Zondervan Blog

Bloggers Wanted: Sign Up to Review Lisa Harris' "Blood Ransom"

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UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who signed up for the Blood Ransom blog tour! If your blog was selected, you'll receive the book in the mail soon. We're looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

 

1. We'll ship a copy of Blood Ransom to you if your blog is selected.
2. For the sake of full disclosure, please mention in your review that Zondervan sent you the book for free.
3. When your review is complete, link to your review in a comment here. (We'd like to hear your thoughts!)
4. Post your review on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or your favorite book retailer's website.

 

Watch for more blog review opportunities coming up on Zondervanblog.

Synopsis of Blood Ransom:
Holden Natalie Sinclair and Dr. Chad Talcott want to make a difference in underdeveloped African villages ... but they didn’t count on risking their lives in the process. Watch Book Trailer

 

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Coming February, 2011: Mission Hope Series, Book 2: Blood Covenant
New Paige Ryan and Nick Gilbert are trapped in an overpopulated African refugee camp where an outbreak of measles erupts and renegade soldiers block their only way out. Desperate for vaccines, they must put their own lives in the hands of God as they fight for the safety of the refugees under their protection. Learn More

 

Jesus: Favorite Uncle or Uptight Boss? by Scot McKnight

Guest post by Scot McKnight, who blogs at www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed. Scot's latest book is One.Life: Jesus Calls, We Follow.

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I don’t know about you, but I get tossed between absolute wonder and utter frustration when I read the moral challenges of Jesus. Some days I wonder if we ought not call Jesus a "moral zealot" to chase away our beliefs that he is an avuncular Lord. Consider words like this: "Be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect" or "Let the dead bury the dead," or the always yougottabekiddin’ me! line of Jesus that if we don’t give up our possessions we can’t be his disciple.

 

Sometimes, if I were to confess the deepest truth, I can almost unconsciously dismiss these lines with "that’s just the way Jesus talked," but I can’t for one conscious moment think Jesus said some of the following things and didn’t mean business:

• If you don’t have surpassing righteousness you can’t enter the kingdom (Matt. 5:20)

• If you don’t do the will of my Father you can’t enter into life (Matt. 7:21-27)

• If you don’t become like children you can’t enter the kingdom (Matt. 18:1-4)

It's the "you can’t enter" stuff that disturbs me.

My years of studying these lines (and I teach some of them nearly every semester and encounter them more times a year than I care to count) has convinced me that they are designed at their deepest core to confront us with the singular challenge Jesus gives to us as a daily summons. It goes like this: