​This is an awesome book. From the time I heard they this book was happening, I was so excited. When it came out during my last semester of college, I finish it in only a few weeks’ time, even on top of all the reading I had to do for class! I was already a big fan of Jeff from his YouTube channel, but seeing Jeff’s heart and life story written out in this way was a confirmation of why I enjoyed his work so much. This book is still in my opinion of the best books written from a millennial viewpoint of the subject of Christianity. Jeff’s desire to help his audience find a more intimate relationship is undeniable and that desire guides his audience to a good place when they are finished. Especially after I helped launched two of his other books (It’s Not What You Think and Love that Lasts), I definitely recommend this book ~ Bethel

Religion has been around for a long time, but most of us don’t really understand all that it implies in our world today. Although the essence of religion was created by God, what it has become is a far cry from the vibrant relationship He wants us to find in His Son. Through human misunderstanding, practicing religion has become distorted into a list of rules that are impossible for us to keep in our imperfection. There have been many consequences to this distortion, including many falling into either theological arrogance (assuming they can earn merit with God through rule-keeping) or making the choice to give up on religion (because the standards are impossible to achieve). These two extremes create tension, and everyone in between feels like they are caught in the middle of the hypocrisy or ignorance of those involved in the argument. It makes us ask the question: Is there something better than the rule-keeping of religion?

In his first book, Jesus > Religion, Jefferson Bethke helps us understand that there is a big different between the rule-keeping of religion and the freedom in obedience we should have in the saving grace of Jesus Christ. After his spoken word on the same subject when viral (Why I Hate Religion, but Love Jesus), Jeff decided he wanted to write a book to further explain his position. The result is a book that takes much of what we thought we knew about Christianity and turns it on its head. He breaks down many of the issues that subscribing to a religion brings and points to the greater ways that Jesus taught throughout His ministry. When we are able to truly learn that we have receive grace as soon as we accept it, it will allow to live a more abundant life that is not bogged down by rule-keeping. However, we do also learn that grace doesn’t absolve us from sin, but instead allows us to have hope that we can remain anchored in Christ, even if we mess up, as long as we have an attitude of repentance. These truths and much more are told within the framework of the spoken word that inspired the book as well as personal stories from his own life that make his points relevant.

​Although this was Jeff’s first book, published when he was only twenty-three, this book has a wisdom beyond his years. His theology is strong, but his writing is understandable to everyone and relevant to all of us. I honestly think that every Christian needs to read this book. Get your copy today!

​I have been looking forward to the release of this book ever since I first heard that one of my favorite YouTubers was planning on writing a book with his wife. Since I was on the launch team for Jeff’s last book, It’s Not What You Think and I met Jeff on that book tour, I knew it was a book I didn’t want to miss. And sure enough, I was right. It’s a book with the facts that everyone should know about love and marriage, regardless of your relationship status. It’s a book that came at a time when I needed a refresher about God’s incredible design and intention behind marriage and relationships in general. But this is also a book that brings my journey as a blogger and a book reviewer full circle. I When I reviewed It’s Not What You Think, it was my only my second book review. But since then, thanks to a lot of positive feedback from several people (including Jeff himself!), I have found a passion for reviewing books, mostly books on Christian living. This review is my 19th book review in almost 4 years, which is insane. My desire to do more with book reviews started with It’s Not What You Think. It’s been incredible to see where God has taken a simple interest of wanting to be involved in book launches and has turned it into a way to serve and minster to others online. In light of all this, it’s my pleasure to give this book my highest recommendation to anyone, single, dating, or married, over the age of 16. If you want to know more about it, just ask ~ Bethel

Love is hard. It takes effort, intentionality, self-denial, humility, vulnerability, and many other things that our culture has convinced us is unnecessary or makes us weak. So instead, we revert to the culture’s distorted views of sex and romance, and we unknowingly buy into the lie that we will find lasting love and fulfillment using their methods. They also imply that you will never find fulfillment unless you have your “happily ever after.” However, there is even more unhappiness, un-fulfillment, divorce, and brokenness in relationships and marriages than ever before. And this brokenness is creeping into the hearts and minds of men and women who have never even been in a relationship. All because we have given into the lie that we will never be happy without it. It makes us as the question: Is it possible to find a love that lasts in our world today?

In the latest book by YouTuber and author Jefferson Bethke and his wife Alyssa, Love that Love offers hope that we can find a love that lasts in our world today by sharing their own personal romantic journeys. As they take turns authoring chapters titled after popular songs, they share the highs and lows that led them to each other and that inevitably led them to marriage and a family.  As you join them on this incredible journey, they help us see the problems with our culture’s broken and distorted view of love and helps us replace it with one that is full of life, hope, and endurance. They cover so much in the pages of this book, from recognizing unhealthy relationships and bad self-esteem, to seasons of singleness, to healing from breakups, to the beauty of sex in the covenant of marriage. Although this young couple has only been married for 5 years, they speak with a wisdom beyond their years and their experience, as they reflect much of the counsel and wisdom bestowed upon them by those who are older and wiser than them. What results in a radically transforming view of love and romance that could change our culture, if we choose to embrace it.

​This is exactly the book my generation needs, regardless of their relationship status. As a single woman who has never been in a relationship, I found this book to be powerful, useful, and exactly the insight I need to give me a necessary foundation to build my sexual theology. This book, as well as workbooks and a video curriculum, are available today! Get your copy now!

