A few weeks ago, a bunch of bloggers, primarily women, got together and orchestrated a "summer giveaway". Basically, they all gave something free away to a reader. In order to register, readers had to leave a comment and, at the end of the week, the blogger drew names to find out who won their item.

Lisa gave away a book. A lot of the things given away were pretty "girly" -- smelly stuff and gift certificates for stores I don't frequent. I recall just one male blogger, though, who participated in the giveaway and he, like my wife, gave away a book. He gave away what he described as a "man's book". It was "In A Pit With A Lion On A Snow Day" by Mark Batterson. The sub-title is "How to survive and thrive when opportunity roars."

I registered to win the book. My name wasn't drawn so I did not win the book. But the end result was that Amazon and Mr. Batterson sold an additional copy of the book ... to me.

So that book is my current reading material.

I am not quite half-way through the book. And I have found a number of things to be of interest. Based upon II Samuel 23:21-22, this book is about going after the things that scare us in life. It is about realizing that God doesn't necessarily want us to be on the sidelines all the time. Sometimes he presents us with opportunities for growth that may be cloaked in something very scary or intimidating but we need to consider what we could be missing out on if we stay on the sidelines.

I am thinking about how to apply this to my life. I am a very blessed man -- blessed in so many ways yet my life, like everyone else's, has not been without adversity and troubles. Sometimes I have pursued opportunities through that adversity but sometimes I have stayed back. I wonder what I have missed by doing that.

Let me leave you with a section of this book to consider:

In his "Letters to Malcom," C.S. Lewis said, "If God had granted all the silly prayers I've made in my life, where would I be now?" Lewis went so far as to say that someday we'll be more grateful for our prayers that didn't get answered than the ones that did. The reason for this is simple: Many of our prayers our misguided. We pray for comfort instead of character. We pray for an easy way out instead of the strength to make it through. We pray for no pain, when the result would be no gain. We pray that God will keep us out of pits and away from lions. But if God answered our prayer, it would rob us of our greatest opportunities. Many of our prayers would short-circuit God's plans and purposes for our lives if He answered them. Maybe we should stop asking God to get us out of difficult circumstances and start asking Him what He wants us to get out of those difficult circumstances.

Most of us blame our circumstances when things aren't going well just like we blame the ref when a game isn't going well. We look for some external scapegoat. But maybe our problem isn't our circumstances. Maybe our problem is our perspective.

... God has a three-hundred-and-sixty degree perspective on everything. He considers every contingency. He sees all the way around everything -- every issue, every person, every experience, every problem. Most of us see a very narrow slice of reality. The best and brightest among us might have a one-degree angle of vision. It's like we are looking through a peephole. So why do we assume that what we pray for is always what's best for us? If we could see what God sees, we would pray very different prayers.

... Sometimes an unanswered prayer is God, in His sovereign wisdom, sparing us the pain of unintended consequences. Sometimes God allows what His power could prevent. Most of the time that causes us a great deal of temporal angst, but someday we will owe God as many thank-yous for the prayers He did not answer as the ones He did.

... Maybe we need to quit praying safe prayers.