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From the Front Lines
Whether he's writing about the current political scene, discussing a passage of Scripture, or telling heart-gripping stories of real people, Joe Stowell finds redemptive insights and lessons from the front lines of life that will challenge, encourage, inspire, and bring smiles and tears. Even in the face of unresolved whys, God's love for us guarantees that we can trust Him, that He will never waste our sorrows, that no problem is too tough for Him, that there is no sin or effect of sin that He has not already covered at the cross. Trust in all that God really is, says Stowell, and we will have courage in the trenches of life and strength for the journey.
224 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2007
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About the author
Joseph M. Stowell
67 books18 followersDr. Joseph M. Stowell serves as the 11th President of Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Comprised of approximately 2500 undergraduate and graduate students, Cornerstone is a Christ-centered university with a passion for global influence through the transforming power of the gospel. The University is committed to creating an environment where students thrive both spiritually and intellectually as they prepare themselves to influence our world as followers of Jesus.
An internationally recognized conference speaker, Joe has also written numerous books including "The Trouble with Jesus, Simply Jesus and You, The Upside of Down" and "Eternity." Joe also serves with RBC Ministries, partnering in media productions, writing, and outreach to pastors. His "Strength for the Journey" web ministry, www.getmorestrength.org, features daily devotionals, weekly messages and commentary, downloadable Bible study curriculum, and an audio library of his most requested messages. Joe serves on the Board of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Wheaton College, and has a distinguished career in higher education and church leadership.
From 1987-2005, he served as the president of Moody Bible Institute, and as teaching pastor at the 10,000-member Harvest Bible Chapel in suburban Chicago from 2005 to early 2008 prior to assuming the presidency at Cornerstone University. He is a graduate of Cedarville University and Dallas Theological Seminary and was honored with a doctor of divinity degree from The Master's College in 1987. Joe and his wife Martie are the parents of three adult children and ten grandchildren.
An internationally recognized conference speaker, Joe has also written numerous books including "The Trouble with Jesus, Simply Jesus and You, The Upside of Down" and "Eternity." Joe also serves with RBC Ministries, partnering in media productions, writing, and outreach to pastors. His "Strength for the Journey" web ministry, www.getmorestrength.org, features daily devotionals, weekly messages and commentary, downloadable Bible study curriculum, and an audio library of his most requested messages. Joe serves on the Board of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Wheaton College, and has a distinguished career in higher education and church leadership.
From 1987-2005, he served as the president of Moody Bible Institute, and as teaching pastor at the 10,000-member Harvest Bible Chapel in suburban Chicago from 2005 to early 2008 prior to assuming the presidency at Cornerstone University. He is a graduate of Cedarville University and Dallas Theological Seminary and was honored with a doctor of divinity degree from The Master's College in 1987. Joe and his wife Martie are the parents of three adult children and ten grandchildren.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 2, 2020
This was quite a good book, literally the only downside was that each topic was too short in my opinion. I feel for the guy, it's nearly impossible to impart truth succinctly, and completely impossible for me as I tend to ramble, so he did an excellent job. It's just that I prefer a bit more depth and development.
That is not to say that there were not good things in this book, there were. I thought the end was better than the beginning, but there were good tidbits sprinkled throughout the book and everything was so practical and easy to understand. Take Bonhoeffer for instance, I've read Bonhoeffer and I have no idea what I read, I could barely understand what the topic was, let alone the point he was making about the topic. Stowell is not like that at all. He uses apt analogies and explains, in a thorough and yet brief way exactly what he is trying to say. I have no difficulty following him and building off of his foundation. That's good. That's very good. But...I did want a little more occasionally.
