#Struggles: Following Jesus in a Selfie-Centered World - Book Review

Is there such a thing as communication overload?  I love all the ways I can keep in touch with more people in my life, from a niece that lives 2,000 miles away to old friends from grade school.  I can see what is happening in their lives through social media and feel like we are all walking through life together.  Or so it seems. 

Instead, I find myself feeling guilty of my failure to maintain relationships.  There are too many people to text or message or ‘like’ on social media.  I should be texting my niece more.  I should be checking social media more to see what is going on in people’s lives to see if there is something to acknowledge or something major happening in their lives.  I should be calling my parents more. I should call PEOPLE more.  I should be updating my in-laws more on my husband’s battle with cancer.   I can’t keep up.  My relationships are broader, including so many more people than ever before possible, but they are definitely shallower.

Craig Groeschel addresses these types of technology struggles in his book #Struggles:  Following Jesus in a Selfie-Centered World.  We want to believe we are not the sum of our likes our last post received, but it still feels like those little clicks matter.  And why do we try to impress each other and put on our best front?  We generally connect with people best through our weaknesses, not by impressing them with our strengths. 

Groeschel is in his mid-forties (as myself), so he remembers how communication “use to be” and can compare to now.  He sees the positives of social media, but also points out the narcissism it can create, the decline in our ability to be empathetic to others, and the opportunity to state your thoughts and opinions and move on without caring or knowing about the destruction you create.  He discusses the struggle with counting “likes”, the struggle with being authentic, the struggle with comparing ourselves to others, the struggle of being constantly distracted.  He provides perspective and answers too – ways we can recover contentment, intimacy, authenticity, compassion, integrity, and rest. 

We can learn how to keep technology in its place, to enjoy its benefits and aware of its obstacles.  I found this book enlightening and could connect with many of the struggles.  Awareness of the problems with social media is a huge first step in managing it.  I highly recommend this book to anyone who frequently uses social media and also wants to follow Jesus.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Zondervan Publishing in exchange for my honest review.

Delighting in God - Book Review

Several of A.W. Tozer’s books that are now considered Christian classics are stacked in my “to read next” pile of books.  A Christian pastor and theologian who lived in the first half of the 20^th century, A.W. Tozer is well known for his books The Knowledge of the Holy and The Pursuit of God.  The book Delighting in God is a newly published book based on the sermons he preached after he wrote Knowledge of the Holy.  Because this was a newly published book, it ended up at the top of my stack, above his other classics, which is a pity.

Sprinkled throughout this book, I found some great ideas and quotes that I want to remember about the importance of our perception of God, His character and nature, and how knowledge of things stirs us up with a passion to follow hard after Him.  Tozer discusses head knowledge versus heart knowledge.  He views salvation as something beyond the idea evangelical idea that one day I’m going to die and go to heaven.  However, Tozer complains a lot about the church, how they worship (he died in 1963), and how they fail to delight in God.  He is opinionated but acts as if his opinions are facts, and I wanted to argue with him.   

This book is more useful as a devotional style book with 18 short chapters that stand rather independently.  Furthermore, each chapter begins with a prayer and ends with a hymn, If you are a big fan of A.W. Tozer, you might like this book.  If you have never read A.W. Tozer, I would not recommend starting here.

I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I'm Happy for You (Sort Of....Not Really) -- Book Review

We live in a culture obsessed with comparison.  As parents, we feel the pressure intensely with our children, or in our careers as we see others succeed, or in our homes when we alternate locations for small group gatherings.  We may not even be aware we are suffering from a disorder – Obsessive Comparison Disorder.

How do you know if you suffer from Obsessive Comparison Disorder? 

• Do you feel delighted when you do something better than someone else?
• Do you feel like you do not measure up when someone else does something better than you?
• Do you look on Facebook or Pinterest or Instagram and wish your life was more like that?
• Do you feel better at someone else’s misfortune?
• Do you feel burdened by something unfair or unequal?
• Do you feel embarrassed about something you have that isn’t new or trendy?

 If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you will enjoy reading I’m Happy for You (Sort Of…Not Really) by Kay Wills Wyma.  We are content when comparison is not involved, and we may be oblivious to what we lack, but once we start measuring against a new standard, we either enter the Land of Discontent or the Land of Superiority. 

Full of anecdotes and illustrations from her life as well as highlights sprinkled throughout the book of others' experiences, Wyma shows how big the problem of comparison is and reminds us that things are not always what they seem. She also gives solutions without sounding preachy, weaving them into her stories by showing what happens when we can accept life’s inequalities, when we can say “I am happy for you” and mean it without comparing, and when we can know each other for who we are and not what we do.  When we can think less about ourselves instead of less of ourselves, then we can begin to overcome the discontentment or superiority that comes from comparing.

 

I thought this book was delightful, entertaining, and humorous while also exposing the painful layers of my heart that are guilty of comparison in ways I had never considered.  I highly recommend this book to mothers and grandmothers.  To learn more about this book, check out the following:

•  Author Kay Wills Wyma 
•  Excerpt from book

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for my honest review.

Coming Clean: A Story of Faith - Book Review

Sometimes it is just hard to face life.  We want to run from hurt or pain.  If we can't run from it, we want to mask it or cover it up.  Some do this chemically – pain pills, alcohol, weed, food, self-medicating with substances that temporarily replace the yucky feelings with good ones.  Others run from it by substituting their focus with something else – hard work, internet surfing, materialism, social media likes/approvals, status, evading the pain by burying it with action.  But when we do these things, we isolate ourselves; and we fail to hear the still small voice.

When I picked up Seth Haines’s book Coming Clean: A Story of Faith, I was not sure if it was the season to read it, but it was next on my list.  I was sitting in the hospital with my husband who was recovering from surgery and just diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer.  What interest could I find in a book about an alcoholic Christian, church leader, devoted father and husband on the search of sobriety? 

But what kept me reading was the pain that Seth Haines felt during a time of life when his two-year-old son was hospitalized and might not live. It was also during a time when he realized he had used alcohol as a balm to soothe him where God was not.  Writing in the style of a journal, he chronicled his path to sobriety over a period of several months.  He reached back to pain that stemmed from his childhood with a faith healer that failed him and how that experience had infected him and his faith now.  By facing the pain, digging into it and not covering it up and isolating himself, he found a new faith and a community that gave him strength. 

For me, this was more than a story of struggling with alcoholism and sobriety. It was a peek into another one’s life who struggles with the issues of healing and faith.  I could relate to the unhelpful things that people say and find the grace to forgive them in it.  I understood the desire to isolate oneself and could relate to wanting to cover up pain.  He showed me ways that we tend to run from pain, and how instead, we can let Jesus meet us there. 

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book from Zondervan Publishing in exchange for my honest review.

Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People - Book Review

God seems to sometimes show up in the least likely places.  In the midst of our crap, God reveals Himself and His ways to us, and if we choose to search and see it, it can be transformative.  This is the premise of Nadia Bolz-Weber’s book Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People. 

Nadia Bolz-Weber, Lutheran and founding pastor of the church House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, has a depth of understanding of living in this messed up world as a messed up person.  She writes from the vulnerable places in her heart, and her personality in all its unstereotypical beauty and rawness shines through. 

She acknowledges that we live in a world that admires only the strong, but God blesses the weak, and in those He may give us our greatest lessons, especially if we can count ourselves among them.  Through the stories of the least likely people whom she expects to hear from God, she shows how God reveals His grace, not so much in a warm fuzzy blanket but more like painfully being knocked to the ground.  We must be willing to look beyond the surface of people and our assumptions about them and see that they, too, are a child of God for whom Christ’s  body was broken.  She expresses the true meaning of living in Christian community with one another, sharing of the bread and wine among people who are very different but share the common bond of faith, and thus struggling through life together while displaying and receiving God’s grace and mercy.

Sometimes I am frustrated by my lack of gradual transformation.  Nadia shows us that it is not necessarily about trying to grow or seeking growth through spiritual disciplines, but rather, it’s about seeking God and seeing Him in others as well as in our weaknesses.  It’s about grace, love, and mercy – giving it and receiving it.  People are drawn to freedom and are hungry for freedom, not the “Christian lifestyle”.  Christian community is a coming together to live and tell and be made into the story of Jesus together, a melting and being re-formed.  While I struggled with some of her descriptive word choices (aka profanity), I absolutely loved this book.

For further information about this book, click on the following:

Book Info

Author Info

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Blogging for Books (Convergent Publishing) in exchange for my honest review.

Rising Above a Toxic Workplace - Book Review

At work, do you ever feel insecure, overworked, underpaid, or under-appreciated?  Are you frustrated when you are unable to meet expectations, or experience emotional harassment?  Is your boss a control freak, or do you frequently feel manipulated?  Or maybe you just find it hard to cope at work but you cannot put your finger on exactly why it is so difficult?  Sometimes workplaces can become unhealthy, harmful to your emotional health, even toxic. 

But there are ways you can cope, rise above it, and take care of yourself and others who are struggling.  In the book Rising Above a Toxic Workplace: Taking Care of Yourself in an Unhealthy Environment, by Gary Chapman, Paul White, and Harold Myra explain what a toxic workplace looks like and shed light on how it happens.  Simply understanding why leaders may create a toxic environment can help us understand better how to cope.  The authors counsel how to maintain our sanity and how to be a light in a place of darkness.  They use many real-life illustrations along with a survival guide and toolkit at the end.  Most of all, they help us know when it is time to leave those types of workplaces.

Workplaces change over time, sometimes good to bad, sometimes bad to good, sometimes a roller coaster in which we need to hang on for the ride.  I feel like the authors quickly turn to getting off the roller coaster more than how to cope with the drops and hanging on for change.  Many of their illustrations are of people who leave their toxic workplaces and then find a new job and live happily ever after.  In reality, it can be just as easy to walk into another toxic workplace, or one that starts out healthy and then management changes.  The subtitle of this book would be more appropriate to say “how to know when to leave” instead of “taking care of yourself in an unhealthy environment”.  Still, I thought this was an enlightening book and found some wise advice within it. 

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Moody Press in exchange for my honest review.

Encountering Truth: Meeting God in the Everyday - Book Review

Encountering Truth: Meeting God in the Everyday is a compilation of Pope Francis’s morning homilies from the Vatican chapel, St. Martha’s Chapel, from March 2013 to May 2014, edited by Father Antonio Spadaro.  Pope Francis provides true homilies, not written speeches, to the ordinary people from a variety of walks of life who attend the mass.  The preface by Father Spadaro is nearly 50 pages long and provides an informative background on possible ways to read and understand the spiritual richness of the homilies, and how to draw a personal encounter with God through them.

Pope Francis’s messages are simple, gospel-centered, sometimes strong, but always positive too. He proposes what we can do better instead of telling us what we must do, providing a challenge for us to strive toward.  He is truly a compassionate spiritual teacher of living the spiritual life and living out the gospel.  Whether Catholic or Protestant, there is much here for thought, guidance, and encouragement.

If interested, check out the following links:

More Information about this book

Read Chapter 1

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for my honest review.

Slow to Judge - Book Review

The Christian tendency to rush to judgement to soon or too often stifles dialog.  In David Cape’s book Slow to Judge, he shows that if we listen, we may be given a chance to speak.  However, if you are listening in order to fulfill your agenda of hoping to speak and be heard, you miss the point. 

David Capes, a professor at Houston Baptist University, discusses love, forgiveness, phobias, and problems with the cultural view of tolerance.  While the book starts off slow, most of the substance is in the last third of the book, especially in examining the definition of authentic tolerance and exploring when it is acceptable to judge and when it is not. 

The sub-title of this book turned me off at first: “Sometimes it’s okay to listen”.  Isn’t it ALWAYS okay to listen? Isn’t listening a way to express kindness or love?  But Capes points out that sometimes there are things that are not worth listening to.  If it is too offensive and injurious, we should not waste our time on toxic thinking – racism, facism, terrorism, etc.  Sometimes it is okay to judge. We need to speak out against evils like human trafficking, not be tolerant of it. 

Authentic tolerance intrinsically means handling things that make us uncomfortable, requiring us to practice a tolerance based on humility, an open heart, and love that gives the other person dignity and respect.  Because of general revelation, any culture enlightened by truth can be no other than truth revealed by our God and Father -- not promoting relativism but truth that is common for everyone because it is real. We can all learn from each other.

We don’t have to just join hands and talk about all we have in common.  We can discuss our differences as well, and listen, and learn from each other, even when it makes us uncomfortable.  I highly recommend this book, especially the last three chapters.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book from BookLook in exchange for my honest review.