The book 'Promises Kept' is now available.  It can be purchased for $14.95.  You will find it online at http://www.haislipcreative.com/GreatCollections/current.php and can pay for it and have it shipped through Paypal with my email address kevin@haisliphotography.com .  I hope to get an excerpt of the book up online today.
    The book is entirely about what the Lord has done in our lives as He led us to adopt so many children and chronicles many of the miracles and lessons.    I wrote once that our testimonies are for ourselves, that as the Lord told Israel to remember His delivering them from Israel, so He reminds us to remember.  The book took several years of researching and writing, and even as I have been pouring through the pages to prep it for printing, I have been greatly blessed to remember all that He led us in and brought us through.  I trust you too will be blessed to read of His great works and how He leads people.

PROSPERITY vs. DENYING YOURSELF
    On another note, I would appreciate any comments and thoughts about an issue I have struggled with a fair amount these past few years and seems to rear it's ugly head often here in Texas.  Please respond via email at kevin@haislipcreative.com and I will post these comments in a Daily Chew.
    The issue revolves around the issue of prosperity in the Christian life.  Many churches and pastors here in Texas proclaim the Christian life as revealing God's love for us through great prosperity, and of course the opposite of that is if one isn't particularly prosperous or not prosperous at all, it shows either that sin is present in a person's life, or great spiritual immaturity.
    I of course do not believe this at all.  While God did bless His people in the Old Testament with prosperity, I see the teachings of the New Testament to be entirely different in this matter.  As I read scripture, I see Christ teaching His disciples to follow Him, and that a disciple tends after living as Christ lived and doing what He did.  Often throughout the New Testament, the call is to deny ourselves, take up our Cross and follow Jesus as the call to the Christian.  Perhaps the best way I can say it is that the disciple of Christ is not at all concerned with what he must eat or what he must wear, what kind of house he must live in or what kind of success he must have, but rather to be entirely about the work of God, taking the gospel into the world and making disciples.  His relationship to God creates a desire and a drive to this expediency.
    Does that mean that we cannot be prosperous, or conversely that if we are not prosperous, we are sinful or immature?  There can be little absolute said except to say that God knows the hearts of saint and sinner alike.  The man/woman who is prosperous stands naked before God just as the poor.  It is their heart and deeds that God will judge, rich or poor.  I have personally met very wealthy 'Christians' who in all their efforts and conversations appeared to be entirely carnal minded.  But I have met poor 'Christians' with the same attitude.  And I have met wealthy 'Christians' who really had a heart for reaching to lost with the Good News that saved them; and the same for poor as well.  The person God blesses with great prosperity and uses it to advance Christ's kingdom to others is a blessing to Christ and His church.  He does not seek attention to himself for this deed, for he knows that Christ alone has blessed him that he can be a blessing to others.
    The issue I believe is denying yourself and taking up your cross and following Jesus.  Like John said before his execution, "He must increase and I must decrease."
    What has the Lord shown you?