A little over two and half years ago, ten people gathered in our living room to pray about launching a new church campus.  This past Sunday, the attendance at what we now know as Fellowship of the Parks Grapevine was 274 people - the most ever!   Seven people publicly proclaimed Christ as thier savior by being baptized.  God is truly taking eveything to a new level.

Please pray that we will continue to reach those disconnected from God.    Also, pray that miraculously we could pay off our land this year and could begin construction of our facility next year.   This would be huge but it can be done.

I am still in awe of the fact that God has allowed me to be a part of what he is doing at this incredible church.

This is the best book I have ever read on the subject of anger.  It is simple and very practical.  Ingram helps us to see that anger is simply a signal, a warning sign that something is not right.  Often times we   spend most of our time dealing with the signal rather than the underlying cause.   This would be like trying to get the oil light repaired on your car instead of realizing that you are low on oil.

The most helpful part of this book for me was the way he indentifies the three main ways that we express anger.   We are either spewers (we explode), stewers (we stuff it, pretend we are not angry) or we are leakers.  Leakers express anger by being critical, sarcastic, and/or backstabbing.  Sometimes they can even use humor as a way of expressing anger.   I have often said that I do not have a problem with anger simply because I am not a spewer.  Reading this book help me see that I am a leaker.

Ingram, gives very practical steps to help us learn how to express anger in a constructive manner.   He does this for each of the three primary ways that we express anger.

This is a great book.  I think anyone could benefit from reading it.

This first half of this book recounts Austrian psychologist Viktor Frankl time in four different Nazi death camps between 1942 and 1945.   The lessons he learned facing death daily serve as foundational principles for more than just survival but for living a fulfilling life.

Frankl helps us to see that we cannot avoid suffering but we can make a choice about how we are going to cope with it.   In fact, the big idea of this work is basically that another person can take everything you have away from you except the capacity you have to choose how you are going to respond.

Having everything stripped away helped Frankl realize that man’s primary drive is not for pleasure or possessions but rather our primary drive is find meaning in life.   He developed a form of therapy called Logotherapy that is centered on this one truth.  The second half of the book goes into more detail regarding logotherapy.

Man’s Search for Meaning is a classic work with more than 12 million copies in print worldwide.  I had quoted from this book often but had never taken the time to read it.  Now I have and my only regret is having waited so long to do so.