Groveling underneath, now sweating not only with the heat but with frustration at the sloppiness of the rental car agency, I beheld…nothing. “Well, let’s just drive on and pray that we don’t deflate a tire,” I announced. There didn’t seem a better plan.
Thankfully, although the warning light continued to burn, whichever tire it was did not go flat. When I called the rental agency, a bright, British accent announced, “O, sorry, sir, no, we don’t supply spare wheels with our cars; you just have to use the repair emergency kit to pump it up.”
“How dumb that sounds,” I thought as I politely thanked her. In my convenient world, I like to be prepared. That means a jack and a fully inflated spare wheel.
After recalibrating to UK time, just five hours ahead of eastern time in the USA, (and also finding out that the rumored heatwave was a reality–it was exceptionally hot weather for Britain) we headed north to the beautiful Lake District. Navigating traffic around Birmingham on a Friday afternoon was every bit as frustrating as I thought it would be, only even worse. Traffic backed up for around two hours. The main reason? A broken-down van occupying a lane a mile or so after an on-ramp. A rather perplexed driver stood by his van while yellow-jacketed patrol officers looked on in puzzlement, as they waited for a rescue truck to come and solve the problem. In my simplistic world, all they had to do (and there was enough muscle power, I would have thought) was to push the broken-down van off the road and let simple people like me (and maybe two thousand over drivers traveling on the same road in the same direction) drive past at something faster than stopped or slow walking speed.
The location as beautiful as ever, we made our home for two nights in the town of Penrith in a small-but-comfortable air b-n-b. Joined by our good friend Raymond Zulu and with my sister Jan and nephew and niece, Shaun and Pru camped out in a nearby location, we were well positioned to prepare for the sprinkling of my late mother’s ashes in the countryside nearby.
Sunday took us to Northallerton to visit with friends Cyril and Margery Fawcett, senior citizens and dear saints now in their nineties, members of the Northallerton Evangelical Church, our former home church, with the happy providence of their daughter, Rebecca and family, husband Stephen, and their two boys, Jonathan and Matthew, on a short visit from Northern Ireland.
Darlington, just twenty or so miles further north, was our home for twelve years, and it was fun to be back in town, visiting our other home church in Aycliffe and enjoying meeting with old friends and neighbors. Two days spent there sped by quickly as there were various administrative matters to take care of.
Tuesday was spent on the road, with a brief visit with John, Sue’s brother in the Manchester area. By then, the weather had turned much cooler and we felt that this was the “more normal” Britain, the Britain that we were used to living in those years ago when the overcast weather made it seem as if we were living in Tupperware, and never left a shadow even in the brighter light. The final day was spent enjoying a visit to Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford upon Avon.
Owing to expected labor union strikes, we knew the so-called London Orbital, the M25, could be seriously gridlocked with motorists avoiding the railroad service. It’s often been said that the M25 is London’s largest circular parking lot, and we did not want to experience it, so we were on our way back to London’s Heathrow Airport by just after 3am. It made for a long day, but we were thankful to be able to start the check-in process early, and good that we did, as Matthew repeatedly ran into security checks that looked as if they would bump him from the return flight. I don’t think he has ever been so happy to be sitting back on an airplane as when we finally reclined in the comfort of Delta’s Boeing 767 to ferry us back over the Atlantic for an extended layover in Detroit, Michigan, before we would finally catch our connecting flight and put our feet back on South Carolina soil sometime after 11pm.
Notes I prepared and delivered in honor of my mother’s wishes for me to speak at her funeral. Due to COVID travel restrictions, I was not able to speak in person at her funeral service, although I did prepare a video recording that was played on the day. The following notes are some thoughts I handwrote in preparation for the small, family memorial service conducted a few miles from Penrith in the beautiful Lake District of England.
Genesis 3:17-22, notably 19b-20 “For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.” . . . “The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living.”
A word that Mum often used was a Swahili one–FUMBI–dust. Whether a cobweb or some ethereal particles on the carpet that needed disposing of. we would joke about the dust (pronounced in a Yorkshire accent) or the fluff (similarly said in Yorkshire tones).
God’s Word is very sobering in how it describes the universal human condition. Gen 2:7 “The LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground”–then, after disobedience to the clear and distinctly revealed will of God, the pronouncement of the curse (Gen 2:17) “…You shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it, you will surely die…”
Our first parents knowingly disobeyed the revealed will of their Creator and therefore brought disorder and death into our world.
Here, very starkly, in these human remains, is the evidence, the proof, of the outworking of sin, disobedience to God.
