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Be the Message

Taking Your Faith Beyond Words to a Life of Action

Author Kerry Shook, Chris Shook
Foreword by Rick Warren
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Ebook
PRH Christian Publishing | WaterBrook
On sale Sep 09, 2014 | 240 Pages | 9780307729613
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Maybe you’re troubled by the disconnect between the words you speak and the life you live. Maybe you’d like to see your faith become more active and life-changing in the world around you.
 
Pastor Kerry and Chris Shook felt that way. Even though their calling involved preaching and teaching, they became weary of sermons and words. They felt a gap between what they were saying and the needs of people around them.
 
They decided to do something about it.
 
Be the Message is their story of waking up to the gospel—not just a gospel of words and sermons, but the gospel of intention and action and people. They discovered a profound secret:
 
You Are the Gospel
 
As they explored the deeper truths of scripture, the verse “the word of God lives in you” came alive. Digging deeper, they discovered that the gospel message is really about life message—your life lived out. God’s call to you is simple:
 
Be the Message
 
Be the Message opens up a new world of understanding about what God calls you to. As the Shooks learned, the gospel is not about what you say. It’s about who you are and what you do—and how you can be God’s hands and feet in the world. 
 
What would happen if we talked about God less and walked with God more?
 
Be the Message reminds us that Christianity was meant to be a faith of action, not a faith of words. Yet often we sacrifice doing something for the sake of talking about it. When we actually act out on our faith, we find our faith grows even more.
 
You can do more than nothing.  People’s lives are changed when you allow your life to be the gospel to the world.
 
Living out the gospel in the world today is both simple and costly.  The Shooks explore that paradox through biblical stories and their own experience of making a decision to live out the gospel in practical ways.  Choosing to be the gospel changed their family, church and personal relationships with God.
 
How can it change your life?
FOREWORD BY RICK WARREN
Hudson Taylor once said, “All God’s giants have been weak people.” My favorite example of a giant is Jacob. Jacob was a deceiver, a manipulator, and even a schemer. He spent much of his life scheming to get his way, making one mess after another. Then he’d run from it. This was the pattern of his life: create a mess and run.

Then one night Jacob had an encounter with God. He literally wrestled with God and said, “I’m not going to let go until you bless me, God.” And God said, “Okay, I’ll bless your life.” The Lord grabbed Jacob’s thigh and pulled his hip out of socket. He touched him. God touched him at a point of strength and turned it into a weakness. The Bible says that from that point on, Jacob’s life was blessed, but he walked with a limp.

Kerry and Chris Shook know that instead of hiding and denying our weaknesses, we need to recognize them and learn from them. We need to learn to share them. We need to learn to glory in our weaknesses. If God is ever going to use us greatly, we’ll walk with a limp the rest of our lives. We can hear about people’s successes all day, and it will have absolutely no benefit to us. But when they start talking to us about their pain, all of a sudden they have our attention. Sharing our handicaps causes others to stop making excuses, to see the possibilities, and to rely on God.

If we’re going to have a Christlike ministry, that means sometimes other people are going to find healing in the wounds in our lives.

In Be the Message Kerry and Chris have written a powerful guide on how to stop hiding behind our images so we can truly discover and live our authentic life message. This book is not for those who seek to be impressed;it’s for those who want to have an impact on the lives of others. We can impress people by talking about our successes, but we’ll impact people when we admit our failures and weaknesses and point them to the God who can work a miracle out of our mess.

—Rick Warren
Pastor, Saddleback Church
Author, The Purpose Driven Life
Copyright © 2014 by Kerry and Chris Shook; Foreword by Rick Warren. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Kerry Shook is one of today’s most gifted communicators, offering a clear, contemporary, and creative teaching style. He is the senior pastor of Woodlands Church, one of the fastest-growing churches in America. Kerry and his wife, Chris, founded Woodlands Church, formerly Fellowship of The Woodlands, in 1993; and since then the church has grown to 17,000 in average attendance each weekend. Woodlands Church is now one church in many locations with three campuses in the greater Houston area and thousands joining for church online every weekend. Kerry believes that church should be engaging and fun, calling it “The Best Hour of Your Week.” He strives to eliminate the barriers of boredom, unfriendliness, and fear that keep people from experiencing not just religion but a relationship with Jesus Christ. His messages are relevant, and his illustrations memorable. View titles by Kerry Shook
Chris Shook, along with her husband, Kerry, founded Woodlands Church outside of Houston, Texas, in 1993. Since then the multicampus church has grown to an attendance of more than 18,000 people and is recognized for its ministries to the poor and powerless. Woodlands Church also has one of the largest fair-trade/direct-trade stores in the country, with the goal of lifting generations out of poverty by empowering their lives with hope. Thousands of people in more than two hundred countries tune in weekly to Pastor Kerry's televised broadcasts. The Shooks' first book, One Month to Live, is a New York Times bestseller. Kerry and Chris have been married for more than thirty years and have four grown children. View titles by Chris Shook

About

Maybe you’re troubled by the disconnect between the words you speak and the life you live. Maybe you’d like to see your faith become more active and life-changing in the world around you.
 
