After a visit to her family in Louisville, young Mercy Randolph returns to her new home in Sweetriver, Kansas, and suddenly finds herself in the midst of dangers moving as fast as a tornado.
Meanwhile, Jeremiah must learn to deal with his new faith and his new love—while risking everything he has to save his reckless nephew from the evil plans of the Medicine Bow Gang. Mercy is tested in ways she could never have imagined and must decide if she has the boldness and wisdom to thwart the gang’s schemes. Will her bravery be enough to guarantee her a future with Jeremiah?
A Sacrifice of Obedience was written through the years 2002 and 2003 as an intended sequel to Make Me Like Jesus. It was never published.
Fifteen years have now passed. As I look at the world around me, it seems less likely than ever that Christians in very large numbers will be drawn to a message about sacrifice or obedience. And I am no different. I resist both imperatives just like everyone else. I had hoped by this time in my life to be a little further along.
But obedience remains the bull’s eye of the Christian faith, and the very personal bull’s eye of my own life. Thus, the time at last seems right to revisit this manuscript and share it with whatever fellow pilgrims there may be on that isolated and occasionally lonely path.
You who read these words may be few. Even in Christendom, where the image of the cross looms large in the imaginations and theologies of its many churches and their members, the actual cross-life of sacrifice and obedience is not so well known.
Yet to such a life we are called. It is the only life to which we are called.
Let us, then, courageously explore together a few high points along the Lord’s earthly Calvary road to see what they have to reveal about that life.
A book for young people by Michael and Judy Phillips, veterans of a 46-year marriage (and counting!), in preparing for a marriage that will last a lifetime.
The state of marriage is alarming—not only in society at large but among Christians as well. Young people need a whole new strategy for finding lifetime mates. Drawing upon their pioneering work in the field of home schooling as well as their work with young people, Michael and Judy Phillips present bold, surprising, sometimes even controversial alternatives to dating as the means for choosing spouses.
Best Friends for Life develops revolutionary ideas about parental involvement, about dating as it is usually understood, and about the pressures young people face to make lifetime decisions prematurely. Families who want to choose God’s best will find here a strong prescription for wise, sensible, and lasting Christian marriages.
