Does Jesus Speak To You?

 

 

 

      “I personally found Donna’s writing highly inspirational, forceful,

                 and life changing.”  -- Midwest Book Review

 

Three in four Americans –230 million people – claim to be Christian. Yet many do not follow the teachings of their faith or fall far short of embracing Jesus Christ into their lives. Donna L. Ferrier, active in singles ministries for the past two decades, is the author of a new book that implores people who claim to be Christians to adopt the direction and voice of Jesus, Does Jesus Speak To You?

 

Her provocative but moving book answers a variety of questions regarding the practice of faith in America. She responds to questions such as “Does Jesus speak to us now?,” “How does he talk to us?,” and “Why is it so important we hear his words?”

 

Donna was raised by her mother, and her father who was an alcoholic and eventually committed suicide. She shows with brave candor how she has battled to live her life of faith. She became a devout Christian when she turned 21, absent a religious foundation as a child. She now encourages each of us to adhere to a morally-higher standard, as exemplified by her vow to remain a virgin until she’s married.

 

Donna, 41, says her book challenges professed born-again Christians to examine their walks with God to see whether they really have been transformed by the Lord.

 

“Sadly,” Donna says, “I’ve discovered that many professed Christians, for example, can’t even spiritually discern God’s word enough to apply it to their lives. This is more indicative of someone who isn’t a Christian, however, than of someone who is.”

 

Throughout the book, Donna uses personal testimonies combined with Scripture to discuss how Jesus reveals Himself. Each chapter focuses on a different way Jesus speaks to us today and can be used for devotional, discussion, or reflection. Also included are tips to enhance your own quiet times with the Lord Jesus Christ and a
Bible reading checklist to check off daily Scripture readings.

Donna can discuss:

  • Why so many professed Christians are not in closer touch with their faith.
  • How she abandoned her faith during troubled times – but then returned.
  • How she went from going to Church just a handful of times prior to college to now living a transformed life that is indebted to Jesus.
  • How to keep a prayer journal.
  • How one can lead a transformed life.
  • How one can minister outside the walls of the Church.
  • Why sin will always be a part of human society.

 

“What I’m hoping my book will do is challenge people to examine their own lives and determine whether they really have a personal relationship with Jesus, whether He really does speak to them, and if not, why not?” concludes Donna.

 

Donna reveals:

  • A six-step process to effective and meaningful prayer.
  • How she has overcome life’s challenges to embrace her faith.
  • Why America’s professed 230 million Christians should embrace their faith.
  • Key pointers on how to live a life like Jesus would.
  • How to develop your own relationship with God.
  • Why so many people all too often ignore the Scriptural truths of the Bible.
  • How she once used faith to talk someone out of committing suicide.
  • Why Spiritual nourishment is the most important thing in any kind of relationship.
  • Advice regarding abstaining from sex until one is married.
  • How single women can attract men who display genuine spiritual leadership.

“One of the greatest spiritual tragedies in this life is that many people who were raised with a distorted view of Christ never come to know the Real one, and as a result, miss His compassions, love, and what it means to have His spirit living inside them,” says Donna. “As a result, many people spend their entire lives in open rebellion against Christianity because they don’t know what true Christianity is.”

 

Does Jesus Speak To You? Is a map for one’s spiritual journey, revealing that Jesus can speak to anyone who wants a relationship with Him.

 

About The Author

Donna Ferrier is pursuing a Master of Arts Degree in Biblical Studies from Trinity College of Bible and Theological Seminary in Newburgh, Indiana. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English and Communications in 1989.  She’s been involved and active in singles ministries since 1988. She has been on two missionary trips –to Russia in 1992, and to China in 1993. She has worked for the past two decades as a technical writer, editor, copyeditor and proofreader, and an assistant editor and Website manager. She now owns and runs her own company, Desktop Prepress Services.  Donna resides in Ada, Oklahoma. For more information please consult www.desktopprepress.com and www.doesjesusspeaktoyou.com

