This last Sunday we had 284 in attendance – our highest attendance on a Sunday other than Easter!  We had many first time guests from our recent mailer and others invited by FOTP family members.  We have 10 people scheduled for baptism on Sunday, January 29.  In addition, we began work on our new future home.  Trees were cleared on our property on Hall Johnson.  All of this means one thing – God is at work at FOTP Grapevine.  He is helping us prepare a place where people can have a life changing encounter with his love.

“Some women want a passive man if they want a man at all; the church wants a tame man – they are called priests; the university wants a domesticated man – they are called tenure track people; the corporation wants a …sanitized, hairless, shallow man. But we addicts know that we need a wild man.  A man who will love us when we wander; when we drink too much, eat too much, spend too much…or try to drink our own urine.  The God-man who has gone to the absolute extreme for us.”  - Iron John: A Book About Men by Robert Bly

As a year winds down, I typically look back at the best books I read that year.  This book will be on that list for 2011.  Written by Sharon Hersh, a licensed counselor who struggles with an addiction to alchohol.  She openly shares about her struggle including a painful relapse that resulted in her divorce from her husband. 

The last addiction is an addiction to our own self efforts – thinking we can solve our problems.  This is why Hersh is cautious when it comes to self help groups.   In the end, it is easy for participants to believe that they overcame their problems themselves.  Learning to be totally dependent on God, on the other hand results in a much more emotionally healthier life in the long run.

Hersh describes the gifts of addiction.  One of those gifts is the gift of being found out.  The reason she refers to this as a gift, is because for most addicts the road to real healing does not take place until they are found out.  She also looks at the gift of surrender – a total admission of a lack of self sufficiency when it comes to dealing with an addiction.

This is a wonderful book for anyone struggling with an addiction or for those who have a friend of loved one struggling with an addiction.  The last section is actually is written specifically to family and friends of the addicted person.

I underlined sections of this book on almost every page.  It is filled with thought provoking, inspiring messages.  Here is one of my favorites:

It has been a while since I updated our status.  This past Sunday our church family committed to give over $1 million dollars over the next three years so that we can begin construction on our future church home located on Hall Johnson in Grapevine.  It is hard to beleive all of this has happened in three years - we started with 10 people in my living room, nowrun well over 200, purrchased and paid for property and will have our own facility this time next year.  Most importantly, we have seen many, many lives transformed by the grace of God.

I want to thank all of you who pray for us.  God is doing a great work at FTOP Grapevine.  I am having the time of my life and have made some of the best friends imaginable!

This is the true story of a marriage gone bad and then redeemed.   Jeff and Cheryl  Scruggs seemed to have it all – professional success, adorable children, and a good marriage.  But like so many other couples like them the Scruggs lacked a connection on a deep intimate soul level.   After many attempts to let Jeff know there were problems, Cheryl thought she had found what she was missing through a relationship with another man.  The Scruggs marriage ended in divorce. During their 7 years apart, Cheryll came to know Christ and Jeff renewed his commitment to Christ.   Eventually they were remarried.

This first part of this story plays itself out, hundreds of times every day.  Couples in this situation need to know that there is hope and the story can have a happy ending.  This book proves it and also provides reach insight into how to save a broken marriage and how to make a good marriage better.

This is the best business book I have read in a while.  My wife started the book and I read a little, got hooked and ordered my own copy.  No regrets.  Read it in a short time period and was inspired.

The book is written by Tony Hshieh (pronounced Shay).  After floundering around in college to some degree he graduates and starts a company, LinkExchange.  He turns down an offer for $22 million to sell the company but later at the age of 26 sells it for $274 million.  He then turns his attention to another endeavor by pouring his energy into a infant company called Zappos.  Zappos was a start up company selling shoes on-line.  People in the shoe industry were skeptical.  When Zappos was about to close its doors, Hshieh and the leadership decided on making customer service the number 1 priority.  They opened their phone lines 24/7 and made it goal to “Wow” every person that called in. 

During the early stages of the company Hsieh felt that creating the right culture was a key to success.  In time, they were able to list their core values.  Here are a few:

Deliver WOW through service

Embrace and drive change

Create fun with a little weirdness

Be adventurous, creative and open minded

To give you an idea of their success, the leadership team decided to move their base of operations from San Francisco to Las Vegas.  At the time they had 90 employees and 70 of them moved their families to the new location.  The ultimate measure of their success from a business standpoint is that they sold Zappos to Amazon for $1.2 billion.

I found that this book had many applications for my own life and the people I lead.   It reminded me of how being open to change is so vitally important in today’s world.  I also saw how creating the right culture (in your family, business, church) is the foundation for future success.  At Zappos it really does not matter how competent you are, if you do not embrace the culture, you are not a good fit.  In fact, they will pay you anyone their full salary and $2000 to leave during their first month.

I highly recommend this book.

This is the newest Max Lucado book.  He is still one of my favorite authors simply because his books are inspiring.   His books are always filled with great stories that help us connect the dots when it comes to spiritual truth.  For instance, he tells the story of Carl McCunn, a man who moved from Texas to Alaska At the age of 35 he embarked on a photography expedition.  He hired a bush pilot to drop him of 70 miles north of Fort Yukon.  Later that year as his supplies ran low he realized he had not made arrangements to be picked up.  When a state trooper discovered his body he had left behind a 100 page diary in which he wrote, “I think I should have used more foresight about arranging for my departure.”

The lesson is clear – many people live this life with no clear exit strategy.  They live as if life will go on forever.  Those who realize this is not the case and commit to following Christ will be ushered from this life into the next.

I liked the verse quoted at the start of the book:

God rewrote the text of my life when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes. - I Samuel 22:25 (MSG)

As I have stated before, Lucado’s books seem to run together at this point but are still worth my time as far as I am concerned.

Doug Walker, our senior pastor at Fellowship of the Parks, wrote this book which is the story of his journey in facing the challenges of feeling rejected and unaccepted.   Doug was given up by his birth mother and adopted.   While the fact that he was adopted led to its own set of issues, he also struggled with what he felt like was a lack of unconditional love from his adoptive mother.  This all resulted in years of having his self worth tied to performance.

Doug’s story is compelling and each person who reads this book will find themselves somewhere in the story.  In the end, discovering the richness of being loved unconditionally by God helped Doug reconcile the pain of the past. 

This book is an easy read.  Anyone can benefit from reading it but those touched by adoption in any way will find it most helpful.

This was a bargain table book.   I read the introduction where the author shared the title he had submitted to the publisher, Creating Heuristic Educational and Psychological Thematics Reproducing Idiopathic Cognitive Kinesthetic Systems and I was hooked. 

I reality this is a simple, easy to read, fun book.  Here is some of the insightful information I gained from reading it:

·         The colors red and yellow tend to make us eat more and faster.  Any fast food restaurants come to mind?

·         70% of all the information your brain receives comes from your eyes

·         To ride a roller coaster without throwing up, look straight ahead.  Don’t shut your eyes because this overloads and confuses your kinesthetic and vestibular sensory systems.

·         You are probably only about six people away from meeting any person in the world.

·         Never show up for an exam early.  If another student asks you questions about the material that you can’t answer, anxiety sets in.

This is just a small sampling of some of the types of information contained in this book .   It was definitely a bargain and worth the money.

This book is authored by former UT quarterback Colt McCoy and his dad.  The story begins with Colt playing in his first professional football game for the Cleveland Browns.   Then you are taken back to story of the McCoy family and Colt’s childhood.  

I knew a little about Colt’s background but reading the book gave me a greater appreciation for his family.  They were of modest means (his dad was a coach) and lived in a small town.  They lived out their faith without being offensive or radically strange in some way.

This is a great book for dad’s to read.  You will be inspired by Colt’s father.   He loved God, his wife and his children but you get the idea that what he did is doable for any father.   He was not a saint or a theologian.  He is a man of character who made mistakes  along the way but overall sets an example for others to follow.

This is a book that I had decided I was not going to read but a friend bought me a copy and asked for my input on the book.  Several other people asked me about the book as well.  So I read it in a matter of three days or so.  

The story is about Colton Burpo who at the age of four had a near death experience from a ruptured appendix. Colton’s dad is a pastor and he tells the story.   Over time Colton’s parents discover that while he was in surgery he had an out of body experience.   Over a period of time Colton reveals things about his experience that are challenging to explain outside of accepting that he in fact went to heaven.

My take on the book is this, I don’t know whether Colton went to heaven or not but I don’t have any reason to dispute what he says.   The thing that always strikes me about this type of experience is that people are facscinated and intrigued enough to read about and some of those very people are less intrigued by the experience John had and recorded in the book of Revelation.   This is a much more trustworthy source.

I will say this, the story was captivating mainly from the standpoint of all that the family endured (months before Colton’s near death, the father shatters his leg in an accident and then finds out he has cancer) and yet their faith remained strong.   Any parent that reads the book will be moved by the emotions the Burpo’s  experienced during Colton’s ordeal – he was sick for several days before the doctors determined the cause and then struggled for his life for weeks after the surgery.

All in all I am glad I read the book and thankful for my friend that bought me a copy.