You'll Get Through This - book review

Title:  You'll Get through This

Author:  Max Lucado

        The message is the message you need:  You'll get through this.  It won't be painless.  It won't be quick.  But God will use this mess for good.  Don't be foolish or naïve.  But don't despair either.  With God's help, you'll get through this.  Yes!  Deliverance is to the Bible what jazz music is to Mardi Gras:  bold, brassy, and everywhere.

        Sometimes our "pits" come in the form of a diagnosis or a traumatic injury.  Joseph's came in the form of a cistern.  Joseph was thrown into a hole and despised.  Sometimes we are thrown into an unemployment line and forgotten, into a divorce and betrayed, into a bed and abused.  Our life is reduced to one quest:  to get out of the pit and never get hurt again.  Pits have no easy exit.  Joseph's story got worse before it got better.  Abandonment led to enslavement, entrapment, and imprisonment.  He was sucker-punched, sold out, mistreated.  People made promises only to break them.  If hurt is a swampland, then Joseph was sentenced to a life of hard labor in the everglades.

        Yet, Joseph never gave up.  He never became bitter.  He never let anger metastasize into hatred.  His heart never hardened.  He not only survived; he thrived.

        Joseph's life offers this lesson:  in God's hands, intended evil becomes ultimate good.  Life in the pit stinks, but it forces us to look upward.  Someone from up there must come down here and give you a hand.  God did for Joseph.  In the right time, in the right way, He will do the same for you. 

        Max Lucado acknowledges the depth of sorrow and trouble in modern life and offers realistic hope in a faith in God, even when such hope is hard to find.

        Max Lucado ministers at the Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, Texas, where he lives with his wife, Denalyn, and a sweet misbehaving mutt, Andy.  More than 100 million readers have found comfort in his writings.

Runaway Emotions - A book review

Title:  Runaway Emotions

Author:  Jeff Schreve

 

        This is a well written book about our emotions and how to deal with them.  We all have them and we all need to know how to deal with them and to realize that they are no unusual.  The author explores emotions from embarrassment to depression.  He helps us to know what causes us to feel inferior, loneliness, frustration, worry, anger, guilt, discontentment, and depression.  Emotions make life interesting.  Life without emotions would not be fascinating in the least.  He explains how emotions make life worth living.  They are the colors of life.  Unfortunately, as fallen human beings living in a fallen world, we aren't given the privilege to pick and choose which emotions we will experience in our lives.  We appreciate all the joy, love, laughter, peace and wonder we can wrap our arms around.  But then we also have to deal with the dark side of the emotional spectrum.  There we find fear, worry, anger, and bitterness.  Guilt, loneliness, and embarrassment also join in to rear their ugly heads.  Sometimes these negative emotions run away with our joy and peace.  The author likens these negative, runaway emotions to smoke detectors.  They tell us, "There's a problem here.  Something's out of adjustment and desperately needs attention.  The author helps understand that even these negative emotions can play a positive role in our lives.  He uses scripture to show us that there is a specific and compelling message in each of our negative, painful emotions.  He lets us know that God doesn't want any of us to get stuck in one or more or these troubling feelings.  The choice is ours to make.

 

    Jeff Schreve is a passionate communicator of God's word with a great desire to help people connect with Jesus Christ and experience His love and plan for their lives.  Since 2003 he has served as pastor of First Baptist Texarkana, Texas.  In 2005 he foualnded From His Heart Ministries a national and international radio and television ministry.

Victim of Grace Book Review

Title:  Victim of Grace

    Robin Jones Gunn is the much-loved author of several award winning series, including Christy Miller, Sierra Jensen, Katie Weldon, Glenbrooke, and Sisterchicks, with more than4.5 million books sold worldwide.  Robin serves on the board of Media Associates International and often speaks locally and internationally.  She and her husband have two grown children and live in Hawaii. 

    This book helps us to understand how God comforts us when we feel as if we are at the mercy of other people's decisions or victims of circumstances.  Sometimes our faith seems to be tested and the "Teacher" seems silent during this test.  Robin helps us to consider women in the Bible such as Hannah keeping her promise to God to give her son back to Him  She kept her promise even though it hurt.  We learn to understand that our circumstances do not limit God.

