Heart of David Ministries
Endorsements for PASSION AND FIRE
There is no greater pleasure than knowing that we are loved passionately by a merciful and kind God and that because of this we can freely and willingly pour our lives out in holy abandonment to Him. Nathan’s book PASSION AND FIRE calls us into the knowledge of this reality. It will awaken and stir the hearts of all who read it.
Mike Bickle, Director of International House of Prayer, Kansas City --Author of:
*Passion for Jesus
*Growing in the Prophetic
*The Pleasures of Loving God
*After God's Own Heart
www.fotb.com
Superficiality seems to characterise most of the relationships we enjoy today. The danger is to carry that shallowness into our relationship with God. Nathan addresses a theme that is so relevant for the church today; going deeper with God. He faces with honesty and personal experience the hindrances that stop believers doing just that. This book will prove to be an encouragement to all believers seeking a more impacting and effective relationship with God.
Brent Douglas, Senior Leader, Encounter Christian Centre, Auckland, New Zealand
www.encounter.org.nz
PASSION AND FIRE will encourage all those who yearn for greater intimacy with God, and particularly those who struggle to obtain it. I am glad that Nathan has shared some of his story and opened his life for those who want to learn from it. Daniel 11:32 says that those who know their God intimately will be strong and do exploits. A lost world awaits such as these.
Dudley Hall, Founder and President of Successful Christian Living Ministries --Author of:
*Grace Works
*Incense & Thunder
*A Treasure Worth the Effort
*Igniting the Passion for Life
www.sclm.org
Nathan Shaw has opened our eyes to a realm of God's presence and intimate relationship with Christ Jesus. The Holy Spirit is challenging church leaders to develop a proper balance between being and doing. Thanks Nathan for sharing your personal experiences and challenging us to fulfill Father God's heart by coming into a personal, committed relationship with Jesus Christ. The reading of this book should renew a passion for Jesus Christ and inflame the reader with the fire of the Holy Spirit.
Dr. Bill Hamon, Chairman and Founder of Christian International Ministries Network, President of Christian International Business Network, Author of:
*The Eternal Church
*Prophets and Personal Prophecy
*Prophets and The Prophetic Movement
*Prophets, Pitfalls and Principles
*Apostles, Prophets and The Coming Moves of God
*The Day of the Saints
Nathan Shaw’s PASSION AND FIRE fulfills its title. I was moved, stirred, challenged and filled with a sense of the Awe of God as I read through its pages. From children to tribal cultures God’s hand is still daily alive and active. Nathan’s clarion call for individuals to see the presence of God more than the gifts of God insures the gifts will always be present for those who are humble, hungry and thirsty. One should be prepared to be changed as you read through his book PASSION AND FIRE.
John Paul Jackson, Founder of Streams Ministries International --Author of:
*I AM: 365 Names of God
*Unmasking the Jezebel Spirit
*Buying and Selling the Souls of our Children: A Closer Look at Pokèmon
*Needless Casualties of War
www.streamsministries.com
God is calling us to be His friend. He is looking for men and women through whom His purposes in the earth can be birthed. Nathan’s book PASSION AND FIRE will kindle the passion in you to be one in whom God can share His intimate secrets. Reading this book will cause a passion for intimacy to rise in you that will affect a hurting world.
Bob Mumford --Author of:
*The King & You
*Take Another Look at Guidance
*Dr. Frankenstein & World Systems
*The Agape Road
www.lifechangers.com
Passion and fire is exactly what this challenging book is all about. Nathan Shaw bares his heart’s longing to see the church brought into a deeper intimacy with Christ. Unlike many who swing the pendulum for intimacy into a mystical and monastical extreme, Shaw brings a healthy balance with his emphasis on reaching the lost. Just as Jesus warned the Pharisees that they were in error not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God, so are those who stress passion without purpose. May God use this book as a spiritual accelerant to ignite a fresh burden for intimacy and involvement. I commend it to you.
David Ravenhill --Author of:
*For God’s Sake Grow Up – A Call to Spiritual Maturity
*They Drank from the River and Died in the Wilderness
*The Jesus Letters
PASSION AND FIRE is another in the Lord's recent genre of books written to induce us into intimacy with God. I have edited several and have written endorsements for more, but this is by far the offering I have liked the most! Nay, I should say, thoroughly enjoyed.
