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Facing Your Giants: The God Who Made a Miracle Out of David Stands to Make One Out of You
By Max Lucado
Giants. We must face them. Yet, we need not face them alone.
This profound look at the life of David digs deeply into the defeats he suffered, and the victories he won, as he faced the giants in his life. When David focused on God, giants tumbled. But when David focused on giants…he stumbled.
Goliaths still roam in our world. Debt. Disaster. Dialysis. Divorce. Deceit. Disease. Depression. These super-sized challenges swagger and strut into our lives, pilfering our sleep, embezzling our peace and robbing us of our joy. And while these giants try to dominate our lives, we know what to do! We've learned what David learned, and we do what David did. We become God focused. We pick up five stones. We make five decisions. And we take a swing.
Alison Moore Smith is a 60-year-old entrepreneur, who graduated from BYU in 1987. She has been (very happily) married to Samuel M. Smith for 39 years. They are parents of six incredible children and grandparents to two astounding grandsons.
Ooooh! A Max Lucado book! I don’t remember you picking this book for October– I must have missed that conversation!
He’s written some GREAT stuff. Believe it or not, my interest in this genre of reading started with Max Lucado and Leo Buscaglia instead of the LDS authors– just because the people I was working with were reading it and talked about it during lunch and it caught my interest.
This should be some good reading!
So far it’s just great. Hope more of you will join me. (It was posted a few weeks back in an (apparently) obscure thread.)
I hope Stephanie will read it with us. I think it may have something of value to her.
hey! our library has this! I’m going to give it a try! I was hoping to find it on cd but even in normal book form, I can read it. . .just not as much time for it!
Face the Music, you know about Leo Buscaglia? Yippee! I have loved him for a long time, though I don’t agree with everything he ever said. I guess I love him because he’s a cute Italian man that talks with his hands! I’m an Italian woman that talks with my hands! I have a CREW of Italian relatives that talk with their hands! Not only do you have to plug your ears sometimes, you have to duck!
And I love Max Lucado. We read You Are Special about once a month on a Sunday evening. If I can find this book in the library, I will read it.
I’m in too, if I can find it at my library. If not, I’ll have to bow out of this one – my book budget for the year (and next??) is long gone… 🙁
Who budgets BOOKS??? Books are like making a long horizontal cut out of the brownie pan. Guilt free!
FWIW, years ago I had a friend (the mission president’s wife when I lived in England when I was 19) who collected pigs. She had tons of pigs. I thought it would be so cool to collect something. Problem is, I couldn’t think of anything I liked enough to collect.
One day, I figured it out. WATCHES! I was into clothes and jewelry and fashion and already had a few awesome ones (like one that belonged to my grandmother that I found in a shoebox in the basement that was made of 18k rolled gold–and still worked). So, I started buying all sorts of them. Dressy, casual, some for each holiday. I even got that Bill Clinton backward running watch.
About a year after I started this, I found the fatal flaw. All the batteries started dying. I realized I had acquired a very expensive habit when I had to replace 60 watch batteries every year. (OK, I didn’t have 60, but I WOULD have…)
So, I gave that up.
A few months later, Sam and I were in Utah on vacation and left the BYU Bookstore with our typical $600 worth of stuff.
“Honey, we collect BOOKS,” Sam said.
Duh. We had a real library in our house in Boca. I should have figured that out.
Now we have two libraries and a homeschool room and shelves in every bedroom and two offices and a conference room lined with books. I love it. But here’s the secret…if you COLLECT books, you can buy as many as you want. It’s true. The money is always there and you feel no remorse. Because you COLLECT them. It’s very important to understand this law.
And you wonder why I joined BookWise? Just more books, cheaper, and now it’s also a business deduction. :devil:
OK, back to the book ?
I know, you’re still tempting me with Bookwise. 🙂
I don’t really, truly, have a book budget. I just know that I have no money and I’ve been spending too much on books. It’s hard living in Louisiana because they don’t stock the LDS books in the libraries…gone are the days when I could go in the Pleasant Grove library and find 5 copies of “The Work and the Glory” lol!
