There is something strange about writing a review for a book on overcoming rejection, especially when your sentiments towards the book veer more towards rejection than praise. It is with humility that I share that Uninvited by Lysa TerKeurst is one such book.
I wanted to appreciate this book, especially since a number of women that I love read it and recommended it. I've heard a number of women share how it has encouraged them and how relatable and helpful it has been to them. I do not doubt that the Lord has used this book in their lives. However, I struggled while reading this book. Before I share some of the critiques of this book, I wanted to share a few things that I did appreciate. Honesty One of the things that I appreciated about this book was Lysa's honesty in sharing the ways that she has experienced rejection in her life. I could easily identify with the various situations that she shared and they recalled instances in my life when similar things happened to me. Chapter of Prayers Lysa takes a chapter to share several prayers to the Lord to encourage in times of rejection. Her prayers are based off of Psalm 91 and would be a helpful resource to someone in the midst of feeling rejection. End Chapter On Jesus I spent the entire book wishing she would focus on how Jesus experienced and responded to rejection and how we should respond to rejection in light of the love shown to us by Christ. It wasn't until her second to last chapter that she brought up how Jesus is the one that helps us to overcome rejection and live loved. I appreciated this last chapter, but wished it had come sooner. While these are some of the encouraging points of the book, there are a number of things that concerned me with this book and prevent me from recommending this to women that struggle with rejection. Shallow Content I spent most of my time reading this book just wanting more. Lysa shares personal stories and gives truisms about God and His love, but I did not see how this book would help someone overcome deep hurt from rejection, such as from a spouse or a parent or a close friend. The deep and heart changing content did not come until the second to last chapter in which Lysa focuses on the character of Christ in the midst of rejection. It saddened me to read this book and realize that I would not want to recommend it to a person that needs biblical encouragement in the midst of facing rejection. Twitter-Style Writing Uninvited is written in a twitter-style with staccato sentences and pages dedicated to a twitter ready quote. While I can understand wanting to appeal to a younger audience in the writing of this book, the twitter-style writing made it difficult to follow her writing. I really wanted to like this book. There were a number of passages that I appreciated, but the shallowness of the content is my main critique. If there is someone that wants to read an encouraging book filled with truisms about God in the midst of rejection, this book might be helpful. However, if there is someone that struggles with working through the rejection that they face, I would recommend looking at the life of Jesus in the Bible or finding another biblically focused book on the topic. I received a copy of this book from Book Look Bloggers in exchange for an honest review, and this is my honest review of this book.
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Sometimes God brings a book into my life at just the right time, when my soul needs to read and be reminded of a truth from His Word that I never knew I needed. Simply Tuesday came at just the right time - on a Tuesday. I've been following the author of Simply Tuesday, Emily P. Freeman, for a few years. I read and enjoy her blog regularly, as her tagline is "creating space for your soul to breathe." My soul often needs space to breathe, especially in a world and culture that values producing, creating, and living fast-paced. I started reading this book while reading through the book of Matthew in the Bible. The two in tandem were like sweet honey to my soul - rich and satisfying. The book is about small moment living, but it's also focused on God's Kingdom and how it is different from what the world would expect. Drawing from the Scriptures, Emily shows how God's Kingdom is found in the ordinary and everyday, in the small moments (and the big moments), but particularly in the small moments. God's Kingdom is found in a mother making a pb&j sandwich for her child. It's found in taking time to sit on a bench and converse with your neighbor. It's found in obedience to God's Word, no matter the consequences. It shows up even on the most ordinary days of the week. It's far different from the kingdom of the world, which values success, extraordinary moments, and fame. I learned a lot about God's Kingdom while reading this book, and I learned a lot about myself. You see, in my brokenness, sinfulness, and humanity, I tend to build my own crumbling kingdom. I live life, longing for the big moments and struggling with discontentment on the everyday Tuesdays when building God's Kingdom looks like making lunch for my husband. I compare myself to others. I feel discouraged when I don't feel like I'm doing enough or when I think about the smallness of this blog or my Instagram. In the midst of this discouragement, God meets me and reminds me that it's not about my kingdom. It's all about His Kingdom and He's given me a part to play - a specific assignment. I have a small part, but it's an important part. After reading Simply Tuesday, I'm learning how to repent when I get caught up in building my own kingdom and instead I want to look for God's Kingdom in the ordinary and everyday. I want to learn how to celebrate my smallness and be faithful and obedient to the specific assignment he has given me, which is to love others and invite them into God's Kingdom. I can't do that when I'm too busy building my own. I would recommend Simply Tuesday for the fact that it encouraged me when I was feeling weary. This book is for anyone that is tired of fast-paced living, and longs to see the beauty and Kingdom-building ministry of small moment living. Note: The Amazon link to Simply Tuesday above is an affiliate link. If you click on the link and purchase the book, this blog is supported at no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting She Laughs Without Fear!
