February Book Recommendations

Here are this month’s book recommendations. I hope you enjoy them! Let me know what some of your favorites are as well. 

 

Fiction – To Win A Prince by Toni Shiloh 

I think this book has one of the best character journeys. The former prince Ekon experiences demotion, humiliation, struggles, and quite a learning curve as his entire life changes. Along the way, he discovers surprising things about himself and his family that cause him to genuinely search for answers and meaning in life. His journey to faith is so well portrayed, and the final plot twist was incredibly moving. The other main character, Iris, also learns an important lesson, that only God can change a person’s heart. If you enjoy meaningful Christian romance, this is a worthwhile read! 

 

 

Non-Fiction – Good Leaders Ask Great Questions by John Maxwell

As a life coach, I naturally ask a lot of questions. This book had great insights about the kind of questions that are helpful and meaningful. It also covered how to listen well and other qualities of an effective leader. Knowing the best questions to ask ourselves and others can help us to grow, learn, work, lead, and serve more effectively. I really enjoyed this great resource!

 

 

Children’s – The Treasure Tree: Helping Kids Understand Their Personality by John Trent and Gary Smalley

This fun book helps children understand the different personality types in ways they can relate to. The four animal characters represent different ways of how we think and relate. The characters have to work together using their unique strengths to reach their goal. This story helps kids better understand others, as well as identify their own personality traits. Great for family reading and discussion time!

 

He Sees Me – Guest Post

This month I’m happy to share a guest post from my friend Haley. I hope her testimony of God’s faithfulness and presence encourages you today. 

 

He Sees Me – by Haley V. Craft

 

These past two years have been an extended exercise in faith for me and my husband. We’ve walked through loss, health crises, legal challenges, publishing delays, and generally put our bank account through some fights that have left it a bit more bruised than we care to admit.

 

It’s been so discouraging, and all that pressure became crushing when we got some more bad news. First, it became clear that we will have to get a new car, despite our best efforts to get our cars paid off. It was yet another financial hit at a time when we were still trying to recover after having to replace my husband’s transmission.

 

Then I discovered that the physical copies of my book, which I had just launched the day before, wouldn’t be delivered in time for an event where I had been put in the lineup of speakers specifically to testify about how God had brought me through all the challenges of my unusually complicated publishing process. 

 

I felt so defeated. How would we ever be able to afford a house? How would we ever afford the expenses of having children? All our goals and dreams seemed to fly another million miles away.

 

The next morning, I got up, turned on that day’s episode of Daily Audio Bible, and started getting ready for the day as normal. When the recording got to the daily passage in Psalms, this is what I heard:

 

“The steps of a man are established by the Lord,

And He delights in his way. 

When he falls, he will not be hurled headlong, 

Because the Lord is the One who holds his hand. 

I have been young and now I am old, 

Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken 

Or his descendants begging bread.” 

–Psalm 37:23–25 (NASB)

 

If there has ever been a time when I experienced, more than just believed, the truth that God sees us and our struggles, it was at this moment. I was drowning in fears of financial failure and how that would affect our ability to care for our future children, and God met me right there through a few verses of Scripture written thousands of years ago.

 

Experiencing this reminded me of Exodus 3 when God told Moses that He had seen the oppression and pain of His people. The word translated as seen in our Bibles, doesn’t just refer to physical sight in the original language. It also carries a connotation of understanding something by experiencing it.

 

God wasn’t just saying that He saw what was going on from a distance. He was there with His people, experiencing their pain and providing the rescue they needed. That’s the God we serve! He’s not just interested in walking with us through the garden of Eden. He’s the God who joins us in the valley of the shadow of death, bringing with Him everything we need to make it through.

 

I don’t know about you, but just the thought of the Almighty being willing to come meet me in those dark and scary places relieves the tension in my shoulders. There is rest to be found in the truth—rest from fear and rest from despair—and I pray that you lean into that rest. Especially on the difficult days.

 

“The Lord said, ‘I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt, and have given heed to their cry because of their taskmasters, for I am aware of their sufferings. So I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey'” (Exodus 3:7–8a NASB).

 

*I recommend Haley’s new book Practicing Swordplay. It’s a practical, powerful guide to overcoming the enemy’s lies and confidently walking in God’s truth as the victor you are in Christ! 

 

Haley V. Craft is a follower of Jesus and a life-long learner who fell in love with the power and beauty of language when she was in college. When she’s not teaching, she loves encouraging others to discover God’s fingerprints in the ordinary. She and her husband live in Mississippi where she enjoys making her students laugh, writing, and hobbies like designing jewelry and enjoying the sunshine with a comfy chair and a good book. You can connect with Haley V. on her website where she writes a weekly devotional: https://haleyvcraft.com/

 

 

January Book Recommendations

As we start a new year, have you already set aside a stack of books you’d like to read? I have a pile of good books I hope to read this year. But I’m always looking for new books and authors as well. =) Let me know what some of your favorites are, and here are a few recommendations from me to start the year. 