 

Publication Data: Does Jesus Speak To You?  by Donna L. Ferrier; Desktop Prepress Services (March 2008); 140 pages; Trade Paper; $18.95; ISBN: 978-0615190396

Contact Information: Planned Television Arts

Brian Feinblum 212-583-2718 feinblumb@plannedtvarts.com

 

6 Steps To Effective

Devotional Time

 

When you seek to pray for guidance or answers, Donna Ferrier, the author of Does Jesus Speak To You?, suggests it is best to create a quiet environment.  Her six-step process for committing to praying in focused solitude is as follows:

  • Let God pick a place for you to have your quiet time.  It can be a room in your house or somewhere outdoors or some other location.
  • Just sit down, clear your mind, and calm down until you can focus on the Lord.
  • Pray for Jesus to speak to you.  Strife among people comes from our own desires, and we don’t have what we want because we don’t ask God.  And many times even when we do, we don’t get what we ask for because we ask with wrong motives.  After you’re calm enough to focus on the Lord, spend some time in prayer, asking Him to create a pure heart in you and to renew a steadfast spirit in you.  Genuine faith requires not only hearing the Word from the Lord, but acting on it.
  • Read His Word.  While many Christians read books by today’s Christian authors, there is no substitute for Scripture.  It is our guidebook for our lives so that we act on God’s teachings.  Many professed Christians will claim, “I don’t understand the Bible.”  They may be doctors, engineers, college professors, or hold some job that requires a high degree of intelligence or technical know-how.  Lack of scriptural understanding is not an intelligence problem.  Many professed  Christians lack spiritual discernment, which is absolutely imperative to understanding God’s Word.
  • Keep a journal:  pray on paper!  Record your prayers and the answers that you receive.  It’s important to know that much of our transformation is internal.  Our attitudes change as we grow, as does the way we look at life.  In other words, the more we grow, the more our minds are renewed and transformed to be more like Christ.  And people will be able to see that internal transformation on the outside.
  • Close with prayer.  You can  close with prayer in your journal, or you can audibly close with prayer.  But if you haven’t already done so in your journal, praise Jesus for revealing His Word for you, and talk to Him about anything else you feel you need to.

Overcoming Life’s Challenges

To Embrace The Faith

 

 

Donna L. Ferrier, the author of a new book that encourages the nation’s 230 million professed Christians to embrace Jesus Christ into their lives, Does Jesus Speak To You?, has found her own attempts to bring Jesus into her life were challenging.

 

“I became active in singles ministries when I gave myself to Christ in college 20 years ago, “says Donna.  She even went on two overseas mission trips – Russia in 1992 and China in 1993 – but she walked away from her faith. during some personally trying times, in the mid to late 1990’s.  However, by 2000 she had recommitted to her faith and is now working toward her Master’s degree in biblical studies.

 

Donna grew up in a household that included an alcoholic father.  By age 17 she tried to run way from home.  “One of the greatest challenges I faced as a child was the belief there was no one else around like me,” she notes.  In college, she sought out traditional talk therapy to help her deal with her childhood that was marred by alcoholism.  But she grew disappointed with the process.

 

“Much of what goes on in therapy is contradictory to the message of Christ,” she says.  “Pretty much all I ever did in therapy was focus on my problems, past, etc.  That’s not what Jesus teaches us to do. However, Christ teaches us to focus on Him, and the abundant life He came to give us, not our pain.  Focusing on pain only leads people to feel sorry for themselves, and no one can live victoriously in that state of mind.”

 

Her parents separated for three years when she was 19.  Her father committed suicide in 1994, five years after she attended college.  She also had some struggles within the church and from 1995 to 2000 she “just didn’t speak to God.”  But she learned that “once we accept Christ into our hearts, we can’t get rid of Him.  He never abandons us.”

 

She knows first-hand that a life lived in step with the Bible, to be dedicated to the teachings of Christ or the principles of God, can be challenging, even consuming, but once she returned to her faith she felt as if she found her family.

