Relentless Pursuit by Ken Gire

 

 

For the most part, I really enjoyed reading this book. It gave me new insights on who God is and how He desires a personal relationship with each one of us - so much so that He "relentlessly pursues" us. Wow! What an awesome thought. The God of the Universe cares so much about each one of us. We, who are unworthy. We, who sin and want our own way. Yet, God pursues us!

 

 

This book was somewhat disjointed, though since I wasn't able to sit down and read it all at once I thought maybe it was just me and the fact that a lot was going on in my life. However, at least for me, this disjointedness didn't distract me from the overall book or its message.

 

The book is broken up into the following chapters:

1. The Pursuit

2. The Pursuer

3. The Nature of the Pursuit

4. The Part of Us That Is Lost

5. God's Passion for the Outsider

6. God's Provision for the Outsider

7. Jesus' Mission to the Outsider

8. God's Mandate to the Insider

9. The Part of Me that was Found

 

I enjoyed learning more about the life of the author who wrote the poem, "The Hound of Heaven". As well as reading more about C. S. Lewis that I didn't know before. I found it especially interesting that C. S. Lewis was at one time a self-proclaimed atheist and yet even he was pursued by God and came to be a Christian - one who wrote many books with Christian themes.

 

The author does write about his own life - a lot! But I think this book would be hard to write without showing how your life was and how you studied and came to realize that God is constantly pursuing us and that He puts the desire in us to pursuit Him back.

 



If there have been times in your life when you've felt like an outsider, this would be a good book for you to read! If you're not sure about Christianity and what God is all about. Please read this.

 

 

I received this book for free from Bethany House in exchange for an honest review. I was under no obligation to give it a positive review. The thoughts in this review are my own. 

 

 



 

Unstuck: Your Life. God's Design. Real Change. by Arnie Cole & Michael Ross

As Christians, we often get in a rut with our spiritual lives. Hard times may come and we don't know why things are going wrong and we wonder if God even cares. We question why this is happening to us and sometimes we even wonder if it is worth following God. After all, if He truly loved us like He said He does would He allow this to happen to me?

I don't know the excuses for every believer, but I know my excuses. I know that I've wondered many times how do I live a life that is honoring to God. How do I have a passion for Christ - continually? There always seem to be questions and often it seems hard to get any answers.

When I saw that this book touched on the very topic of many of my questions, I jumped at the chance to read it. The answer is simple: read your Bible. As you read your Bible, God is able to communicate to you in a very real way.

For most Christians, I doubt this book is going to have a "new" solution for you. But their whole point is we don't know God and we don't know what He would have for us because we aren't reading His Words to us. It isn't a hard answer, though it can be a very difficult thing to do.

This book addresses many of the excuses that we give for not reading the Bible and goes into how profitable it is to read your Bible at least 4 days a week to see continual growth. Even though I'm telling you more about a book than I normally would, I don't feel that this is going to "ruin" the book and its contents for you.

The authors are very down-to-earth and share many stories of other believers who have been stuck in a rut and how the Bible has transformed them. They even include their own stories.

I really enjoyed reading this book even though it really wasn't eye-opening it was a good reminder of where we find the source of our life. This book would make an awesome study for an individual or for a Bible study group. The end of each chapter gives a Scripture passage to remember and a thought to consider. It asks questions to make you think about what is going on in your own spiritual walk with God.

I would highly recommend this book to anybody that is struggling in their spiritual walk because it had such practical applications.

I received this book for free through Bethany House and was under no obligation to give it a positive review. All the thoughts in this blog are my own. 

Every Day a Friday: How to be Happier 7 Days a Week by Joel Osteen

I was so excited to see that I'd be able to review this book when I got an email about it. At the time, I was so stressed with working from home and trying to take care of my child at the same time I felt like this would be a great book for me to read to gain a better perspective on life. When it finally came in the mail I was so excited, I couldn't wait to start reading it but like so many times life got in the way - now months later I was finally able to read this book.

This book had such great potential and a lot of really good points. Much of the book was great! There was so much in the book that was so practical...being content where you are, keeping a positive attitude at all times, finding a reason to laugh every day (for me - that's hanging out with my daughter), giving thanks for what you have. There were so many great thoughts.

I guess my main concern with this book is it seemed that the main message for each chapter was do "a" and God has promised to bless you, do "b" and God will bless you. I have no problem with the fact that God blesses people because I know that many times God is most glorified when true believers praise him and declare how God has blessed them, but I just felt that he really didn't have Scripture to back up what he was saying at times. My other concern was the book seemed to be so focused on how can this help me. Many of the things he kept saying were that God will bless you because you are so wonderful or whatever point he was trying to make, but there seemed to be little in most (not all) chapters that gave any indication that the reason we were made was not to bring glory to ourselves and so that we can live great lives, but so that God will be most glorified.

Sometimes we can be doing everything right and we can be happy and joyful, but we won't always see the blessings here on earth. That I guess was where I felt like this book was a little off. Much of our blessing won't come here on earth, but will come when we reach heaven.

Even though I have some concerns about the book, it really did help to either change my perspective or to reiterate that I'm on the right track. I would still recommend this book to someone who is struggling to believe that God is good and that you can be happy even when times are tough, but I'd probably have to tell them to read it with a grain of salt.

As I wrap this up, I did want to mention that I received this book for free from Faith Words in exchange for an honest review. I was under no obligation to give a positive review.