Things aren’t going as you planned. You are down.
“Often in life the what, when, and where are not going to turn out the way you want them to turn out. You don’t always get to choose those things, but you do get to choose the way”
When this happens we blame God, if we believe. Or if we don’t believe, we take this as proof that there is no God since if there was why would this be happening to us?
This book offers a discussion of how to cope with disappointment with life when it doesn’t go your way. We all go through periods like that, which is why this book is useful.
Author Pete Wilson who is a pastor at Cross Point Church in Nashville, Tenn. offers this book as hope. We all are going to need a plan B.
“All of us have had dreams, wishes, goals, and expectations that, for a variety of reasons, have not come to fruition.” Wilson writes.
Hope is something we all have. Hope that life will turn out the way we dreamed. We prepare and then we hit what Wilson calls a wall. The wall is another way of saying cognitive disorder. A divorce after a marriage which seemed OK, a difficult birth, a lay off at your job, even joblessness, a betrayal; all these can be seen as walls. It is those “Why Me” situations.
Wilson reaches back to the Bible for stories of people who faced Plan B situations. There was Abraham who left his comfort zone to go to an area he did not know. He also had a son in his old age only to be asked to sacrifice him many years later.
There was Job who had everything taken away from him and even had his health endangered. We also mustn’t forget Joseph who was a person going some where when he was sold into Egypt, falsely accused of rape and thrown into prison.
We aren’t the first to hit the wall nor will we be the last. Sometimes all we need to help us make it through these times when we hit the wall and see no hope is to have a book like this to read and find hope in. Not that things will. Someone has penned a song “I Never Promised You A Rose Garden.” This is so true. Life throws us curves. You may find yourself walking around waiting for the next bomb to go off. We even can start doubting our faith.
Wilson offers us six stages of faith we go though as suggested by Hagberg and Guelich. The first one is our awareness of God’s reality.
We move on to the second stage which is that of discipleship. At this stage we learn what it means to become part of a group of others who are struggling. We move on to stage three where we become active in working serving others.
Stage four is when a person starts to rethink what they believe. Stage five will find a person acting out their beliefs. Finally if all is well we enter stage six where we find the resources, events and people, even books such as this one.
This book should be on your bookshelf to grab at those times when hope is low and despair is high.
We need books we can hold as well as our Kindles. A person can not cuddle up to a screen and get the same enjoyment as a hard cover or a paperback. I may be wrong. But you can let me know at smdp_review@yahoo.com either way.
