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Has Humankind Ever Been More Broken Than Now?

Has Humankind Ever Been More Broken Than Now?
Writings of the Late Dr. Noomen Preach ‘Connectedness’

(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet or used by any means of social media sharing.)

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Does it sometimes seem as if political parties, the country and perhaps the entire world has fallen into an unprecedented morass of divisiveness and animosity? Read the news, turn on the TV, listen to the radio or just eavesdrop on conversations. Has there ever been a time when civilization was any less agreeable? Can anything be done to help fix this rampant and dangerous antagonism?

Author and scholar Dr. Pieter Noomen wrote at length about his belief that “all is connected,” and although he passed away three years ago, his writings are still available to all, free, anytime, on his website (www.wordsforall.org). Among the 12 “booklets” he posted is one he called “Connectedness.”

“If on your inner level you do connect with the universal sphere, boundaries blur,” Dr. Noomen wrote. “You then experience that your universal links are not vague or impractical at all. You can hook up to a world that poses no threat and lets you know and feel that.”

Dr. Noomen’s writings speak largely about his belief system and often refer to messages he said he received from a higher power, but his words can resonate with all, regardless of faith. The booklet on “connectedness” is written in first-person, with the “I” being the higher power that he believed spoke to him.

He begins the booklet thus: “One of the most amazing statements I make is related to this ‘all is connected;’ not that the fact itself that all is connected is surprising, as you observe it on earth … but indirect all-connectedness makes good sense. You and, say stars, are separate worlds; yet what is in between serves as link. And so it is with everything. All that exists is acting in the same play of being. Let the word play conjure a sphere of playfulness, team spirit and adventure.”

That may sound like Pollyanna wishful thinking in 2022, but what if the Russians and Ukrainians, the pro-life and pro-choice folks, the Republicans and Democrats, and all the other so-called diametrically opposed groups could look at civilization as one big family?

“Truth has ways to overcome confusion, to a point of restoring clear vision,” Dr. Noomen wrote. “For this, you’ve the whole eternity at your disposal. So do not worry or panic. Realize the sixth component of being well-connected is already a part of you. For present humans, this connectedness is severely disturbed. And it shows. Yet, in you, ‘all is connected’ waits to be recognized and be applied positively.”

Born in the Netherlands, Pieter Noomen worked as a psychotherapist and staff member at a Los Angeles church. He completed doctoral studies in theology and pastoral psychology at the Free University of Amsterdam and became senior minister of three Protestant churches.

An example from Dr. Noomen’s Wisdoms of the Week from his website, as we continue to hold out hope that better days lie ahead:

“It seems scientifically proven that laughing is good for our health. (I still regret that I can’t even tell a joke. Sorry!) Yet I know a source that always lets me smile inside. That happens when I realize how awesomely great the universe is and how tiny I am. And much more, when I realize that this Totality of all, Life in its full volume, is essentially a love reality.”

Trish Stevens
Gloria Gonzalez
Ascot Media Group, Inc.
Post Office Box 2394
Friendswood, TX 77549
281.333.3507 Main
[email protected]
www.ascotmedia.com

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A Biblical Recipe for Marital Success

A Biblical Recipe for Marital Success

(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet, or used by any means of social media sharing.)

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Counseling is a significant aspect of pastoring, and marriage counseling is the most common form of counseling for many clergy. To address the needs of husbands who come to him for marriage counseling, Pastor Scott LaPierre says the first thing he looks at is the man’s relationship with Christ.

“Our relationship with our wives, our relationship with our children, is a reflection or outpouring of our relationship with Christ,” La Pierre said in a recent interview. “And it’s our relationship with Christ that we need to draw on at those times when we’re upset.”

In his new book, Your Marriage God’s Way, LaPierre distills lessons from scripture, carefully examining the principles for building a strong, biblical marriage—one in which your relationship with Christ brings guidance and blessing into your relationship with your spouse.
“God is the author of marriage. He designed the roles and responsibilities for husbands and wives,” LaPierre writes in his book. “He knows what couples need so they can experience healthy, joyful, Christ-centered relationships, and He provided the principles in the Bible.”

