In our evening reading time, my wife and I recently read aloud A Gift of Miracles: Magical Stories to Touch Your Family’s Heart. This is a group of stories about events in peoples’ lives where something unexpected and, shall I say, miraculous happened.

Submitted by those whose stories they are, the book is by Jamie C. Miller, Laura Lewis, and Jennifer Basye Sander. I assume they are editors of this, though they may have served as co-writers with some who submitted their stories.

The book contains 31 inspiring stories, typically three to five pages. These are very much like the stories you find in Guideposts magazine, though this is not a Guideposts book. While this is a faith-based book, all the stories are not outwardly spiritual. No matter. It’s a good book.

If you find this book, it’s well worth a read. Read one story a day for a month. Or two if you have the time. Or read it straight through. You will be inspired.

While I liked the book and give it 5-stars, it is not a keeper, as I don’t see myself ever reading it again. If this is in a series, or we find another like it, we will probably pick it up and read it.

One of the books we picked up used, somewhere along life’s way, is Luis Palau by Terry Whalin. It’s part of the Men of Faith series by Bethany House Publishers (since bought by others).

Palau was an Argentinian who grew up in difficult economic circumstances. He had limited schooling at an early age, though finally went to a European-run boarding school in Argentina. Slowly, God got ahold of his heart and he embraced Jesus as Lord.

He became interested in spreading God’s word and, in the 1940s, became aware of mass evangelism. This seemed a great idea to him. He found mentors and organizations to guide him, and his ministry took off. A few years later, he was holding crusades throughout Latin America. As bilingual, Spanish and English, he was soon called upon to hold crusades around the world. Along the way, he had emigrated to the USA, married in the States, and they had children.

The book was written while Pilau was alive and holding crusades. The author, Terry Whalin, is someone I’ve met at writing conferences. He has been active in all parts of the publishing industry: author, editor, agent, publisher. He also spent time with Wycliff Bible Translators. I’ve corresponded with Terry off and on over the years.

This is a good little book. If you get ahold of a copy, it’s well worth reading. Our book was a strange critter. We began reading it aloud. We got to page 32, and the next page was 65. At page 96, it went back to page 65. We saw, stamped on the bottom of the book, “Seconds”. We obviously bought a defective copy.  Not to worry. It was probably a 50¢ purchase. But, we aren’t going to pass a defective copy on to someone else, and into recycling we will go. We were able to find a copy of the book to borrow at Internet Archives, so we were able to finish it.

In our quest to reduce clutter and dis-accumulate years of accumulation, Lynda and I pulled a few books from obscure shelves in the basement family room, and will read them next. These are all “non-keepers”, books we will discard. One of these books was George Mueller. Not too long ago we read that aloud in the evenings.

I’ve known about George Mueller and his life of faith for a long time. I’ve read about him in various books and articles. I included him in a chapter of Acts Of Faith, my book about Bible people and Christians who had special faith experiences. But I had never read a biography of him.

This was a short book, possibly geared towards teens, though actually a good read for adults. It covered Mueller’s growing up in Germany, his wild youth period, his conversion, and his growth as a baby Christian. He gave up a prospective marriage to a woman who did not appreciate his desire to be a missionary.

He made contact with a missionary society that wanted him to work among the Jewish people in England. He went there, but it didn’t work out. He became co-pastor of a church. Before long, he started a Bible distribution ministry. Not long after that, he took notice of orphans in Bristol and their plight in the workhouses. He decided to develop orphanages, which he had seen in Germany but were a new concept in England. Over the years, he developed multiple orphanages, first in the heart of Bristol, then on the outskirts.

The act of faith? He did all this without ever soliciting donations. Not for renting property. Not for staffing the orphanages. Not for provisioning them. Not for buying property and building multiple orphanages on it. He prayed for the needs and trusted God to supply.

The book concentrated on the orphanage years. There were times when they had nothing for breakfast, and a bread truck broke down in front of the orphanage. There were times when a 5 pound bill was due, and an envelope came in the morning mail from someone they didn’t know. Mueller had faith when he needed a shilling and was trustworthy with it. God then gave him faith for tens of thousands of pounds and trustworthiness with that.

The book was an easy read. Not terribly long, but long enough so that by the end I felt like I understood Mueller’s life fairly well. Now I’m sure that, in a short book, much was left out. I want to read a fuller biography of this.

