Tag Archive - Books

Grace Is For Sinners Review

August 27, 2010 in Adultery, Books, Faith, Friends, Life Experience, Marriage, Ministry with 8 Comments

If I read this book 5 years ago, I may have never finished it.

I would have been disgusted.
I would have judged Serena.
I would have said “grace costs more than that”
I would have been completely uncomfortable with how many loose ends her story holds.

However, today is a completely different story. Today, I AM Serena (save a few minor differences). I need grace. I’m completely aware that God may have allowed me to fall as far as I did so that I could understand and accept His grace. Which also leads me to believe that I may have been living as a “Christian” yet fully REJECTING His grace before all this.

So, in a very warped way… I’m thankful for the fall so that I could experience restoration.

In this autobiographical book, Serena writes about her experience navigating through life in search for who Jesus is. In the good and in the bad. As Christians, we are taught to flee from evil. We are supposed to hate sin… but somewhere in all that teaching, we have confused “hating the sin” with “hating the sinner”.

We are supposed to flee from evil, but we end up fleeing from those who trip into it instead. The only problem? In this, we end up abandoning those who need community and the Church the most… the one’s Jesus came for.

In this book, Serena bravely speaks up from the “fallen’s” point of view. Not only does she speak from our side (yes, I said “our”) but she backs it up FULLY with scripture. Most church leaders use scripture to cast out sinners and alienate them… but Serena uses God’s words to remind us of God’s love for the sinner and His desire to restore us.

Serena said it best this way: “Jesus wasn’t the atonement in case you accidentally sin. He was the atonement because you hopelessly sin. The freedom that the Bible is talking about is not something you earn by making the right choices; the freedom is the lack of punishment when you don’t make the right choices.”

Here’s another one of my favorite excerpts from chapter 17:

“Grace, by definition, is undeserved authentication of restoration and sanctification. That is a thesaurus-assisted way of saying that grace is an unfair gift of a new beginning and a clean slate. It’s unfair because it goes to the undeserving. Simply put, grace is for sinners.

A person can follow the rules and busy themselves with the work of ‘furthering the kingdom’ and figuring out more ‘relevant’ ways to ‘spread the good news’ but how can they  ”grow in grace”? (2 Peter 3:18) How do you grow in something you are a part of only by failure? If grace exists only as a result of failure, then what good does it do to try to be good and follow a religious formula? When you cease to need grace because you’ve reached a place where you can maintain on your own then that is when you have fallen from grace.”

I could quote her forever… because her book is JUST THAT GOOD. But don’t just take my word for it. It’s a must read.

If you haven’t entered to win GRACE IS FOR SINNERS yet, you can HERE. But seriously… if you don’t win this ONE copy I have to give away… go and buy it HERE or HERE.

Have you read her book?
If so, what do you think?

Uncontainable Love

December 7, 2009 in Books, Faith, LifeGroup Online, Worship with 14 Comments

My favorite paragraphs from this weeks read in The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning.

And God answers “That’s what you don’t know. You don’t know how much I love you. The moment you think you understand is the moment you do not understand. I am God not man. You tell others about Me — that I am a loving God. Your words are glib. My words are written in the blood of My only Son. The next time you preach about My love with such obnoxious familiarity, I may come and blow your whole prayer meeting apart. When you come at Me with studied professionalism, I will expose you as a rank amateur. When you try to convince others that you understand what you are talking about, I will tell you to shut up and fall flat on your face. You claim you know I love you.”

“Are you aware that I had to raise Jesus from the dead on Easter morning because My love is everlasting? Are you serenely confident that I will raise you too, My adopted child?”

“Faith means you want God and want to want nothing else.”

“When Scripture, prayer, worship, ministry become routine, they are dead. When I conclude that I can now cope with the awful love of God, I have headed for the shallows to avoid the deeps. I could more easily contain Niagara Falls in a tea cup than I can comprehend the wild, uncontainable love of God.”

*sigh*

Paste Jewelry and Sawdust Hot Dogs

November 24, 2009 in Books, Faith with 4 Comments

Another excerpt from my LifeGroup Online study… and my prayer this week:

Lord Jesus, we are silly sheep who have dared to stand before You and try to bribe You with our preposterous portfolios. Suddenly we have come to our senses. We are sorry and ask You to forgive us. Give us the grace to admit we are ragamuffins, to embrace our brokenness, to celebrate Your mercy when we are at our weakest, to rely on Your mercy no matter what we may do. Dear Jesus, gift us to stop grandstanding and trying to get attention, to do the truth quietly without display, to let the dishonesties in our lives fade away, to accept our limitations, to cling to the gospel of grace, and to delight in Your love. Amen

~ The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning

Deadly Viper: Character Assassins

November 22, 2009 in Books, Faith, Ministry with 100 Comments

By now, I’m sure most have heard about the incident regarding Deadly Viper: Character Assassins.

I’ve been avoiding this whole controversy due to the mere fact that there has been enough attention thrown that direction. I really didn’t feel the need to add to the noise. Also, I thought, “Who am I? Why does my opinion matter?” But when people started asking me more and more what my thoughts were, I realized maybe my voice DOES matter.

Long story short: Jud Wilhite & Mike Foster wrote Deadly Viper. Much of the Asian American Community were deeply offended by their use of marketing, which used kanji and martial arts illustrations. Words were expressed on blogs. Feelings were hurt. Jud & Mike (along with Zondervan) addressed the concerns as best they could. Plans to re-design the book were made. Everyone seemed to have come to a compromise. Then, instead of going with the plan, Zondervan pulls the book off the stands… indefinitely.

Now, everyone feels censored.

The Asian American community has blown up the blogosphere with their thoughts. You can read some written by Professor Soong-Chan Rah, Eugene Cho, DJ Chuang, Dave Gibbons and Kathy Khang. Then later I was quoted HERE by DJ Chuang… twice.  I highly respect ALL of these contributors, but I don’t necessarily agree with everything they are saying. My comments have been so scattered on different blogposts, I thought it would be better if I just compiled them all in one place. So here goes:

For clarity, I am Chinese-American. I didn’t even speak English until I was in first grade, but if you and I had a conversation, you’d never know that because I have NO accent. ESL classes were my best friend in elementary school. On my wedding day, I had a Chinese red-dress wedding AND an American white-dress wedding (with tea ceremony). Brian “purchased” me for $99.99. It felt like the longest day of my life. I know the Chinese traditions all too well, yet at the same time, feel as if I know NOTHING about my culture. Where does that put me? Always willing to learn, I guess.

I am DEEPLY saddened about the controversy surrounding this matter.

People were offended and hurt in this process. Brothers and Sisters in Christ (of the same race, of a different race, same gender, different gender) slung nasty words at each other while they fought for a side… fought to be heard. Ironic really, how this book was about character assassination.

The majority of the offended party has not even read the book. This is unfortunate because the premise and the purpose of the book is quite phenomenal and has changed the lives of many. The offended also saw an obscure Facebook video from 2 years ago that was unrelated to the book’s marketing and words flew. Even though the video was removed immediately once it was brought to attention, integrity was questioned.

The offended looked at the design and concluded it was a marketing gimmick when in reality, the book wasn’t about hijacking a culture… it was about using the Kung-Fu movie genre & Martial Arts as a metaphor for living a life with integrity.

I understand that some of the DV marketing was offensive. Not knowing some of the material was offensive doesn’t excuse the DV team from the FACT it’s still offensive. However, they were never given a real opportunity to rectify it before it all blew up in their face.

My biggest disappointment in all of this isn’t that I felt as if my Asian culture had been attacked… but that CHRIST’S culture had been attacked.

From the beginning, my frustrations weren’t with the DV camp… it was with some of the “offended” Asian American community. Am I saying they didn’t have a right to be offended? NO. Hear/read me clearly – God gave us ALL feelings for a reason. If we feel it, it’s real to us. Right, wrong or indifferent, it’s real. Our job is to communicate that out of love and grace so that restoration can take place. But from what I have read, that didn’t happen.

Matthew 18: 15-17 says:

15″If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over. 16But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ 17If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”

From what I saw… the offended jumped STRAIGHT to the last resort.

We’ve come a long way from when my great-grandfather was working on American train-tracks as a slave. We can talk to each other now respectfully and humbly without fearing for our lives… so let’s use our words to resolve issues of offenses… not attack back.

I’ll close with part of my comment on DJ Chuang’s most recent post:

I wish that DV didn’t get pulled. I wish the Asian-American community didn’t APPEAR so “overly-sensitive” and to be blunt… a bit selfish. But that’s where we are right now and I feel like I’ve got a foot in both camps. This CAN be remedied… but it’s gonna take communication… and some serious hugging.

“Brothers don’t shake hands… Brothers gotta HUG!”

Oh… and in case you couldn’t tell? I was NOT offended by ANY of Deadly Viper’s materials.

Confessions of a Good Christian Girl

February 18, 2009 in Books, Faith, Ministry, Personal Entries with 7 Comments

As you may have seen from my 25 Random Things post, one of the books I’m currently reading is Confessions of a Good Christian Girl by Tammy Maltby.

This book was chosen because the title spoke to me.  I have known Jesus for as long as I can remember… and for the longest time, church has taught me that I should always have joy because of that.  Church, without meaning to, taught me that if I loved Jesus, and he truly lived in my heart, everything would be fantastic in my life.

Everyone seemed to be living a great life blessed by God.  Everyone except me.  I hurt.  I hurt people.  People hurt me… badly.  I was isolated.  I didn’t belong anywhere.  But I pretended.  I tried.  I really REALLY tried… because Christians HAVE IT ALL TOGETHER.

Seriously… the Church is REALLY bad at allowing Christians to be authentic.  I’m not picking on a certain church.  Just being general… 

It wasn’t until the last 8 years, did I really truly realize and believe that church is for the broken, the imperfect, the lonely… the unstopping sinner.  Me.

Confession:  I still don’t feel like I belong anywhere sometimes.  Often, actually.

I don’t usually cry reading books.  I can count the times a book has drawn tears on ONE HAND, but I’m a few chapters into this one… and I think I may be in deep doo-doo.

Check this excerpt from the Book:

Come home, sweet baby.  The lights are on.. soup’s on the stove, warm bread in the oven.  Just come home and let Me hold you, protect you, cleanse you from the world that ravages your very soul.  I know you.  I know what you have done and what has be done against you.  I know how hard you have tried to be good and how defeated you feel.  But you can rest now.  My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.

You don’t need to be a good Christian girl.

Just be who you are — My beloved child.

So here’s the deal.  I’m a Christ follower.  I’m a Worship Pastor.  I am a broken BROKEN human being in need of insurmountable grace.  If you are too, you belong in the Church.  If you’re perfect… GET the heck OUT.

Any other “good christian girls/boys” out there?