LaPierre gives readers the tools to:

  • Understand the unique roles and responsibilities of husbands and wives
  • Recognize and resolve conflicts with a heart of hope and compassion
  • Follow God’s worthy command to love and cherish your spouse unconditionally

A companion workbook is also available (LaPierre’s Your Marriage God’s Way Workbook) to help couples apply biblical principles to their own marriage.

The workbook aims to help couples:

  • Understand the unique roles God has given each person
  • Identify ways to better help, encourage, and support each other
  • Make serving God the focal point of the marriage

“Let’s journey together, with the Bible as our guide, to experience the blessings of a Christ-centered relationship,” LaPierre writes. “Whether you’re at the beginning of your journey or you’ve been on the road together for years, Your Marriage God’s Way will provide the helpful and encouraging insights you need to experience marriage as God intends it.”

About the Author
Scott LaPierre is the senior pastor of Woodland Christian Church in Woodland, WA, an author, and conference speaker. He holds an MA in Biblical Studies from Liberty University. Scott and his wife, Katie, have nine children, and they are passionate homeschooling advocates. Scott is a former schoolteacher and Army officer.

To learn more about Pastor Scott LaPierre, please visit www.scottlapierre.org, or follow him on Twitter (@PastorWCC), Instagram (@pastorwcc) or Facebook (@SctottLaPierreMinistries).

Your Marriage God’s Way: A Biblical Guide to a Christ-Centered Relationship
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers
ISBN-10: ‎ 0736983961
ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0736983969
Available from Amazon.com

Your Marriage God’s Way Workbook
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers
ISBN-10: ‎ 0736983988
ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0736983983
Available from Amazon.com

Trish Stevens
Mandy Sullivan
Ascot Media Group, Inc.
Post Office Box 2394
Friendswood, TX 77549
[email protected]
www.ascotmedia.com
281.333.3507 Phone

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And Suddenly Life Will Never Be the Same: Almost Like Praying a Contemporary Family Drama

And Suddenly Life Will Never Be the Same: Almost Like Praying a Contemporary Family Drama

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What would happen if a suburban woman with a hard-as-nails façade and a detailed life plan was suddenly saddled with caring for a 6-year-old girl from the Bronx?

Such is the dilemma facing Dolores Farrell in Almost Like Praying, the intriguing new novel from author Joel Samberg. But the 6-year-old girl is just the tip of Dolores’ family-centered iceberg. When readers first meet her, she is a woman with a future all planned out: She’ll marry an attorney, have sons who will become attorneys, daughters who will become patrons of the arts, and live in the shadow of Harvard University, thereby continuing her privileged, purebred Irish-Catholic legacy.

Instead, Dolores must watch as each of her children adopts a lifestyle quite different from what she had envisioned. One daughter becomes a waitress, another a shock jock. One son becomes a cop (a troubled one at that), another a cartoonist. Much to his mother’s dismay, the cartoonist is also missing a leg due to a terrible childhood accident. That, of course, had not been part of Dolores’ original plan.

Almost Like Praying, which fictionalizes some real thoughts and memories, is told through a trilogy of stories reconstructed by a curious journalist who, as a boy, lived across the street from the family at the heart of the book. One day from his old bedroom window, the journalist sees Dolores on her front step hugging a dark-skinned little girl named Maria, and smiling—something he feels the grim-faced Dolores would never do. That’s what prompts him to research and write the stories.

“The novel sprung from my own roots,” Samberg said. “Growing up on Long Island, one of my best friends had a mother who to me seemed humorless and severe. I had always wondered about her. She became Dolores. Also, whenever my family drove through the Bronx, I’d look at the ramshackle apartment buildings and wonder how the kids who lived there would fare in my own middle-class neighborhood. One of them became Maria.”

Featuring flawed, relatable characters, Almost Like Praying offers a compelling message that likely will resonate with readers everywhere.

