Come Away
by Shel Arensen

Foreword by Randy Alcorn

"My sheep listen to my voice," Jesus said. Have you been listening to his voice lately? Have you been putting your ear to his Word and asking him to speak to you?

Have you been sitting at the feet of Jesus, as Mary of Bethany did, turning your back on a thousand distractions to enjoy the presence of your bridegroom, the Carpenter from Nazareth—the one who said he was going to prepare a place for you and coming back to get you so you can be with him forever?

We were made for a person and a place. Jesus is the person. Heaven is the place. We'll never be satisfied with any person less than Jesus, and no place less than heaven. We won't be fully content until we're home with our Beloved. But the closest we can get to contentment-and to heaven—while we're still here as aliens and strangers on this earth, is when we come away with Jesus and get away from his substitutes.

Shel Arensen is right on target when he says, "Whether we realize it or not, we desperately need to spend time with God." Many of us realize it, but only sporadically. No sooner do we sense he's the one we're longing for, that he's the cold refreshment for our parched throats, then we turn to lesser streams that cannot quench our thirst. We let that still small voice of God get buried under the din of our busyness. Television, radio, email, classes, sports, business trips, chores, hobbies. Up early, to bed late. Music turned up loud. Talk shows where we hear from everybody but the One who knows everything.

How does this all fit with "Be still, and know that I am God"?

John Piper says God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. We will only be satisfied with God if we go out of our way to spend special time with him.

In the spring of 1988, Nanci and I and our daughters, Karina and Angela, then only seven and nine, spent two weeks with Shel and Kym Aresen and their children in their home in Kenya. We'll never forget those people or that place. We celebrated Easter in a large hut with backless benches, worshipping God for hours, delighting to the children as they danced to the music. We looked down over the great Rift Valley, and listened to the monkeys chatter in the trees over our heads.

Sitting here in my office in Oregon, I just turned my head to the left to see a picture I took there of a tall young Maasai woman and her child, who seemed to appear out of nowhere as we picnicked on a game reserve with the Arensens. We still have a Maasai spear in our basement.

We saw wildebeests and zebras, giraffes and gazelles, heard lions and saw hippo tracks outside our tent. Our four-wheeler was chased by baboons. (We found out later the Arensen boys were throwing cheese snacks out the sun roof.) We drove to the coast, to Malindi, where Shel warned us to run through the shallow waters into the Indian Ocean to avoid burning our feet. (In Oregon you run through ocean water for another reason—to keep your feet from getting numb!)

We saw insects so big they cast shadows. Early one morning our daughters looked at us wide-eyed and one of them said, "Daddy, there's a giant leaf with legs standing over my hair brush." I went into the bathroom and stopped in my tracks. It was...well, a giant leaf with legs, straddling a hair brush. I've never seen an insect like it before or since.

Kenya is an exotic place, but what we saw that really stuck with us was more than these things I've recounted. It was the quality of Kim and Shel's life. We saw the fruit of Shel's years as editor (following in his father's footsteps) of Today in Africa, a quality Christian magazine that built up the body of Christ and reached out to unbelievers. We saw how the Arensens cared for people and built their family around the things that matter.

Years later Nanci and I sat with Shel and Kym in Oregon, where they told us that they believed God was calling them to step away from the work they'd been doing all those years. Not content to be comfortable, they wanted to start a new missions adventure, to evangelize and plant churches among the unreached Dorobo people, a tribe of hunters and gatherers.

Fantastic, we said. Wow, we said. To step from a long term established ministry in Kenya to such a work among an unreached tribe was as radical as it would have been for us to leave America for Africa.

But they did it, crying out to God to prepare the way for them. God answered that prayer powerfully. And now there are many Dorobo people who know Jesus Christ as their Savior, and a few dozen Dorobo churches where there were none before.

I tell this story for one simple reason—if I'm reading a book on prayer, I want to know whether the person writing it has walked with God in the crucible of life, drawing on his strength to do what could not be done without him. Shel and Kim Arensen have. So what's on these pages is more than just words.

This isn't only a good book on prayer retreats, it's a good book on prayer. It's full of Scripture, which has a power nothing else does. (God never says our points and anecdotes won't return unto him without accomplishing their purpose—he says his Word won't.) It's simple yet profound. It's clearly written, as you might expect from someone whose job for many years has been putting truth into understandable terms. It's richly illustrated, with a fascinating African flavor, but readily cross-cultural. It's practical. You won't just walk away with theory, but specific ideas of what you can do to come away with God and enjoy his presence.

What could be more important—and more satisfying—than to set aside time to confess, give thanks to the Lord, recognize his greatness, intercede for others, open his Word and seek after God?

I enjoy regular time with God, and have had prayer and Bible study retreats before. Some of my sweetest memories are of days given over to God—having meals with just him, taking a long bike ride with him, talking with him, reading good books with him by my side, listening to his Word and asking him to speak to me. But as I read this excellent book, I realized it's been too long since I carved one of these times into my schedule. Well, I fixed that. I picked some spots on my calendar and wrote in God's name. After reading this book, I think you'll likely do the same. I'm looking forward to those days. So will you.

"Open your servant's eyes," Elisha prayed. And God did open his eyes, to the invisible realities of the spirit realm we're often blind to. May our eyes be opened as we step into the unseen realm to walk with God, and he steps into this realm to walk with us. May he use Come Away to draw us into His presence and empower us in a way that changes the world around us.