I did find Rough Stone Rolling in my library here, though. I’d bet they have the Max Lucado book too.
I have a very low book budget. You have to budget when you go through 5 books/week. Though I’ve slowed down to about 3 since I now have a toddler and am trying to be more “social” at work.
Michelle, we don’t link to “that site” here. Maybe it was the blackball threats after we quit writing Circle of Sisters for them. I don’t know…
You’re getting sleepy…sleepy…sleepy… :devil:
BTW, my kids are jealous because the entertainment for the convention in two weeks is Smash Mouth. But Henry Winkler is one of the guests and they don’t have a clue who he is! I must have failed in my homeschooling!
Alison, I’d love to see your watch collection! Hang me by my thumbs and shoot me for spending money on it, but I have a dish collection. The attic is full. The kitchen is full. The basement is full. It’s my one frivolity, and yes, I feel guilty. I really like to set a pretty table and make Italian food for guests, and we have a good time! I have a 4th of July set of dishes. I have a Christmas set of dishes. I have a Halloween set. I have an Italian hand-painted set that has fruit on it. People give them to me for gifts, or I save my shekels and buy them. I have a set of 100 glass plates we use just for wedding receptions. (I have six daughters.) (By the way, it’s up for loan if you’re planning a wedding.) The most recent collection my husband gave me for my birthday in September was a set of red and green banded plates and bowls from the dollar store, and they are displayed in a china hutch he built for me in my kitchen. I tell my shoulder angel to shut up, because when the lost ten tribes return with nothing and need places to stay and kitchen set-ups, I’m going to give them each a set of dishes! And then I will start to collect books.
And mlinford, I did read the article you referred to, and it helped. Am I blackballed if I read an article from the blackballers? I’m sorry, Alison, if they were mean to you. What happened? Should I not ask?
Sorry, Alison…didn’t know links were not allowed to ‘that site’ (thought I had seen one not too long ago).
You probably did, Michelle. Because I try not to be militant…although I think I SHOULD be. 🙂 I was teasing, btw, so I should have put a smiley in there. It was obvious in my head that I was laughing. 🙂
davidson, another thread for another day. 🙂 But be careful. The spies are watching to keep us in line…
I hoped you were joking, but just in case, I wanted to cover my bases. Heh.
Agreed. (…that I don’t always agree, either). He sometimes waxed a little too philosophical for me, getting a little “out there” with his ideas. Believe it or not, the book of his that I enjoyed the most was Papa, My Father. Sweet, sweet tribute to his father.
Alison, doesn’t it seem oddly funny to you that you could spend the money to buy all those watches in a year, and then think that having to spend $60 a year to keep them all running was “too much”?? 😉
Davidson– your dish collection sounds like something I’d LOVE to see. I love beautiful dishes– I’m just an admirer though. (Our only set came from the dollar store, too!)
I have a rather large collection of lint from my dryer.
Just teasing– but it IS true. Every single week for the past 3 weeks, I’ve forgotten to go into the basement to get the trash from the laundry room. So I have a rather extensive collection of lint in sheets of dark and light.
I collect a few different things– nothing in large amounts, I don’t get them for every birthday, mother’s day and Christmas or anything. (And I wouldn’t want too– I like not having any idea of what I’m getting.) But my favorite collection, which is still rather small is my collection of nativities (just Joseph, Mary and the Savior– not entire scenes). I specifically collect ONLY those sets where Mary is actually HOLDING her baby. They’re not very common. Usually, it’s the typical Catholic version, where Mary is looking over the manger, holding her hands up, palms out, as though she was worshiping and praising Him, and Jesus is laying in the manger with His arms reaching up. Even as a child that drove me batty. I figured that His arms were up in the air like that because he was thinking “Hey! It’s cold and I’m naked! Can you hold off on the praising for a minute and PICK ME UP AND HOLD ME??”
