Christmas is in full swing in the Long household! We are loving our new family traditions and celebrating Christ together as December 25 draws near!
Around this time of year I have so many people asking for books that would make great gifts for their loved ones! My list is always growing and changing, but these four are my go-to favorite books to give! Each of them has impacted my life and walk with Christ and holds a dear place in my heart...
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"Marriage is not a give and take relationship."
During our premarital counseling sessions, I remember our pastor saying these words to me and Jake as I looked at him in confusion. Of course marriage is a give-take relationship, right? That's what the movies and tv shows say. That's what people say. And so many articles I had read about how to have an awesome marriage said so too! Type the phrase "give and take relationship" into Google and here's the first definition that appears: "'Give and Take' is a mechanism inherent to all personal relationships- you cannot expect to receive something if you don't offer on your own turn. Once the balance between give and take is broken, difficulties arise and partners feel they are not getting much from their relationship." Give and take. Meeting in the middle. A 50/50 relationship. Phrases that we've been told are key to a successful marriage. But, as I learned from our wise pastor, marriage is not a give-take relationship. It is a give-give relationship. We both, as husband and wife, give the marriage our all despite what we receive (or don't receive) in return. We don't give 50% and meet the other person in the middle. We give 100% and give it our all even when marriage is hard. We vow to love one another for better or worse, for richer or poorer, and in sickness and in health. It is easy to give when we know we will receive in return, but to love one another even when one of us is acting unloveable? That is humbling and hard. That is selfless, truly unconditional love. And wow, on those days and in those moments when we are being selfish and unloveable, I am especially thankful for a husband who loves me regardless and points me back to the truth of Scripture our pastor read at our wedding: "...Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross..." Philippians 2:3-8 I don't want a give-take marriage. I want a marriage that reflects how Christ loves the church: a selfless, humble, truly unconditional love. We will never perfect this and it will take years of learning and practice, but I pray that over time our marriage will continue to become more of a reflection of Christ's perfect love for His church. I want to love, bless, encourage, and affirm Jake not because I want him to give me the same in return (although he certainly does!), but because of the incredible love I have experienced from Jesus and the relationship I have with Him. (Oh! And if you're reading this now and feel confused because you haven't experienced this relationship with God (and maybe you're curious about what that means), click here to send me a message and I'd love to share more!) When I first picked up Angela Mills' book, Bless Your Husband, I was immediately impressed by and thankful for her courage. In an individualistic society where singleness is idolized, Biblical femininity is frowned upon, and 50% of marriages (including Christian marriages) end in divorce, it takes immense courage and confidence in God's Word to release a book about ways for a wife to love, encourage, and bless her husband.
Bless Your Husband is a book full of practical and creative ideas to love your husband. It is divided into a six week "challenge" that helps the reader focus on manageable ways to bless her husband each day while also centering her heart on the Lord. Every day of the challenge consists of a time of prayer, meditating on the Word, dwelling on something we enjoy about our husband, a short devotional, and a reflection question. The content for each day could easily be done in 15 minutes, or stretched much longer depending on the time the reader has to devote to reading. I am so thankful that Angela takes time to teach about and explain the heart behind loving our husbands well. She begins the book helping the reader to analyze their motives for reading: "...this challenge is about changing your heart, not changing your husband." It can be so easy to pick up a book like this with the motives of wanting to change our spouse, make other people think we're an awesome wife, get something in return, or make our spouse feel guilty. These motives only lead us to feeling frustrated and ultimately reveal the selfishness and bitterness we often harbor in our hearts. Instead, Angela encourages the reader to read her book with positive motivations instead such as desiring to bring joy to our husband's day, growing in humility and selflessness, and blessing another person because we love the Lord and realize how immensely He has blessed us through Christ. The layout of this book makes it incredibly fun and easy to read! Each day's read is concise and includes Scripture alongside the creative activities. I felt challenged by her wisdom and self-reflection questions, yet encouraged by her daily ideas to apply what I was learning. My rating? 5/5
I plan on re-reading this book during the first six weeks of 2019! I loved the practical and heart challenges Angela presented, and this book has encouraged me to love Jake well. It is such a manageable, easy-to-read book, and would be a great read to start off the New Year investing intentionally in your marriage! *I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest, unbiased review! Read the Review
Having the opportunity to work with college women full-time is such a sweet blessing. I love being able to watch their eyes light up when they fully grasp the Gospel for the first time or see Jesus in a way they never have before. Meeting with freshmen their first week of school and watching them grow and mature in their faith during their time in college is amazing. There truly is no other way I would rather spend the most productive hours of my week than winning women for Christ, building them up in their faith, and sending them out into the world fully equipped to share their faith with others and walk with Jesus for a lifetime!
