About Bible Store Browser
Hi, I’m Dee and I love to browse Christian bookstores. I look forward to being able to serve you in this ministry to which I feel the Lord has led me. You see, for several years before I ever had the thought to help Christians through my own website, I had prayed that God would lead me to a ministry that would fit me perfectly. I also prayed that I would have the courage to step through the open doors . . . with the confidence that I was at the right address.
God used several means to bring me to the point where I had the confidence to start BibleStoreBrowser.com. The first step in my journey, of course, was my calling as a child of God. I was fortunate to be born into a solid Christian home, and I’ve been fellowshipping with the Lord for as long as I can remember.
The next major step came when I was about ten. A challenge was set before our Sunday School class to read the Bible daily. I dutifully read my Living Bible and especially liked the footnotes. I hungered to have more information about the Bible and was excited to get my NIV Study Bible for Christmas. Since then, I have added many more Bibles in several versions, many of which are part of a Bible study system.
My first ventures into Bible references were those required by some of my Christian college’s core and elective courses, but I have since expanded my selection (though not to this lifelong learner’s satisfaction!) Not a shopping trip to the Christian store has ever gone by that I have not spent some amount of time drooling over the Bibles or Bible references, wishing I had the money and time to invest in more.
After a year of graduate school, I abandoned my field of study for lack of passion. A year later my husband and I were married and I soon found myself in need of a new job. It seemed a natural outpouring of my enthusiasm for spiritual growth and Bible study that I go to work at a
Christian store.
People came there for everything from books and music to cards and gifts. My favorite things to sell, though, were Bibles and Bible reference books. To see people's faces light up when they learned something new about the Bible was a great reward. One of the things I tried to encourage was opening the Bible or book and using it to see how it could help them. After all, there were a table and chairs nestled in the back of the store for that very purpose. For me, these people were more than customers; they were brothers and sisters in Christ who needed someone to show them how to get more out of God's Word.
Several years passed. We had moved away, we had started a family, we had started a business. But I never lost the memory of how good it feels to know I helped someone develop a greater appreciation for all the Bible can teach us. Somewhere in that time frame, I’d started longing for a way to serve in the church. That was about the time God started using Christian books to take me to the next point in my journey.
It began when our church read together
The Purpose Driven Life
, which first introduced to me the importance of passion in service and ministry. Oh, how I wished I could fill a need in my church with those passions, but the opportunity was not there.
A year later, what I heard about
The God Adventure
inspired me to dream God-sized dreams. I thought, “Why limit myself to what I can do in our church? Why can’t I use God-given ideas to bless the universal Church?” I started research on a long-term project which I hope will someday help churches and organizations alike. For all my zeal I was unaware that this research would also help me in the next book to which God would lead me.
While watching one of the Christian variety shows, I heard about a book called
Live Your Calling
, which promised to assist me in finding and fulfilling my mission in life. In anxious anticipation of its arrival, I was searching for career assessment websites--not that I would have a chance to pursue those career possibilities before our kids got a lot older, but I could pretend. It didn’t take long for me to work through the assessments in the book.
Meanwhile, my husband had begun sharing what he was learning from the Web business book he was reading to help his clients. Intrigued, I began reading it, too, pretending that my business was an online Christian store with Bible study as its primary focus. I couldn’t believe it when he told me he thought I should pursue the idea!
Not yet sure this was the next destination in my journey, I picked up my Life Calling Map from Live Your Calling. I was dumbfounded to discover that my “pretend” business plan for the website would enable me to use nearly all my God-given traits as they had been identified in the assessments! God certainly works in ways we could not fashion!
Yes, the time has finally come. The proverbial door has been opened--a door to none other than my favorite kind of store: the Christian bookstore. Will you join me? Perhaps we can meet in the back for Bible Study. Now, I take a deep breath, enter through the door, and browse. . . .
DomBlog is a free blogging template provided via the generosity of codestore.net.