Author Joel Samberg decided to become a writer as a boy. He wrote a screenplay when he was 12 and sent it to MGM, and although the studio turned it down, an executive’s encouraging note suggested that he never give up on his dream to be a writer. Two years later, his English teacher sent a nasty note home to his parents falsely accusing him of plagiarizing a book report because she said it was too well-written for an eighth-grader. That settled it: from that point on, he has never given up.

Samberg has written for dozens of magazines and has published seven fiction and nonfiction books, including Some Kind of Lonely Clown: The Music, Memory, and Melancholy Lives of Karen Carpenter.

For more information, please visit https://almost-like-praying-new-novel.blogspot.com/, and follow the author on Twitter at @JoelSamberg.

Almost Like Praying
Publisher: Black Rose Writing (http://blackrosewriting.com)
Release Date: April 28, 2022
ISBN-10: ‎ 1685130097
ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1685130091
Available from Amazon.com, Black Rose Writing and other online booksellers.

Trish Stevens
Parker Wilson
Ascot Media Group, Inc.
Post Office Box 2394
Friendswood, TX 77549
[email protected]
www.ascotmedia.com
281.333.3507 Phone

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Protests, Blockages, Threats of War: What Happened to Freedom?

Protests, Blockages, Threats of War: What Happened to Freedom?
Dr. Pieter Noomen’s Website Offers Guidance for a Troubled World

(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet or used by any means of social media sharing.)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Long before he died in 2019, Dr. Pieter Noomen explored deeply the meaning of life, death, freedom and so many other topics that the writings on his website will continue to enlighten and inspire readers for decades. In a time when mass protests and threats of war fill our daily news, his musings on freedom seem starkly meaningful.

Many of these protests focus on the freedom to decide for yourself what you will inject into your body or put on your face. But what about the freedom of others not to be impacted by decisions you make that might endanger them? It’s a slippery slope to be sure.

On his website, www.wordsforall.org, Dr. Noomen writes:

“’Yes’ a free will, ‘no’ a free will, argued the sages of all ages. Like they did, it does in me. I vacillate, how much am I free? By my logic, no answers do fit. Yet freedom is, and that is it. It features as essence and substance in all life’s creatures. You see that we are free to even choose our own slavery?”
He also wrote that “all living is based on free participation.” Freedom is embraced in many of the world’s nations, but not all, and the chaos of early 2022 may echo for many years to come. How can we make sense of it all and find some semblance of inner and outer peace?

Visitors on www.wordsforall.org can explore Dr. Noomen’s comprehensive collection of vivid experiences and wisdom drawn from the communications he shared with what he called a “spiritual presence.” He grew to believe that, either directly or indirectly, all life stems from one common source, and when we can reconnect with that source, we reach the highest level of existence. And perhaps more importantly, he believed that being in direct contact with the ALL of existence is possible for anyone and everyone.

In essence, we’re all in this together, and the path forward starts with accepting that. As Dr. Noomen wrote, “Let it sink in that you are part of the oneness of all. You’re one of its constituents.”

Born in the Netherlands, Pieter Noomen completed doctoral studies in theology and pastoral psychology at the Free University of Amsterdam and became senior minister of three Protestant churches. Later, he worked as a psychotherapist and as a staff member of a Los Angeles metropolitan church, working in mental health fields like suicide prevention and hospice.

An example from Dr. Noomen’s Wisdoms of the Week from his website:

“If today all people decided to drop negative behavior, and our societies would become peaceful for all, we still face that nature won’t follow the change. It will remain violent at will, not caring about our human needs. In other words, the brokenness and imperfections of life do not depend on our human behavior. The roots of that go deeper. Our earth and its potential for carrying life is put together as a faulty product. Any hope for fundamentally changing the world? No! Any hope for substantially changing people? Yes! When we as individuals connect with the Real, the full, Reality.”