I highly recommend this book, which I give 5-stars. But this little paperback is long out of print. If you can’t find this, grab any bio of Mueller and dig in.

This book is not a keeper. However, we might give it to our grandchildren to read. It’s quite readable at that age.

In the quest to reduce our possessions, of which books are the ones we have most of and need to reduce, the wife and I went to the shelves in the basement family room, which is really part of an open space that includes The Dungeon, and grabbed a number of books to bring upstairs and read aloud in the evenings. We now have a stack of six or eight books to read. Except we finished two of them.

One was Like A Mighty Wind by Mel Tari, Cliff Dudley being his collaborator. We bought this used hardback some years ago. At least, I assume we bought it. I don’t remember the many book purchases we made. This could have been given to us. No matter. It’s been on that shelf for a long time. We finally got to it. Originally published in 1971, our copy is a tenth printing from August 1972. Ten printings in one year. Obviously, this book struck a nerve when first published.

Mel Tari was an Indonesian native from the island of Timor. The Foreword begins:

Four nights before the nearly successful Communist coup in Indonesia in 1965, God sovereignly began pouring out His Spirit in a small town on the little-known island of Timor. He alerted the Christians to pray, and the country was remarkably spared.

A revival broke out in Timor right afterward and Mel Tari, at the time only 18, was saved and empowered to preach the gospel. The book tells his story. How he became a preacher on Timor. How God did miracle after miracle, things like helping the evangelistic team find their way in a roadless, pathless jungle to a village they had heard of but never been there. How doors opened and closed, and God’s work progressed. How he learned as he went along. It’s a fascinating story.

Despite the above quote, the book isn’t about politics, but about Mel’s journey. He turned down a scholarship to a university in Russia, and instead came to the USA for study. Expecting to come to a Christian country. Instead, he found sin all over the country. He was quite disappointed.

The story is, as I said, fascinating. Tari sees miracle after miracle. He grew in his faith as he took the Bible at its word. He prayed much. He preached. He helped many people on his native Timor.

The book gives Tari’s journey for the first ten or so years during and after the revival on Timor. It’s a story well worth reading. As I did a little research while putting this post together, I see that controversy now swirls around Tari, who is now a US citizen. I wasn’t able to make sense of it all, but I take it he is considered something of a fraudster-preacher. Could be; I would have to do more research to know for sure.  It’s possible that the spiritual condition he experienced in his early years didn’t carry through to his later years.

I give this book 3-stars. It has some typos that distract. Tari also gets into a couple of controversial doctrinal issues, which slightly lessened my enjoyment of it. Should you read it, given Tari’s current reputation in the USA? If you come across it (and it’s available where used books are sold), yes. As I said, whatever his faults now, this book is of a time many decades ago, when the moving of God in Tari’s life was new and fresh.

But, it won’t go back on the basement shelf. Into the sale/donation pile it will go later today.

Our church recently did an all-church study of the book Organic Disciples. Our pastor preached on the concepts in the book, and all adult Sunday school classes (a.k.a. Life Groups) studied it.

What exactly are organic disciples, you ask? Well, in the food industry, organic means “natural”. In terms of discipleship, it would mean we should naturally grow/improve as disciples of Jesus.

The idea of organic disciples grew out or organic outreach. This is a ministry of Kevin and Sherry Harney, pastors of a large church in California. Organic outreach means natural outreach. Your life should be structured in such a way that reaching people with the gospel happens naturally. It is not forced, not a trial or burden, but a joy that comes from everyday living. The Harneys have a series of books, church resources, and small group resources designed to help with the concept of organic outreach. Organic Disciples is one of those resources.

The book focuses on six spiritual markers that the disciple can use to measure their progress on the road to being more Christ-like, which is the definition of a disciple. Such things as Bible engagement, prayer, worship, generosity, etc. are what marks a disciple. The book has chapters based on these concepts. Examples from the authors’ lives. Suggestions on how to make these items natural in your life.

The book I found to be useful and well-written. I found nothing to disagree with. The book stayed clear of politics and controversial subject. At times the discussion ran a little long.  I felt that several chapters were repetitive, or went into too much detail. But, overall, a good book. I give it 4-stars.

But as to keeping it? Alas, no. If I didn’t have a couple of thousand  other books to read, I might. But the likelihood of my ever reading it again is small. So to the donation piles it goes. Hopefully today it will go to one of the area thrift stores.