Meet Horse, Byrd, Puppy and Kitten… they are the 4 heroes of…
MY CHILDREN'S BOOKS
THESE ARE THE CHRONICLES OF 4 SEEMINGLY ORDINARY ANIMALS - HORSE, BYRD, PUPPY and KITTEN. HOWEVER, AS YOU WILL SOON FIND OUT, THESE 4 ADORABLE ANIMALS ARE ANYTHING BUT ORDINARY...
First, we have Byrd, a Snow White dove who changes colours depending on what He is doing at the time. Sometimes He shines as bright and as brilliantly as the sun!
Then there is Horse, Who stands a magnificent 18 hands high, which means that He was a very big and very powerful stallion. He is also white. His mane that grows from the top of His neck down to His shoulders, is the colour of spun gold, glistening and gleaming in the sunlight. It flies like the wild winds of the desert when He runs. Horse is a big and proud animal, afraid of absolutely nothing. Strong and independent.
The 3rd animal in this Band of Brothers is Puppy. Puppy is an adorable sandy brown Cocker Spaniel with a cute little black nose and bright blue eyes, sparkling with love and life.
Finally, we have Kitten. He is shiny, beautiful jet black with a cute little button nose too. His eyes too, are full of life and love and joy.
Both Puppy and Kitten are very special. They are eternal. In other words, they will never grow up into being a full-grown cat or dog. They will always be a puppy and a kitten but being as special as they are, they have the wisdom and intelligence of adult cats and dogs. Plus they can run as fast as adult cats and dogs if they have to. They have all been together for a very, very long time. Puppy, Kitten, and Byrd always ride on Horse’s back as they wander from city to city, and town to town, looking for children who need help and need to be coached in the real ways of life, the old ways of our grandparents.
Their job is to show young children how to stand firm when they are faced with challenges in their lives, and to look, and even ask their parents if they aren’t sure what the old ways are. The real ways. The safe ways to live. Puppy and Kitten, and Horse and Byrd as well, are here to help children to walk in the ways which lead to lots of happy experiences in life, because there are too many paths now that lead innocent children away from everything worthwhile and true.
Horse represents Lord Jesus and Byrd is Holy Spirit, whilst Puppy and Kitten are, in reality, two messenger angels.
Each book tells a separate story of adventure and intrigue, whilst at the same time focusing on a single point of The Sermon on the Mount – Jesus’ most famous sermon that took place on the shores of Lake Galilee. Whilst each book will most certainly teach your child good manners and how to to get along well with people, each book will also covered a specific point in the Sermon on the Mount, whether that be a Beatitude, or what Lord Jesus meant when He told us to turn the other cheek and to pray for our enemies…
The Disruptive Truth Series is born out of a lifetime of pain in growing up under the tyranny born of the raw and unhealed scars of a sexually abused mother and an absentee father, himself the product of a broken home.
The resultant life has been a life not lived at all. Or to put it another way by quoting a line from John Greenleaf Whittier, “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest of these, “It might have been!”
My single biggest regret in this portion of my life is not getting to know Jesus Christ as my LORD and Saviour when I was a very young man, of choosing the world and its ways over Him and His ways.
Ergo, out of my own lifetime of pain I am prayerfully reaching out to young people all over the world; calling them to a life of obedience and disciplined discipleship, or as Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it, “to come and die to themselves and LIVE for Christ.”
Audibly called to writing in November of 2019, the Holy Spirit woke me up on the morning of Friday, 8th November 2024 with the 4 characters of these books identified. These 4 characters, Byrd, Horse, Puppy and Kitten, have the Holy Spirit driven potential to alter the trajectory of each young pre-school and/or junior school child’s life who reads them, significantly changing the course of their lives, with the ability to lead them into a very different future than what they might otherwise have experienced.
Whilst it is indubitably to my honour to write these books for your children, it remains entirely up to you, the child’s parent/s, or guardian, to put God’s Words into effect in their lives.
If you cannot afford the cost of any of these titles, please write me at enough@afftb.co.za, tell me a little bit about yourself, and it will be my pleasure to let you have any number of the eBook titles that have been published at no cost, as long as YOU promise GOD that you will work through each title with your children, before it is too late for them.
Please take note of the titles that have been published. These are in RED on the LIST OF TITLES page.
My other writing cap is that of a man deeply concerned about the Church in its severely slacking, weakened state.
Jesus told us that He would build His church and that the very gates of hell would not prevail against it, would not overcome it (Matthew 16:18), so I have no fear that, try as he might, Satan will ever succeed in removing the church from the face of the earth. But he is having great success at the next best thing – contaminating the minds of our children to his utmost levels, and causing them to stray into the hellish areas of life that they are, thus bringing God’s words of prophecy that the day will dawn when men call good evil, and evil good (Isaiah 5:20), to full fruition.
This calls then for passionate adults and parents to stand up, hold a Holy Bible up to this evil ruler and say, with the authority that Jesus Christ Himself gave us in Matthew 28:18-20, “Enough!”
But then going out and doing something about the situation instead of just returning to your pew, or to watch and listen to yet another message on your Smart TV in your lounge. Don’t be a professional Pew Warmer or Sermon/Message Watcher/Listener. People like this merely pay the Lord lip service but do not honour Him with their hearts. Be a Believer In and Follower Of Jesus Christ. Adopt His Mind Set.
My adult titles of “Don’t Focus on the Darkness” and “LETTERS From an Old Man Desperately Seeking an Intimate Relationship with Jesus” are soon to be published. These are the first 2 of a series of books Father wants from me, looking at life and love through the eyes of someone like myself, reaching out to YOU to help you understand Christianity. As someone once said (I think it might have been Derek Prince), “All Christianity is is one hungry beggar reaching out and telling another hungry beggar where to find food.”
The late Dallas Willard was not only totally unafraid to speak of the Cross of Christ as something that Jesus Christ did for us, but also as something we are busy doing with Him.
Dr. John Ortberg does that daily.
I try to.
How about you?
Graham Ries
REACHING OUT TO AS MANY CHILDREN AROUND THE WORLD AS I CAN...
Each of my books featuring Horse, Byrd, Puppy and Kitten will be written for three different age groups, ages 6 to 10, 10 to 14, and 14 to young adult. I believe God has called and is continually calling me to write these books in order to get His Words into His little children’s hearts from the perspective of someone who was never able to be a child himself, and who learned the things he should have known as a child in very hard and painful ways, as he grew from a broken child into a broken teenager and into a broken young man, finally only achieving his wholeness as a man in his 60’s. In other words, I believe God is using my experience in life to protect His little children from experiencing the types and depth of pain I had to endure, whilst at the same time reaching out to them and teaching them, planting seeds in their souls (which will be watered by other people) that will keep them from a lot of the pain in this world (as God does the growing) [1 Corinthians 3:6-7].