Take the last chapter, which I thought was very good. The last chapter was talking about why some Christians fail and fail so spectacularly. People that are in church leadership turn out to be pedophiles, or people who write books on discipleship repudiate their faith, or people that lead worship affirm their atheism. Why does this happen? He made a point that I think is probably valid, that we as Christians tend to focus on the product rather than the process. We accept Christ and we are supposed to be perfect little people who never make mistakes, who live righteously and morally and never ever have weaknesses. This seems to me to be true. I remember sitting through a sex-ed seminar (required of course) at my first university, and the woman in charge (in her 50s) remonstrated with all these 18 year olds the importance of purity. Purity is important, but purity is not a switch. It's not you had sex one time, now you are forevermore impure. Maybe physically that is true, but it is not true mentally or spiritually. Purity is a state of mind and of actions. It's how you live. It's turning away from temptation. It's refusing to indulge in compromising behaviors. It's something that you can continue to practice even if you have failed in the past. It's like dieting. We all overeat sometimes, but we pick ourselves back up and start counting calories once again. We are fallible imperfect creatures and it is not our position to sit and create a standard that many people cannot reach and then judge them when they do not reach it. If purity was something that is forever lost from one mistake, then the woman who washed Jesus' feet could never have hoped for it, yet it was credited to her. She was honored for making good choices despite her past. To go back to this woman in charge of the sex-ed class, I remember her telling these young women, raised in the nineties and 2000s that she hadn't even held her husband's hand until marriage and we must all do the same thing or we were foul and not true believers and just sinful terrible people. What on earth?! I can nearly guarantee that every girl there had already held someone's hand, and now they were told that they had blown it?! That they could never again stand before God or their partner without feeling guilt?!? That is not what the Christian faith is about. I agree with the author, we are too focused on glorying in what we have 'done right' rather than reveling in the forgiveness for what we have done wrong. In the case of purity, it is good to have a standard, but it is also good to recognize that this is a broken world and it is full of broken people and not all of us are capable of reaching that standard due to past mistakes. Those mistakes should be recognized, and then new goals should be built based on that person's needs and spiritual level. Say they struggle with physical boundaries, help them to establish boundaries and celebrate with them when they succeed. Cry with them when they fail, and help them pick themselves back up, it's a process, a way of living, not a complete product.
The other thing that made me think in this book was his discussion of unity in the church. I do think unity is one of the things that we are terrible at. We are great at separating ourselves from those who believe the wrong thing, even if it's something minor like whether or not to drink alcohol, or whether or not to wear skirts, or whether or not there are dispensations. I mean, really, is dispensationalism really on the same theological level as 'Jesus is God's son, believe in him and be saved'? No, no it is not. It is important, yes, but if someone disagrees with you about which dispensation we are in, or if there are even dispensations, it does not follow that they are now spawn of Satan. We are great at building our little denominations and distancing ourselves from those who are a little bit odd, and we are terrible at uniting. We are terrible at presenting a unified front against things that are truly anti-scriptural. We aren't even that good at getting along with the other people in our church. We look askance at those that dress outside of the unspoken code, or those that sing just a tad too out of key, or those whose politics are slightly different than our own, or those who came from a different background and speak differently than we do. I've pretty much always recognized that problem, it's kind of hard not to when you have lived all over the world and been a missionary kid all over the place, you get to see a wide variety of ways of doing things, but something new this book made me see was that this was an issue in the early church as well...or at least should have been. Even among the apostles! I've always viewed them as this conglomerate, moving together towards the same goal. And they were, but that was despite their differences. He pointed out that within the same 12 apostles were a zealot and a roman employee. That would be kind of like a loudmouthed libertarian and a lifetime government worker being friends and working together. Hard to imagine. And yet they did it, because Christ was more important to them than their lived experience and their backgrounds. How many of us can say that today?
That is not to say that there were not good things in this book, there were. I thought the end was better than the beginning, but there were good tidbits sprinkled throughout the book and everything was so practical and easy to understand. Take Bonhoeffer for instance, I've read Bonhoeffer and I have no idea what I read, I could barely understand what the topic was, let alone the point he was making about the topic. Stowell is not like that at all. He uses apt analogies and explains, in a thorough and yet brief way exactly what he is trying to say. I have no difficulty following him and building off of his foundation. That's good. That's very good. But...I did want a little more occasionally.