I shared previously about what I learned from reading Love Walked Among Us by Paul Miller. This book deeply impacted me, and I shared about how the first section of the book was impactful in Love Shows Compassion. The main point of this book is showing how Jesus loved others and how we're called to love others like Jesus. The next section in the book is titled "Love Speaks The Truth" and boy, was this section challenging and encouraging to me. When I think of loving others, the compassion side of loving others comes pretty easy to me. The Lord has made me a very compassionate person, but speaking the truth? That's something I'm fearful to do. I often believe the lie that being honest or speaking the truth is unloving, but Jesus exposes that lie and reveals the truth to me. As shared in the previous post, Jesus loved others compassionately, but he also loved others by being honest. Jesus spoke honestly to others, like calling out the Pharisees for being hypocrites, but he also showed compassion towards them. He was honest with His Father in the garden of Gethsemane about how He was feeling in regards to going to the cross, but He ultimately submitted to God's will (Matthew 26:36-46). Jesus balances honesty and compassion. I don't do that well... at all. Paul Miller gives a great example of this struggle in Love Walked Among Us and how to choose honesty and compassion instead of dishonesty and resentment in relationships. He tells a story about a husband and a wife. The wife works late at night, and the husband doesn't get to see his wife very often. The husband and wife make plans to have a date night, but the wife calls her husband an hour before she's supposed to be home, asking if he would be okay with her working late and postponing their date night. The husband has several ways that he could respond. If we're honest, a lot of us in a similar situation would respond by either saying "It's okay," allowing the person to do what they want and then later resenting the fact that he/she chose work over the relationship, allowing bitterness to fester. OR we respond by getting angry and upset and telling the person that they're not really caring for the relationship. (At least these are two ways I might respond). Paul Miller offers a very different response, a response that images Jesus by balancing honesty and compassion. He shares that the husband could speak honestly to his wife and tell her that he would prefer her to come home for their date, but that he would understand if she chooses to stay later at work. In this way, the husband is honest about how he feels but is also compassionate in allowing his wife to feel free to make a decision that she think would be best. The wife could then respond in one of several ways. She could feel guilty and decide to come home, but feel resentful that she didn't get extra work done. She could stay at work and come home later. Or she could decide that coming home is the best thing. However, in all of her potential responses, the husband is free from resenting not telling his wife the truth. He told her the truth; he wanted her home, but he gave her the freedom to make the decision. The husband images Jesus in balancing honesty and compassion I can't tell you how encouraged I was after reading this example from Paul Miller's book, because this is something that I often struggle with: wanting to be honest with how I feel but also wanting to show compassion and understanding. Reading this section of Love Walked Among Us came at exactly the right time. Within a week of reading the section, I encountered several relational conflicts in which I was in the "husband's" situation. I wanted to share how I truly felt but also show compassion. This time, I didn't give into the lie that I wasn't loving my friend by speaking the truth. I shared with her honestly about how her actions and decisions made me feel, but I also showed her compassion and understanding in forgiving her for how her actions and decisions affected me personally. I would recommend this book for this example of speaking the truth in love alone. I reference this section all the time now when I encounter situations and conversations when I could choose to hide the truth and feel resentful or choose honesty and feel free. I still have a lot of growing to do in speaking the truth in love, but this section showed me that Jesus loved others by being honest and by balancing honesty and compassion. I'm called to image Jesus as his follower and that means that I'm called to speak the truth. Speaking the truth and being honest truly does love others, and I'm looking forward to future opportunities to practice balancing speaking the truth while also showing compassion. This post is a part of a series as I review and share thoughts spurred on by the book
Love Walked Among Us by Paul Miller. Confession time: Theology often overwhelms me. When I think of Theology (the study of the nature of God), I think of big ideas and big words that are hard for me to understand. But knowing and understanding God is essential in knowing and loving God more. How can we know and love God more if we don't learn more about Him?