Pastor Kerry and Chris Shook felt that way. Even though their calling involved preaching and teaching, they became weary of sermons and words. They felt a gap between what they were saying and the needs of people around them.
 
They decided to do something about it.
 
Be the Message is their story of waking up to the gospel—not just a gospel of words and sermons, but the gospel of intention and action and people. They discovered a profound secret:
 
You Are the Gospel
 
As they explored the deeper truths of scripture, the verse “the word of God lives in you” came alive. Digging deeper, they discovered that the gospel message is really about life message—your life lived out. God’s call to you is simple:
 
Be the Message
 
Be the Message opens up a new world of understanding about what God calls you to. As the Shooks learned, the gospel is not about what you say. It’s about who you are and what you do—and how you can be God’s hands and feet in the world. 
 
What would happen if we talked about God less and walked with God more?
 
Be the Message reminds us that Christianity was meant to be a faith of action, not a faith of words. Yet often we sacrifice doing something for the sake of talking about it. When we actually act out on our faith, we find our faith grows even more.
 
You can do more than nothing.  People’s lives are changed when you allow your life to be the gospel to the world.
 
Living out the gospel in the world today is both simple and costly.  The Shooks explore that paradox through biblical stories and their own experience of making a decision to live out the gospel in practical ways.  Choosing to be the gospel changed their family, church and personal relationships with God.
 
How can it change your life?

Excerpt

FOREWORD BY RICK WARREN
Hudson Taylor once said, “All God’s giants have been weak people.” My favorite example of a giant is Jacob. Jacob was a deceiver, a manipulator, and even a schemer. He spent much of his life scheming to get his way, making one mess after another. Then he’d run from it. This was the pattern of his life: create a mess and run.

Then one night Jacob had an encounter with God. He literally wrestled with God and said, “I’m not going to let go until you bless me, God.” And God said, “Okay, I’ll bless your life.” The Lord grabbed Jacob’s thigh and pulled his hip out of socket. He touched him. God touched him at a point of strength and turned it into a weakness. The Bible says that from that point on, Jacob’s life was blessed, but he walked with a limp.

Kerry and Chris Shook know that instead of hiding and denying our weaknesses, we need to recognize them and learn from them. We need to learn to share them. We need to learn to glory in our weaknesses. If God is ever going to use us greatly, we’ll walk with a limp the rest of our lives. We can hear about people’s successes all day, and it will have absolutely no benefit to us. But when they start talking to us about their pain, all of a sudden they have our attention. Sharing our handicaps causes others to stop making excuses, to see the possibilities, and to rely on God.

If we’re going to have a Christlike ministry, that means sometimes other people are going to find healing in the wounds in our lives.

In Be the Message Kerry and Chris have written a powerful guide on how to stop hiding behind our images so we can truly discover and live our authentic life message. This book is not for those who seek to be impressed;it’s for those who want to have an impact on the lives of others. We can impress people by talking about our successes, but we’ll impact people when we admit our failures and weaknesses and point them to the God who can work a miracle out of our mess.

—Rick Warren
Pastor, Saddleback Church
Author, The Purpose Driven Life
Copyright © 2014 by Kerry and Chris Shook; Foreword by Rick Warren. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Author

Kerry Shook is one of today’s most gifted communicators, offering a clear, contemporary, and creative teaching style. He is the senior pastor of Woodlands Church, one of the fastest-growing churches in America. Kerry and his wife, Chris, founded Woodlands Church, formerly Fellowship of The Woodlands, in 1993; and since then the church has grown to 17,000 in average attendance each weekend. Woodlands Church is now one church in many locations with three campuses in the greater Houston area and thousands joining for church online every weekend. Kerry believes that church should be engaging and fun, calling it “The Best Hour of Your Week.” He strives to eliminate the barriers of boredom, unfriendliness, and fear that keep people from experiencing not just religion but a relationship with Jesus Christ. His messages are relevant, and his illustrations memorable. View titles by Kerry Shook
Chris Shook, along with her husband, Kerry, founded Woodlands Church outside of Houston, Texas, in 1993. Since then the multicampus church has grown to an attendance of more than 18,000 people and is recognized for its ministries to the poor and powerless. Woodlands Church also has one of the largest fair-trade/direct-trade stores in the country, with the goal of lifting generations out of poverty by empowering their lives with hope. Thousands of people in more than two hundred countries tune in weekly to Pastor Kerry's televised broadcasts. The Shooks' first book, One Month to Live, is a New York Times bestseller. Kerry and Chris have been married for more than thirty years and have four grown children. View titles by Chris Shook

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