New Book by Anita Estes: Armed for Prayer

Ready for 2025? Have New Year's Resolutions? Here's a book to challenge you to be a better prayer warrior.

Armed for Prayer: A Strategic Guide to Victory

 Are you searching for the keys that unlock prayers that transform both individuals and nations? Do you want to know God personally and understand the authority He has given you through His promises? Or perhaps you’re a battle-weary prayer warrior seeking freedom, refreshing, and healing. Then “Armed for Prayer: A Strategic Guide to Victory” by Anita Estes is precisely what you need. This comprehensive manual will guide you into the realm of powerful prayer, offering encouragement and assurance that God hears and answers spiritual prayers. Designed for both individual and group study, each chapter addresses key topics, such as knowing God intimately, understanding your identity in Christ, and grasping foundational biblical truths along with the Bible's promises. Explore the depths of healing prayer, the impact of trauma, prophecy, demonic strongholds, deliverance, and the weapons of spiritual warfare, including the armor of God. Each chapter provides detailed insights into effective prayer, concluding with examples of powerful prayers. Drawing from years of experience in spiritual warfare, Anita Estes has crafted an essential guide for unlocking prayers that move mountains.

Anita Estes is a dynamic speaker and author on many topics including: Victory in Every Season of Life, Divine Guidance, Prayer, Guidance for Parents and Teachers, Utilizing Art in the Curriculum and more. Her work appears in several compilations including God Allows U-Turns, A Cup of Comfort, Adam’s Media Press books, Deliver Me, as well as other publications. She is the author of When God Speaks, Transformed—Inspiring Stories of Freedom   Letters to God on a Prodigal Son and the devotional book, " I AM" Calling. Her newest book is a dynamic study on prayer and spiritual warfare: Armed for Prayer: A Strategic Guide to Victory. Her debut novel is The Dividing Stone, which is now available on audible.

Mission Mesquite is available!

My latest novel!
While Kate Lawrence 's parents served in Cote d'Ivoire as career missionaries. Kate's education came in a French boarding school and American University in Paris and Georgetown.  Now a Foreign Service Officer for the US State Department, she wants nothing to do with the missionary lifestyle. When she finally agrees to visit their new mission post Mission Mesquite, the rodeo church at the Mesquite Arena in Dallas, Kate meets Tyler Hawkins, attractive All American Cowboy who has since been crippled by a bull trampling. They have an instant connection, but Kate doesn't know that Tyler has just completed seminary and mission training and is poised to take over Mission Mesquite once her parents retire. How can Kate resolve the conflict between her and God and her heart? Will Tyler's past as a free-wheeling cowboy cut short his ministry? Mission Mesquite is a contemporary Christian romance.

Get your copy of my new novel from me, Amazon, or CreateSpace! And because you read to the end of the blog, here's a $5 discount code when purchasing your copy on createspace: 7R3THBJT

Back Surgery Metaphors of the Christian Life

My journey toward reconstructive back surgery began years before 2016. Cortisone shots in my lower back reduced the pain and inflammation, but they were temporary measures, never fixing the big picture. After air travel alone in January and again in February, after slinging computer bags into the overhead bins and pulling bags from the baggage carousel, it was clear that something was wrong.

http://www.teachpe.com/anatomy/the_spine.php

As a fibromyalgia sufferer, it’s sometimes hard to know if pain is more than just a spike in ‘regular’ pain.  For a while I dismissed the pain in my hips, lower back, buttocks. My right quad would go numb when standing for too long. Tingles would cascade down my legs. When I woke on March 9 with a massive muscle spasm from my lower back to behind my knee, my husband said, “Now will you go to the doctor?”

So I did, finally. After yet another cortisone shot in my left lower back and an x-ray showing a ‘bone spur’ on the L4 vertebra in the lumbar region, the physician’s assistant requested an MRI from the insurance company. If you follow me on Blasting News, you’ve read that story.

How is all of this a metaphor for the Christian Life?

First, you can’t go about changing a problem until you realize you have a problem. As non-Christians, we all must come to the conclusion that something is wrong in our lives. All the Tylenol Extra Strength doses would never fix the cause of my pain. Once I knew that the pain had a specific cause, I knew I had to fix it. Sin in our lives, yes even Christians sin, can never be repaired without the Holy Physician’s help. Only He can remove our sin as far as the east is from the west. Until He excises my sin problem, my constant missteps without Him, I continue to stumble and fail to live a life focused on Him instead of dwelling on myself.