Take the last chapter, which I thought was very good. The last chapter was talking about why some Christians fail and fail so spectacularly. People that are in church leadership turn out to be pedophiles, or people who write books on discipleship repudiate their faith, or people that lead worship affirm their atheism. Why does this happen? He made a point that I think is probably valid, that we as Christians tend to focus on the product rather than the process. We accept Christ and we are supposed to be perfect little people who never make mistakes, who live righteously and morally and never ever have weaknesses. This seems to me to be true. I remember sitting through a sex-ed seminar (required of course) at my first university, and the woman in charge (in her 50s) remonstrated with all these 18 year olds the importance of purity. Purity is important, but purity is not a switch. It's not you had sex one time, now you are forevermore impure. Maybe physically that is true, but it is not true mentally or spiritually. Purity is a state of mind and of actions. It's how you live. It's turning away from temptation. It's refusing to indulge in compromising behaviors. It's something that you can continue to practice even if you have failed in the past. It's like dieting. We all overeat sometimes, but we pick ourselves back up and start counting calories once again. We are fallible imperfect creatures and it is not our position to sit and create a standard that many people cannot reach and then judge them when they do not reach it. If purity was something that is forever lost from one mistake, then the woman who washed Jesus' feet could never have hoped for it, yet it was credited to her. She was honored for making good choices despite her past. To go back to this woman in charge of the sex-ed class, I remember her telling these young women, raised in the nineties and 2000s that she hadn't even held her husband's hand until marriage and we must all do the same thing or we were foul and not true believers and just sinful terrible people. What on earth?! I can nearly guarantee that every girl there had already held someone's hand, and now they were told that they had blown it?! That they could never again stand before God or their partner without feeling guilt?!? That is not what the Christian faith is about. I agree with the author, we are too focused on glorying in what we have 'done right' rather than reveling in the forgiveness for what we have done wrong. In the case of purity, it is good to have a standard, but it is also good to recognize that this is a broken world and it is full of broken people and not all of us are capable of reaching that standard due to past mistakes. Those mistakes should be recognized, and then new goals should be built based on that person's needs and spiritual level. Say they struggle with physical boundaries, help them to establish boundaries and celebrate with them when they succeed. Cry with them when they fail, and help them pick themselves back up, it's a process, a way of living, not a complete product.
The other thing that made me think in this book was his discussion of unity in the church. I do think unity is one of the things that we are terrible at. We are great at separating ourselves from those who believe the wrong thing, even if it's something minor like whether or not to drink alcohol, or whether or not to wear skirts, or whether or not there are dispensations. I mean, really, is dispensationalism really on the same theological level as 'Jesus is God's son, believe in him and be saved'? No, no it is not. It is important, yes, but if someone disagrees with you about which dispensation we are in, or if there are even dispensations, it does not follow that they are now spawn of Satan. We are great at building our little denominations and distancing ourselves from those who are a little bit odd, and we are terrible at uniting. We are terrible at presenting a unified front against things that are truly anti-scriptural. We aren't even that good at getting along with the other people in our church. We look askance at those that dress outside of the unspoken code, or those that sing just a tad too out of key, or those whose politics are slightly different than our own, or those who came from a different background and speak differently than we do. I've pretty much always recognized that problem, it's kind of hard not to when you have lived all over the world and been a missionary kid all over the place, you get to see a wide variety of ways of doing things, but something new this book made me see was that this was an issue in the early church as well...or at least should have been. Even among the apostles! I've always viewed them as this conglomerate, moving together towards the same goal. And they were, but that was despite their differences. He pointed out that within the same 12 apostles were a zealot and a roman employee. That would be kind of like a loudmouthed libertarian and a lifetime government worker being friends and working together. Hard to imagine. And yet they did it, because Christ was more important to them than their lived experience and their backgrounds. How many of us can say that today?
August 26, 2013
it was ok. it was a collection of short editorials written for a college news magazine and it reads like one. a little like a devotional.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews