Archive of ‘Book Review’ category

Gay Girl Good God Book Review

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This book review of Gay Girl Good God: The Story of Who I Was, and Who God Has Always Been, by Jackie Hill Perry is written by Drey Clark. Drey serves as a student pastor at Champion Forest Baptist Church in Houston Texas and is currently working on his ThM at Dallas Theological Seminary.  He also hosts the podcast “Good theological Thursday” with the goal to bring community and theology to the next generation.

In her book, Gay Girl Good God Jackie Hill Perry presents her personal story of becoming a Christian in light of her same sex attraction. As the subtitle notes, Jackie carefully walks through the story of who she is and who God has always been. Not only is this book a great resource for people who share a similar story, but it also offers several pastoral suggestions.

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Best Books for Intimacy in Marriage

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Best Books for Intimacy in Marriage

The Mingling of Souls

In this book Matt Chandler addresses topics of romance and sex. This book focuses on the marital process as a whole and gives tools to understand your partner and plan ahead for greater intimacy. (Buy on Amazon.)

Now You’re Speaking My Language

This book is specifically from a Christian worldview and is a useful guide to building a strong marriage that is based on intimacy. (Buy on Amazon.)

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Live on Purpose + Make it Happen Book Review

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Lara casey

In Make it Happen, Lara Casey shares 5 ways to create a life of purpose and make it happen. What is your “it”? Maybe you have a goal that you have never been able to reach or a dream you have kept locked away – now is the time to make it happen.

Lara’s steps towards making it happen are not only practical, but very encouraging and thought provoking. I want to share with you her 5 steps and then a few of the thought-provoking questions that I loved most from each step. Believe me, her book is filled with hundreds of other questions that you will want to process though. (more…)

6 Scripture Passages about God’s Love

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God’s love for us is complex, fascinating, and beautiful. His love for us could only happen through the death of Jesus. It is hard to comprehend that we humans are so sinful that another person had to die for us in order for a perfect God to love us. Jesus had to die for us, and his death was God’s largest act of love. As this Christmas season is approaching, I wanted to share scripture that explains God’s love.

Here are 6 passages that show us a glimpse into the amazing love of God:

  1. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.” – John 15:12-16.
  2. “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” – Romans 5:8.
  3. “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” – Romans 8:38-39.
  4. “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” – 1 Corinthians 13:4-7.
  5. “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” – 1 John 3:1.
  6. “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.” – 1 John 4:9-12.

As Christmas draws near, ask God to reveal his love to you. Ask him to show you his love in a powerful and personal way.

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In the Middle, You Find Jesus | Charlotte Gambill Book Review

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I recently went to a women’s conference called Dare To Be by Natalie Grant and Charlotte Gambill. Natalie led worship and then Charlotte led the teaching. It was very inspiring and impacting! Charlotte opened my eyes to something in scripture I had never before thought about – the middle. Charlotte also wrote a book about this called The Miracle in the Middle: Finding God’s Voice in the Void. This is a fabulous book that I would recommend with you! Because I loved the conference and book so much, I want to share her message and expand on the topic.

In Mark 6:45-52, the story is shared where Jesus walks on water towards his disciples. In these verses, the men were in the middle of the trip between the land where Jesus was and the land on the other side. The boat was in the middle of the lake, far away from Jesus. I want to focus on the word- middle. This is pulled directly from verse 47, “Later that night, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and he was alone on land.”

How would you define the middle? For the disciples, they were literally in the middle of the water, but the middle can look different for everyone. Maybe you are in the middle of waiting for something, middle of a struggle, middle of a breakup, middle of singleness, middle of a conflict, there are lots of middles in our lives. Right now I am in the middle of trying to figure out what career to work towards. I would love to be at the end and know exactly what God wants me to do, but right now I am where God wants me, in the middle.

Being in the middle may not be comfortable, but it requires trusting that God will get you to the other side.

The disciples would have felt more comfortable if they would have been on land next to Jesus, and maybe they thought about turning around and going back to where they came from. Right now I am in the life stage of singleness. I have to choose daily to trust that God knows what he is doing. Some days I may want to run back to my old lifestyle of dating who I wanted instead of waiting for a Godly man. I want to run back to what I know is comfortable, but I don’t because I am trusting that God will use this middle to glorify himself.

The middle may not be comfortable, but it does have an end.

The enemy knows when we are in the middle. Because each step we take gets us closer to the other side and closer to a break through. Every middle is equal distance both ways, so sometime it would require the same amount of work to go back to the beginning as the end.

As humans, we don’t want the journey, we want the results. We want to get to the end. We want to know what decisions to make, be married, get past the conflicts, and get out of the boat!

In the middle is when you put to practice all that you say and believe. It may be easy on the shore to say that you believe God is good and that his plans are perfect, but how you live out your life in the middle is the proof.

In the middle you see the miracle. Jesus walks on water and comes to you. When you are thinking how will I ever make it to the other side, Jesus performs a miracle.

In the middle,  you find Jesus.

The greek word used for middle, mesos, in this passage is also found in another passage in the Bible. John 19:18,  “There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.”

So where was Jesus? In the middle. He was in the middle of dying a painful death for you and I. He was in the middle of saving us from the pain of our own sinful choices. He was in the middle of saving us from the hurt this world causes us. Jesus was in the middle!

When you are in the middle of your struggles, waiting for hope, or  just want to get to the other side, remember that Jesus is in the middle.

I hope this post has been encouraging! Be sure to add me on social media and share my blog with your friends! Thanks!

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