“For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” That is our universal and inevitable condition. We may ignore it, suppress it from our minds, party and hedonize it, to “not be so morbid about it”, but, like taxes, it won’t go away and we will eventually encounter it. Emily Dickinson’s words are so apt:
“Because I could not stop for death
He kindly stopped for me.”
That’s the curse.
But there is also blessing. What is it? Consider the next verse–verse 20: “So the man called his wife’s name Eve.” ZOE = Living, Life, Life-Giver. Staring inevitable death in the face, Adam is given faith to see that his wife will yet deliver life–first of all in their progeny: they will have sex and they will have babies–and ultimately in the the Seed of the woman, Jesus the Messiah.
Jesus, God in human flesh, was a perfect man–unique and sinless. Paul the apostle compares and contrasts this in 1 Corinthians 15:45. “The last Adam–Jesus–became a life-giving spirit.”
CURSE: By nature, each of us will inherit the curse of Adam–physical death.
BLESSING: By grace, each of us may inherit eternal life through the person and work of Jesus, the Seed of the woman, through the substitutionary work He did in living a perfect life on our behalf and then in His death, receiving an eternity’s worth of punishment so that our sins may be imputed to Him, and His righteousness to us.
As we sprinkle the remains of our mother, grandmother, mother-in-law, we remember her–lovingly–as the one responsible for bringing us into this world. And with thanksgiving to God for the good news of His grace that, through Jesus, He rescues sinners who repent and trust in Him alone–to Heaven.
I often told her, referring to the words of the Heidelberg Catechism, that my only hope in life and in death is that Jesus has lived and died for sinners such as I am , and I have no other hope than in Him.
This is a sober and sobering event–and I administer these words in a way as best I can to honor her wish that I should speak at her funeral.
We do not lower her body in a casket into the ground. Instead, we scatter these, her earthly remains, to be distributed by the winds of heaven from this location where the ashes of my father, Reginald Frank Holmes, were similarly scattered some nineteen years ago under the same sun–and we await the sure and certain promise that God, for whom nothing is impossible, shall gather and reconstitute and rejuvenate these very same particles this very dust… into resurrected bodies.
Are we sobered by this? Surely so!
But we may be joyful, too, as we consider how God wove the account of redemption into Mum’s life, so that she was born of God-fearing parents and how she was able to learn not only from her upbringing but through God’s Word faithfully preached that there is a way back for sinners to be reconciled to God through Jesus–and so we can conclude with the words of Fanny Crosby that she and Dad loved:
To God be the glory, great things He has done
So loved He the world that He gave us His Son
Who yielded His life and atonement for sin
And opened the life gate that all may go in
Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, Let the earth hear His voice
Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord, Let the people rejoice
O come to the Father, through Jesus the Son
And give Him the glory, great things He has done!
Some time back, I shared some thoughts about working with wood (HERE and HERE). Time spent away from my desk is spent profitably and enjoyably harnessing some God-given resources and converting them into useful items. Three projects come to mind:
Part of being productive involves having an environment in which it is possible to spread out somewhat. A single desk seems too cramping, so I dreamed up a design that would accommodate some ugly plastic shelving that needed concealing and that would also give me some significant extra space for working. Home Depot sells lumber at a reasonable cost, so off I went to find out what I could use. Initially I thought plywood (carefully edged) would be sufficient, but I discovered pine strips bonded together into an attractive board, so I settled on that. After a few weeks of measuring, cutting, joining, sanding, and varnishing, I was pleased with the outcome.
The problem with books is that they need decent accommodation. Sue and I have been blessed with gifts of several beautiful volumes and we have purchased others in light of ongoing study and being kept appraised. Two of our friends, an elderly couple, are amused that I had to inform them that their generosity caused me to build another pine bookshelf named in their honor!
The third item proved a more challenging one for me to construct. After we were married, Sue and I purchased (in part as an anniversary gift and as a kind of memorial of my paternal grandmother) a set of Encyclopedia Britannica. It came with a pretty standard set of shelves, and these did not take long to start to sag.
I have long loved the appearance of cedar (and related woods in its family). Strictly speaking, cedar is a Middle-Eastern tree, but there are variants, some of which grow in South America. Home Depot had some from Colombia. After researching some cutting and finishing techniques online, I took the plunge and purchased a couple of small pieces to see what they handled like. I was surprised by the softness of the wood and its responsiveness to being glued and screwed. A week later, I went back and purchased several pieces with a view to constructing a bookcase for the set encyclopedias that proved a visual annoyance to me each time I noticed how their shelves sagged.
