Core value exercise from Love Without Hurt book

Interesting exercise from chapter 5 in the Stosny book.  Hoping to challenge our Nar house with this 7 day challenge

Recovering Core Value   --  do each of the following, everyday for 7 days

Appreciate at least one thing about each person you love. 

Make at least one spiritual connection. 

Appreciate a new thing of beauty in nature, art, music and/or your community. 

Do at least one compassionate thing for another person. 

Do at least one compassionate thing for yourself. 

Culture Shift book review

Culture Shift - The Battle for the Moral Heart of America
by R. Albert Mohler Jr.


I must admit that it took me a little bit to warm up to and appreciate Culture Shift by R. Albert Mohler.  Do you recall the story of dropping a frog in a pot of boiling water and they will jump out but put them in a pot of room temperature water and then slowly bring the pot to boiling and the frog will not ever jump out?  Mohler compares Christians to fish swimming in water and not realizing they are wet.  Culture Shift makes a case that Christians need to tune into the complex changes going on around them today. 


Many very current day topics are addressed in this book with the intent to get us thinking and considering changes that are taking place in our world. Free speech, supreme courts, Islam acceptance, abortion, natural disasters, public schools and age of lies are a few topics that Mohler addresses in his book.  I liked that he brings things to light and then offers some perspective on the topics but doesn't necessarily bang you over the head preaching some path that everyone must take.  


My favorite chapters were The Culture of Offendedness where Mohler explains that the right to free speech means a right to offend and the chapter called Hard America, Soft America where he discusses the goal of schools to produce soft Americans who are coddled and used for experimentation and then turned loose in hard America.


I would recommend this book to those who enjoy being tuned into the current topics and thinking of the day. Culture Shift will be a useful tool for keeping you out of the pot of boiling water.


I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review
To Read Chapter 1: http://www.scribd.com/doc/58119941/Culture-Shift-by-R-Albert-Mohler-ch-1-excerpt

Global-Warming Deception - Book review

The Global-Warming Deception  by Grant R. Jeffrey


The global warming topic is very intriguing to me. I seldom feel that I get the whole story when reading typical media coverage.  Grant Jeffery's book The Global-Warming Deception was a good read on the topic.  I thought that Jeffrey started out slow in his book and dwelt too much on some of his extrapolation thoughts on where the deception was heading.  He May be correct in some of his conclusions but I would rather have him let the readers decide for themselves using the facts that he presents later in the book.  Jeffrey gets into the meat of the topic and provides some global temperature history early in the book which he refers to frequently throughout the book.  I appreciated having a better understanding of the Roman Warm period, Dark Ages Cold period, Medievil Warm period and the Little Ice Age period (AD 1350 to AD 1850).  This informatio is an excellent backdrop for any discussion on this global warming topic.


Mr Jeffrey devotes a fair amount of print disecting many of the claims made by the IPCC (United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).  Providing clarity on many current day global warming topics is a great attribute of the The Global-Warming Deception book.  The famous hockey stick graph is explained and it's dismissal of major temperature variations are noted.  Jeffrey gets very detailed in some of his arguments but does a nice job in presenting information in an understandable way.


Jeffrey claims that the primary argument used by anthropogenic global warming advocates are not based on observable, measured evidence but rather on computer-modeled predictions and potential scenarios.  Chapter 8 takes time to explain many of the scientific facts influencing weather and temperatures.  One quick fact that highlights the sun as a major proponent in climate is that every second the sun sends to earth the amount of energy released by a magnitude 8 earthquake.  Another area of enlightenment was hearing of our oceans and their release of CO2.  I would recommend The Global-Warming Deception to anyone with interest in the global warming topic.


I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review


Read Excerpt: http://waterbrookmultnomah.com/catalog.php?isbn=9781400074433&view=excerpt

200 years of History in 5 mins

Interesting history perspective.  China has come a long way.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/watch-200-years-of-history-in-5-minutes

-Nar

How to subscribe to the EBC marriage blog

Add this HTML to your webpage to have a subscribe button to the EBC Marriage Blog

<a href=" http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=EagleBrookMarriageAndFamilyBlog&amp;loc=en_US " target="_blank"><img src="http://narfamily.com/images/EBCmarriageBlog.jpg" border="0" title="Email subscription to Marriage Blog" alt="Email subscription to EBC Marriage Blog"></a>

or

Click here to subscribe now...




-Nar

Skateboard mag photo

Dan in Skateboard Mag

http://theskateboardmag.com/blogs/austin-mayer/2011/05/04/photofile-21/

Book Review: Soul Print

Soul Print  by Mark Batterson

I had high expectations for this book after reading Batterson's earlier "In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day" book and I wasn't disappointed. Mark Batterson used various events in King David's life to again challenge me in my walk with Jesus. Soul Print encourages us to tune into the various memory moments that we have in life and recognize that each of us is uniquely created and the combination of our experiences gives us a distinct 'soul print'.   Batterson encourages us to identify and accumulate lifesymbols, those events and memories which make up the story that God is writing through us.

I was introduced to a couple of new words during my reading of Soul Print, dunamis and exousia.  Dunamis is doing things beyond your natural ability and exousia is the ability to not do things you have the ability to do.  Jesus was the ulimate example of exousia when he choose to stay on the cross despite having the ability to call on a legion of angels and get himself out of the disaster he was in.  It is one thing to 'do' the right thing and another to 'not' do the wrong thing.  Batterson uses the story of David in the cave with Saul to develop the definition of integrity.  David fulfills a definition of integrity by doing the right thing even when no one is watching, he could have killed Saul without anyone knowing.

I have a long way to go to be living out the principles that Batterson presents in Soul Print but I totally trust that God is intimately with me as I walk through this life of bunders and mistakes.

I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review

Read Chapter 1: http://waterbrookmultnomah.com/2010/11/19/sneak-peek-soulprint-by-mark-batterson/