 

“One day, in early 2000, I began reading the last journal I kept before I walked away from the Lord,” she says.  “Now, you’d think that would have just made me feel worse, but instead I started to feel an incredible peace that I can only attribute to God because that was the first time I’d shown a desire to come to grips with what happened and be healed of the pain.”  She returned to her church two months later – and hasn’t left since.

7 Key Points

Does Jesus Speak To You?

 

 

  • Life lessons: 1. Have faith even when you can’t see any reason to.  2. If you hang onto baggage, you can’t press on to the goal.  3.  God can accomplish the impossible.
  • Spiritual nourishment is the most important thing in any kind of relationship, whether it’s friendship, dating, or marriage.  Unfortunately, many people don’t see that because they have never experienced biblical fellowship.
  • Jesus speaks to us – often, through many people, in many ways.  You just need to pray and listen for a response.
  • Just because we might shove God aside, that doesn’t mean that He ceases to exist.  He waits for us to return.
  • Read the Bible.  You can do it over the course of a year.  By knowing His Word, you’ll know what to do at all times.
  • Christians need spiritual discernment.  Not everyone who says he or she is a Christian is.  The fact is there are many singles in today’s churches who either don’t walk with the Lord at all, or have carnal, stagnant walks at best.  And while we need to encourage them to live the life that Jesus has called them to, we also need discernment to know that these people are not ready for anything other than friendship and discipleship.
  • Discernment is simply imperative for knowing whether something comes from God or not.  This includes anything that you hear from pastors and church leadership, by the way.  Many Christians swallow everything a pastor says just because it’s coming from the pulpit, but there are many unsaved pastors in this country, and others who are preaching ideas that are completely unscriptural.  We as Christians have to have discernment to stay on the right path and to make sure that what we believe squares with the Bible.

 

 Does Jesus Speak To You?

Select Excerpts

by Donna L. Ferrier

 

 

A Distorted View

“One of the greatest spiritual tragedies in this life is that many people who were raised with a distorted view of Christ never come to know the real one, and as a result, miss His compassion, love, and what it means to have His Spirit living inside them.  As a result, many people spend their entire lives in open rebellion against Christianity because they don’t know what true Christianity is.”

 

Distinguish Good From Evil

“One of the most important ways Jesus speaks to us is through our private, one-on-one study and prayer times with Him.  We speak to Him in prayer, and He speaks to us through His word, answered prayer, and daily circumstances.  Yes, there are a lot of fake spirits in the world today, and it’s important to be able to discern them, and the only way to do this is to spend time in God’s Word; that’s how we get to know the Lord, that’s how we mature, and that’s how we distinguish good from evil.”

 

Alone Time With God Is Crucial

“Christianity is not a lone-star way of life.  Yes, we need to spend time one-on-one with the Lord every day, through Scripture reading and prayer.  Jesus Himself is seen numerous times in the gospels withdrawing from the crowds to pray.  My point here is that while our alone time with God is crucial to having the mind of Christ, God always works through our relationships with other people, and if you want to understand this concept, I highly recommend that you start in Genesis 1:1 with “In the beginning,” and end in Revelation 22:21 with “The grace of the lord Jesus be with God’s people, Amen.”

 

Transformation Is A Process

“When we come to know Christ, we need to let Him transform the mindsets we have into the mindsets that He wants us to have – His mindset.  It’s the only way we’ll be able to discover what God’s will is for our lives as referenced in Romans.  One thing I want to emphasize is that this transformation is a process.  We’ll never stop growing in Christ as long as we’re here on earth, and Christ changes our mentalities day by day to be more like His.  All we need to do is seek Him through scripture and prayer.”