Trish Stevens
Gloria Gonzalez
Ascot Media Group, Inc.
Post Office Box 2394
Friendswood, TX 77549
281.333.3507 Main
[email protected]
www.ascotmedia.com

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Reignite Your Spiritual Conviction in 2022

Reignite Your Spiritual Conviction in 2022

(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet, or used by any means of social media sharing.)

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Spiritual drifting was a concern for many churches way before the pandemic kept parishioners at home. Here to help Christians re-evaluate and reaffirm their spiritual journeys is senior pastor Alan Davey.

“We forget him so quickly,” Davey says, referring to Jesus. “The commonplace platitude ‘out of sight out of mind’ applies not just to people we see and know, but also to our Father in heaven.”

Our noisy world constantly pulls our attention in new directions and prompts us to pursue other interests and desires, he notes.

“Subsequently, we become tired Christians who suffer from a lack of conviction, authenticity and prophetic insight,” he says.

In his new book, Walking the Line: Embracing the Imperatives of Jesus, Davey shares insightful commentary, perspectives from a rich variety of Christian sources and authors, and lessons from Jesus himself to create an accessible guide to viewing the Bible and Christ’s teachings in a fresh light. Included are original drawings from the late artist Joy Kim and study questions at the end of each chapter to help reinforce the messages.

Davey masterfully underscores the value and importance of understanding and following the rules of Jesus — not just for individuals but for entire communities of faith.

“The rule of Jesus articulated in Matthew’s Gospel is neither obscure nor archaic,” Davey says. “Jesus’ imperatives speak powerfully to the contemporary issues of our day, and do so by illuminating a way of clarity, simplicity and love.”

Author Alan Davey is the senior pastor of Weston Park Baptist Church, an inner-city church in Toronto, and Adjunct Professor of Christian Spirituality and Worship at Tyndale University and Seminary. He is co-author of Climbing the Spiritual Mountain (Wipf & Stock, 2014), Abba’s Whisper (Wipf & Stock, 2017) and The Passionate Bride (Wipf & Stock, 2019).

Davey is also an avid scuba diver, hiker, singer, guitarist and art lover. While writing Walking the Line, Davey was asked to officiate at the funeral for his wife’s niece, the late artist, teacher and musician, Joy Kim. While leafing through a collection from her final exhibition, “Have You Walked in My Shoes?”, Davey was inspired to include some of her oil pastel drawings of shoes, boots, and slippers in his book to represent the disciples who embrace Jesus’ imperatives in the everyday of their lives.

For more information, please visit www.daveybooks.com, or connect with Davey at [email protected].

Walking the Line: Embracing the Imperatives of Jesus
Publisher: Wipf & Stock
ISBN-10: ‎ 1725290340
ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1725290341
Available from Amazon.com, BN.com and wipfandstock.com

Trish Stevens
Marie Jennings
Ascot Media Group, Inc.
Post Office Box 2394
Friendswood, TX 77549
[email protected]
www.ascotmedia.com
281.333.3507 Phone

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Meet 7 Inspirational Women Who Changed Their Stories and Changed Their Worlds

Meet 7 Inspirational Women Who Changed Their Stories and Changed Their Worlds

(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet or used by any means of social media sharing.)

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Can something as simple as a story change the lives of others? Do you ever wonder if your life — your story — matters?

“Of course, it does,” says international speaker and sought-after story expert, Linda Olson. “Everyone has a story, and your story can bring transformation and impact into the word today.”

In Olson’s latest book, Story Matters! Empowering Your Hope When Going Through Tough Times, she provides real-life examples of seven ordinary women who faced major challenges. These women embraced their stories and learned to rise above nearly insurmountable obstacles. They did it through strength, courage and their faith in God, and they are sharing their stories to light a path forward for others facing difficult circumstances.

In this book, readers will learn:

  • How a single woman rose above childhood trauma to conquer fear and loneliness.
  • How a young mother moved through grief and loss when her young child was diagnosed with a terminal illness.
  • How a caring sister became embroiled in a devastating lawsuit and discovered that forgiveness is a choice.
  • How a middle-aged woman, faced with a choice to live or die, once again found joy.
  • How a career woman who achieved the many pleasures of the world discovered her real fulfillment was through commitment.
  • How a college student fulfilled her dream, only to find out her real dream lay deep within her.
  • How a teenager, devastated by the death of her brother, became a professional storyteller.

