This month on NewHopeDigital.com our theme will be The Power of Small and Other Upside-Down Kingdom Values. What does that mean? Allow me to quote from Jennifer Kennedy Dean’s upcoming release, not coincidentally titled The Power of Small: 

“Like Alice’s adventures in Looking Glass Land . . ., where everything she encounters is mirror-image opposite of what she thought to be true, the kingdom of heaven seems upside and inside out when we first enter. . . . The way up is down. The way to life is through death. The way to greatness is through servanthood.

      Kingdom living turns all of the world’s platitudes and conventional wisdom on its head. The two are diametrically opposed. . . .

      The mind-set of the world tends to value big. The bigger the better. Flashy—sparkly big. . . . But, small is where all the action is in the kingdom.”

I truly have been challenged and encouraged by reading Jennifer’s 28-day devotional experience. She gets at some issues regarding faith, giving, leadership, competition, value, and anxiety that challenge our preconceived notions of how we should live and what we should strive for. With illustrations from the Old Testament and New Testament as well as contemporary life, she guides and nudges readers to rethink their thinking (and doing), based on the values of God’s kingdom.

When we truly wrestle with our Lord’s words, it’s hard not to be redirected, reoriented, and reshaped. He gets to the heart of the matter in Matthew 10:39 (ESV): “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” Wow, that’s not what the world’s marketers are trying to sell us, is it?

Right now you can read Day 1 of The Power of Small (releasing September 5; available later in August) by downloading it here.

To further flesh out the theme this month on NewHopeDigital.com we plan to feature:

And there will be more content on a variety of other topics as well!

Scripture quotation marked ESV is from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.