 

True Fellowship

“Contrary to what a lot of Christians believe, fellowship is not sitting in someone’s living room, eating pizza in front of the tube, and watching the Super Bowl.  Now that’s not to say that fellowship never happens at social gatherings; for example, I myself am a huge Carolina Panthers fan, and sometimes I watch football with my current pastor (who’s a Dallas Cowboys fan).  But we also talk about Christ and the Bible when I go to his house.  That’s fellowship.  Talking about the game, his family, my dogs, and whatever other casual conversation comes up, is not fellowship.  Fellowship comes from first communing with God, and then sharing that with other people.  It’s that very deep spiritual connection that enables Christians to form Godly bonds with one another.”

 

Being Single and Faithful

“Unfortunately, from my experience, true fellowship is getting harder and harder to find among singles, particularly the older I get, because the older singles get, the more consumed they are with finding the perfect spouse, the perfect house, and the perfect job.  Generally, if singles aren’t where they want to be in life by the time they’re in their late 20s, particularly with regard to marriage and family, they start panicking that they’ll never get married.  By the time they get to be in their early 30s, the mentality worsens, and they may start to compromise their faith to reach their goals.  And if they’re over 40 and have never had a family, they get bona fide desperate, and may start dating non-Christians if they haven’t been doing that already, and going to extraordinary lengths to take matters into their own hands.  I’ve seen many start ‘dating’ people across state lines, and even across international borders, and declaring that it’s God’s will that they go on some kind of wild goose chase to find happiness.”

 

Baggage

“Truth is, most people carry around emotional difficulties from some place in times past, but if we hang on to them, we never move on to reach our next destination, and we stunt our emotional and spiritual growth.  I’ve often said, “People who are stuck in the past forfeit their future.”  Christians who can’t “let go” can’t even see much less experience the blessings they would receive from growth in their relationship with Christ because they’re too full of anger, resentment, and bitterness.”

 

Being In Touch With The Lord

My point here is that while our alone time with God is crucial of having the mind of Christ, God always works through our relationships with other people, and if you want to understand this concept, I highly recommend that you start in Genesis 1:1 with “In the beginning,” and end in Revelation 22:21 with “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen.” In between those two verses, God has spoken to His people through prophets, priests, kings, other believers, and even nonbelievers. He continues to speak to us today using our pastors, elders, deacons, friends, and even enemies and strangers. Any time someone is talking to you, whether it’s a speaker from the pulpit, your friend at a singles ice cream social, or someone you may meet only once in your life, don’t be surprised if you receive a message from the Lord!

 

 

Donna Ferrier

Q&A

Does Jesus Speak To You?

 

 

  • Donna, what inspired you to write Does Jesus Speak to You? In 2000, I began noticing something seriously wrong among my Christian group---God didn't seem to be a part of the lives of those who claimed to be His. Professed Christians were not talking about Christ, sharing about Him, or mentioning anything He was doing in their lives. At that point, I felt I had to write about how Jesus speaks. The book originally started out as individual testimonies on the Internet, which were assembled into a book later on.
  • Why do you feel too many Christians are not in closer touch with their faith? We all struggle with getting closer to the Lord and having regular devotional times, but many people’s only spiritual nourishment is on Sunday morning, listening to the pastor. We can’t have a strong relationship with Jesus Christ if the only time we want to give Him is an hour on Sundays. Communication plays a huge part in any relationship, and the more we talk to Christ and get to know Him through His Word and prayer, the stronger our relationship will be.

 

  • You have at times admittedly abandoned your faith.  What was going on in your life that you shut religion out when you probably were most in need of it? Christianity is a way of life where we have a genuine heartfelt desire to be closer to Jesus Christ. A religion is often nothing more than mindlessly following “do’s and don’ts.” But to answer the question, when people we trust hurt us, that often leads to a crisis of our faith. But we cannot put what other people think about us over what God thinks. There will always be people who tell us we can’t do something or that we’re immature, or whatever. As valuable as people are to us in our lives, they can only see what we are now; God sees what He’s making us into.

