About Me

My photo
Joyce Swann has been a Christian since childhood and a prayer warrior for over forty years. She became nationally-known in the 1990’s because of her work homeschooling her ten children from the first grade through masters’ degrees before their seventeenth birthdays. She has been featured on Paul Harvey’s weekly radio program, CBN, and the 1990’s CBS series, “How’d They Do That?” She has been interviewed by “Woman’s World”, “The National Enquirer”, and numerous regional newspapers. The story of the Swann family has also been featured in the “National Review” and several books about homeschooling success stories. Joyce is the author or co-author of five novels, including “The Fourth Kingdom”, which was selected as a finalist in the Christianity Today 2011 fiction of the year awards and “The Warrior” which, since its release in 2012, has had over 50,000 Kindle downloads and hundreds of glowing reviews. She was a popular columnist for “Practical Homeschooling” for nearly decade and she has retold her own story of homeschooling her ten children in “Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother”. “The Warrior” is her first solo novel.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

This is the Story of Christmas

When I was a child, all television programs were in black and white and there were only three networks—ABC, NBC, and CBS. While this arrangement did not make for particularly exciting television viewing, it made for simple television viewing.  Saturday nights gave viewers a choice of watching either Lawrence Welk or Gunsmoke, and Saturday and Sunday afternoons were devoted to televised sports on all three networks.
Holidays were devoted to the airing of the same shows every year that had been made to celebrate the particular holiday at hand. When I was very young—five or six years old—Christmas programming consisted of a number of re-enactments of the birth of Christ played back to back. Every year it was the same thirty-minute programs so that even as a child I was able to recognize the various productions from year to year.
Each of these programs consisted of a badly scripted and equally badly acted retelling of Mary and Joseph finding shelter in the stable and the wise men and shepherds paying tribute to the newborn king. However, none of them attempted to tell the viewer why this message is important to modern day humans or how it impacts on our lives.
Apparently, not much has changed. This year churches everywhere will hold Christmas pageants in which children will play the parts, and the retelling of the events chronicled in the Bible will be faithfully retold. All Christians love the story, and we will be glad to be reminded of how God sent Jesus to be born in the most humble of circumstances to live among us.
I wonder, however, what impact these pageants would have on those who have never heard the Gospel. Would they leave knowing why this message is important and how it impacts on their lives? My guess is that as beautiful as the story of the birth of Christ is, those who do not know Jesus would not understand that to appreciate what happened at the birth of Jesus we must understand why He came in the first place.
Therefore, I submit to anyone reading this who may not understand the why and how of the birth of Christ, this is the story of Christmas: God sent His son to earth to live among us so that we could know Him and love Him and accept Him as our Savior. If anyone comes to Jesus, He forgives him of his sins and gives him an abundant life here on earth and eternal life with God in Heaven. The Christmas spirit is the Holy Spirit who dwells in all who belong to Jesus, and He is with us every day.
This year as we share the story of Christ’s birth with our children, I hope that we will remember to tell them why He came and how His coming is relevant to our lives.

Joyce Swann is a nationally-known author and speaker. Her own story of teaching her ten children from the first grade through master’s degrees before their seventeenth birthdays is retold in her book, Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother. Her novel, The Warrior, about how one woman's prayers change the lives of those around her, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information visit her website at Frontier 2000 or like her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/frontier2000mediagroup.

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Next

In Next, the 2007 movie starring Nicolas Cage and Jessica Biel, Cage plays a small-time Las Vegas magician whose ability to see two minutes into the future with absolute clarity, has enabled him to have a somewhat successful magic act and to supplement his income by using his psychic ability to win at the gambling tables.
When an FBI agent, played by Julianne Moore, becomes convinced that Cage actually can see into the future and that his act is not an “act” at all, the agency kidnaps him in order to force him to work with them to stop a group of terrorists from detonating a nuclear weapon on American soil.
Fortunately for Cage, while lying in bed one morning, he foresees these events and begins to mentally work out the various outcomes of a number of different actions that he might take. To his dismay he realizes that whatever option he selects, the outcome is the same—he is unable to prevent the bomb from being detonated, and his one true love, played by Jessica Biel, is killed in the explosion.
Cage finally realizes that the only way to save Biel is to leave her before the FBI takes him and tell her that he will meet her in a few weeks at a location known only to the two of them. Thus, he is able to save both his country and his true love from being blown to smithereens.
I saw Next in the movie theatre when it was released, and a couple of weeks ago, when I was channel surfing, it was again brought to my attention. As absurd as the premise is, I could not help thinking that we Americans now find ourselves in a very similar situation. As a nation we have made a series of bad choices that will result in disaster unless we can find a way to change our direction entirely. On the other hand, if we continue on our present path, no matter how hard we try to tweak the outcome, disaster is imminent.
Sadly, this country has embraced a godless, sinful world view that can end only in disaster. Whether we are governed by liberals or conservatives, unless those governing are men and women of God, they will make poor choices that will continue to break down the very fabric of our society. I am, therefore, petitioning each of you to join me in praying for revival for our nation and for the world.
I have been praying for revival since 1995, and during this time I have become focused on some specifics that I believe are key to a successful revival. Here are some of those points:
  1.  Pray for what you want God to do. Do not limit your prayers because you think your requests are too big.
  2. Pray for world-wide revival. It is not enough to have revival in our own city or our own state or even our own country. The world needs Jesus, and we need to pray for world-wide revival. As I pray, I ask Jesus to bring revival “to the United States, to all of North America, to all of Central and South America, to Europe, to Asia, to Africa, to Australia, to Antarctica, to the Arctic Circle, and to every island nation.” I pray that “there will not be even one square centimeter of land on earth where the Holy Spirit does not fall.
  3. I pray that this will be the greatest revival that the world has seen, thus far, and that billions of people will be saved.
  4.  I pray that those who sit in darkness will see a great light.
  5. I pray that Islam will be pushed back for one-thousand years. When I first found myself praying this particular part, I felt intimidated, but then I realized that through Charles Martel prior to 800 A.D. and the Crusades a couple of hundred years later, that is exactly what happened. Why should we not expect it to be pushed back again?
  6. I pray that we will see great revival in the Middle East where Christians are persecuted and killed for their faith. I pray that those people will be set free to preach the gospel and witness and worship openly.
  7. I pray for revival in Israel. I pray that the Jewish nation will find Jesus and that millions of Jews will be saved.
  8. Finally, I pray that God will allow me and my family to have our full part in bringing about this revival. I pray that we will be obedient to all that He has for us to do, and that we will bring many people to Jesus Christ.
Like the Nicolas Cage character, I have looked at the direction this nation is headed from every angle, and I am convinced that if we do not change paths, nothing is going to save us. A return to genuine Christian principles based on a relationship with Jesus Christ is our only hope. That return to Christ will happen only through genuine revival.
 
Joyce Swann is a nationally-known author and speaker. Her own story of teaching her ten children from the first grade through master’s degrees before their seventeenth birthdays is retold in her book, Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother. Her novel, The Warrior, about how one woman's prayers change the lives of those around her, is available on Kindle and in paperback. For more information visit her website at Frontier 2000 or like her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/frontier2000mediagroup.