Review: Take Someone With You to Heaven by Carol Middlekauff

Take Someone With You To Heaven
By Carol Middlekauff

Anyone can share their faith with others. That's the message Carol Middlekauff delivers in her account of the many divine appointments God has given her. You will be encouraged by her real-life stories and motivated by her challenge. -John Sorensen, President, Evangelism Explosion International

This book is a non-fiction collection of stories about Carol and her husband Chuck and their journey from being pew-sitters to evangelists. It's a God-story, how God can take anyone who is willing and use them to reach others for Christ. It's laid out as a responsive journal, giving the reader an opportunity to jot down names of people they can talk to about their faith, and moments when they were afraid to share. Carol relates the sequence of events that caused her and Chuck to come out of their comfort zone and do neighborhood door-to-door evangelism, missions work distributing food, gospel tracts, and hope, and jail ministries.

Carol is unsure how many people she has personally witnessed to, but her God-driven encounters involved gas stations, running trails, hospital visits, roadside assistance, and workplace sharing. There isn't an area of her life that has not involved being open to God's leading and eventually the sharing of the Good News.

Take Someone With You To Heaven is intended to take a believer, and gently nudge them out the door with a message that needs to be shared to a lost and dying world.

Here's a quote that clearly gives Carol's attitude and the good news about the Good News:
Life gives you things you have to do, things you want to do, and things you get to do. Sharing the hope of a Father in heaven who loves us and the promise of forgiveness in Jesus is one of those things you get to do. [emphasis mine].

Content:

Violence:
There's a bit that is inferred. Some people in jail are there for very good reasons. There are many times my heart was in my throat about people Carol and Chuck stopped to share with, bracing myself for the responses from unbelievers. But there was no violence actually in the book.

Language:
Very clean.

Adult Content:
Squeaky clean.

Christian content:
This is a non-fiction book encouraging the reader to share the Gospel, and depicts many accounts of that activity. It is nothing but Christian content. :-)

Final analysis:

I'm not an evangelist by spiritual gift, and I've only presented the gospel a dozen or so times. I'm normally stuck in a Fantasy or Science Fiction book, but this book became an enthralling read as I shared in her joy of souls won to heaven literally anywhere. I found this book well-written, powerful, challenging, even convicting. I gave it five stars.

About the Author

Born in Amarillo, Texas, Carol Middlekauff stands five feet tall, 110 pounds, with green eyes, chin-length gray hair, and glasses. Retired from the insurance business, she doesn't really look like a runner, a writer, or someone who might spend time in jail. And she isn't a preacher. She's just an ordinary person. But she and her (also ordinary) husband, Chuck, head out from their home in Austin, Texas, to share their faith as they go along--at the grocery store, on the running trail, by gas pumps, and in prisons and jails across the United States. 

Middlekauff received her teaching degree from the University of Texas. And she's an incurable writer and traveler. You may have seen her travel, profile, and insurance articles in publications such as American Cowboy, New Mexico, Rough Notes and other magazines, or the Dallas Morning News, Kansas City Star, Boston Herald, San Jose Mercury News, New Orleans Picayune, and other newspapers. As she began to write down some of the stories of the amazing things God does as she and her husband share their faith, those stories became a teaching book, Take Someone with You to Heaven.