Books For Christian - Keeping Cool When Heat Is On

Publisher: Whitaker House
ISBN: 0883682052
Pages: 224
Book Type: Paperback
Size: 0.55 x 6.88 x 4.21 inches
Released Date: Aug 1989

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Table Of Contents

Description:
Every Christian takes a turn in the fiery furnace of trials, trouble, and temptation. Knowing what God wants to do, however, is critical to the outcome. Bob Heil shares the secrets he has learned in the Refiner's fire. You, too, will never be the same once you learn how to keep cool when the heat is on.

1. Desperate for Change --- 13
2. Something Is Missing --- 21
3. Please Pray for Me --- 37
4. I Want It All --- 45
5. In Step With Jesus --- 61
6. Whose Problem Is It? --- 71
7. Forgive Who For What? --- 79
8. Increase Our Love, Lord --- 97
9. Where Does Love Come From? --- 107
10. Changing the Way We Think --- 119
11. Combating a Critical Spirit --- 131
12. Sick of Sin --- 153
13. Learning to Relax in the Lord --- 175
14. Warriors Not Weepers --- 193
15. Rejoicing in the Refiner's Fire --- 207
About the Author --- 223

Deep inside me there were words. They were alive, and they shook me to the core. God was saying, "Bob, you do not love them enough." What was to take place in the next ten minutes would dramatically transform my life.

Once I could have acknowledged what the Lord meant by not loving enough. In fact, I did not love at all. That was another time, another world, another man.

I grew up in one of those nightmarish homes. As far back as I can remember there were no long periods of peace in my father's house. On three different occasions my parents' fighting resulted in bitter separations.
Although my father never finished the eighth grade, he had worked his way up the ladder in the postal department to become assistant director of foreign airmail for the whole country. Such climb involved endless struggles at the office. With job competition and inter-office politics tearing him to shreds, the stress of his job took its toll at home. If there was no smile on his face in the evening when he came from the subway and crossed the lot toward our apartment, I knew that within half an hour he most likely would be beating me with his belt. He usually vented his frustrations on my mother and me.

More vividly than my father's belt, I can remember my mother's seemingly constant criticism. Both my parents called me stupid, and I always felt inadequate. In their eyes it seemed I could do nothing right. Although they loved me and occasionally showed affection, those moments were so rare that they seemed almost a dream. As a youngster who didn't know any better, I considered this type of life normal. As a result an attitude of self-condemnation took root in my young life and thrived well into my adulthood.

My parents rarely went to church, yet they always sent me off to Sunday school. Despite my disinterest, they made sure I went through the church confirmation.
My religious upbringing seemed to be a waste of time since the church I attended taught nothing of Jesus' salvation or the real meaning of the cross. They preached moral and social issues. Those who were supposed to be watchmen for my soul were there simply to make the death process more comfortable. Looking back, I realize I was learning to fear God, twisted and mixed as it was with the fear of my father.
Although the rules at home seemed neither right nor just to me, I did have a moral upbringing. For this I praise God-that even through unbelieving parents He could reach my soul and lay a foundation that was to be the beginning of wisdom.
By high school I was sent off to a church-related military school where I was marched into the chapel every day and twice on Sundays. The droning sermons were meaningless to me; yet somehow the fear of God and the desire to do right were instilled in me. I decided to join the choir and sang for two years, acting as devout as possible on the outside, yet inwardly aware that something was wrong-I just didn't know what.

One day, on my way back to school and dressed in uniform, I was waiting in a Chicago railway station. A young man sat down beside me and began to talk about Jesus. Had he asked me some religious or philosophical question I might have been interested, but I could not listen when he used the name "Jesus." Because it frightened and repulsed me, I turned him off. After all, I had religion. I had Jesus "in my own way," didn't I?

For three hours I sat there while he pleaded with me to receive Jesus Christ as my Savior. I nodded my head now and then saying, "Yes, I understand. But I am not that bad, you know. I even sing in the choir. I don't need that sort of thing." Still he begged me to give my heart to Christ.
Finally the call for my train came. I grabbed my bags and fled, but this persistent young man stayed right on my heels. Just before I jaunted through the gate, he stuffed some tracts and a card with his name and address into my hand.
"Think about what I've said," he begged. "Pray about it, give your life to Jesus, and write me about it. I'll be praying for you." I waved him off with "Sure, sure."
As I got on the train I breathed a sigh of relief. Slouching into a seat, I tried to wash from my mind all the words I had just heard. I wanted nothing to do with this "Jesus" he was talking about.
By the next day his name card had found its way into my wastebasket. But those tracts-they were something else. They were about a holy God. Yet a week later I finally discarded them, too. As they dropped into the trash, a barrier went up, separating me from God. From then on, God seemingly gave me over to the destructive consequences of my own life.

I graduated from military academy and went on to Cornell University. This sudden burst of freedom after the restrictions of military school was too much for me to handle. I began living a wild, partying life, and eventually my grades plummeted. I was trying desperately to escape the darkness of my life, and movies were a convenient way to run from it all. Night after night, for months in a row, I went from one movie to another with an occasional party thrown in for variety.
The parties gradually grew in intensity, and I entered another phase in my downward slide into sin. I remember being sober only two nights during an intoxicated stretch that lasted three months. All my eating money went to buy cheap wine to help me escape.
But escape from what? I had come through a good high school; I was at a fine university; life should have been great. Instead, it was a nightmare. My grades dropped more sharply. I was destroying everything. Sin bred sin! Escape bred escape! Caught in a vicious downward spiral, I had no strength to extricate myself from the powerful grip of sin.

While at college, I met and married my wife. Our stormy engagement had been broken off six times. Neither of us was ready for marriage. Filled with problems and frustrations, we fought just as my parents and hers had done. The sins of the fathers were being visited upon the children. (See Exodus 20:5.)
I was finally forced to leave school because my grades were so low. Since the Korean War was still on, I was drafted within the month. In the Army my frustration and bitterness changed into utter hatred. Any moral fiber I had left was disintegrating, and I was becoming a hating animal. The hatred that had spawned in my father-and in his father before him-grew to full stature in me. I hated everyone: the sergeants, the officers, the WACS, my wife, and myself.
Soon my actions exposed my hatred. One day my one-year-old son committed an unforgivable sin by coming between me and my television set. As he began playing with the knobs, I became so enraged that I started beating him. My wife frantically began to hit me, screaming at me to stop.

I could no longer conceal the bitterness I felt. Finally one day my best friend, also an unbeliever, lamented, "Bob, you are so filled with hate that I just can't stand you anymore. I'm through." He walked out of my life, never to be my friend again.

Something broke inside me, and I wept a little as I watched him walk away. Only then did I realize that my life was a mess. At times, when I was alone, I even wept because of my helplessness to change. Realizing that God could not let me into heaven in my condition was a nightmarish thought. I knew I was destined for hell.

While in the Army I moonlighted as a bartender in the officer's club. Night after night I stole whiskey so my wife and I could get drunk. By now both of us were attempting to escape the pain of life.

Shortly before I was discharged, an old friend from Cornell University walked into the officers' club where I was working. Michael, a classmate, was now an officer while I was still a private. That night it hit me: I had only one life, and I was ruining it. At that moment I determined to straighten myself out.

The next day I applied to fourteen different universities, hoping to continue my education after my tour of duty. Only one accepted me, and then only on probation. I did not know it at the time, but God's hand was involved in my acceptance at the University of Kansas.