Enter Visual Theology: Seeing and Understanding The Truth About God by Tim Challies and Josh Byers. I wanted to read this book from the moment Tim Challies shared about it on his blog. When Book Look Bloggers offered a free copy in exchange for an honest review, I was sold. Here are three things that I appreciated about this book: 1. The Breakdown of Truths About God Tim Challies and Josh Byers break down this book into four sections: Grow Close to Christ, Understand the Word of Christ, Become like Christ, and Live For Christ. Ultimately knowing more about the truths of God should help us grow in our relationship with Christ. The truths that Challies and Byers share does just that. They break down truths about God so that readers would know more about how to live as Christians in this world. 2. Helpful Visuals You don't get Visual Theology without visuals. Challies and Byers used visuals to enhance what they were sharing in terms of theology. I found the graphics to be helpful in terms of understanding the concepts they were breaking down. While there is more text in this book than visuals, the visuals go right along with the text. As a side note, this made me want books with information to contain more visuals and graphics! I enjoyed how this book blended visuals and information. 3. Accessible to Everyone Visual Theology isn't an in-depth book on Christian Theology, but it is a helpful appetizer, whetting the appetite to learn more. It does what it sets out to do, showing that Theology is something that everyone can understand and how it enhances our knowledge and love of God. Overall, I would recommend this book to those that want to learn more about God or enjoy visuals that break down truths about God in a way that everyone can understand. The books main aim is to help individuals understand concepts about God and the Bible to help them live a life in which they can know and love God more and live their life for His glory. If that's something that you would like to learn more about, then check Visual Theology out! There's a ministry called Adopt-a-Block that reaches out to families and individuals that live on one of most crime ridden streets in York County. Christian men and women give up their free time to minister to people that are impoverished, experience prostitution, and dabble in illicit drug and gang activity in order to show them the love and hope of Jesus Christ. I had the opportunity to become involved with this ministry for a few months this past summer, and what I experienced amazed me. These Christian men and women meet real physical needs. They are in connection with local churches to provide food, clothes, toiletries, and even furniture to the people within this community. But their primary focus is on meeting spiritual needs through developing close relationships with the families and individuals. The people on this street know these men and women as the church people, but there's a deep love and respect among the people that live on the street and the people that have been visiting their homes for the past few years. Through these relationships, God has provided opportunities for the people on the street to hear about the gospel. In the believers involved with Adopt-a-Block, I see the compassionate love of Christ that Paul Miller describes in his book, Love Walked Among Us: Jesus has shown us how to love: Look, feel, and then help. If we help someone but don't take the time to look at the person and feel what he or she is feeling, our love is cold. And if we look and feel, but don't do what we can to help, our love is cheap. Love does both. Pg 30 In essence, love shows compassion, which requires action + feeling. Jesus explains what compassionate love looks like while sharing the parable of the Good Samaritan with a lawyer seeking how to inherit eternal life. From Luke 10:25-37: Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.’ Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?" The one who showed compassion. The men and women involved with Adopt-a-Block in York County show the compassionate love of Christ through the way that they see the people and care for them. They see their physical and spiritual needs and they take action to care for both. It isn't easy, and these men and women pray for protection from God on a street known for violence, prostitution, and drug use. However, they get to see an entire community transformed through imaging the compassionate love of Jesus Christ. Christ exhibits compassionate love in his death on the cross. He was moved by compassion for his people and their enslavement to sin, and this compassion moves him to give his life on the cross for the ransom of many. What greater act of compassionate love is there? Reading the Love Shows Compassion section from Love Walked Among Us and ministering alongside the men and women involved with Adopt-a-Block opened my eyes to how Jesus shows compassion through feeling and action. I can often choose one or the other (action or feeling), but like Paul Miller writes, true compassion requires both. This post is a part of a series as I review and share thoughts spurred on by the book
Love Walked Among Us by Paul Miller. When I find a book that I love, I can't stop talking about it with friends or seeing real-life applications to what I read. Love Walked Among Us by Paul Miller is one of those books. I loved it because it was all about the love of Jesus, and I can't stop talking about it because it revealed so much about Christ's love to me. Paul Miller goes through Scripture passages about Jesus and shows how Christ's love is shown through his interactions with others. Miller then gives insightful real-life applications. He shows the reader the depth of Christ's love and how we can image Christ in loving others. Miller divides up the book by focusing on different attributes of love and how Christ exemplified those attributes. The book is divided up as follows: Part 1: Love Shows Compassion Part 2: Love Speaks the Truth Part 3: Love Depends on God (COMING SOON!) Part 4: Love is Energized by Faith (COMING SOON!) Part 5: Love Moves Through Death Into Life (COMING SOON!) Since this book was impactful, I decided to do a book review series for this one and focus each attribute that Miller explores, similarly to Tim Lane's review of the 7 Principles For Making Marriages Work by John Gottman. Which means, that next week we'll be looking at the section "Love Shows Compassion." With this new review series, you can also read this book with me. If you'd like to be a part of this series and read the book as I'm blogging about it, you can purchase it here. Join me in learning to love as Jesus loves! P.S. I'm a big fan of Paul Miller's work as a writer. I read his book A Loving Life last summer and highly recommend it. You can read my review of it here.