 

  • Why do you believe more Christians should be challenged to think about how Jesus has manifested Himself in their lives? First, it’s quite a humbling and awe-inspiring experience to know that the Creator of the universe wants to speak to us and have a relationship with us. Meditating on the ways that Jesus has spoken to us encourages us to grow further in our faith. Second, and this is unfortunate, but a lot of professed Christians are not experiencing Jesus speaking to them. We can’t have a personal relationship with Christ if we can’t hear Him speak to us through His Word, the Holy Spirit, prayer, and the circumstances of our daily lives. He doesn’t have a problem communicating; we just have problems listening and receiving.
  • You note in your book that Christians and non-Christians handle the same types of problems in very different ways.  How so? I just finished editing a book by another Christian author who illustrates this very well. He talked about a time when he handled a situation with one of his children incorrectly, but after parent and child resolved the problem, the family got together, discussed, and prayed over scriptures about parents and children so that they could learn how to resolve future problems in a more Christ-centered way. That would never happen among non-Christians because they aren’t concerned with pleasing the Lord or transforming their ways of thinking. Many problems never get resolved among non-Christians anyway. Instead there’s a lot of continual friction, instability, emotional roller coaster rides, and small problems that get blown out of proportion.
  • Why do so many people spend their lives in rebellion against their religion at birth? We are all sinners from birth because by one man (Adam) sin entered the world. And it’s because of that sin in us that our natural tendency will be to rebel against God. The good news is that we can let Jesus produce in us a Christ-centered way of thinking and living so that others will see Him in different aspects of our lives. Being transformed is a lifelong process, and even though I’m still growing, I know the more I grow, the more areas of my life my faith will be seen in.
  • How has Jesus transformed your life? Make no mistake; I will always be grateful to God for my family; I love them, and they’ve given me a lot. Even still, I grew up in the midst of alcoholism, and the fear and anger that go with it, and I went to church maybe five times before college. Now, I’ve found peace in the Lord, I am now a graduate student in seminary, and Jesus speaks to me in some way every day of my life. I always hear statistics about how less than 20 percent of Christians today became Christians after age 18. I was 21, so I’m in a serious minority, and it’s just so wonderful to know that Christ changes our lives.
  • What role can prayer play in our daily lives? Prayer is invaluable; it’s how we talk to Jesus, and communication is crucial for any relationship. It’s how we praise Him for what He’s done, how we confess our sins, how we make our requests known to Him, and the list goes on. Prayer sets our minds and focus on the Lord. It changes our perspectives, our circumstances, the way we relate to other people, and the way people relate to us. And when we sin and are convicted of that sin, we can go to God in prayer, ask for forgiveness, and be cleansed. In that way, we can ensure that our sin doesn’t cause a barrier in our fellowship with the Lord.
  • Why do you suggest we keep a prayer journal? So that we can see the changes God produces in our lives. It’s very easy for us to forget what God has done for us, especially when we’re going through hard times. And many times, we may not even see the changes being produced. Writing down what God has done for us, including how He’s answered prayers, and how He’s brought us through problems in our lives, produces hope and joy in our walks. Talking about our lives with other people also encourages us. Then we have others around to confirm what God is doing.
  • Your father was an alcoholic who eventually got divorced from your mom and later committed suicide.  How did you lean on your faith to help you heal? Actually, my parents never divorced. They were separated for a time but then got back together until my father’s death. And a large part of the healing that needed to happen in my early 20s was due to the struggles I faced as a result of growing up with an alcoholic parent, and I’m grateful to God that He brought another strong Christian into my life who taught me not only the basic principles for Godly living, but also a biblical approach to dealing with the problems I was facing at the time.

