Exchanged News: August 2014

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AUGUST 2014

Why The Boy Cried Wolf

By Dr. Stephen R. Phinney Forward By Dr. John Woodward A Personal Journey Into The Exchanged Life Not long ago, I was strongly encouraged to write my autobiography by four of my mentors. Being hesitant to take on such a project, through much prayer and counsel, I decided to follow such encouragement. You see, as most people, I was very uncomfortable placing my writing emphasis on stories about myself. After wrestling with this idea, the Lord opened my eyes to a very simple fact: “You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. Such confidence we have through Christ toward God” (2 Cor. 3:2-4). One of these mentors stated that unless people know who you were and where you came from—readers, today, find it difficult to trust where you want to take them. I cannot tell you how much sense this made to me. With him saying that, I moved forward with the project. Well, that project has turned into a 300+ page autobiography.

The uniqueness of this writing is that the Lord led me to write my story in and around the primary principles depicted in the IDENTITY MATTERS CONFERENCE. With that, I have become comfortable that my life’s lessons will provide our readers with a richened message of “Not I, but Christ” in and through each of the stories told about my journey A Personal Journey Into the Exchanged Life. Throughout the remainder of the year, I would like to give you snippets of my story before the book is published. I will begin my story by offering the following allegory to Why The Boy Cried Wolf, which comes from the parable of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” (public domain). There once was a shepherd boy who was bored as he sat on the hillside watching the village sheep. To amuse himself he took a great breath and sang out, "Wolf! Wolf! The Wolf is chasing the sheep!"


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