Living Beyond the Cycle of Defeat: Finding More Power than Self-Discipline Can Deliver

About the Book Since the beginning of time, mankind had desperately sought what he had found, but Paul, a first century Jew, was the first to find it...or was he just the first to write everyone and tell everyone about it? He hadn't even been looking for it when he had found it, but when he stumbled upon it he knew he had something everyone would want and fortunately for us, Paul was too excited about what he had found to keep this secret to himself. As one might expect, Paul's account of what he had found caused quite a stir in his day and has continued to powerfully impact the lives of those thousands who have followed his example down through the centuries.Because Paul's account has been told and retold so many times in so many languages, and because times and terms have changed so drastically over the centuries, Paul's first-century, first-hand, how-to account has been all but lost to us today. We don't have to guess what Paul was writing about. All we have to do is look at what he wrote: "I have learned how to be content (satisfied to the point where I am not disturbed or disquieted) in whatever state I am. I know how to be abased and live humbly in straitened circumstances, and I know also how to enjoy plenty and live in abundance. I have learned in any and all circumstances the secret of facing every situation, whether well-fed or going hungry, having a sufficiency and enough to spare or going without and being in want." If he were still writing today Paul might call his book, Living Beyond the Cycle of Defeat: Finding More Power than Self-discipline can Deliver.

Though a professional writer for over forty years, and a teacher for over fifty years, that's not what makes Don¿s books so compelling. Like many of us, Don was "raised in the church." Unlike us, by the time he was 28 he had fathered four children, two of which were born with muscular disorders so rare that they were not expected to live let alone walk.Years of surgeries later, when both daughters were finally out of their casts and braces, the younger¿at age eight--died suddenly in her sleep. That tragedy stripped her mother of her faith in a kind, compassionate God and sent her into an eight-year, downward-spiraling, self-incriminating, Valium-dependent, suicidal mode.Without Don¿s having noticed it, each cycle of defeat had taken its toll! Worse yet, now that his soul mate teetered on death's door he found useless the tools he had learned while securing a Masters in Social Work. Fervent Bible study and prayer also failed. Everything he had been trying to hold together was coming apart. Nothing secular or otherwise was working and there was nothing he could do about it! He knew he couldn¿t ease his wife¿s sorrow and he knew that if he couldn¿t rescue her, he didn¿t want to live either. That¿s when the controller within him¿his confidence in the absolute power of his SELF-effort--died!And unbelievably, that¿s when everything that had gone wrong was almost instantly made right by the God Who repeatedly tells us, "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts.¿ Zech 4:6, (KJV). That Spirit chided Don for his having believed his SELF-effort was needed, effortlessly revived all that had been dead and dying in his wife¿s heart, and guaranteed peace in the face of adversity.