Java Wake
Stephen Cranton’s mid-life crisis is coming on a decade too early. On a business trip to Indonesia, he evaluates his heartless existence after getting challenged by an obnoxious adventure guide on his flight. Soon after landing, Stephen tries to spice up his stale life with a brazen act of spontaneity. Bad move. His impulsiveness sets off a chain of events, one that brings enemies into his life and endangers new friends. His longsuffering wife, who makes a spontaneous move of her own by flying to Java for a last-ditch marriage intervention, also gets tangled up in his miscalculation. Stephen feels like he is living inside a nightmare that he can’t seem to escape, but will the ordeal be enough to wake up his sleeping heart?
“…knowledge of the landscape, culture, and climate shine through, creating a vibrant sense of place…An atmospheric debut.”
– Kirkus Reviews
Growing Desperate: The Favor of God for the Poor in Spirit
Desperate people stop Jesus in His tracks. Think of the woman hemorrhaging for 12 long years, despondent that all remedies up to that point had proven worthless. The only option left for her was to grab the robe of the miracle man as He walked by. Jesus affirmed her courage, healed her, called her daughter, and blessed her in peace. Jesus admires your gut-honest desperation more than your religious self-sufficiency. It attracts Him like nothing else. Cruel circumstances, fractured relationships, bruised emotions and aching loneliness—God meets us in the desperate places of our lives, fights and delights to restore us, and sends us out into a world full of desperate people.
“Honesty is what you will find as you advance through the treasures that await you in this unforgettable book. The words are not the hollow ramblings of an academic, but rather the wisdom of a man who writes from the depths of his quest to find meaning and hope in the darkest and loneliest circumstances…I invite you to read his meditations on human desperation. Prepare your heart. I dare say, you will never be the same.”
— Paul Richardson, author of A Certain Risk: Living Your Faith at the Edge (Zondervan, 2010)