“All of these women wanted to give in and give up because they felt themselves giving out,” Olson said. “But something kept them going!”

And now they’re using the power of their stories to make a difference.

Linda Olson is the go-to story expert who helps authors, speakers and entrepreneurs impact millions with their stories. She is a TEDx Speaker, multiple bestselling author and founder of Wealth Through Stories. Her mission is to impact a million people a year with multiple authors in her series, Story Matters! Linda and her husband, Rick, reside in sunny California. They enjoy their two married daughters, sons-in-law and five adorable grandchildren who are the best part of their story.

For more information, visit https://wealththroughstories.com/, or connect with the author on Facebook (Linda Olson).

Story Matters! Empowering Your Hope While Going Through Tough Times, Inspirational Stories Compiled by Linda A. Olson
Publisher: Made for More Publishing
ISBN-10: ‎ 098190145X
ISBN-13: ‎ 978-0981901459
Available from Amazon.com

Trish Stevens
April Johnson
Ascot Media Group, Inc.
Post Office Box 2394
Friendswood, TX 77549
[email protected]
www.ascotmedia.com
281.333.3507 Phone

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What If ‘The Force’ Were Real? This Doctor Believed It Was

What If ‘The Force’ Were Real? This Doctor Believed It Was
Dr. Pieter Noomen’s Website Explains Mystical Connection to Oneness.

(This press release may be reprinted in part or entirety by any print or broadcast media outlet or used by any means of social media sharing.)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

George Lucas called it “The Force” in his Star Wars movies, Taoists call it “The Way,” and the late Dr. Pieter Noomen called it “Oneness.” It’s a belief that everything and everyone is interconnected. Dr. Noomen’s website, www.wordsforall.org, is filled with writings on the subject, and his words may offer healing for a divided world struggling to find truth and meaning.

Dr. Noomen wrote of having transformative visits on the spiritual level, and his website brings to light the universal and eternal “facts of life” that were communicated to him.

“I can only say that the information came from a presence on my innermost spiritual level that I was in communication with for some time,” he said. “The words seem the result of my spirit merging with the spirit of life.”

While Dr. Noomen’s personal revelations may seem to have a religious tone, he does not use the word God. Instead, he relays his journeys on the spiritual plane with a freedom that invites readers to uncover and explore their own accessibility to Oneness without labels or specific constructs. What others will experience, he said, will be as unique and as personal as the individuals themselves.

Visitors on www.wordsforall.org can explore Dr. Noomen’s comprehensive collection of vivid experiences and wisdom drawn from the communications he shared with that “spiritual presence.” He grew to believe that, either directly or indirectly, all life stems from one common source, and when we can reconnect with that source, we reach the highest level of existence. And perhaps more importantly, he believed that being in direct contact with the ALL of existence is possible for anyone and everyone.

Born in the Netherlands, Pieter Noomen, completed doctoral studies in theology and pastoral psychology at the Free University of Amsterdam and became senior minister of three Protestant churches. Later, he worked as a psychotherapist and as a staff member of a Los Angeles metropolitan church, working in mental health fields like suicide prevention and hospice.

An example from Dr. Noomen’s Wisdoms of the Week from his website:

“In many parts on our planet, the beginning of a new year is celebrated. The heart of it could and should be not so much the public displays, fireworks, speeches of leaders, etc., but the reflection in our personal minds on the merits of last year and what to look forward to. Even that can be superficial. What really can gladden our hearts is that regardless of circumstances, we are not just the center of our little world, but of the whole world, as only we can make real changes for the better! If we all would do that…. wow!”

Trish Stevens
Gloria Gonzalez
Ascot Media Group, Inc.
Post Office Box 2394
Friendswood, TX 77549
281.333.3507 Main
[email protected]
www.ascotmedia.com

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