Terri Wangard's Friends and Enemies

Terri Wangard’s Friends and Enemies is about how ‘real’ people experienced WWII, including civilians in Germany. Her characters experience their own ‘teacup tragedies’ and triumphs in a world full of rationing, fear, love, and loss. A book in two parts, Wangard introduces a cast in Part 1, then follows them through their journey during the war in Part 2. The reader has no difficulty caring about these ordinary characters affected by a world on fire.

Friends and Enemies is an enjoyable read. As a member of Wangard’s ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writer) Scribes group, I have had the privilege to read and comment on her work. She never disappoints. Her stories are intriguing woven tapestries drawn together with historic detail and the ordinary within. Each of her characters and his/her situations add the pattern and color to the sweeping drama of history. In addition, the characters share their faith with those who struggle without it.

I was provided a final copy of this copy in exchange for a review; however, I had already experienced this story as a critiquer. It is my pleasure to recommend Friends and Enemies to both those who have an interest in WWII stories, but also to those who enjoy curling up with a good book.

Deanna Nowadnick's Signs in Life: Finding Direction in Our Travels with God

Deanna Nowadnick’s second book Signs in Life: Finding Direction in Our Travels with God is an introspective look at the ways God makes himself known in her life. Using traffic signs as chapter titles, the reader can relate to the experiences Nowadnick has had. Each chapter also has five questions at the end to lead the reader to apply the lessons learned in his/her life.

As with her previous work Fruit of My Spirit, Signs in Life is Nowadnick's testimony of her day by day walk with Christ. While experiencing God, life gets messy sometimes, especially when we blow right through the traffic signs. Anyone who has tried to walk with Christ can relate to the unfortunate consequences of speeding, missing a sign, or choosing to ignore a sign.

Two particular passages struck me.

“Chapter 5, No U-Turn” was one such passage. In discussing her difficulty in relying on God in some situations, particularly one that seemed hazardous, she realizes that ‘letting go and letting God’ is more than bumper sticker theology. She states, “[I]f we want to experience God’s glory, be it thunder, a beautiful vista, or a new opportunity in life, we have to let go of the past and let God show us the future. In life there are no U-turns.” In this same vein, she quotes a plaque she purchased during the experience in this chapter. It says: ‘You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep reading the last one’ (49).

“Chapter 8, Road Narrows” was another such passage. Nowadnick had rebellious relationship with her dad with her mom running interference. When her mom died, Nowadnick claimed Anne Lamott’s advice of either being right or being kind. She chose to spend her father’s two-year good-bye a time being kind. “With God’s help, I was able to practice being kind. …[K]indness became tolerance, and tolerance became understanding. Understanding became acceptance, and acceptance became love, a messy, imperfect love encased in my own messier version of grace. …that narrow lane of life’s six-lane interstate, that lane in which we travel at the speed of love” (80).

Nowadnick’s transparency throughout is fresh and encouraging. Her application of lessons learned is natural, humorous, and not forced. Signs in Life is a challenge to how you see God and His lessons for your life. Take the challenge and read Signs in Life. Find it in Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

I was provided a free copy for an honest review.

Marketing Gold Earrings

My life has been filled to overflowing with marketing Gold Earrings and some family drama.

One way I have been doing this is being involved with the John 3:16 Marketing Network. The network is a Christian family of writers who encourage, support, and pray for one another. It has helped me make new friends who know more about this marketing gig than I do.

Two ways we support each other are the Book Showcase and the Book Launch. The Showcase involves members featuring other members books on their blogs, twitter, web sites, etc. The Launch involves concentrated focus (24 hours) on Amazon to help Christian books reach best-seller status on one day. Writers offer eGifts to anyone who buys the book during the launch. These eGifts can be previews of their books, free books, special offers, and almost anything.

Gold Earrings begins a Showcase on September 29 and the Launch day is October 4. If you have read Gold Earrings, you can help by posting a review on Amazon, Facebook, twitter, etc. Books are available still from me, including the Special Edition Hardback which will never be for sale through anyone but me. Amazon is already selling my novel; Barnes and Noble has it for pre-order.

Thank you for all of you who have already read Gold Earrings and replied with such kind words. You can read reviews at the "What People Are Saying about Gold Earrings " on my new website http://dianeetatumwriter.weebly.com . Pictures from the first book signing at Celtic Cup Coffeehouse in Tullahoma, TN are also posted there.

September 27 is Gold Earrings Release Date. A Summer in Oakville by Lisa Likel and Shellie Neumeier is being Launched on Amazon that day. October 11, Fit for Faith by Kimberly Payne is being launched. See her Launch Page at http://www.kimberlypayne.wordpress.com/