 

  • You tried talk therapy, at first.  What did you find to be deficient with that process? I went to a few secular one-on-one as well as group sessions before I became a Christian. While I was grateful to discover other people in college going through similar struggles, I found the message of secular therapy to be to focus on problems, and relive them over and over again. Nowhere in the Bible does it say to do that. The message of Christianity is to give our cares over to Christ for Him to resolve, and to let Him transform our lives and ways of thinking, not to try to do it ourselves. In addition, people who do not know Christ nor His comfort and peace will never be able to impart it to anyone else.
  • Do many people misunderstand or all-too-often ignore the scriptural truths of the Bible? Yes to both. Even among Christians, no one can interpret Scripture perfectly because none of us are perfect. And while we can know God personally, we can never know Him exhaustively here on earth. Non-Christians will misunderstand scripture because they don’t have the Holy Spirit living inside them, so they don’t have the needed discernment to receive the truth from it. Preconceived notions of scripture can also affect people’s interpretations. And yes, others ignore the truths, I think because the Bible is a very convicting book, and many people just don’t want to believe that they’re sinners, or that Jesus is the only way to Heaven.

 

  • How do you know what Jesus wants?  How can any of us really know? We all struggle with knowing God’s will, but we were not created to be restless wanderers on the earth. God communicates His will through the Bible, the Holy Spirit, answered prayer, and confirmation from others. And even though no man may instruct the Lord, we can have the mind of Christ. Jesus was our ultimate example of teaching us how to know God’s will and timing---He stayed connected to His Father through prayer. Today, we can stay connected to God through prayer and the written Word. Scripture also teaches that if we’re transformed by the renewing of our minds, then we will be able to test and approve what God’s will is.
  • You say in your book you couldn’t live with yourself if you were intimate with someone you weren’t married to.  You’re still single.  Why do people get ridiculed for that? The context of that point was having sex with someone. “Intimacy” can also mean different types of affection (kissing, for example, is not something you would do with everyone). But yes, the world thinks that people like me, who have never had sex, are “missing something.” Unfortunately, as I’ve seen with other people, sex between singles only leads to unhealthy attachments. And many people think that singles are incomplete, especially if we’re not engaging in sex. But our completeness comes from our walk with Christ, not from sexually bonding with other people before marriage. Completeness never comes from sin.
  • You once helped talk someone out of suicide when he confessed at a Sunday school class his intentions.  How do you do that? Well, I’m not sure whether he was really serious or whether he was just angry, but regardless, God brought all of us together that day to talk to that person not only about wanting to live, but also about what it means to have a relationship with the Lord, even though he claimed he was already a Christian. But his lack of remorse for any sin in his life and lack of understanding of any scriptural truths at all would indicate that he was not a Christian. So hopefully we were one step along the way to him turning his anger, bitterness, and his life over to Christ, even though that choice is ultimately his.

 

  • Can one minister outside the walls of the church?  How? Absolutely. In fact, Jesus sent His disciples “out” to minister, while He was still here on earth, before the birth of the church. Today, we can go out to our neighbor’s house to talk about the Lord, or even just to visit someone who’s sick or do something nice for someone. Just being friendly with someone in the grocery store can let people see our relationship with Christ because Jesus makes a difference in even the smallest details. We can have Bible studies or fellowship gatherings in our homes, go on missions trips, or do what I and others have done in the digital age, and have a web-based ministry.
  • How does one lead a transformed life? We lead a transformed life by having a relationship with Jesus Christ and letting Him transform our hearts and minds from being self-centered and world-centered to being Christ-centered. This, in turn, changes how we live our lives. Leading a transformed life entails being set apart and leading a different life from the world.
  • Why is there so much sin out there? Sin has been man’s nature ever since Adam and Eve fell in the Garden of Eden; we are born with a sin nature and we will have a sin nature as long as we live on this earth, in the flesh. Sin is the reason for pain, sickness, death, famine, and many other things. We live in a fallen world, and we are all fallen, imperfect people. The good news, though, is that we can have a relationship with Jesus Christ, who can transform our ways of thinking so that we will want to please Him and not the world, sin, or our own desires.
  • How did the church you were attending begin to fall apart? Actually, it wasn’t the church that fell apart; it was the singles ministry within the church. In fact, the church itself is still growing and thriving to this day. But to answer your question, the singles ministry started falling apart because people in the ministry weren’t reading the Bible or talking about what God was doing in their lives. God just didn’t seem to be a part of people’s conversations. Spiritually mature Christians were being led away to other churches to minister, and eventually we lost our group. Some went to other ministries or churches, but others just scattered.
  • How did your faith help you quit smoking? Once I gave this up to the Lord, He just took it away. First, He convicted me of the sin, many times. Every time I would light up, I would feel the conviction and then put it out again. At one point I actually tried to justify my own sin with thoughts like, “Well, if I only smoke in one area of the house, it’s not as sinful as smoking all over the house.” Then one day, I told Jesus, “Lord, I have an addiction that I can’t give up on my own.” After that, He took it away. I don’t even know the day I quit; all I know is that it’s somewhere between 2001 and 2002.
  • What advice do you have for single women who seek out men who display spiritual leadership? To grow in the Lord as much as they possibly can, to put all their focus on Him, to lift their prayers for a mate up to the Lord, and to wait for Him to bring that Godly person into their lives. Before they can attract that Godly mate, they need to be Christ-like themselves, and this does not include “going after” men or advertising themselves in front of people that they’re looking for a husband. That just makes women look easy and desperate. They also need to search the scriptures for what the Lord says about a Godly husband, so that they will be able to recognize Christ-like characteristics in a potential mate.

