the book
Every sentence they used on me was true.
That is the part nobody warns you about. I had braced myself against lies my whole life. I knew what a con man sounded like. Nobody came selling something false. They came saying the kingdom of God is within you. You cannot serve two masters. Surrender the fruits of your actions. I had read those sentences years before I heard them in the mouth that would cost me everything, and I believed them then, and I believe them still.
This is a book about what happens when true words are spoken by the wrong mouth.
Ebook, yours the moment you order. The audiobook can be added for $12 at checkout.
who it is for
Four people, and one of them is probably you.
If you are inside something right now.
You cannot say what is wrong, only that some small animal in you has gone still. Nothing here asks you to leave, to accuse anyone, or to decide anything today.
If you love someone who is inside.
Every conversation dies against a wall of scripture, and you have started rehearsing arguments in the shower. There is a letter in this book written for you, and it does not pretend the ending is guaranteed.
If the place that folded you was small.
Two people, one house, one voice in one kitchen. Everything here still holds, because this was never really a book about communities. It is a book about what one person can do to another with true words.
If you got out.
And you lie awake calling yourself a fool for what you gave and what you believed. This book is for you most of all. You were not a fool. You believed true things.
how it is built
One true sentence at a time, four moves each.
Eleven chapters, each taking a sentence you have heard in scripture or from any teacher worth hearing. Each chapter does the same four things in the same order.
- The sentence in the honest mouth. First, plainly, because the truth deserves that, and because I refuse to surrender the words to the wolves.
- The twist. The small added clause, the quiet inversion that turns surrender to God into surrender to a man.
- Where I lived it. In rooms I will not name, among people I will not name, because this book is not a courtroom and the pattern matters more than the man. Where I give you his words, or my own, I give them exactly.
- The test. A question you can carry into any church, any community, any teacher's living room, that tells the shepherd from the wolf who quotes him.
I am not going to teach you to trust less. The world does not need one more closed heart. I am going to teach you to see the door, whether it is opening, whether it is closing.
the eleven sentences
You already know most of them.
That is the whole problem, and it is also why the book can be useful. Every chapter title below is a sentence that is true.
- 01The Kingdom of God Is Within You
- 02Ask and It Will Be Given
- 03You Cannot Serve Two Masters
- 04Whoever Does Not Hate Father and Mother
- 05Surrender the Fruits of Your Actions
- 06Bring What Is Hidden into the Light
- 07Jesus Is Enough
- 08Seek First the Kingdom of God
- 09Where Your Treasure Is, There Your Heart Will Be Also
- 10You Shall Not Covet
- 11God Is on the Throne
and then two letters
The part people write to me about.
A Letter to the One Still Inside is written for someone who may be reading in minutes that belong to somebody else's schedule. It asks for no decision and sets no deadline. It gives three permissions and then tells the reader he can put the book down, and that it will keep.
A Letter to the One Waiting Outside is written for the person searching at two in the morning because someone he loves is inside. It says plainly that arguments do not survive it and ultimatums do worse than fail. It says to feed the person who existed before the house. It does not promise a good ending, and it says so in a paragraph it refuses to soften.
The eleven tests are gathered at the back, in short form, so you can find the one you need without rereading a chapter.
what it costs
Seven dollars and seventy seven cents.
$7.77
- The complete book, delivered the moment you order.
- Eleven chapters, the two letters, and the tests gathered at the back.
- The audiobook, the whole book read aloud, can be added for $12 at checkout.
If the book is not what you hoped for, write to me within thirty days and it is refunded. Keep the file. Sending it back is not possible and returning it is not asked.
who wrote it
Peter Korinek
other ways to read it
The order below hands you the book to read tonight, and the audiobook too if you add it. If you would rather hold a printed copy, or read it on a Kindle, both editions are on Amazon.
A shepherd and a wolf can speak the same sentence, and the words will not tell you which one you are hearing. The difference is never in the words. It is in the door.
The order form is just below.