Foreword by Randy Alcorn

Several years ago, my daughter Karina—whose judgment I deeply respect—read Nancy Leigh DeMoss's Lies Women Believe and recommended it to me as a great book. Since then I've come to know Nancy as a precious sister. When I've read her books, and spent time with her doing her radio program or talking on the phone, I've been drawn to Jesus.

Readers can rest assured that Holiness: The Heart God Purifies comes out of a life that has firsthand experience with the subject matter. The holiness I've seen in Nancy doesn't scream "Look at me—I want you to be impressed with my holiness." It's not the check-off-the-boxes legalism perfected by the Pharisees and paraded by a thousand Christian groups since. It flows from a heart humbly submitted to Christ's lordship. Nancy's holiness is saturated with grace.

"Be holy for I am holy." God is the reason we should be holy. But he's also the empowerment for our holiness. Many of us are convinced we should be more holy, but we've gone about it wrong. To be holy in our strength, and for our glory, is to be distinctly unholy. To be holy in Christ's strength and for his glory...that's our calling, and our joy.

Like Jesus, this book is full of grace and truth—challenging yet winsome, convicting yet inviting. True holiness isn't cold and deadening—it's warm and inviting. It's irresistible. Those who think otherwise have never seen it, but only its caricatures. In this book Nancy strips "holiness" of its baggage, so we see it as it is. And, contrary to popular belief, it's something beautiful.

Yes, there is the carry-your-cross demand. But there's also Christ's assurance, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest....For my yoke is easy and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:29-30).

Holiness is the only path to happiness. Every time I've been unholy it has made me unhappy. Every time I've been holy it has made me happy. Holiness sometimes hurts in the short run, but an hour or day or month or year or lifetime from now, holiness always brings happiness. Jesus promised it would: "Happy are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

Nancy says, "No amount of striving or self-effort can make us holy. Only Christ can do that." Gladly, I want to shout, "That's true!"

She says, "Somehow, the evangelical world has managed to redefine sin; we have come to view it as normal acceptable behavior—something perhaps to be tamed or controlled, but not to be eradicated and put to death. We have sunk to such lows that we can not only sin thoughtlessly, but astonishingly, we can even laugh at sin and be entertained by it."

Sadly, this time, I say, "That's true."

Each day the God in whose presence the seraphim cry "Holy, Holy, Holy," examines every secret corner of our lives. He's the Audience of One. What really matters is whether he is pleased with our lives.

May we humbly acknowledge that when it comes to holiness—with all its sacrifices and rewards and pleasures—apart from Christ we can do nothing. But by his grace and empowerment, we really can live so that we may one day hear him say those amazing, thrilling words: "Well done, my good and faithful servant!"

The moment we hear those words, from the mouth of our Lion and Lamb, we'll know that in comparison, nothing else matters.

The Listener: What if you could hear what God Hears?
by Terri Blackstock

The Slumber of Christianity
by Ted Dekker

Foreword by Randy Alcorn

Rise up from slumber. Set your mind and heart on an inheritance that will blow your mind. Feel your heart flutter and find a new passion for life here and now. This is the call from Ted Dekker, who writes with passion and insight on the search for happiness and heaven.

"Are you desperately longing for heaven?" It's a question that begs answering. Peter says, "we are looking forward to the new heavens and new earth" (2 Peter 3:13). But, in fact, as Christians today are we? Are we actually looking forward to and longing for our eternal home?

Heaven plays a major role in my novels and nonfiction. Researching my book Heaven, I read 150 volumes on the subject, many long out-of-print. I've taught a seminary course "A Theology of Heaven." I've received literally thousands of letters and emails about heaven. There's a great deal I don't know, but one thing I do know is what Christians think about heaven. And how seldom we think about it.

Sadly, Ted is right when he says "the church today has little passion for the coming life."

What a contrast to the early Christians. Their pictures on the catacomb walls portrayed heaven with beautiful landscapes, children playing, people feasting at banquets. Believers throughout the ages saw heaven as a constant source of strength and perspective. It was their central reference point, the north star by which they navigated their lives. But today, heaven has fallen off our radar screens.

What God made us to desire is exactly what he promises: a resurrected life in resurrected bodies, in a resurrected community, with the resurrected Christ on a resurrected Earth. This is the eternal heaven that awaits us, and should daily capture our imaginations.

Ted's right-we're slumbering. We need to wake up and smell the New Earth. Taste the coming resurrection. The doctrines of resurrection and New Earth mean that this present world, though suffering under sin and curse, is bursting with clues and foretastes of the coming world.

The Carpenter from Nazareth is preparing a place for us. He knows how to build. He's constructed entire worlds, billions of them. He's going to strip the damaged paint off the old Earth, sand and refinish it, then present it magnificent and pristine. He says it will one day be our home...and His, for He will dwell there with His people, forever bringing heaven to earth (Revelation 21:3).

With the Lord we love and with the friends we cherish, believers will embark together on the ultimate adventure, in a spectacular new universe awaiting our dominion and exploration. Jesus will be the cosmic center. Joy will be the air we breathe.

And right when we think "it doesn't get any better than this"—it will.

So listen to Ted Dekker's wake-up call. You'll never regret the world you'll wake up to...not in a billion years.

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