Author Archives: hemilykim

2016 Winter Reading Challenge: Say No to Mental Hibernation!

Posted on by
1

It’s winter, but instead of curling up on the couch with tea or hot cocoa to watch hours and hours of shows and movies, enter the Bibliopolis U Winter Reading Challenge at Gracepoint Berkeley church! It’s open to anyone in Element youth group all the way up to the least young of us. 🙂

winter_challenge_web

What do I need to do?

  1. Start READING a Christian book. You can buy your books online or at the Book Fair at church this Sunday or throughout the week. Or borrow from a friend or one of your staff. Or listen to an audiobook!
  2. LOG your reading.  Submit your information on the OFFICIAL READING CHALLENGE FORM. Then add your 2-3 sentence (or more) comment about what you appreciated most about the book. You can find links to the books on the Winter Reading Challenge 2016 page. You can also find a red link to it at the top of the home page.
  3. Once you read 5 books, you’ll WIN a $20 gift certificate to the GP Bookstore!*

Happy reading! Will you be participating? What book are you going to be reading first?

*Yes, if you read 10 books, you’ll win $40…and so on.

Wisdom From the Wemmicks

Posted on by
2

As the holidays draw near, people have been sending me emails asking about book recommendations for this relative, or that aged friend or coworker. So I hope that a series of posts on good books will be helpful for those of you at our churches in Gracepoint Ministries and beyond!

For those of you looking for good children’s books, I highly recommend any of Max Lucado’s Wemmicks books. I confess I’ve had a couple of them in the library for awhile, but didn’t read them until recently. And I was pleasantly surprised and ministered to by the books for their deep truths about our source of worth that comes from our relationship with God our Father and Creator.

I’ve been reading and rereading the books with different groups during our Bibliopolis reading time, and have been making adults who walk by read them as well!

In fact, here is a short testimonial from Alexandria Shen from Gracepoint Berkeley church, who read four of them in succession on a study break. 🙂

I just read four of these books and cried! They are moving and delightful reads reminding us of God’s love. You’ll likely find yourself identifying deeply with Punch and the Wemmicks (read the books if you don’t know what a Wemmick is).  If I had kids, I would definitely read these to them. For now, I think I might just read them with my life group!

As you can see, the Wemmicks books are great for children of any age! So they will make great gifts for children or the adults who will read them aloud for them.

My personal favorite out of the six is Best of All. Which one of the Wemmicks books do you like the best? 

Two Books for Intercessory Prayer

Posted on by
1

For the month of December, I will try to post as many book recommendations as possible, since many people are looking for good books to buy for people, as well as to read during the colder, perfect-reading-weather days.

Today’s recommendation comes from Susanna, from Gracepoint Berkeley church. She has two recommendations for books to help with intercessory prayer. As a pioneer of many prayer workshops, I for one am going to take her recommendation seriously!

I would like to recommend the following book to help you pray scriptural prayers as you intercede for those who are far from God:

This prayer book is written by a pastor who had two prodigal children, one of whom struggled with substance abuse for 7 years but is now a minister of the Gospel.  Although it is written to pray for prodigal children, I found this book to be helpful to pray for anyone who is a prodigal, may it be a parent, sibling, relative, friend, or someone you are reaching out to.  You just need to insert your loved one’s name in the prayer.  I have been using this book to intercede for some people, and it has given me so much hope, strength, and confidence in God’s promises, especially when you feel weak and heartbroken.

The following prayer book is for parents, children’s ministers, and youth ministers:

Again, the prayers are scripture-based, and based on Biblical themes.  It’s a wonderful springboard to pray and claim promises of God daily for your children (of any age).  Although this is written for parents, it is a helpful resource to pray for children or youth that you are ministering to over the themes of purity, protection, faithfulness, fruitfulness, etc.

I will end with an inspiring quote from James Banks:

“We have a God-given responsibility to pray for them as long as we live.  And we have the comfort of knowing that because of God’s kindness our prayers can even outlive us, finding their answers years after our own lives on this earth are done.”  

Both of these books are readily available for purchase at online booksellers, and in the HB bookstore!