For most of these women, the idea of Biblical womanhood is pretty foreign. How, as women, are we supposed to live for Jesus in this time of cultural craziness? How are we supposed to interact with God, men, friends, family, and other women when it seems like the advice our world gives for these relationships so often leads to conflict, upheaval, and dissatisfaction? I'm certainly no expert in the subject, but thankfully we have been given a Word filled with stories from the lives of women across centuries. When we take the time to learn about them, we can start to learn from their successes and mistakes to navigate this tumultuous world around us. The Most Important Women of the Bible is a great resource for briefly surveying the lives of 31 women in Scripture. From women we're more familiar with such as Eve, Mary, and Bathsheba to ones rarely mentioned in books and sermons today like Zipporah, Gomer, and Phoebe, this short book offers a brief look into the lives of women in the Bible and how their triumphs and failures point to the love and redemption of Christ. Each chapter gives insight into a Biblical woman's story through Scripture references, a short biography with cultural context, and the role her story plays in God's overall plan of redemption. The authors are humble in sharing questions and things about the women's stories they don't know but wish they did ("How could Hannah leave Samuel with Eli when his two sons were known for being corrupt and evil?" pg. 71). I found each chapter to be brief and to-the-point, yet thorough and thought-provoking regardless of the reader's amount of Biblical knowledge. There were some stories I was already fairly familiar with (Mary, Esther, Ruth), but I loved learning about women I had never noticed before in the Word as well (Anna, Tabitha, Lois)! My rating? 5/5
This book gives a great survey of some of the most important women of the Bible, with a great variety of familiar stories and unfamiliar ones as well! Reading about these different remarkable ladies helped give me a better Biblical perspective on womanhood, and it was encouraging to see the way God has used women from the beginning of time to help accomplish His plan for love and redemption! *I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest, unbiased review! Links provided through Amazon Associates.* Read the Review
I love my job. Really, I do. Sometimes I feel like a broken record or that people don't believe me when I talk about how much I love the work that occupies the most productive hours of my week. I would never say that every day is easy- not every day is enjoyable. Some days are stressful when I feel I have a million things to accomplish for a million different people. Some days are heartbreaking when a young woman shares some of her deepest hurt with me. Some days are exhausting as I jump between discipleships, meetings, and Bible studies. Some days are sweet and others are difficult, but I am thankful every day for the work I am blessed to do full time.
It has been one year since I stepped onto campus in a full-time ministry role. Over the past year, I have seen lives transformed by the truth of the Gospel and hearts opened as they grasped the love of Christ for the first time. It has been so life-giving! But I have also seen women struggle through the darkest times of their lives and a student in East Asia stare blankly at me when I asked if she have ever heard the name "Jesus." So when, in chapter one of Pierced & Embraced, author Kelli Worrall posed the question "Has your calling come with a piercing part? How have you seen God equip you and sustain you when you responded to His call?" I felt like she knew me personally as I analyzed God's call in my life in ministry, marriage, family, and so many other things! Pierced & Embraced is a beautifully written, highly practical, Christ-centered book about seven encounters in the Gospels where we see Jesus interacting with women, what those interactions reveal about who He is, and why that continues to matter in our daily lives so long after the Bible was written. Each chapter also contains study questions that are deep, thought-provoking, and God glorifying. I loved that the author includes the Bible passage to read, but doesn't type the Scripture out in the book...which means the reader is encouraged to actually pull out their own Bible and study the passage! And the Scripture readings for each chapter are entire stories or chapters, not just a verse here and there. I love this because it causes the reader to spend extended time in the Word while reading Pierced & Embraced.
My rating? 5/5 Pierced & Embraced caused me to look more closely at the way Jesus interacts with people in Scripture, and helped me to see what these often-read portions of the Gospels tell us about the person of Christ! I plan on reading this book again, and have already recommended it to several friends and students! *I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest, unbiased review! Links provided through Amazon Associates.* Read the Review
To be honest, the title of this book is what caught my attention in a list of books available for review. Before selecting it, I googled the author, Wendy Alsup, and the first two results included her bio on The Gospel Coalition as well as her personal blog (Practical Theology for Women is the title...so cool). I then looked on Amazon at the book's endorsements (Hannah Anderson and Matt Chandler were present!) and description (it placed a heavy emphasis on the authority of God's Word), so I felt confident and eager to request it for review- having no idea that God was about to use it to rock my world.
Of the 10 short chapters in this book, 5 of them are dedicated to building a foundation on the authority of Scripture itself. Before we can know if the Bible is good for women, shouldn't we be sure that the Bible itself is good? Yup! Shouldn't we know that God is good? Yes indeed! Shouldn't we know why God's creation in Genesis 1 and 2 is good? You bet! I love this! Wendy takes so much time to explain: -who God is and why we can trust His Word -the character of Christ and how He approached God's Word -the content of Genesis 1-3 She does this in order to clearly explain how men and women were created, the tragedy of the fall, and why all of that is so important when analyzing if the Bible is good for women. If you've spent time learning about the authority of Scripture and have a good understanding of Genesis 1-3, the first half of the book may seem like a lot of review. I continued reading through it anyway because learning this content again can help me know how to better explain it to my students! The last 5 chapters of the book dig deep into the more controversial passages in the Bible that are often taken out of context as an argument for why the Bible is outdated and oppressive towards women. But, as the author states throughout the book, "Let the Bible explain the Bible." Instead of going to outside resources, she looks at the Bible as a whole to explain and dig into these passages that are so often misused. Scripture that she analyzes includes 1 Timothy 2:11-15, 1 Corinthians 11 and 14:33-35, 1 Peter 3:1-2, Deuteronomy 22, and others. Reading her thoughts on these verses and seeing how they relate to Scripture as a whole inspired me to continue learning and researching even after finishing the book. And if you just looked those passages up and are curious as to if they are indeed good for women, I would recommend this book! My rating? 5/5
I really enjoyed hearing Wendy's perspective on this topic, and loved the way that she connected the scripture to other parts of scripture (because "the Bible IS the best commentary on itself!"). I found her points to be logical and objective; she often referenced several possible interpretations of the passage while humbly mentioning which she personally believes to be most accurate and why. This is a great tool for anybody intrigued by this topic regardless of gender or knowledge level! *I received a free review copy of this book from the Blogging For Books in exchange for my honest, unbiased review! Links provided through Amazon Associates.* |
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