Faithware Passages

If your not familiar with Andy Stanley, you need to be. He is the Senior Pastor at North Point Community Church in Atlanta Church. He help start up Northpoint Ministries in 1995 which now includes 3 churches in the Metro Atlanta area and 20 strategic partner churches.

I have been listening to his pod casts for quite awhile now and he has an amazing talent of bringing the bible to life and then relating it to current everyday living. He usually spreads a theme out over several weeks and tackles it from several angles. Fresh, thought provoking, funny and is a gifted speaker. The good news is he has free podcasts on I-tunes here.

Check him out, you’ll be glad you did.

Some of the best blogs of the week.

• Help Haiti - More trustworthy sites for donations
• Five Tips on Simplifying and Living Generously - Something Sue and I have been striving to do.
• What If The Pharisees Had Twittered? - Love this post!!!
• Earthquakes and Family Wellness - A theme I keep running into this week “why do bad things happen to good people.”

I am currently in the middle of Mark Batterson’s “Wild Goose Chase: Reclaim the Adventure of Pursuing God”
a great book that I would highly recomend. As the title states, Batterson talks about how the Spirit of God cannot be tracked or tamed and how following the Spirit is like chasing a wild goose. He goes on to discuss six cages that entrap us that keep us from following the Spirit.  Life dangerously!

It just so happens I caught one of his blogs about Idol worship and Four Ways to Identify An idol. Check this post out as well!

One of my favorite bloggers Loswhit wrote here last week about Rollng Hills Church In Fayetteville, GA and their ultimate sacrifice.   What faith this congregation has and maybe the true meaning of Church? It sounds radical but from looking at the orginal article from the Atlanta Journal Constitution this is not the first church to do this.

This website was sponsored by Westminster Theological Seminary and put together not to boycott Dan Brown’s books but to educate anyone interested in finding out the truth behind his stories. Dan Brown writes great thrillers but has been known to streeeetch the truth a bit to help enhance the stories. Dan Brown has the right to write whatever he wants but thanks to a lot of research done here, we can discern the truth from these fictitious stories.

Check It out here - The Truth About Angels & Demons

If you like this you may also like their site on - The Truth About The Da Vinci Code.

There are a lot of great blogs floating around out there for Mother’s Day,  so as a tribute to all Mom’s, I thought I would put together a few of my favorites.

Mother’s Day: Every Day Of The Year Written By Gayle White for Compassion International!

For those maybe hurting today with missing family, please read this beautiful post by Molly Piper

A Mothers Burden Is Never Too Heavy. Another great story from Compassion International!

Anne Jackson was told about A Great Mother’s Day Gift here!

And lastly, this one is for the guys. A reminder for the rest of the year!

Jennifer has Mother’s posting about what they would like for Mother’s Day. I think I am beginning to see a theme here……Check it out here.

This post is for the guys!

Okay guys, don’t forget, Mothers Day on Sunday. But before you go out shopping click here and read this first, that is if you want to see another Mother’s Day! A lot more insight in the “Member Comments” as well.

I hope you caught some of the Compassion bloggers posts from from 2009 India trip that I talked about here. As I promised, there were some amazing stories that gave you the true story of what Compassion International is about. You can catch the whole series here.

There were two videos in particular from the trip that really gave me a good idea of how children benefit from Compassion International and your sponsorship. The first video talks about a child’s day at one of the Compassion Centers.

This one I really appreciated because it tells you what your $1 a day does for a child, And more importantly what your letters and the relationship that you build does for that child.

You can check out many more videos from this trip on the right hand side of this page.

Anne Jackson spoke of one child who when asked what he wanted to be when he grew up would not answer. Here is the video.

He didn’t answer because he didn’t have a dream. The translators spoke of the cycles of poverty that their parents, and their grandparents and their great grandparents come from. They have no dream because the cycle of poverty is all they know, so future hopes and dreams simply don’t exist.

Your one dollar a day can make dreams come true!

“From April 26th to May 2nd, five bloggers will witness firsthand the ministry of Compassion International to the poor of East India. Visit this page daily to travel across the world to the impoverished neighborhoods of Kolkata through their stories, pictures and videos - and rediscover hope.”

Some of my favorite bloggers are going on this trip, I’m sure it will be very interesting reading for the next week. Shaun Groves had a great post that also helps define Compassion International, check it out here.

For more information about Compassion International or to sponsor a child visit Compassion.com.