Today, a group of about 20 bloggers are sharing their thoughts on burnout and the book.
If you’ve found your way here by one of these bloggers, I say welcome! Thanks! And I hope you’ll stick around.? We have a great community around here. You can subscribe to this blog by clicking here.
Some other cool stuff for you newbies: Enter to win Logos Scholar’s Library Bible Software here.? See if I’m coming to a city near you here.
And if you live in Southern California, click here for a free event where you can get a free copy of my book!
Now for the real post…
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I Wonder if I’ll Get Arrested
Is it breaking the law if I copy and redistribute something from my own book? I wonder if I’ll get arrested by the copyright police.
Hmmm.
Anyway, I can’t believe Mad Church Disease is actually going to be releasing in just a few days!
To celebrate all of these awesome things, below is one final excerpt from the book Mad Church Disease.
And a sample chapter too, if you haven’t read it yet.
Also, enjoy some early reviews and endorsements.
I hope and pray that God uses the words of this book to inspire and challenge us to look at the responsibility we’ve been given as believers to share the hope of the world.? If you haven’t preordered it, just click here and choose your favorite retailer.
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Code Blue (from Chapter 2)
When a Code Blue is issued in a hospital, any available medical personnel run to the room of the person who?s coding. It?s a matter of life and death. Milliseconds count. Politics, personal beliefs, hang-ups, grudges, and pride are put aside as the life of a fellow human lies in their hands. It?s an emergency.
Since the beginning of time, mankind has been facing a life-and-death emergency. We are separated from our Creator. All he wants is for us to be reconciled to him. He sent his own flesh and blood down to earth to restore us. And we?re to help guide others to that restoration.
The greatest commandments are what? To love God and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. In most cases, I don?t question our love for God. The passion and intensity with which we go about our lives are small indicators of our love. But we are guilty of not loving ourselves. The statistics don?t lie. And even if they did, I?m sure you could conclude from your own experience that, quite frankly, we?re pretty terrible at loving ourselves.
If we can?t love ourselves, we can?t love others in the way that God has designed us. We can care for others and can want the best for them, but to love them in the godliest ways is impossible until we can obey this great commandment.
We are in the midst of a crisis that needs our full devotion of mind, body, and spirit.
In Mark 12:30, Jesus declares, ?Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.?
Notice Jesus doesn?t say ?love others with all your strength?; he says to ?love the Lord your God.?
By loving God, we?re faithful to his commandments. And when we?re obedient, God will carry out his work through us.
Satan is out to annihilate hope and light, both in our world and in us, the body of Christ. He?s well aware of the crisis of the human race, and he will do anything and everything in his power to obliterate our efforts.
As the church, we need to take a good, hard look around and ask ourselves if we are ready to fight. To fight for our own love relationship with God through Christ, and for the world around us as well.
Comments
15 responses to “I Wonder if I’ll Get Arrested…”
anticipating the rest of the book! Phil. 4:13 feels like some Truth for you to stay close to during the next several weeks. :)
I read about your book on Angie Smith’s blog last night and then on Dino Rizzo’s blog this morning – I think that confirms that I need to read it. Well, I also want to read it. My husband works in ministry now (after taking a couple of years break from it) and is seriously re-evaluating it. I can’t wait to read it with him soon!
I am so so so proud of you and somebody on the team is bringing me a copy in February…I CAN’T WAIT!
While the premise of your book is very intriguing to me – my grandfather, father and husband are in full time ministry as pastors – I find that your promoting the need to love yourself in order to love others is a way of trying to reconcile the world’s philosophies with God’s word. As you have stated, the Bible clearly states that we are to love the Lord with all of our heart, soul and mind and our neighbors as ourselves. He does not, however, tell us to love ourselves – it’s what we do best! We may not take care of our physical bodies – which He has to remind us to do – but that is also due to our own love of ourselves – the pleasures of sin and plain old laziness. It’s easier for many of us to work too much to feel spiritual, avoid conflict at home or because we are men-pleasers and can’t say no. But these are not problems of not loving ourselves – it is quite to the contrary. We are being completely selfish. There needs to be an evaluation of who are you working for? Is this what God has called you to do or is it the call of men?
In all fairness – I am only responding to a short excerpt of your book, but I feel it is a great deceit in the lives of believers to label our selfishness as not loving ourselves.
Actually…..
He says to Love God and then love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 19:18-20). So that is where that thought came from :)
yep – loving yourself involves no selfishness, if it’s a godly type of love – and we must love others the same way, too
we are bad at it, but that’s what it means
I can’t wait for the book to come out. I’m anxious to read it. Now, if only you would come out to the Midwest so we could get free copies, that would be great.
(Don’t tease me with excerpts, it makes me anxious)
thx tony – you phrased it so well. the chapter talks about that a little more – so this is just a little quip (is that a word? did i use it correctly)? from that conversation.
im so excited about the release of this book that i want to buy someone a pre-order copy of it! see my blog for details!!
(hope you dont mind me putting this on your blog anne!)
Hi Anne,
Thank you for sharing your life. Really enjoy reading your posts!
I was reminded of the chapter below when i read the post and comments above.
(2 Corinthians 1:3-4)
‘Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort that we ourselves have received from God’.
To Love with the Love that we have received from Jesus! …An amazing honour!
Thank you Jesus! I Love Him because He first Loved me!
The more time i spend with Him daily, the more Love i know and Loving others is an overflow of that. We abide in Him so that He can be made known (hidden) in and through our lives. Living with a heart full of Him by resting in His presence allows me to Love others with joy. Apart from Him i am nothing, with Him – all things are possible.
‘Turn your eyes unto Jesus, look full in His wonderful face and the things of earth will go strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace’. ‘All fruitfulness flows from abiding in Him and His great Love’.
Here is the place in the bible that i was thinking of earlier!
John 15 ….”5.I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. 6 If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. 7 If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. 8 Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. 9 As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. 10 If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love. 11 These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.
12 This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. 13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”.
The thoughts that are posted on your blog are very good truths. I ask for your prayers because I feel that I am a piece of burnt toast from the result of church burnout. I know that I was called years ago to God and to the people for the passionate heart that is within me, I simply just got disgusted with the church “business” end of it all and how it consumed the time for true ministry. From serving to pastoring, I have done a bit of it all in the church and just walked away. But not from Jesus. I know that I am not where I need to be. I remember the days when ministry raced through my veins. I miss that, I just don’t know how to get back.
joey – i am praying for you right now!
burnout is crazy. never want to do it again…?
getting arrested could be the best thing to happen for your book sales!?
There have been some rappers, etc…. who have sold millions because they got arrested. Not that you want to go that promo route… but… just sayin….it’s an option.
EB
Anne Jackson is my She-Ro.