{"id":318,"date":"2009-07-17T14:18:49","date_gmt":"2009-07-17T19:18:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mgmorrow.com\/IronSharpensIron\/?p=318"},"modified":"2012-11-10T04:39:19","modified_gmt":"2012-11-10T10:39:19","slug":"0141-diary-of-a-believer-001","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mgmorrow.com\/IronSharpensIron\/2009\/07\/17\/0141-diary-of-a-believer-001\/","title":{"rendered":"0141 — Diary of a Believer (001)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I ordered DIARY OF A BELIEVER<\/em><\/strong> (by Sheila Gibson) about a week after I first heard about it on Al Maxey\u2019s site.\u00a0 He did a complimentary review of her book back in July of 2008.\u00a0 He titled his review \u201cA Quest to Break Free from Religious Mediocrity.\u201d\u00a0 After reading her book I think a better word than \u201cmediocrity\u201d might be \u201cslavery.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In posts to come I will comment on content from various chapters of her Diary, but this initial post will serve basically as an introduction to material that will be covered later.<\/p>\n

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Sheila is a real person.\u00a0 She even answers email when you send it, once she rescues it from her SPAM folder!\u00a0 But even before we traded a few emails I had the sense that the book was written by a \u201creal\u201d person, with real issues, as opposed to having been written by someone who wanted to make a little (a lot of?) money by publishing a book.\u00a0 Much of that \u201crealness\u201d came from realizing that her story overlapped mine in several areas.\u00a0 I discovered from her book that we were even at some of the same places, at the same times!\u00a0 But more than that, I identify with her real frustration and hurt<\/span> caused by real events in a church where we are called to love<\/span> one another.<\/p>\n

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I was also impressed by what seems to be her motive in writing the book.\u00a0 While she names specific names, events, and places, she does not come across at all as vindictive, or as seeking revenge or redress.\u00a0 Rather the tone of the book is, \u201cWhile there were horrible things that happened to me, I want to share them with you so that if your life is the same place mine was you can know that there is a way out<\/em> and that you do not continue to live in fear!\u201d\u00a0 She documents how, through all of what she experienced, she found what she calls \u201cRadical Love.\u201d\u00a0 (It is a commentary on our times that love which is full and unconditional must be called \u201cradical\u201d in order to distinguish it from \u201cnormal\u201d love!)<\/p>\n

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From Maxey:\u00a0 \u201cHer name is Sheila G. Gibson, and she was raised within an extremely legalistic wing of the Churches of Christ, an experience that truly challenged her personal well-being repeatedly and on a great many levels. In some ways it is a love story, and in other ways almost a horror story. Yet, ultimately, it is the journal of a courageous young woman whose faith would not be shackled or shattered by the rigid religiosity of the sect within which she was raised. It is a tale of triumph.\u201d<\/p>\n

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And from the back cover of the book:\u00a0 “The Diary of a Believer is the story of one believer’s quest to break free from spiritual mediocrity in order to discover, know, and love the Lord described within the Holy Scriptures. It chronicles the journey that Sheila Gibson began as a young girl inside a common, traditional, Christian organization known as the Church of Christ. It explores the blueprints of religious patterns often used to seek Christ within that group of believers. It also reveals the disturbing lengths that some brethren will go to to protect those traditional formulas and doctrinal boundaries within the brotherhood.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You can order a copy of the book from Amazon. (AmazonLink<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I ordered DIARY OF A BELIEVER (by Sheila Gibson) about a week after I first heard about it on Al Maxey\u2019s site.\u00a0 He did a complimentary review of her book back in July of 2008.\u00a0 He titled his review \u201cA … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[60,67,114,68,10],"class_list":["post-318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-freedom","tag-book","tag-church","tag-freedom","tag-gibson","tag-tradition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mgmorrow.com\/IronSharpensIron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mgmorrow.com\/IronSharpensIron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mgmorrow.com\/IronSharpensIron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mgmorrow.com\/IronSharpensIron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mgmorrow.com\/IronSharpensIron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.mgmorrow.com\/IronSharpensIron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":441,"href":"https:\/\/www.mgmorrow.com\/IronSharpensIron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318\/revisions\/441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mgmorrow.com\/IronSharpensIron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mgmorrow.com\/IronSharpensIron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mgmorrow.com\/IronSharpensIron\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}