If I'm honest, I can often struggle when reading the Bible. I love reading the Good Book, and I often learn more about God while reading it, but I often struggle with understanding what I'm reading. This can lead to frustration and it can even lead to a discouragement that keeps me from wanting to dig deeper in a passage.
What I appreciate about Jen Wilkin's book, Women of the Word, is that she tackles this issue and many others. Many women feel similarly. They feel like the Bible is too difficult to read or understand. Not only that, but we can often read the Bible with the wrong perspective, thinking it's a self-help book for us when it's actually a book to teach us about God. Wilkin begins the book by saying, "This is a book about equipping women through Bible study." It equips women in knowing how to read the Bible to know God more, because when we know God more, our love for Him grows as well. That's the primary focus of this book: equipping women to study the Bible to know God more and as a result, grow in our love for Him. In order to encourage women in their study of the Bible, Wilkin goes through what she calls the Five P's of Sound Study: Study with Purpose Study with Perspective Study with Patience Study with Process Study with Prayer While it's a short read, it's very applicable. Wilkin goes through the Five P's and a Bible study method and then she takes a few pages to apply it through the book of James. I've been using the Bible study method that Wilkin uses since my freshman year of college, but her explanations and nuggets of wisdom gave me an encouraging and fresh perspective on Bible study. After reading each chapter, I found myself wanting to dig deeper into passages that I've found difficult to understand and comprehend. My main take away from this book is that studying the Bible is supposed to stretch our understanding of God and help us grow in knowing Him more. Which means that it's okay if we struggle through understanding a passage or if it feels like we're just not getting it. Searching for understanding is part of the process of learning, and when we finally do get it, it's all the more satisfying. We learn more about God in the process and become women of the Word. This book wasn't what I thought. I expected to read this book and not learn anything new. I was wrong, and humbled. I read Jefferson Bethke's first book, Jesus > Religion, in college and found that it met a need that I had at that time, namely seeing that a relationship with Jesus is greater than following man-made religious traditions. I found that this book was similar. It met a need, seeing that the story God is writing is so much greater and beautiful than I could ever imagine. To start off this review, I enjoy and appreciate Jefferson Bethke's work as a whole: his books, vlogs, and spoken word videos. I even follow him and his wife on Instagram. So when this book first came out, I was interested in checking it out, but I wasn't sure what to expect. I had planned on waiting a bit to read it, but Book Look Bloggers offered a chance for me to receive the book for free in exchange for a review. Free books? By an artist I enjoy? Sign me up! I flew through this book, but found that it really challenged me to think about things from Scripture I had never thought about before, like the implications of Jesus being King and Lord and what it means that God's Kingdom has come.
Each chapter offered an aspect of something in Scripture and how we often lose the significance of it through nominal Christianity. Jefferson Bethke doesn't make any new claims in his book. He simply opens up Scripture and points out things that are easy to miss, like the significance of the Sabbath, the temple, and many other things and how these things impact our overall view of God's story. My only criticism of this book is that each chapter feels like its own thought, and Bethke struggled in relating each chapter back to his main point. While the main point is clear, namely that Christianity is not what we think, I would have liked to see each chapter related back to that main point in a more clear and concise way. This is a book though that I would recommend to many. It isn't a deep theological read, but it's a nice appetizer to even richer theology, depth, and meaning of the full Biblical narrative. If you're interested in learning more about the book, check out the It's Not What You Think book website here. Loving people is hard work. I admit it. It's just plain hard in a world full of broken relationships and sin. Sometimes the hardest people to love are the people you love the most. And sometimes we're called to love people that are just plain hard to love. A Loving Life, by Paul Miller focuses on the book of Ruth and hesed love. Hesed is a Hebrew word that means God's loving kindness and his love for mankind. God loves us with a committed, steadfast, and sacrificial love. This is the love that we are called to show to others, but it is not an easy love and it is hard to apply. Ultimately, it comes from knowing the one that was the ultimate embodiment of hesed, Jesus. Paul Miller spends the book going through the book of Ruth, showing how Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz embrace hesed love at different points in the story and love sacrificially. Reading A Loving Life was the first time I considered the sacrifices Ruth makes to love Naomi. Reading the book of Ruth in a modern culture can make it really difficult to understand the gravity of Ruth's decision to stay with Naomi, but Miller focuses on the significance of Ruth's decision in her culture and how it is a display of self-sacrificing love. I could probably go on and on about