 

 

Inspirational Christian Author Answers Questions in New Book, 'Does Jesus Speak to You?'

Inspirational Christian author Donna L. Ferrier's new book, "Does Jesus Speak to You?" answers a variety of questions regarding faith. Inquiries responded to include, "Does Jesus speak to us today?" "How does he speak?" and "Why is this important?"

Ada, Okla. (Bluehost/PRWEB ) April 23, 2008 -- Inspirational Christian author Donna L. Ferrier's new book, "Does Jesus Speak to You?" answers a variety of questions regarding faith. Inquiries responded to include, "Does Jesus speak to us today?" "How does he speak?" and "Why is this important?"

Donna says the book challenges professed born-again Christians to examine their walks with God to see whether they really have been transformed by the Lord.

"Sadly," Donna says, "I've discovered that many professed Christians, for example, can't even spiritually discern God's Word enough to apply it to their lives. This is more indicative of someone who isn't a Christian, however, than of someone who is." Throughout the book, Donna uses personal testimonies combined with scripture to discuss how Jesus reveals Himself.

Donna says that the key to understanding a Christian's personal relationship with Jesus Christ lies in verses like Romans 12:2: "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will (NIV)."

"Unfortunately," says Donna, "this transformation does not take place among so many who claim to know the Lord, and as a result, people who aren't Christians look at professed believers getting drunk in bars or beating up their spouses and saying, 'See, look, that person's a Christian.' Many false doctrines have been perpetuated because of that mindset."

Donna believes that one of the greatest spiritual tragedies is that people who are searching for Christ ironically don't want anything to do with Him because of all the false Christianity they mistake for the real thing. "Don't get me wrong," Donna says. "Everyone sins, and every Christian makes mistakes that disrupt our fellowship with the Lord and with one another. That's why we as believers must be sure that our minds are being renewed on a daily basis. It's the only way we can a) have the mind of Christ and b) let the world see what that really means."

For more information on the news that is the subject of this release, contact Donna L. Ferrier, or visit www.DoesJesusSpeakToYou.com.

About the Author:
Donna L. Ferrier was born and raised in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and relocated to Ada, Oklahoma, in 2004. She became a Christian at the age of 21 in college in 1988, and has been active in numerous singles ministries since that time. Donna is now an inspirational author, editor, and book publisher, and is working toward her MA in Biblical Studies.

Contact: Donna L. Ferrier
Phone: 580-332-3288 or 580-310-6151
E-mail: jesusspeakstoyou @ aol.com
Website: www.DoesJesusSpeakToYou.com