Summer Reading

One of my goals for the summer is to read as many books as I possibly can. As I was packing for my summer in Wisconsin it was really hard for me to chose which books to bring along. I have a major tendency to buy books and then never read them. I think I brought about 15 books with me. They are almost half and half fiction and non-fiction. So far I’ve finished 3 books: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Helen Keller’s Teacher, and The Adventures of Edgar and Allan Poe. So far they’ve all been juvenile fiction, but honestly I have no problem with that. My plan is to alternate between fiction and non-fiction.

So now for the next book I picked up “When People are Big and God is Small.” A good friend of mine gave me this book a while ago and I and just now picking it up. Usually when I read non-fiction books it takes me forever, but this one is different. I’m already several chapters into the book and boy am I feeling convicted. I’ve always known that fearing man is something I’ve struggled with, but after starting to read this book and answer the questions at the end of each chapter I didn’t know how so many of my actions show how much I fear man.

At the end of the third chapter the author encourages the reader to make a list of your actions that demonstrate a fear of man both from the past and the present. Oh my goodness!! I started making my list and it made me realize how badly I’ve feared man throughout my life.

So within the first 4 chapters of this books I’ve felt extremely convicted, but I’ve also felt challenged and comforted. I’ve felt challenged to be much more focused on Christ and comforted over how much God loves me.

This passage really stuck out to me as I was reading tonight. The author asked, “Will you trust in man or will you trust in the Lord?”

“Cursed is the one who trust in man,
who depends on flesh for his strength
and whose heart turns away from the Lord.
He will be like a bush in the wastelands;
he will not see prosperity when it comes.
He will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
in a salt land where no one lives.
But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
whose confidence is in him.
He will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when the heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.
Jeremiah 17:5-8