this book. The content is challenging and refreshing, and it gave me a new perspective on the book of Ruth while also reminding me of the sacrificial love of Jesus. It encouraged me to think about areas in my life where God is calling me to love others with hesed love. Definitely worth a read if you want a loving life. It's hard to cultivate, but as evidenced by Ruth, so worth it! Below are some quotes that I enjoyed from the book. Instinctively, we hunt for a church or community that makes us feel good. It is good to be in a place where you are welcome, but making that quest central is idolatry. And like all idolatry, it ultimately disappoints. But if we pursue hesed love, then, wherever we go, we create community. (Pg 100) No story is more powerful than a gospel story. In fact, if you want to write a book or a movie script, you'd better make it a gospel story, or it likely won't sell. When Troy came out as a movie, I thought, "It will flop. It isn't a gospel story; it's a Greek tragedy." I was right. It flopped. Les Miserables, though, whether on Broadway, Public TV, or the big screen, is a hit. It's the power of the gospel. (Pg. 69) You endure the weight of love by being rooted in God. Your life energy needs to come from God, not the person you are loving. The more difficult the situation, the more you are forced into utter dependence on God. That is the crucible of love, where self-confidence and pride are stripped away, because you simply do not have the power or wisdom or ability in yourself to love. You know without a shadow of a doubt that you can't love. That is the beginning of faith - knowing you can't love. (Pg. 43) We come alive as we love. The depth and quality of Ruth's character emerge when she binds herself in love. She's an unusual combination of quiet power and love, intimidated neither by Naomi nor by the prospect of suffering. In fact, she fights to embrace suffering. She will not be out-loved. And she is thoughtful, actually brilliant. Her offer of herself as a living sacrifice is the only answer to Naomi's plan. (Pg. 44) This book is filled with great nuggets, and these are just a few!
Every now and then I stumble across a book that just makes my heart melt in a I-love-this-book-so-much-I-just-want-to-glue-my-face-to-it kind of way. And it usually takes a special kind of book to do that. When you read a lot, books tend to blur together, but the special ones with that extra chutzpah, or whatever it is, always stand out from the rest. A little book called Hinds Feet on High Places from an unknown-to-me author named Hannah Hurnard fell into my lap via a friend. This book came into my life at just the right time - hence it has that little something special. This book's main character is Much-Afraid (Really, that's her name). She's a shepherdess with disabilities and many fears, but she's employed by the Chief Shepherd. Over the course of the book, she goes on a journey set before her by the Chief Shepherd with two companions: Sorrow and Suffering. This journey is to the High Places, where the Chief Shepherd promises to make Much-Afraid's feet like that of a hind (or rather deer), so that she will be able to dance and climb the high places with great leaps. But in order to do this, the Chief Shepherd has to plant the seed of love into her heart, and when it grows, then she will be ready to leap like the hind. This little book is an allegory of the Christian walk, traveling with the Chief Shepherd and growing from the moment of salvation to full maturity. Much-Afraid's journey to the High Places coincides with her growing relationship with and trust in the Chief Shepherd. The moment I realized I liked this book was the moment I met Much-Afraid. Why? Because Much-Afraid might as well be my name too. There were many times in the book when Much-Afraid would speak that I found myself resonating with her thoughts and fears. The moment I realized I loved this book was the moment I met the Chief Shepherd. His love and care for Much-Afraid throughout the journey is like sweet honey to the soul. Many times, Much-Afraid is an unwilling traveler, but as the Chief Shepherd comes alongside, encourages, and leads her while also showing his deep love for her, Much-Afraid blossoms. My heart melted many times while reading this book, and that's why on the bookshelf in my mind, it has become a favorite. So if you've never read this book, I highly recommend it. If you are like me and can really resonate with being a Much-Afraid, this book is a sweet reminder that the Chief Shepherd can and is changing you to make you leap like the hind. You just have to let the seed of love grow. Also, here are some quotes that I just loved from the book: “I think,” said the Shepherd gently, “that lately the way seemed a little easier and the sun shone, and you came to a place where you could rest. You forgot that you were my little handmaiden Acceptance-with-Joy and were beginning to tell yourself it really was time that I lead you back to the mountains and up to the High Places. When you wear the weed of impatience in your heart instead of Acceptance-with –Joy, you will always find your enemies get an advantage over you.”
“Love is beautiful, but it is also terrible—terrible in its determination to allow nothing blemished or unworthy to remain in the beloved”…”He will never be content until he makes me what he is determined that I ought to be.” "The Shepherd laughed too. 'I love doing preposterous things,' he replied. "Why, I don't know anything more exhilarating and delightful than turning weakness into strength, and fear into faith, and that which has been marred into perfection." |
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