For The Love {Book Review}

Jen Hatmaker/ amazon.com

From the inside out is the view point Jen Hatmaker writes in her latest book For the Love.

Cheeky, snarky, funny and down to earth honest... about herself as well as the Word of God. Jen is a must read author  I suggest you add to your favorite authors list.

In her book, For the Love, Jen takes on life, love and living in a manner that is sometimes raw and personal, telling on herself as one who has lived and loved life from one of the best wife and mothers as well as one of the women who sometimes just doesn't get it right.  She is open, honest and writes like you are her best friend who is coming over for coffee real soon and you can't wait to talk all kinds of girl talk.  

Jen also gets in the readers business with deeply challenging theological insights into how to treat the least and the lost.  The marginalized. You will enjoy her chapter "On Calling and Haitian Moms".  Maybe you won't enjoy that chapter since it might get in your business. Especially if you think that being a Christian means you are supposed to be blessed with riches, health, wealth and prosperity here on earth.  

"If a sermon promises health and wealth to the faithful, it its' true, because that theology makes God an absolute monster who only bless rich westerners and despises Christians in Africa, India... everywhere else a sincere deliver remains poor.  If it isn't true for a poor single Christina mom in Haiti, it isn't true."

Jen not only challenges the reader to consider how our faith is to be cultivated and lived out at home, in the church and beyond, she also gives practical ways of living loved right where you are and loving those around you in a way that is genuine and honest and also fun.  

Recipes, family stories, thank you notes (so much fun to read!!) and everyday gospel that goes beyond the church walls.  These are the things you will read about in Jen Hatmaker's book For the Love.

***I ordered For the Love from amazon.com.  I have in no way been endorsed for this review.  The opinions expressed are my own.  Links are provided for copyright purposes. 

Curious Faith

 Available on Amazon.    

                                                                  

“What feels like drowning at age nineteen so often can’t even compare to the ways we gasp for air later in life.” #CuriousFaith

I want to invite you into a story.  The story of a life where you are encouraged to ask questions, to stop and gaze, marvel, wonder, be inspired. A story that is tragic, beautiful, agonizing and wondrous all at the same time, yet in different seasons. 

Logan Wolfram has written her story in a charming and challenging way that causes the reader to embrace her down to earth wit and sarcasm and good friend personality. Life is messy and she doesn’t mind telling her part of it.

But then, Logan takes the reader past the realities of life to the supernatural limitless power of the Holy and stands there in awe of the One who is ultimately after only one thing in us.  Our heart for Him.

Logan’s story resonates in my own heart.  The seeking and searching out more of God than what had been taught from childhood, the bravery to move past the voices of friends and family into an unknown place that lacked familiarity in traditional spiritual practices. Logan has allowed herself to ask questions of God from a place of curiosity that longed for real, life-giving relationship with God in the real living out of life begging the question of God, “Is there more of you?”

“People take offense and think that the shift in your own walk with God is a commentary of their faith in Him….some even worried that we were walking away from God altogether.” #CuriousFaith

www.loganwolfram.com

Logan, her husband and two sons have been courageous enough to seek more of God in their lives, finding in the heartache of the loss of infants, the wrestling of two young boys, the presence of life long friends, missing the presence of great friends who passed too young, clinging to God and His purposes even when it did not make sense to do so.  They have found God in the faces of the least and the lost near and far that have needed to know that Grace reaches long and wide to meet us right where we are.

Logan’s story is not my story or yours exactly.  We all have our own story.  Maybe you will see yourself there…or maybe God will reveal Himself to you in a different way.  Together we can celebrate His ways, while curious to us, can be trusted. 

The question is, however, will we seek our own God story with a faith that is curious enough to step out and live in the love of the One who loves us most? Even if danger is all around us, will we trust God for the journey? 

A Must Read!!

*I was given a pre-release copy of Curious Faith as a member of Logan's Launch team for her new book.  I have in no way been endorsed for this book review.  

The thoughts and opinions are my own.  Links to Logan Wolframs website and Amazon.com have been provided for copyright purposes.  

Interrupted_A Book Review

I love Jen Hatmaker.  

She is my new best friend and I love her. 

We have never personally met, or had a conversation or even looked at each other in the eye as we passed in the isle of the Target or Marshall’s store.  But I would like to sit down and have a cup of coffee with her because she speaks deeply in to my soul about kids, family, faith, coffee, and what really living out the gospel looks like in the everyday ordinary living of life.  

I want to know more about her practical approach to doing life as a ministry family. And she doesn’t intimidate me like some other authors and speakers do… I like her a lot.

Recently I read Jen’s book 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess (finally…I had some serious reservations and didn’t want her to get in my business) I was immediately invited into her life and her real messed-up way of looking at life as a woman who seeks to honor the Lord, but gets confused about what that is supposed to look like compared to the American Dream paraded in front of us while we sip OJ and eat our morning cereal everyday.  

Because she included the “messy” of her experiment and not a sanitized 10 Steps to Overcome style or approach, I decided she is my kind of friend.  One who will say to you, “This is how the Bible teaches us to do/say/speak/act…, but let’s be real… it’s hard and we all get it wrong, but that’s why Grace is amazing.”  

God has enough grace to make up the difference between what we lack and 
Who He IS

Yes… I like Jen for this reason. And because she likes coffee! 

You will want to read Interrupted if you have, as I have been, asking questions like:  

How to reconcile world poverty and the lavish lifestyles of the not so rich and famous, the everyday ordinary living out the gospel when we seem to have excess and the majority of the world has nothing but Jesus.  

They will have nothing  if we don’t tell them, show them, give them Jesus. What do you do? Can we go to them? Do we go to them?

And since going and doing the gospel around the world is not an option for most of us, how do we participate and be involved from right where we live?  What does that look like?

Jen teaches by example in her book what she and her family have discovered about the ministry.  The Gospel begins right in your own neighborhood, backyard, street, city, area where you live.  Taking the gospel to the world sometimes means making your purchases for our household differently and thinking about who made our items and at what cost to the lives of others? 

“Jesus didn’t have much patience with believers who attempted to limit the scop of “who my neighbor is” to the fewest possible people (see Lune 10:25-37)” ~Jen Hatmaker, Interrupted, p 107

Together Jen and her husband Brandon learn what they thought belonged to them was really God’s and if He said to give something away, then they could trust Him to provide what they needed.  

The planting of a church in a neighborhood with a people group that is different than the one you’re used to will become a HUGE Interruption in your life!!! My husband, Mike and I, understand this completely having planted a church in own area with a  people group that was hungry to be reached with clear, simple teaching of the Word of God and to see that Loving God means Loving People.  The end.

On several occasions, God said to Jen and Brandon “Leave your shoes, give them away.” So they did. They went home barefooted; believed God had a higher purpose than for them to wear their favorite well worn boots they had enjoyed earlier in the day.  Guess what?  God did prove faithful to them, they are not shoeless and they are happier and blessed knowing that they serve the God of the Universe who takes care of everything so we don’t have to pretend that we do!!!

We have become church people who go to church thinking it is our right and opportunity to attend in order to be “filled” week after week, entertained if possible.  Jen and Brandon bring light to that attitude and teach that we are to BE THE CHURCH by simply loving people right where they are and telling them about Jesus.

Please.  If you have been a church attender all your life… you really NEED to read Interrupted.  Just like I needed to rethink my own love for God and people, you probably do too.  Just sayin’.  We tend to get too comfortable in our idea and approach to the Gospel lived out and need a sight adjustment from time to time. 

Longing for Paris_Book Review

I am a day dreamer.  I have so many ideas and thoughts and plans of things I want to do, places I want to go, things I want to accomplish in life... and also I want to be perfect at everything!  

How unrealistic of me. 

“ I want to know how to live between this tension of following my dreams and living a Jesus-following, cross-centered life.  I want to know how not to shut out my longing, while at the same time giving myself to the daily work…does the Lord approve of my dreams?"

Maybe God has placed these longings and dreams and hopes inside of me for some kind of higher purpose with a greater plan and design for my life that is so much BIGGER than I could ever hope or dream. 

“Something in me aches as I come back to reality.  Why these dreams?  Why this longing? I’m happy with my life, thankful for all I have. And yet…"

Sara Mae's new book Longing for Paris is designed to help answer and teach how our longings, hopes dreams and longings of the heart are actually God ordained.  Sara Mae shares the uncovering her own motivation and desire for the city of Paris, the ultimate romantic-beautiful destination so many only dream of- and how that very longing and dream is what led her to pursue Paris right in the middle of the everyday ordinary walking out of life. 

Sara Mae walks the reader through her own thought process of pursuing the longings of her heart and beautifully shares her life and family while living out faith and grace.  In wisdom she encourages the reader to embrace the process the walk of faith requires while pointing toward deeper purposes that God has placed in us.

My favorite quote in the entire book:

“We can choose to just see or we can see and experience."

If you have dreams that you just know are God placed in your heart but can't find them to be your reality, then READ this book! It just might be that God has indeed placed these dreams in your heart, but what they look like under His loving eye is a little different-yet so much bigger and better- than you can ever imagine.