 

Fiction –

Stealing the Preacher by Karen Witemeyer 

I’ve enjoyed all the books I’ve read by this author, but this is one of my favorites. This Texas historical romance is a story of redemption, love, and God’s mysterious ways of working all things for good. An ex-outlaw kidnaps a preacher as a gift for his daughter’s birthday—not knowing that her only wish/prayer is for her father’s salvation. The cowboy-turned-preacher is nothing like the old ex-outlaw expected. Through ups and downs, the main characters learn to trust and follow the Lord’s leading and watch Him do the miraculous in their lives. This story has heart, humor, (a little more melodrama than I prefer, but that’s okay), and a happy ending. 

 

Non-Fiction –

The Good, the Bad, and the Grace of God by Jep Robertson

This memoir about Jep and Jessica Robertson is real, honest, and filled with hope. I appreciate their willingness to share the hard and painful things in order to declare how powerful God’s grace has been in their lives. We all have broken places, but God’s grace is greater, and this couple testifies to that through sharing their story. 

(FYI there are serious issues mentioned in this book, and, while not graphic, it was sad and difficult to read in places. But God’s grace triumphs!)

 

Devotional –

Faith Alive: A 6-Week Devotional for Mothers by Anna Hawkes Cabral

This devotional is also encouraging for women in general, not just mothers. I appreciated how Anna emphasized God’s unconditional love, His power at work in our weaknesses, and His grace to live out daily faith in Him. The devotions are short with a focus verse and a reflection question or action step at the end. This devotional provides a way to pause for a few minutes in a busy day to focus on Jesus and His love for us.  

 

He Calls You Friend

Recently I had the privilege of being a judge in a book award contest. It was an interesting experience and one that God used to remind me of some important truths. 

As a first-round judge, my job was to look for mistakes—typos, punctuation, grammar or spelling errors, etc. I wasn’t looking for all the things the author did well. I was looking for every little mistake that didn’t measure up to the standards of book publishing. It was a very different reading experience than reading for pleasure or reading a book written by a friend. In those cases, I look for the good things. I applaud what the author did well and the parts I enjoyed. And it’s easier to overlook any mistakes that I do see. (I still see them even when I’m not specifically looking for them—occupational hazard.) 

As I thought about this, Jesus gave me such a vivid picture of our relationship with Him. Yes, God is the righteous judge. But He has already judged all of our sin when Jesus took it on Himself at the cross. As a judge, God punished Jesus for my sin, and then God declared me righteous with Jesus’ own righteousness! I no longer stand before God as judge. I stand with Jesus—who has called me “friend.” And while Jesus still sees my mistakes, sins, and failures (He’s God, He sees it all), He looks at me as a friend. Jesus focuses on all the moments I turn to Him, all the times I submit my will to His, all the times I rely on His strength not my own . . . all the good things, not the mistakes. 

I don’t know if that encourages you like it did me, but I hope so. God wants us to believe the truth about Him. And the truth is that He isn’t hovering over us waiting for us to mess up so He can judge us for it. That’s why Jesus came—to take the punishment our sins deserve. And to move us from “defendant” to “friend.”

Take a moment to picture Jesus treating you like the best friend possible. Imagine Him looking at all the good things about you, cheering you on, encouraging you in every godly decision, reminding you how precious and loved you are . . . That’s who He is. That’s how He sees you.

There’s another lesson I’ve learned in this process: I don’t want to act like a judge. Being a book judge is hard enough. You’d think that grammar and writing have a standard set of absolute rules, but they don’t. There are many areas where it could go one way or another way, depending on the context, genre, style of the writer, etc. The same is true in life. While some things are absolute truth and clearly right or wrong, there are many choices that could go one way or another way. I don’t want to judge other people, especially over things that are not absolute truth. I’m not the author of their story. I’m not the one who knows everything. And I’m not perfect. Only God is qualified to be the judge because He is all those things. He is both righteous and gracious.

At the beginning of this new year, I feel like this message is so important to carry with us. If you’re like me—a sinner, saved by God’s grace—I want to remind you that Jesus calls you friend. May that sweet truth transform the way you see God and how you think He sees you. And for those who don’t yet know this message, I want to tell them that Jesus took their place so that they can be judged righteous before God—and come to know Him as their friend. Such a gift still astounds me. I pray it will be a theme we carry all year. 

He calls you friend.

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” –John 15:9-15