All of these recent books call us into chasing after God more fervently than ever before. This is surely the Holy Spirit's cogent call, His clarion shofar sounding upon His Church in this time. But Nathan Shaw lifts it beyond personal pious quests into God's greater purposes for calling His people into His embrace - for the work of ministry, for ushering in God's Kingdom on earth. I liked that.
Nathan, akin to his namesake with King David, gently exposes the reasons for our guilty resistances to intimacy, and tells us how to overcome. He lifts away Shame and guilt, not by exhausting lists of "how to's" and "how not to's", but by taking us into our loving Father's arms, revealing our Father's loving nature until shame falls away like heavy frost melting off our stony hearts in the glory of His rising Sonship.
Reading many others books in this field have left me - perhaps it was just me, I don't mean it critically of others - feeling impossible, like I ought to try but I'm not sure I really want to. "Passion and Fire" rekindled within me desire that had somehow become banked, requiring bellows to pump to flame again - and again and again. Now, the strain to deep the fire aglow is gone. I just know the fire is there, resident and alive, and He will fan my sparks to bonfires whenever His purposes prompt. I look forward not to laborious questing, but to restful flaming.
I believe this book will do that for most if no every reader. "Passion and Fire" puts it on God's shoulders, on His desire to enter into relationship with us. To be sure, the book calls upon us to enter more into disciplined seeking. But Nathan makes the case for His grace so strongly that the onus of labor is lifted off, and discipline and seeking become joyful and easy responses rather than stressful work to find.
Joy undergirds the book. Not hilarious peaks that pass and plunge into melancholy and despair, though the peaks are there, but a quiet river one can step into at any time and abide. One that flows undeterred, unlessened in the heart in the dry times. Reading other essays, I have felt that, yes, the river's there, like an oasis somewhere out in the desert I must find or perish. This book leaves me resting in the biblical knowledge that the river is a bubbling brook already within me that I don't have to refind, only to rest in until it becomes experiential continuously that "out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."
In the end, it is simply God. God is the first Chaser, not us. The spring of joy bubbles up from that fact. For, "Herein is love, not that we first loved God, but that He first loved us."
John Loren Sandford, Co-Founder of Elijah House, Inc. - Author of:
*Healing the Nations
*Elijah Among Us
www.elijahhouse.org
I read Nathan Shaw’s PASSION AND FIRE with great interest. It starts with an experience he had when he was only in his early twenties, in Vanuatu for his third missionary visit, during a children’s camp, when a vision of the face of Jesus appeared on the wall. This experience led Nathan to think about what it means to be face to face with Jesus, and enjoy a vital close relationship with him. The book therefore, is about experiencing God, and he explores this theme through many people throughout Scripture. He includes something of his own struggles to reach that intimacy. Some of these passages were to me redolent of the writings of some of my earlier godly models. But those men were all older, more mature. This is a book by a young man, eager to share with freshness and vitality the experience of closeness with God which he has come to have. The book, however, is not limited to any personal mystic experience. The last chapters of the book turn this intimacy into the passion for the lost, of fulfilling Christ’s last Great Commission to make disciples.
Rev Dr David Stewart, Principal of The Bible College of New Zealand 1965-1988
Let the reader beware, for you can never again plead ignorance of the law. It might be said of this title, You Can’t Have One Without The Other, as the old song about love and marriage declares. Nathan asks the powerful question, Where Are The People of Passion? I want to raise my hand in answer to that question and say, here I am. But is that an honest response or a desired one? This book makes clear the process of becoming a passionate and powerful person who knows his or her God intimately.
Iverna Tompkins --Author of:
*Advancing in the Prophetic
*God’s Ravished Heart
*If It Please The King
PASSION AND FIRE is about pursuing intimacy with God. A young man’s desire and passion for intimacy with his Creator has been combined with truth from others to produce a work from which we can all learn and build. Nathan has a way of allowing the reality of his personal relationship with God to overflow and impact his readers. His heart to help others understand some of the key principles of knowing God for who He truly is will motivate and inspire you to press further into your own pursuit of God. The combination of an all powerful God and a man who knows the power of his God are evident all through the pages of this book.
Trevor Yaxley, Co-Founder of Lifeway Ministries, Auckland, New Zealand --Author of:
*William & Catherine: The Life and Legacy of the Booths
www.lifeway.ac.nz