Although some of the pieces of cedar appeared a little twisted, when I glued and screwed them into a frame, they straightened and stayed that way. That was pleasing. And all the time, there was the fragrance of cedar on our back deck where I was working. It was challenging to make relatively invisible joins that would still keep the piece strong (Encyclopedia Britannica sets are about as heavyweight as they come), but the resultant bookcase is pretty pleasing to look at, even if I did not apply as much linseed oil as I might have done to get the tones and grains a little darker.
Good question. A meme is meant to convey a thought or an emotion using a graphic symbol or metaphor and a few terse words. I worked up a few of them over the last several months (it was fun finding the images and sourcing the quotes) and posted most of them on my Facebook account.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Enjoy viewing them; get thinking; and maybe get motivated!
Standing next to the Berlin Wall Obelisk
In my university days in South Africa, the name of Ronald Reagan, recently elected as President of the USA, always brought about the image of a genial, sincere, kind man. A good friend once said that he would perhaps be the last of the great American presidents.
On a visit to California earlier in the year, my good friend Anthony Russo and I had the opportunity to visit the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, located in Simi Valley, some miles north of Los Angeles. It was a short and easy drive from where we were staying in Van Nuys in readiness for attending and exhibiting (and selling books for Shepherd Press) at the Shepherds’ Conference.
My thinking was that an hour or two would be sufficient for the visit. I could not have been more mistaken. Arriving shortly after 10am, by 4pm we were still enraptured by all there was to see and think about.
As the museum’s website well states, “Perched on a mountaintop with sweeping views of the surrounding mountains, valleys and the Pacific Ocean, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library is one of California’s most beautiful and unique destinations.” It continues, “The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum is an immersive museum-going experience. More than twenty galleries highlight the life and times of America’s 40th president. The Reagan Library also presents entertaining and informative temporary exhibitions on a wide range of subjects.”
From actual Reagan memorabilia through hologram 3D cinematic experiences, the offerings to visitors proved to be engaging and fascinating. Of particular interest were the exhibits showing how President Reagan was transported–whether in Airforce One (a retired Boeing 707–and there’s a story in itself all about that, given how the aircraft had to be dismantled, transported by road, and reassembled on site), Navy One, or other vehicles such as the presidential limousine.
Other exhibits include
Reagan embraced a fundamentally Western and biblically integrated worldview. He may have had unfavorable influences in some of his thinking, but his optimism, his commitment to a thoroughgoing work ethic, his power of persuasion over friends and foes alike (think of his most memorable line: “Mr. Gorbachev: Tear down this wall!”) and his concern for the greatness of the American way of life underline his presidency with a sense of remarkable success.
Many years ago, a godly man named Athanasius went head-to-head with a contemporary, Arius, an influential person in the church. It involved their different views on a Greek term, homoousios or homoiousios —the matter was relative to whether Jesus, as the Son of God, was of the same or only a similar essence to the Father. Arius took the weaker position, that Jesus was similar in essence to the Father, but not that He was the same. The ensuing discussion and debate went on for a long time but, in the end, through the perseverance of Athanasius, truth prevailed. Christianity embraced the biblical position that Jesus is God. So, in Paul’s letter to the Colossians, 1:18, 19, we read that Jesus “is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell.” Later in the letter, 2:9, Paul states that “in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.”
To be the perfect Savior of sinners, Jesus has to be fully God and fully human. The New Testament assures us that this is so! The hymn well says: “On Him Almighty vengeance fell | That must have sunk a world to hell | He bore it for a chosen race | And thus became their hiding place.”
Are you trusting the God-man who came into this world to save sinners just like you?
This has been a year of change for us. Matthew completed high school at Bob Jones Academy and graduated in May. This past semester, he has been a freshman at Bob Jones University, studying cinema production.
We were able to have a few enjoyable days of vacation in Georgia in August before Matthew started college.
Jim’s mom, Jean Holmes, passed away in June. She was ninety-four years of age and living in England at the time.
Jim has kept busy with many publishing projects. Sue has had various health issues to navigate and so has worked mostly from home this year, helping Jim with editing projects and doing some work for Dr. Joseph Pipa at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
We send you our love and best wishes for 2022.
An ongoing project in recent years has involved working with Roger Ellsworth on the preparation and presentation of daily Bible meditations or reflections. The project originated as we discussed an idea he had–and which speedily morphed from a single, standalone volume to several more, and, quickly after that, into a reading for each day of the year.
We’re pleased to say that we now have a new format for these delightful readings–four seasonal books that gather all of the months of the year into the four seasonal categories: Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn.
The creative energy that has gone into developing this series of books has been considerable. We are passionate that you will enjoy using and sharing these excellent resources.
Enjoy viewing the introductory video here!
There’s another video you could also view HERE that introduces the Autumn readings.
For more information, visit www.mycoffeecupmeditations.com or click HERE.
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