God's Timing and a Good Book

I've lost count of the number of times someone has recommended a book or given a copy to me, and I discovered that God brought that book into my life precisely in the season I needed it most. It's one reason I try to move quickly to purchase recommended books. It's also why I try to gift books to others as God prompts me or as I come across titles that have blessed me.

As a teenager with an early call to the ministry in my life, I would receive copies of ministry and missionary books from leaders in my home church. None of them knew I had placed some restrictions on my ministry in certain areas. Let's just say I had held my ground on staying close to home for ministry. During that season, a dear Sunday School teacher gave me a copy of the wonderful book Bill Drost the Pentecost. And the limitations I had tried to maintain regarding my involvement with missions and missionaries began to crumble. A few years later, the impact of that book was built upon by Bro. Jim Sleeva, my missions instructor in college. And for the first time I really accepted that the world at home and abroad was a mission field. If I purposed to fulfill my calling, I would be a missionary one way or another, in one place or another, and I must be willing to go. At that time, my involvement began with "home missions" and I started visiting new church plants and eventually accepted an invitation to serve in a home missions work in Indianapolis. That journey took me away from home and familiar territory to where I am now, pastoring the church my wife and I planted as Kentucky Missionaries over 10 years ago in Richmond.
https://pentecostalpublishing.com/p-843-bill-drost-pentecost.aspx


This past October, on the drive to Indiana, for what would be my last Earthly visit with my Dad, I began listening to C.S. Lewis's "The Weight of Glory", recommended by my wife. I didn't finish the selection of sermons and messages on the way there. I arrived at my parents and stayed by Dad's side until he passed away late that night. On the way home to get my wife and kids for Dad's funeral, I finished "The Weight of Glory." It was profound, powerful, and perfectly timed for a grieving son. A couple days later, I re-read Lewis's The Last Battle. "Higher up and further in" resounded in my soul as I longed for the Heavenly reunion the Narnia characters were experiencing.

God's timing and a good book are a powerful combination.

A couple years ago I was introduced to a classic book at the recommendation of Rev. Philip Harrelson. I'm a little embarrassed to say I had never read A Tale of  Three