Sun Stand Still By: Stephen Furtick
When I began reading this book I was told that it would challenge me to go beyond an average life. The book keep point is to be audacious in your faith. The book gives us a story of Stephen, and his walk from the start of his church, and what it took to get where it is now. The book also gives testimonials of people who have walked out in this same faith, and the results that they began to see from it. Three key points that stood out to me, and have impacted me in this book is to have a vision, have audacious faith, and develop hearing the voice of God, and trust him. At the start of this book Stephen brings up how everyone has a vision or dream for there life. He goes on to show how a lot of people have dreams even when you’re a little kid. People have dreams to be the next big millionaire or next big time Pastor. The problem comes in when these people didn’t act out in there faith in God. Then all the sudden there vision became only a dream. This is what our culture does we dream big, but not many of us are
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As followers in our lives those barriers can be sin, laziness, or lack of fulfilling the call that we all have on our life. We are all called to reach the unreached. When we trust God we truly see all the amazing things that he can do within us. The biggest challenge to myself reading this book is to look at my own life, and see where I’m lacking. What I meant by that is saying that when we get tired, and we start to feel like we have nothing left to give we have to look at ourselves, and keep going. The people who have had the biggest impact on this earth including Jesus are the ones that when they had nothing left to give, and they were tired they found the strength within them to keep on going. People want to be audacious in there faith, but they don’t want to put in the
It can be hard to live in high poverty and come out and be highly successful, but the author Wes proves it can be done. I also think this book shows how important it is to make good life choices and to listen more to your parents when growing up, so you don’t stray on the wrong path in life.
Throughout the book the author implies that through persevering through adversity, following omens, and overcoming one's fears, everyone has a chance to achieve their dreams.
“All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.” This quote from Walt Disney addressing the concept of achieving dreams is very accurate, and can be seen throughout literature today and in the past. Dreams can give people power or take away hope, and influence how people live their lives based upon whether they have the determination to attack their dreams or not; as seen through characters like the speaker in Harlem by Langston Hughes and Lena and Walter Younger in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in The Sun.
At one point in every persons life, they have a dream. However, not all hopes and dreams come true. In the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, the protagonist, Janie Crawford, experiences the deaths of some of her dreams, but she also experiences the success of one. The deaths of these dreams change her opinion of men and caused her to become unsure of love.
At the start of the novel, Alan Paton introduces Stephen Kumalo, a native priest in the small village of Ndotsheni. The reader soon learns that he is the protagonist of the novel. He is a modest and good man, and has a deep reverence for the old customs, and he hates no one, even the white men who have oppressed his people. But as the novel progresses, he becomes more sensitive to racial injustice. When Stephen returns to Nodotsheni towards the end of the novel, things begin to change and improve for his people. Stephen is somewhat responsible indirectly for this change. His relationship with James Jarvis, and his conversations with the small white boy brought his town milk and better agriculture among other things. In the Bible, Stephen was chosen among six others to help restore a complaint towards a group of Jews, who neglected to give a daily distribution of food to their widows. "Now Stephen, a man full of God's grace and power, did great wonders and miraculous signs among the people" (Acts 6-8). In both instances, Stephen was seen as a man full of spirit and wisdom. In addition, they both resolved a predicament among their people.
When Jennifer Hochschild describes the fantasy of the American Dream, she captures the abstract nature of the dream eloquently. For the dream is a simple concept, an idea that anything is possible with emphasis on possible. In contrast, when she describes flaws in the tenets of the dream she strays from the essence of
...uly get me to and through the right path. Wisdom can be helped with knowledge but also experiences and I take these experiences I learn and go through within in my faith and everyday life outside of church, like school or home. Finally, This concept is very compatible with my faith because the book discusses, “touching The Living Christ in each person we meet”, and also that I must learn from my experiences and take that knowledge and use it to make sure that I am going on the right path and that I am staying on the right path.
Every young child is told to always tell the truth and that being honest is good. However, some information can create much chaos and is sometimes better unspoken. R.K. Narayan demonstrates the importance this of balance in his story “Like The Sun.” By using dramatic irony, figurative language, and situational irony, Narayan shows that the truth can have consequences.
One should continually quest for spiritual growth and the practice of grace-full leadership. Ultimately, let me fight the good fight of faith, (1Timothy 1:18; 6:12, King James Version). I hunger for Christ and seek His presence in every facet of my life. I strive to deepen my spiritual habits to support my walk in Him. I want to fellowship with other Christians, learning from and sharing with them.
When people think of the American Dream, they usually picture a wealthy family who lives in a big house with a white picket fence. They see the husband being the breadwinner for the wife and kids, by supporting and providing the best way that he can. They also picture the wife catering to her husband 's every need. The protagonist Janie Crawford lives this American Dream but soon comes to a realization that this life isn’t her destiny. Crawford learns that love does not involve money but rather being joyful. In Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Janie breaks the American Dream myth by living a non-traditional life through belief, happiness, and freedom.
Having experienced both what sin had to offer and what a moral life in accordance with Christian values had to offer, it is the time for Stephen to become a lion. He has set his soul into the wild battle abovementioned and as Nietzsche says “But in the loneliest desert the second metamorphosis occurs. Here the spirit becomes lion, it wants to hunt down its freedom and be master in its own desert.” (Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 2006, p. 16).
What does it take to move you from being someone who you read about in a book to the next book written about you? When you look at some of the most influential people to ever live such as Martin Luther King Jr. or Smith Wigglesworth, it's not about possessing more skill or talent, rather a leap of faith into the unknown. As Christians, we know how to dream. We read the books and heard the testimonies of healings and revival, but we yet to see these things for ourselves. Through taking risk and stepping out, we learn we are able to run past the walls we set for ourselves and learn fear is only a tool to keep us contained behind those walls.
“In those days we did not trust anyone who had not been in the war, but we did not
Stephen King had a dream of being a writer, during his time as a teacher he continued to try to write his stories despite being rejected multiple times by different book publishers.
We all have a dream, but the difference is how we realise our dream, how we obtain our dream, and how our dream changes us. This is evident in our learning of dreams and aspirations through the texts Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keys, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? by Lasse Hallström, and through my own studies of Million Dollar Baby by Clint Eastwood. These three highly acclaimed texts represent the same ideas on dreams and aspirations, which can be defined as hope, desire or the longing for a condition or achievement, but these texts express the same ideas differently, shaping our understanding of dreams and aspirations.