:clap:I laughed and laughed and laughed! I read it to my kids, and they laughed, too! Oh, do I have a deal for you! I’ve been collecting lint for my husband’s coworker. She was the girls camp director in her ward, and they were hoping to make firestarters. I was so accustomed to collecting the lint that, even though her ward camp is over, I still keep putting the lint in the sack. What color are you missing in your collection? The brown and pink lints look well together, side by side. I’m also kind of partial to the deep maroon.
LOVED the story about your nativity collection! I laughed so hard my husband and kids were worried about me! :rolling: I have a set like that, too, and I always felt the same way. Thanks for the good time!
I collect unicorns, though I’m very picky about which unicorns, so my collection is quite small. I love what they embody.
Are you kidding? Back then the cheapest place I could find to replace the battery was Sears and it cost $12 a pop. I had collected about 13-15 watches by that time that needed batteries. Some of the watches were only worth $10! And I would have spent over $150 per year on replacements even if I didn’t buy anymore! Walmart does it for $3 now (plus the battery). Some I can do myself, but some are trickier. I didn’t really want a hobby that cost more time and money to maintain than it did to get into!
Davidson– your dish collection sounds like something I’d LOVE to see. I love beautiful dishes– I’m just an admirer though. (Our only set came from the dollar store, too!)
I have a rather large collection of lint from my dryer.
Just teasing– but it IS true. Every single week for the past 3 weeks, I’ve forgotten to go into the basement to get the trash from the laundry room. So I have a rather extensive collection of lint in sheets of dark and light.
My sister collects nativities, too. But she’s a bit less particular. I love your idea, Tracy, except that my kids alway love putting baby Jesus in the manger. 🙂
Silver, my daughter loved unicorns as a kid. What do they embody?
So is anyone else reading the book or are we going to spend the whole month discussing the intricacies of dryer lint???
It’s a great book. I hope Stephanie is reading it!
My local library has it!! But all copies are currently checked out. I’m the 2nd on the waiting queue – hope to have it by early next week.
I couldn’t find one at the library. One that looked like it was checked out. I’m out, it appears. 🙁
But if anyone cares, I collect key chains. And two-dollar bills. 🙂
Well, Alison, it’s hard to describe everything they embody to me, but I’ll give it a whirl.
Purity
Harmony
Strangeness
Beauty
Goodness, but with an ability to defend
Healing
Elusiveness
Grace
Love
Loneliness
Wildness
Part of me wishes that they truly existed as I see them, but the rest of me is glad they don’t. I couldn’t live if we ruined them, too.
Don’t give up on us, Alison! I’m reading five or six books right now. I just ordered this book, and as soon as it comes, I’ll dive right in. It sounds wonderful, and I really enjoy book clubs. They keep trying to make one go in our Relief Society, but they don’t get a lot of response. Ooooo! I’d love to hear what your favorite books are and why, all of you! What a treat that would be!
Read the book and loved it! It was interesting to watch his brain work in the way he worded things. Impressive. I loved the fact that he knew the Bible so well and was so adept at giving people encouragement. I wondered if his book came out before or after The Peacegiver? (I could look, but I’m lazy this morning.) They both discussed David, and the flavor of the two books was essentially the same.
It was interesting to see how he approved of so many things about David’s righteous efforts EXCEPT his practice of polygamy. I understand that David was keeping commandments, even with the number of wives and concubines he had, until his experience with Bathsheba. I wonder how Max Lucado feels about the LDS religion? I wonder if he thinks we’re Christians? I wonder if he still thinks we practice polygamy today? (I wonder if his dog is big or small?) I would like to know him better.
I missed the mention of this book, too. I thought we were doing politics this month…and I was going to have a head start. Grrrrr….. 🙂
I get the sense that this article might be relevant to the thread here. I thought of Stephanie, too, as I read it.
For our dear Michelle and the many others with short term memory loss, here’s a link for you. :devil: