“We live in a love story, set in the midst of a war. Love is our destiny, and all hell is set against it,” write John and Stasi Eldredge in their latest book, Love and War. Written in classic Wild at Heart style, the reader is drawn in early. We are characters in a story much larger than ourselves. This is information we need to have. Ignorance is what causes so many marriages to fail. An enemy is hellbent on the destruction of our marriages and our lives. Like Elisha with his servant, the Eldredges peel back the thin veneer […]

Kim Hamilton Anthony was never your typical world-class gymnast; she wasn’t white, didn’t come from a middle- or upper-class family, and was labeled too tall to be a gymnast. The award-winning athlete shares her painful past and her journey to a purposeful life in her newly released autobiography, Unfavorable Odds. While watching Nadia Comaneci perform in the ’76 Olympics, Anthony fell in love with gymnastics and began doing flips in her grandmother’s living room. “She sent me outside since I was breaking things,” laughs Anthony. “I taught myself how to tumble, do flips with no hands and started jumping off […]

“Taste and see that the Lord is good,” writes the Psalmist. Chris Tomlinson gives that verse a 21st-century context in his first book, Crave: Wanting So Much More of God. Tomlinson is uncomfortable with comfortable. Rather than craving comfort, the author wants to crave more of God, to press in deeper. But with this desire comes trepidation. “It is a terrifying thing to desire submission to a mysteriously unpredictable God who delights in leading people in ways that upend the world,” he writes. In the chapter called Comfort, Tomlinson writes about the compelling, yet dread-laden, sense that he needed to […]

Michael Oher, offensive tackle for the Baltimore Ravens, missed out on earning the NFL’s top honor for a rookie, but pitched Sandra Bullock to win the Oscar for playing the part of his adoptive mother, Leigh Anne Tuohy, in The Blind Side. Just days before Super Bowl XLIV in South Florida, Oher fielded reporters’ questions in an informal press conference after a presentation for NFL Rookie of the Year, Percy Harvin, wide receiver and kick returner for the Minnesota Vikings, was cancelled. Oher, one of five Rookie of the Year finalists, started every game in 2009, 11 at right tackle […]

Several weeks ago, I joined some Christian friends and headed out to see The Book of Eli. I have long been a fan of Denzel Washington, and was curious to see how this movie was going to portray the Christian faith. Known in Hollywood today for his strong Christian beliefs, Washington grew up in the Pentecostal Church of God in Christ, where his father was a minister. In The Book of Eli he had the opportunity to channel his Christian beliefs and behavior into an intriguing character. The Book of Eli is truly a story about the struggle between good […]

This past Christmas vacation, I was given a book by my sister-in-law, who promised it would be “life-changing.” Although I was skeptical, the front-cover artwork and back-cover blurb seemed interesting, so I took my chances and read it. In one day … cover to cover. I just couldn’t put it down! The funny thing about people and books is that sometimes we hear about a “have-to-have-it” book, and then, when we see the actual cover, or read the advertisement on the back, something just clicks in our brain that turns us off, leading us to put the book back on […]

Focus on the Family’s Super Bowl ad featuring Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow and his mother Pam won’t air until Feb. 7, but it’s already created plenty of buzz and even controversy. The subject of the ad won’t be known until it is aired – the Colorado organization is only saying the theme will be “celebrate family, celebrate life” – but several pro-choice groups are assuming it will focus on the issue of abortion and are urging CBS to pull the ad. On the flip side, fans of the former Florida Gator quarterback as well as Christians who align with […]

Blessed are they who hit the “delete” key instead of “forward” when it comes to mean-spirited e-mails of questionable veracity, several Christian ethicists have suggested. Christians have a responsibility to tell the truth and to tell it in love, they agreed. They suggested several guiding principles: Administer the “smell test.” Christians should ask if any e-mail passes the “smell test” before passing it along, said Bill Tillman, holder of the T.B. Maston Chair of Christian Ethics at Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon Seminary. If “something just doesn’t smell right about this,” delete the message, he suggested. Passing along stinky e-mails that fail […]