Hello Brandi!

Thanks for such an encouraging email, it is a wonderful refreshment. :) The truth is that I find it difficult NOT to be honest in what I write simply because of the gut-level reality of Christ's freedom. I can't help but see it in everything and everywhere. When I hear lifeless, hollow words coming from my own lips I am struck with a simple question: What do I have worth telling? The answer is always the same. Christ, the new life in us!!

My "testimony" used to be a somewhat rehearsed and prepared speech about my "conversion experience". I have come to realize that I don't have to fall back to an increasingly distant point in my past to testify of the working of God in my life. As a matter of fact I don't have to go any further back than earlier that same day. For since to testify of my weaknesses and failures are testimonies to the power of Christ I have discovered that I have a full supply!! :) I used to want to be known as one who knows how to "rightly divide the word of God" (according to the usual misunderstanding of that reality), but it never ceases to amaze me how more people have been blessed by my sharing of my own downfalls and disappointments. I begin to understand why Paul came to desire to witness of his own weakness. How ironic.

Thanks, Jim Minker :)