Check it Out- Wasabi Gospel

A book bomb is going off on amazon.com, you may want to check it out.

I got the privilege of being able to get a sneak peak of this bomb, called the Wasabi Gospel, written by Shawn Wood. You may have heard of another book that he's written, 200 Pomegranates and an Audience of One.

Anyway, although I didn't have time to read the entire book word for word, I did skim through it and read chapter 4 in-depth: Rich People Go Straight to Hell, Do Not Pass Go.
Sound challenging? Yeaaah. It was. Wood does a great job of communicating wasabi-like Scripture passages in a way that is easy to identify with and that reveals the real zest with which Jesus said them.

Who is "the rich"? Could it be you or me? What are we expected to do with excess? What are people doing today because of this truth? Not meant to produce a guilt trip or wring us through the dryer, Wood encourages and challenges readers to live the life of the Kingdom- bring the Kingdom to earth. If all the chapters in this book are a similar quality, this is going to be a must-read for all young adults.

To learn more about this book and about the author, be sure to check out any of the following links:

www.wasabigospel.com
www.shawnwoodwrites.com
www.twitter.com/shawnwood
www.facebook.com/shawnwood

Voluntary Poverty

This is one of gift options on the spiritual gifts test i just took:

Voluntary Poverty: "The special ability that God gives to certain members of the Body of Christ to renounce material comfort and luxury and adopt a personal lifestyle equivalent to those living at the poverty level in a given society in order to serve God more effectively."

This gift is a practical gift. Those with the spiritual gift of voluntary poverty will often choose to live among people who are considered poverty-stricken in a given area, and live at their level, although they have the means to live at a higher standard. Th primary motivation for this choice is to minister more effectively to the people through identification. Scriptures: Acts 2:44-45; 4:34-27; 1 Corinthians 13:1-3; 2 Corinthians 8:9.

Note: This gift is often associated with the gift of giving, however, notice that the motivation for this gift is for effective ministry through identification with a group of less-fortunate people, where those with the gift if giving are motivated by what their money can do towards God’s work.

I think this is interesting. If this is truly a spiritual gift, I think that this has interesting implications. "and live at their level..." not just living simply and having money in the bank for "back-up" and not just living in a certain place but having a lot of cool stuff, but living at the same level as those who don't have a lot in order to identify with the feelings and thoughts and needs of others. This is huge.

Coupon Clipping

A few weeks ago I began to search out coupons in newspapers and on the internet to help save some money in the grocery area of our budget. I have good memories of helping my mom cut and organize coupons into categorical envelopes on Sunday afternoons (we'd buy the sunday newspaper after church and look at it over lunch). So, I bought my envelopes, labeled them similarly to my childhood memories, and have been cutting away.

Okay, so onto the good part- the other day I bought about $15-$20 worth of stuff for only $6.50! woot woot. How? Well, I used great saving coupons from coupons.com on items that were already on sale! In fact, Walmart payed me $.02 to buy BBQ sauce.

Warning. Intense bargain hunting is addicting :).