{"id":10884,"date":"2021-02-23T04:14:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-23T04:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=10884"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:35:03","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:35:03","slug":"the-best-gifts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=10884","title":{"rendered":"THE BEST GIFTS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Giving a book as a gift is a real gamble. The jackpot is when a book placed in a friend&#8217;s hand opens up life-altering new insights. But it seems like the greater possibility is that it will sit on a shelf untouched for a few years before moving to a box in the garage and eventually a shelf at the local Goodwill.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Last Saturday Amazon delivered two books into my hands and both were gifts. One was from my wife and one was from a friend on the West Coast.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When somebody gives me a book as a gift, I guarantee that I will read it.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My friend generously sent N.T. Wright&#8217;s<b><i> Paul: A Biography<\/i><\/b>\u00a0after posting about the book on Facebook, just because I commented about my interest in it and its author. Sweet!<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/20210221_122417-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"927\" height=\"1235\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My wife bought me Craig Groeschel&#8217;s <i><b>Winning the War in Your Mind<\/b><\/i> after hearing the author on a podcast and thinking it might line up with some of my current interests.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/20210222_230320-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"968\" height=\"1290\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Time will tell whether either of these hit the jackpot. I will let you know. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Giving a book as a gift is a real gamble. The jackpot is when a book placed in a friend&#8217;s hand opens up life-altering new insights. But it seems like the greater possibility is that it will sit on a shelf untouched for a few years before moving to a box in the garage and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10884"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10887,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10884\/revisions\/10887"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}