Are you facing a personal energy crisis? Does living rightly seem like a challenge more often than not? Are you seeking encouragement? Life can use up the resources we have and leave us perpetually wishing for just a little more. We can’t survive a full and victorious life on our own power – something most of us figure out when we try it!

This book, the third compilation from the New FreeThinkers, will encourage you on to the overcoming life you desire. It will challenge you to raise your commitment level, remind you where your focus needs to be, and proclaim the hope you have in God. You will be Refueled and ready to live the overcoming life!

Refueled is available now for our usual low price of $3.99. All three of our recent releases, Reformed, Refocused, and Refueled, would make excellent gifts this Christmas for someone you want to encourage and uplift.

On behalf of all of the New Free Thinkers, thank you for reading! May God bless you this Christmas season, and may the articles you’ve read be a strength and a light.

Today we are announcing the launch of our new book, Refocused. This book collects articles we published between November 2009 and November 2010. Four new authors joined us for this book and added their own unique viewpoints on the fundamental issues we address. We describe it like this:

Constant distractions assault us every day. Advertising and social media clamor for attention that is becoming scarcer by the day. Without careful forethought, we will get caught up in the game of low-commitment, low-engagement, and low-meaning living. This is not the vibrant and spiritually fulfilling life we are entitled to. We need focus.

This book, the second compilation from the New Free Thinkers, deals with the foundational issues of Christian life. What is important? What is necessary? What does it look like? By principle and by example, the New Free Thinkers show us what the overcoming life looks like — and how to get there.

Refocused is available for Kindle for only $3.99 per copy. It’s the perfect gift for the teen or young adult with a Kindle — and maybe even some adults on your list! Stay tuned for the final eBook announcement next week; until then, hit up the Refocused [Kindle Edition] page on Amazon to purchase your copy!

The book, Reformed, is a collection of all the articles we published prior to November 2009, including a chapter devoted to the names of God. At 104 pages, it will make a great gift for all ages, especially teens and young adults. We describe it this way on the back cover:

Where do your thoughts naturally trend? Do you always expect the best and possess unwavering faith? For almost every human being, the answer is no. We doubt, we engage in self-defeating behavior, and we permit distractions or addictions that pull us away from spiritual matters. Just as we might send a wayward youth to reform school for their own good, our thinking must be corrected in order for us to be effective. We must possess a reformed mind.

What does it mean to be reformed? It means to let God have control and let Him form us into the best shape possible. To let Him re-form us into His image and restore the freedom we once had. He offers escape from addictions, from destructive thought patterns, and defeatism. The reformed mind is free.

As part of our three-year celebration, Reformed is now available for Kindle at the reduced price of $3.99 per copy. Further Kindle books are planned — look for announcements in the coming weeks. Check out the page for Reformed [Kindle Edition] on Amazon to purchase your copy today!

We purposed to keep a schedule of one article a week: Mondays at 8:00 am. For three years we’ve kept the promise of publishing every Monday. Sometimes it meant late nights writing articles and editing them just in time. Sometimes we missed the 8:00 am publish time. Sometimes the published articles tended to be, well, “less than fully edited” in retrospect. But we published every Monday, because someone might just be waiting for an article that speaks directly to them to change course and start a relationship with God.

New Free Thinkers articles are now read in at least 14 countries, accounting for every continent on the globe. If this website were a newspaper, it would now have an average monthly circulation of 900 subscribers. Select articles have been republished in local papers, giving the message an even greater area of effect. After the first year of writing, we collected our work and repackaged it as a book called Reformed – which, by the way, you can still purchase online.

But there is a season for everything, and for the New Free Thinkers, our season of writing short inspirational articles about practical Christianity is coming to a close. As schedules have changed and writers have moved on, or graduated, or simply changed focus, we have restructured and re-evaluated several times. Last week we published our final regular Monday article. The remaining weeks of November will consist of winding down, wrapping up the work we have done, and making a few final announcements.

Thank you to everyone who encouraged and supported us, who sent in suggestions or article ideas, and to everyone who took the time to read some fresh answers, inspiration, and conviction every Monday. Hopefully we have affected your life in a positive way. It is our prayer that whatever you have gleaned from our articles will send you further into His Word and lead you to a great and all-encompassing relationship with your Creator and Heavenly Father.

As for our upcoming announcements: over the next three weeks, we will be collecting each year of New Free Thinkers articles into one volume and releasing each volume as an eBook. Each week we will release details about another volume along with information about how to purchase your copy. Continue to check back every Monday to find out more about this exciting development!

Visit the Inspirations Bookstore at the above link or send your friends to NewFreeThinkers.com/book to order a copy.

The book, “Reformed,” is a collection of all the articles we published prior to November 2009, including a chapter devoted to the names of God. At 104 pages, it will make a great gift for all ages, especially teens and young adults. We will be pre-selling copies online in some manner; stay tuned for more information as we determine the publication details.

We’re excited about the possibilities for year 2 of the New Free Thinkers! Thank you for reading, thank you for commenting, and we pray that God has blessed you through our writing — and that He’ll continue to do so!

To find articles from the series, simply browse through the “Onomaticon” category. There is a link for this category in the sidebar as well.

What are the New Free Thinkers going to be working on over the next couple months? We will be taking a break from series articles for a while, pending completion of another project that’s proceeding in the background. September is planned to be a different kind of month: without teasing too much, we’ll say that there are several new voices that will be helping during that month. November will mark our one-year anniversary, and we plan to have a very special item ready for that event. The details are still being worked out, so stay tuned for more information in the coming months.

Finally, today marks the launch of a significant new feature on NewFreeThinkers.com: topic suggestion. If you have an article topic you would like for us to write about, you can now send that topic to us using the topic suggestion page.

Do you like the current format of articles? Would you like more series articles or less? Other topics? Do you have an idea for a new series? What would you like to see happen on NewFreeThinkers.com over the coming months? Talk back at us in the comments!

Our first series will be on the names of God. Each article will examine several names by which God is called in the Bible. How were these names given? Did God call Himself by this name, or did men assign it to Him? Why that name? What does it mean, not only in a general sense, but in application to our lives? These are the questions we will address in each article.

The name of this series is the Onomaticon, a name which means “a book of names.” The first entry in this series will be posted next Thursday, April 9. Regular articles without a set subject will continue to be posted on Mondays, but we hope you will enjoy our Thursday series as well and join us as we celebrate who God is and what He means to us.

This rare midweek post is here to let you know about a common feature of weblogs that can make keeping up with things a little easier: RSS. The following description of the technology, from WhatIsRSS.com, is apt:

RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it.

Using an RSS aggregator such as Google Reader, My Yahoo!, or Bloglines (here’s a list of RSS aggregators), you can get New Free Thinkers articles delivered weekly without having to write a note to remind yourself to visit Monday morning at 8:00 am . . . not that you had to write a note. Right?

Another new technology we’ve recently added is Twitter. The site defies description, so go ahead and read all about it, then come back here. I’ll wait. If you have a Twitter account, you can follow The New Free Thinkers on Twitter and get updates with every article.

If you haven’t subscribed yet or you’re new to The New Free Thinkers, we encourage you to subscribe (or follow!), enjoy the articles, and join the conversation. Look forward to many new, free thoughts in 2009!