Lazarus Awakening, by Joanna Weaver: A Book Review

I received a free copy of the book, Lazarus Awakening, by Joanna Weaver, from the publisher,  in exchange for an honest review. 

Below is my review.

Lazarus Awakening:  Finding Your Place in the  Heart of God

By Joanna Weaver

     God loves us.  We seem to know this in our heads, but do we truly believe it and feel it in our hearts?

In her book, Lazarus Awakening, author Joanna Weaver gets to the heart of this issue:  “Until we get around to accepting His (Jesus’) amazing undeserved favor, I fear we will miss everything a relationship with Christ really means.”  

Weaver explains that this “love-doubt” we experience can be “traced back to troubling contradictions not unlike the one in the story of Lazarus.”  Then she skillfully takes us through the bible story, exploring both the obvious as well as the deeper, more subtle layers of meaning we can uncover there, as she relates them to our own struggles, fears, and tough questions.

Weaver says, “Suspended halfway between death and life, we’ve accepted the Lord as our Savior, but we have yet to step out into the fullness of life Christ came to give.  Instead, we’re holed up in the dark, held captive by our hurts, hang-up, and habits.”  Weaver then gently and humbly provides us with new insights and fresh perspectives as well as practical help in overcoming our hurts, feelings of unworthiness, and unbelief that hinder us from allowing God’s love to flow from our heads to our hearts.

Lazarus Awakening   includes a ten-week Bible study, filled with thought-provoking questions, and  it encourages further exploration of the Bible as it relates to the theme of the book.  The appendix includes the story of Lazarus in full, as well as a list of books and other resources that the author has found helpful in her journey.  Sidebars placed throughout each chapter help us to further apply what we learn in real, practical ways.

While Weaver never provides cut-and-dried answers to our toughest questions, her guidance led me to a place where I could rest easier in the questions themselves.

As I read Weaver’s book, I found myself discovering my own new insights growing from hers.  When you find a book that can do that, you’ve found a treasure.

I highly recommend this book, and I am looking forward to reading it again, this time more slowly, so I can take my time to reflect more deeply on the truth of God’s love. 

A St. Patrick's Day Weaving Project

A friend of mine decorates the exterior of her cubicle wall at work according to the seasons or Holidays.  

This month, she displayed one of my heart baskets to celebrate Valentine's Day (and I think February was just recently declared "Heart Health Month"). 

For March, she asked me to make up something relating to St. Patrick's Day, so I wracked my brain trying to come up with a way to make a Shamrock.  (Whatever she displays has to be at least somewhat flat on at least one side to hang it properly.)

I tried to create something several times, but nothing was working the way I had hoped.  

But then, as I was paging through one of my big 3-ring binders full of patterns, I found a pattern to make a woven "rug-beater".  I had made a few of these several years ago.

"AHA!",  I thought..."I bet  I can make this and manipulate it to look like a shamrock!"  And that's just what I did.  I dyed it green and added a raffia bow at the stem.

 

I had printed off this pattern  years ago, when it was offered for free by weaver Patricia Yunkes.

  I checked out her website and found that it was no longer offered for free, but she does still have the pattern available to purchase.  You can find it here. 

It's a bit confusing at first, but with some persistence, you'll eventually find it very easy to make.  All I did to make it look like a shamrock was to tighten two of the loops, making them smaller.  

I used #3 RR, and made the initial shape using just one strand.  Then I added two more strands, following the loops of the first one.

You could make these as big or as small as you want, just by varying the size of round reed, and the lengths of each strand.

And there you have it...an easy-peasy, cute St. Patty's Day Decoration!

I'm working on another decoration for her to display, this time for Easter/Spring. 

Stay tuned!

Same Life, New Story: Change Your Perspective to Change Your Life, by Jan Silvious: Book Review

Here is my review of the latest book I received.  Again, I am required to tell you that I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Same Life, New Story:  Change Your Perspective to Change Your Life

By Jan Silvious

I requested a copy of this book to review because I was attracted to its concept, which, in a nutshell, is that changing your perspective on your past, and your circumstances in the present can change your life for the better.  While I believe this to be true, I felt that Silvious fell far short of doing a good job explaining this in her book.

I was attracted to the idea of reading the stories of various Biblical women, and discovering how their stories relate to the ideas presented in each chapter, but I didn’t quite understand some of the connections Silvious made between the two, nor how the stories supported her conclusions.  I often ended each chapter feeling as though I must have missed something.  Some of the stories of modern women she interjects throughout each chapter seem to relate much better to her concepts, but she hops back and forth between the Bible stories and the modern day stories so much that it just felt disjointed.

In Same Life, new Story, Silvious likens our lives to stories, wherein some of the pages are filled up, but “there are always new blank pages on which to write. “  Therefore, we can always “start over”, but doing so “most often comes with a new perspective and a new way of thinking.”

