Greetings, ladies, and welcome to my 2017 blog page! Last year I decided to make a change and do video blogs. This year it’s back to penning words on the page. I will be sharing reviews of books and movies I have read and watched that have really made an impression on me. I hope you enjoy!
Review of Fresh Wind Fresh Fire by Jim Cymbalta
When I started reading this book, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but was quite surprised to find the book interesting and intriguing.
Cymbalta is one of the founders of what we now know to be the Brooklyn Tabernacle Church. The church started out with only a handful of members when he became Pastor. Today, the church has a membership of over 6,000, including several satellite churches which branched out of the parent church.
Pastor Cymbalta’s ministry is heavily devoted to prayer. In fact, prayer dominates most of the worship services. Pastor Cymbalta mobilized his congregation with a call to prayer, catapulting his ministry, and bringing life-changing results into the lives of many people – particularly those in the inner-city, drug plagued, community where his church was located. Former drug dealers, prostitutes, and those without homes, whose lives were transformed by the power of God through that ministry, make up the membership. More importantly, those individuals worship right alongside business people and other, well-to-do members. He employs a policy of tolerance and encourages his members not to look or act differently towards anyone that comes in, no matter how they look or smell.
Throughout the book, Pastor Cymbalta shares several testimonies of people whose lives have been saved, healed, and delivered from the grips of the enemy and have turned their hearts to Christ. Drug addicts, alcoholics, and gang members were among the many listed. One example is a man named David, a vagrant, who would be despised in most churches, but who found tremendous love and encouragement through Pastor Cymbalta and those in his congregation.
To be sure, the blessings and success that Pastor Cymbalta’s ministry enjoys came at a great cost. He did not exempt himself from sharing his personal family hardships in this book. Perhaps most poignant is the story of Pastor Cymbalta’s daughter, Chrissy, who rebelled against her earthly and heavenly fathers in her late teens. Thankfully, Chrissy finally returns and becomes an example of the power of answered prayers, Pastor Cymbalta speaks of throughout his book.
Cymbalta’s book causes us to really take a closer look at how we as Christians approach the problems plaguing our society today. It encourages us to make prayer an even greater priority and believe in the power of answered prayer.