I have had my picture in the newspaper once in my life and I
sincerely hope that that was the last time. It was April or May of 1997
and I have a copy of it here in front of me. I'm not sure of the exact
date because I just cut around the article. Here's the story behind it.
My wife and I had just opened up a bookstore in the town that we live in
and our local newspaper was kind enough to give the bookstore a little
publicity with an news article accompanied by a photo. The photo is
great... except for me sitting in the middle of it in a Governor
Bradford chair that I remember my mother buying in a little antique
store circa 1955 in Buffalo, New York.
We had all of the book shelves made for the bookstore and today some of them hold my books in the basement and some hold motor oil and bird feed and hedge clippers in the garage. I can identify some of the displayed books in the newspaper photo. They are of church history, biographies, great Puritan literature and some contemporary critiques on today's church, and I'm holding Spurgeon: A New Biography by Arnold Dallimore in my hands. Above me is a print under glass of a well-known oil painting by George Henry Boughton titled Pilgrim's Going To Church. That same picture is six feet away from me right now and hanging on our living room wall. My wife doesn't like either the chair or the painting. The Bradford is in the basement and I only get to hang the painting, a snow scene, up here for the winter. I hope that she doesn't read this post for it's past time to switch to the Paris summer street scene.
Our bookstore lasted two years. I worked full time and came to the store when not at work, and our pastor's wife was our only employee. It was a joy from the day that our son and his friend, both 12 years old, dressed up in colonial garb and handed out leaflets on the bookstore's opening day to the day that I packed up the books,
In a way I like writing personal posts like this but if there wasn't a message in it, then the entire blog of almost seven years would be just a grand waste of time. The word eureka is associated with the discovery of gold in both California and Australia. The message here in this post is that there are gold nuggets....usually about 6" by 9" and weighing a little over a pound each depending on the number of their pages that literally litter the American landscape in bookstores and libraries. They are worth far more than if they were actual gold and will change your life if you will let them. Actually it's the Holy Spirit who does that but he employs words written by mere men and women. Unfortunately you may have to pan as tirelessly as those miners from the California Gold Rush to find them, but the nuggets are indeed there. I'll give you a few recommendations at the end of today's post to get you started.
The following is from February of 2014 and although it doesn't mention books, it was books that God first used to open my eyes. That's why we opened a bookstore and that's why the short novella that I wrote which you can access at the link on this page revolves around a Christian bookstore.
It Would Not Make Sense.....
I cannot remember what it feels like not to know Jesus Christ as my Savior, my Lord and my King. Oh I remember what it is like to trample underfoot the grace that He bestowed upon me, sinner that I am, for I would only have to go back hours if not minutes for that, but I cannot remember how I 'thought' prior to 1982. I know what wasn't in my mind but cannot remember what was there. I can recall my fourth birthday party where my older cousin Buzzy hid behind a door to scare me. I remember putting a full carton of my lunch milk into the milk crate, spilling it all over the kindergarten floor at North Hill Elementary School, and then not owning up to it as Mrs. Martin had us circle the crate until until the guilty party fessed up. It's not for lack of memory powers, it's for lack of something else.
I remember what it was like to be....religious. I remember sitting in the pew before grade school, holding my daily missal in my hands almost entranced by the Latin words coming from the altar. I remember trying to converse with God on long walks in the rain while in my teens. I remember attending Mass in Vietnam on those Sunday mornings when I didn't have a hangover. I remember walking over to St. Paul's Cathedral for evening Mass after finishing work at Hillman Library at Pitt. I just cannot remember the name of Jesus as anything more than a distant personage who must surely be revered as someone very important but for reasons as distant in understanding as the heavens themselves where Jesus lived.
Someone won over $400 million dollars in the Powerball yesterday but that experience cannot possibly rival receiving the grace poured out from the cross of Calvary. I have a Bible hanging on the side of my locker at work all of the time. I doubt that it is picked up very often. Here in that Bible is something that should make the $400 million jackpot appear as a worn penny on the street in value but it goes unrecognized. Bibles are everywhere in America but can't even compete with an iPhone in perceived value.
Arminianism is the most prevalent theology in evangelicalism today. In this doctrine man responds positively to the Gospel and is born again. But this is not what Scripture describes. In the Gospel according to Jesus Christ a dead person (spiritually dead) is made alive!!! He then responds to the Gospel that he truly hears for the first time. For ten years I thought that I made a decision and God responded by pouring His grace out upon me... that I wasn't as dumb as I look! Then I saw what really happened, that for some reason known only to God, he said..."You....the lowest of the low....believe, repent, be baptized and follow Me!" It was He that opened my eyes, that made me see my previous 32 years. I saw the filth and the rebellion, the pride, the hate, the ignorance and the arrogance.....and then I saw a King before me... the King of Kings! My heart stopped beating and a new heart began to beat. My lungs collapsed. I could draw in no air for the majesty I was in the presence of. I yelled as John Bunyan's pilgrim..."Life, life, eternal life!"
If I sit and meditate and try as hard as I can to remember what it what like before God opened my eyes...I start to tremble. Something wafts through my nostrils...an odious smell...and then it disappears. I perceive that God will not let me return any further then the address where I see the outside of the building but cannot go in. I never want to go into that building but I also never want to forget it for therein is my only remembrance of what life was like without Christ and what I was rescued from, and every time I see it I yell once again...."Life, life, eternal life!'. My desire is that you hear what I heard....the words "You.....the lowest of the low.....believe, repent, be baptized and follow Me," for it makes no sense that God would have had mercy on me but that I could tell you of it!
Eureka!
Putting Amazing Back Into Grace by Michael Horton
Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
The Holiness Of God by R. C. Sproul
Scripture Alone by R. C. Sproul
These will help also...
24 hour Internet radio.....refnet.fm
Cumberland Valley Bible Book Store......cvbbs.com
We had all of the book shelves made for the bookstore and today some of them hold my books in the basement and some hold motor oil and bird feed and hedge clippers in the garage. I can identify some of the displayed books in the newspaper photo. They are of church history, biographies, great Puritan literature and some contemporary critiques on today's church, and I'm holding Spurgeon: A New Biography by Arnold Dallimore in my hands. Above me is a print under glass of a well-known oil painting by George Henry Boughton titled Pilgrim's Going To Church. That same picture is six feet away from me right now and hanging on our living room wall. My wife doesn't like either the chair or the painting. The Bradford is in the basement and I only get to hang the painting, a snow scene, up here for the winter. I hope that she doesn't read this post for it's past time to switch to the Paris summer street scene.
Our bookstore lasted two years. I worked full time and came to the store when not at work, and our pastor's wife was our only employee. It was a joy from the day that our son and his friend, both 12 years old, dressed up in colonial garb and handed out leaflets on the bookstore's opening day to the day that I packed up the books,
In a way I like writing personal posts like this but if there wasn't a message in it, then the entire blog of almost seven years would be just a grand waste of time. The word eureka is associated with the discovery of gold in both California and Australia. The message here in this post is that there are gold nuggets....usually about 6" by 9" and weighing a little over a pound each depending on the number of their pages that literally litter the American landscape in bookstores and libraries. They are worth far more than if they were actual gold and will change your life if you will let them. Actually it's the Holy Spirit who does that but he employs words written by mere men and women. Unfortunately you may have to pan as tirelessly as those miners from the California Gold Rush to find them, but the nuggets are indeed there. I'll give you a few recommendations at the end of today's post to get you started.
The following is from February of 2014 and although it doesn't mention books, it was books that God first used to open my eyes. That's why we opened a bookstore and that's why the short novella that I wrote which you can access at the link on this page revolves around a Christian bookstore.
It Would Not Make Sense.....
I cannot remember what it feels like not to know Jesus Christ as my Savior, my Lord and my King. Oh I remember what it is like to trample underfoot the grace that He bestowed upon me, sinner that I am, for I would only have to go back hours if not minutes for that, but I cannot remember how I 'thought' prior to 1982. I know what wasn't in my mind but cannot remember what was there. I can recall my fourth birthday party where my older cousin Buzzy hid behind a door to scare me. I remember putting a full carton of my lunch milk into the milk crate, spilling it all over the kindergarten floor at North Hill Elementary School, and then not owning up to it as Mrs. Martin had us circle the crate until until the guilty party fessed up. It's not for lack of memory powers, it's for lack of something else.
I remember what it was like to be....religious. I remember sitting in the pew before grade school, holding my daily missal in my hands almost entranced by the Latin words coming from the altar. I remember trying to converse with God on long walks in the rain while in my teens. I remember attending Mass in Vietnam on those Sunday mornings when I didn't have a hangover. I remember walking over to St. Paul's Cathedral for evening Mass after finishing work at Hillman Library at Pitt. I just cannot remember the name of Jesus as anything more than a distant personage who must surely be revered as someone very important but for reasons as distant in understanding as the heavens themselves where Jesus lived.
Someone won over $400 million dollars in the Powerball yesterday but that experience cannot possibly rival receiving the grace poured out from the cross of Calvary. I have a Bible hanging on the side of my locker at work all of the time. I doubt that it is picked up very often. Here in that Bible is something that should make the $400 million jackpot appear as a worn penny on the street in value but it goes unrecognized. Bibles are everywhere in America but can't even compete with an iPhone in perceived value.
Arminianism is the most prevalent theology in evangelicalism today. In this doctrine man responds positively to the Gospel and is born again. But this is not what Scripture describes. In the Gospel according to Jesus Christ a dead person (spiritually dead) is made alive!!! He then responds to the Gospel that he truly hears for the first time. For ten years I thought that I made a decision and God responded by pouring His grace out upon me... that I wasn't as dumb as I look! Then I saw what really happened, that for some reason known only to God, he said..."You....the lowest of the low....believe, repent, be baptized and follow Me!" It was He that opened my eyes, that made me see my previous 32 years. I saw the filth and the rebellion, the pride, the hate, the ignorance and the arrogance.....and then I saw a King before me... the King of Kings! My heart stopped beating and a new heart began to beat. My lungs collapsed. I could draw in no air for the majesty I was in the presence of. I yelled as John Bunyan's pilgrim..."Life, life, eternal life!"
If I sit and meditate and try as hard as I can to remember what it what like before God opened my eyes...I start to tremble. Something wafts through my nostrils...an odious smell...and then it disappears. I perceive that God will not let me return any further then the address where I see the outside of the building but cannot go in. I never want to go into that building but I also never want to forget it for therein is my only remembrance of what life was like without Christ and what I was rescued from, and every time I see it I yell once again...."Life, life, eternal life!'. My desire is that you hear what I heard....the words "You.....the lowest of the low.....believe, repent, be baptized and follow Me," for it makes no sense that God would have had mercy on me but that I could tell you of it!
Eureka!
Putting Amazing Back Into Grace by Michael Horton
Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
The Holiness Of God by R. C. Sproul
Scripture Alone by R. C. Sproul
These will help also...
24 hour Internet radio.....refnet.fm
Cumberland Valley Bible Book Store......cvbbs.com