I agree with this idea, and Silvious does explain (albeit to a small extent) how different mindsets, attitudes, and beliefs can hold us back and keep us stuck in a story(life circumstance) with which we aren’t happy.  But I found there to be a number of serious mixed messages throughout the book that left me utterly confused.  For example, Silvious states that “how you write your story is up to you”, and “The story is yours to create, and it is yours to tell.”   But later she states, “You are not the author of this story.  God is.”, and “He knows you didn’t volunteer to be a character in this story, but (…) you have been chosen to live this story”, and “God is the author who writes our stories.”  So which is it?   This was the most confusing thing about the book for me.

In one chapter, Silvious tells us that we must learn to be content in our circumstances, and in another, she implores us to “choose instead” rather than “accept the status quo” when we are dissatisfied with our current situation.

Silvious also tells us in one chapter that whining about our troubles is because “it is hard for us to bow to the fact that an unseen hand holds our lives, and whether good or bad is happening, He is in control of it all”, then later scolds us for “blaming God for your troubles.” (This is connected to the “who writes our stories and who doesn’t” question!)

Silvious tells us on one hand that “No one but you can propel your story forward”, then on the other hand, she says “In the midst of your story, God propels you to a new future.”

If there is any way to reconcile these contradictory statements, she does not explain them.

For most of the questions at the end of each chapter given for personal reflection and group study, I had no idea how I would answer them, and because of the mixed messages, I wasn’t inclined to even try.

I agree with other reviewers who felt this book couldn’t rightly be called a Bible study.  And again, although I did enjoy reading the Biblical accounts, I could not make the connection with them as they were supposed to relate to the chapter, so to me they just seemed incidental.

I love the concept of the book, but I don’t think Silvious quite pulled it off.  There are plenty of other books regarding changing your perspective that would be worth your money far more than Same Life, New Story.

Mere Churchianity, by Michael Spencer: A Book Review

A few weeks ago I discovered a program called "Blogging For Books" through Multnomah Waterbrook, a publisher of Christian books.  With this program, you can request a free copy of a book from a list, if you agree to write a review and post it on your blog, their website, and on any retail website that sells that book.  That's it.  You don't pay a dime....they even ship the book to you free! The book is yours to keep, give away, or toss!  I felt absolutely giddy when I discovered this, because I LOVE to read, and the ghost that is my "would-be writer" has come back to haunt me...again.  So I signed up, received my first book, read it, and am ready to post my review!  

I am required by law to post the following disclaimer:

I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review

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Mere Churchianity, by Michael Spencer:  A Review

by Juliana Deen

More and more people are leaving the church.  Increasing numbers of people who consider themselves to be non-religious, are neither agnostic nor atheist.   They leave, not because they are fed up with God, Jesus, or the Christian faith, but because they are fed up with religion, or what Spencer calls “Churchianity”. 

Spencer believes that if you have left the church, but still want to seek  Jesus, that it “may have been the most spiritually healthy thing you ever did.”  The reason, he contends, is that churches today have a serious “Jesus disconnect”. Churches seem to be increasingly caught up in everything BUT Jesus.   In this book, Spencer reminds us that it is Jesus Himself that transforms lives, and not formulating doctrines or mindlessly following church traditions.  He believes that the church has “failed to be a resource for producing and encouraging the life of discipleship.”  Spencer  acknowledges the importance of community among Christians, but questions whether Jesus would recognize the church today as the movement he started, or as fulfilling the purpose He intended.

As someone who has left the church, I found my own concerns and struggles with “churchianity” in the pages of this book.  Spencer has done a good job of articulating the reason why so many have left, even while they hunger for more of God.  Although the book criticizes the condition of the evangelical American church, and points out the areas where he believes it is seriously lacking, his main goal in the book is to guide the de-churched in their search for “true truth” by teaching us to “read the labels.”

If you are disillusioned by the church, but can’t turn your back on Jesus, and you know there has to be more to being a Christian than what you’ve found inside a church, this book will guide you toward a “Jesus-shaped spirituality” as you walk away from “church-growth” spirituality, “culture-war” spirituality, or a “spirituality of worship experience.”

If  you are still a part of the church, and you seek to understand why people are walking out your doors, I humbly recommend this book to you as well.  The answers may surprise you.  But if you’re happy doing church the way you’ve always done church, and are quite satisfied with the status quo,  I beg you to read this book.

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There you have it...my first official book review!
I would love to hear your comments, whether it's regarding the book, or your own experiences as it relates to this topic.
I have placed a "gadget" on the left side-bar, linking to the Blogging for Books program for anyone else who might be interested in receiving free books in exchange for an honest review.
There is another similar program out there, called "BookSneeze", through Thomas Nelson Publishers.  I have a copy of a book from them in hand, and once I have read it, will post a review of it!
Thanks so much for reading!