Thank you for joining the Partners in Health and Wholeness Book Club. You can officially sign-up here. Through it, we hope to engage people of faith in discussions over why our health matters. Our current choice of reading is “Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire” by Jim Cybala. We are posting updates through the PHW Facebook page, but our PHW blog page has the discussion posts in full with responses from staff. Just look for the apple on top of the book picture among the blog post pictures and you will find past Book Club entries.
We are taking a turn in our book club material. It’s time to delve into how prayer can change our outlook on health. My congregation is currently reading “Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire” and it is changing my life. And the effects on my health are profound. While reading this book, I have internalized even more the importance of taking care of my body. I am starting to rest. While I rest, I pray. I started reading this book at the end of “The Daniel Plan,” and “Fresh Wind Fresh Fire” encouraged me to internalize Pastor Rick’s points of taking care of my body, and being disciplined. Now, I have started an exercise routine. It’s simple. Just walking and picking mulberries, but I pray as I walk and sing hymns or spiritual songs as I pick mulberries. It’s delightful.
I think many of us might want a fresh wind, fresh fire within ourselves. If so, take up this book and read it with me. We will take it chapter by chapter. It should take us just over two months to complete it. Please join me. I know it will change us.
I am offering free loaned copies of this book. Please email me if you are interested in borrowing one, joy@ncchurches.org.
Publisher’s Description
The Times Are Urgent God Is on the Move Now Is the Moment to … ask God to ignite his fire in your soul! Pastor Jim Cymbala believes that Jesus wants to renew his people—to call us back from spiritual dead ends, apathy, and lukewarm religion. Cymbala knows the difference firsthand. Thirty-five years ago his own church, the Brooklyn Tabernacle, was a struggling congregation of twenty. Then they began to pray … God began to move … street-hardened lives by the hundreds were changed by the love of Christ … and today they are more than ten thousand strong. The story of what happened to this broken-down church in one of America’s toughest neighborhoods points the way to new spiritual vitality in the church and in your own life. “Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire” shows what the Holy Spirit can do when believers get serious about prayer and the gospel. As this compelling book reveals, God moves in life-changing ways when we set aside our own agendas, take him at his word, and listen for his voice.
–Joy Williams, PH Regional Consultant
Partners in Health and Wholeness is an initiative of the North Carolina Council of Churches. PHW aims to connect health as a faith issue. Please visit our website to sign your personal pledge to be healthier, and to find out about grant opportunities for places of worship in NC.