    We also learn to wonder how our family legacy might be changed if we put all our hope in God the way Ruth did.  Ruth managed to navigate her way through her relationship with Naomi even though Naomi had become bitter and declared he emptiness to others.

    This book was extremely helpful for dealing with life's happenings.  I especially enjoyed the discussion questions at the end of the book.

I give this book 5 stars.

Karen M. Buckner

The Lambs Agenda - A book review

Ttle:  The Lamb's Agenda

Author:  Samuel Rodriguez

 

    Rev. Samuel Rodriguez is president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, America's largest Hispanic organization.  Named by CNN as "The leader of the Hispanic Evangelical Movement" and by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of America's new evangelical leaders.

    The Roman historian Tacitus, writing nearly two thousand years ago, told us how the Emperor Nero thought he had put an end to that "class hated for their abominations, who are commonly called Christians.  Tacitus wrote::

                                                                    

     Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.

 

    If Christians could survive Nero, if they could survive Lenin and Hitler, them they can survive the materialist present.  They have already outlasted the Beatles, whose John Lennon told us nearly fifty years ago:  "Christianity will go.  It will vanish and shrink.  I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right.  We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first--rock and roll or Christianity."

    Life is a cross.  No other symbol incorporates passion and promise like the cross--a simple symbol depicting two pieces of wood, one vertical and the other horizontal, successfully branded the eternal hope of glory to all mankind.

     In this book Samuel Rodriguez offers a blue print for Christian rejuvenation, a prophetic call to orient our lives at the nexus of the cross.

    Joining the Christianity of Martin Luther King jr. and Billy Graham, The Lamb's Agenda reveals the crucial connection between biblical social justice and spiritual righteousness.  Getting back to the basics of Christianity means extending our efforts simultaneously in the vertical direction of GOD and the horizontal direction of our neighbors.

        This is one of the most inspiration books  I have ever read.  I give this book 5 stars.

    

Karen M. Buckner

When Donkeys Talk - Book Review

Title:  When Donkeys Talk

Author:  Tyler Blanski 

    Mr. Blanski gives us a different look at Christianity.  Whether you agree with him or not, you may enjoy his book.  I didn't care for his ideas, however I am sure some people will.  The book makes the oint that the medium of God's message is not important---only the message is.  An ass or an angel, it doesn't matter.  It is difficult to imagine a set of beliefs more suggestive of mental illness than those that lie at the heart of many of our religious traditions.  According to Mr. Blanski, theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance.  I felt this book talked down to the reader in a large amount of intellectual "babble".  Many times I found myself lost in words.

Just Like Jesus - Book Review

Author:  Max Lucado

Title:  Just Like Jesus

 

    Max Lucado is one of America's favorite writers with more than 100 million products in print.  He serves the Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, Texas with his wife, Denalyn.

    This book is beautifully written.  It helps us accept the simple truth that God loves us.  Not only does He love each of us exactly as we are, He wants us, little by little, to become like Him.  He loves us enough to live within us, making our hearts His home.  Max reminds us of just how far God will go to transform us into His likeness.  God loves us just the way we are, but He refuses to leave us that way.  More than anything, He wants us to be just like Jesus.  This book helps us to understand the heart of Jesus.

    The heart of Jesus is forgiving, compassionate, listening, God-intoxicated, worship hungry, focused, honest, pure, hope-filled, rejoicing and enduring.  This may sound like too much, but  this little book explains it all in an easy to absorb fast read.  At the end of the book there is a complete study guide.  The study guide covers each chapter seproup study separately and completely.  It would be a great book for a group study, as well as a personal study.  I can't think of a greater gift than to be like Jesus.  Christ felt to guilt; God wants to banish yours.  God wants to remove our bad habits.  Jesus had no fear of death; God wants us to be fearless.  Their are many more qualities that are covered in this book that we can learn from studying the heart of Jesus.

 

I give this book five stars.