Love as a Way of Life

In a previous book, author Gary Chapman focused on five “love languages”, laying out the concept that people respond to others relationally based on five primary ways love is given and received: affirming words, quality time, gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. If we learn to “speak” the other person’s love language, and vice versa, things may go great. However, if we do not, then the relationship may not go well at all.

Chapman assumed that if people understood and learned how to speak the correct language to those around them, they would do so all the time. However, what he found was that people were not necessarily eager to speak the correct language because it might be contrary to their natural tendencies.

Before penning Love as a Way of Life, the author spent time studying and surveying, and realized that oftentimes people fail to love others properly because there is no foundation of real love.

“Love is not an emotion that comes over us or an elusive goal dependent on the actions of others. Authentic love is something within our capabilities, originating in our attitudes and culminating in our actions. If we think of love as a feeling, we shall be frustrated when we can’t always work up that feeling. When we realize love is primarily an action, we are ready to use the tools we have to love better.” (pg. 6)

Chapman identifies seven traits of a loving person and proceeds to devote a chapter to each of them. The “quiz” for personal assessment at the beginning of each chapter, definitions, and the down-to-earth examples throughout the book lead the reader to introspective reading. Recognizing self-centered love and turning from that to habitually loving others unselfishly is the goal.

This new hardback from WaterBrook Press, Love as a Way of Life, can be purchased here.
I also have two* copies to give away.

*now one

skid

Hank takes a job as an undercover investigator for an airline to assess their on-board service in their competitive quest for passengers. Always polite and positive due to his Christian background and personal faith, he both puzzles and annoys not only the crew but also the passengers he interacts with who are having an extraordinarily rough day.

Flight 1945 is no ordinary flight. Hank’s seatmate, Lucy, is trying to get over her split with her boyfriend and discovers him to be traveling on the same flight with a new love interest. One passenger “dies” enroute. Anna Sue, who the crew believes is emotionally challenged, has traveling with her her companion animal, a pot-bellied pig. Somehow Chucky gets loose and has the passengers and crew scrambling to catch him. A jewel thief attached to an FBI agent is being extradited to Amsterdam and believes there is someone on board who wants to kill him. Topping off this scenario we have a man sitting nearby who is carrying hidden diamonds to a grandmother he’s never met, a fake federal aircraft inspector and finally, a pilot-less cockpit.

Bordering on funny (lots of comedic misunderstandings) and just plain dumb, Skid, by Rene Gutteridge, is an easy, fast read that requires little thought. The gospel and comments regarding faith are scattered here and there for good measure, but there is no enduring lesson to ponder. It was not my cup of tea, but if you need something very light and simple, you might enjoy it.

New from WaterBrook Press, I have 3 (now 2) copies to give away.

Also available for purchase here.

Healing Promises

Where do you go and to whom do you turn when your world is falling apart?

Those are some of the questions the characters in Amy Wallace’s new novel, Healing Promises, find themselves asking. Healing Promises is a well-written, compelling book which kept me turning the pages to see what the next chapter would bring. It was a difficult read only because of the emotional subject matter.

Sara is an oncologist whose Christianity leads her to pray with her patients and connect with them during ongoing treatments. Her faith is shaken to the core when her husband, an FBI agent, is brought to the hospital for treatment for a gunshot wound. The doctors treating him find more than just a wound; extensive tests lead them to discover he has cancer. All these years she’s been espousing God’s healing promises. Does she really believe what she’s told her patients?

Emotionally painful also is the job her husband, Clint, has with the FBI Crimes Against Children Unit. He is in the midst of tracking down a serial kidnapper of young boys when he receives his cancer diagnosis. The powerlessness he feels as he undergoes chemotherapy and his inability to effectively help his partners also challenges his beliefs.

There are some other characters’ underlying stories woven through the book. All are dealing in one way or another with their faith in God. Hope, trust, anger, pain, wrestling with God; all these emotions are portrayed. Wallace’s characters are fictional but the struggles are real. Again and again they are pointed to the source of truth.

Read Healing Promises. You may find some for yourself.

This is book two in Amy Wallace’s “Defenders of Hope” series.
New from Multnomah, it can be purchased here.

If you are interested, I have two copies to give away.

A Mending at the Edge

A Mending at the Edge is the third and final novel in Jane Kirkpatrick’s Change and Cherish series of historical novels. The books are based on the life of Emma Wagner Giesy, a German-American woman raised in a religious communal society. The author weaves the myriad details gleaned from extensive research with a fruitful imagination and presents the readers with a captivating tale of life in the 1850’s.

For background: as a young woman Emma questions, rather than accepts, the Bethel colony’s communal life; the intent that everything done is for the sake of the colony as a whole, not the inhabitants as individuals. Emma is not one to listen quietly but instead speaks her mind. She wants others to recognize and value that women can think, too. She is skeptical as to motives behind actions that others seem to accept like obedient sheep. She tires of the refrain “for the good of the colony.”

When her husband becomes the trusted leader of a scouting party to begin a new settlement in the western territories that will become Oregon and Washington, Emma convinces the community leader to let her go too. Wilhelm is hesitant yet determines it might be a chance for her to know “all that a woman’s lot entails,” perhaps settling for once and for all her issue with conformity.

Throughout the series, we feel Emma’s struggles as she wrestles with the yearning for independence and recognition. The pinnacle of this wrestling comes to a head in A Mending at the Edge when tragedy strikes. Emma is devastated and angry with God. Even more reluctant to yield to any community help, she makes poor decisions. As a last resort, she finds herself fleeing to the new western settlement and becoming once again a part of the communal society she tried so hard to flee.

Emma’s husband and other community members always attributed circumstances to God’s goodness and direction, whereas Emma was so blinded by an independent spirit and pride she could not or was not willing to do the same. She wanted purpose, but did not seek God’s direction. She exemplified Phil 2:21 rather than Matt 6:33. At the conclusion of A Mending at the Edge we find Emma content in her relationships in the community. Did she reach that same relationship with God? I hope so.

New Release from WaterBrook Press