Thanks to an extremely generous publisher, I, as a member of the book launch team for Love that Lasts, am offering you a sweet deal: Buy one, get one FREE, with NO LIMITS! Here’s how it works:

1) Buy the book from anywhere (Amazon, B&N, CBD, etc).

​2) Either screenshot or take picture of the receipt.

3) Go to jeffandalyssa.com/freebook and fill out the form, using the promo code “Bgrove”
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4) You’re all set! You will receive the first copy as soon as it ships from your distributor. The second one will come from the publisher around the end of October.
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You will probably only pay about $5 per copy of the book (not including shipping costs on the first one. The second will ship free). Since there is no limit, you will get a free copy for every copy you purchase! This deal only lasts until October 17, so don’t miss out! Get your copies today! (And make sure to let me know how many of you take up this awesome deal!)
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For the second time this month, I got to meet someone famous that I admire. This week, I got to meet one of my favorite YouTubers and authors, Jeff Bethke. He’s such a great guy with an incredible story of God’s grace at work in his life. Although he didn’t always follow Jesus with a relationship, God eventually got a hold of his heart while he was in college. A few years later, Jeff became famous when his spoken word poem, “Why I Hate Jesus But Love Jesus” went viral. 

Since then, he has been able to make a career out of creating videos for his YouTube channel and has also authored two books: Jesus > Religion (inspired by his viral poem) and It’s Not What You Think (for which I am on the launch team). Those of you that follow me on social media know that I am a big fan of Jeff and have been following his work for about three years now. He has challenged me and inspired me in so many ways. In fact, he is the reason that I got interested in spoken word poetry and eventually came to become a spoken word artist in my own right. [Link to my spoken word playlist at the end of this post]
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Needless to say, when I found out he was going to be at Olivet Nazarene University for both their chapel services this week (which is very close to my hometown), I was so excited! Jeff delivered a great message from Luke 15 about the prodigal son on Wednesday October 28, and then I waited in line with dozens of college students to meet him. When it was my turn and I told him my name, he remembered me from my review of his new book. He thanked me for my review and work on the book team, which was pretty awesome to hear from the author of the book himself. He signed both of my books and then I got a picture with him.

​He said that it was nice to meet me, a feeling which was quite mutual. He even replied to my tweet of our picture later than day. He also delivered a great message on Thursday October 29 about bringing the kingdom in the here and now by being ministers of reconciliation in our world today. It was both encouraging and inspiring.

​It’s so crazy to think that within only a few weeks’ time, I managed to meet both of my favorite YouTubers. Those of you that follow me also know that I met Jon Jorgenson of The Anima Series on October 13. I have so much admiration and respect for these two men, for their work has touched my life in so many ways, even before I ever thought I’d have the chance to meet them in person. I honestly don’t know what kind of person I would be without the challenges they left me and the inspiration they have given me over the time in which I followed their work. But as I have been thinking about how much I admire Jon and Jeff, I started to think about my perception of them verses the way that I used to view those that I admired from afar on the internet. My view has come a long way from where it used to be. Let me explain.

I tend to have personality that my friends would call passionate and my enemies might call obsessive. If I like something and I see it as worthwhile, I’m going to put my whole heart into my interest and investment in it. In the case of my faith or things like social injustice, this trait is to my benefit. But throughout junior high, high school, and even through most of college, I tended to find myself devoting too much time to things that should have merely been hobbies or personal interests. This also tended to be the case with celebrities that I admired.

Through my last year of high school and my first two years of college, I was obsessed in the Jonas Brothers (*cough, cough*). I admired Joe, Nick, and Kevin so much, I got to point where I wanted to be like them and wanted to date Joe (*cough, cough*). Most people would say that I called them my role models. I spent way too much time on my computer and social media following them or watching videos of them. I would bet anything on their character and believed that they would never do anything that bad morally, especially in public.
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I got to the point where I was passionately defending them for their faith, their character, and specifically their purity. I did this by making a series of YouTube videos that were supposed to give evidence of their faith, and also by arguing with anyone that disagreed with me on these videos’ comments. In fact, if you Google or YouTube search “Jonas Brothers Christians,” several of my videos are still leading that search. (I will explain more of the story of my YouTube channel in a future post) However, I now know that this was not the wisest use for my time and indicated that my heart was not in the right place about the situation. For the longest time, I was so sure that the Jonas Brothers would not disappoint me.

​Just after I came out of my JB-obsessed phrase, Joe and Nick Jonas started to slowly but surely prove me wrong. Eventually, the truth came out about why they stopped wearing their purity rings and how they struggled with their connection to the church after some issues their dad had faced in their childhood. They showed no regret or remorse for backing down on the faith they once professed, and slowed morphed into what the rest of the world was expecting them to become. I will never forget finding the article were Joe Jonas confessed that he was no longer a virgin in December 2013. Although I was no longer emotionally attached to them, I remember how sorry I felt for how lost Joe was, and how annoyed I was with myself for believing in them and defending them as avidly and incessantly as I did. But in that moment, I realized a powerful truth that has stuck with me ever since.

​The definition of a role model is “a person looked to by others as an example to be imitated.” When I started to think about it, no one that we encounter in this life is ever going to be a perfect role model. There is no one living on this earth that is really worth imitating their every move and character trait. It was crazy for me to believe that any person could live up to that expectation, especially when they are under pressure to be a role model like those guys were back then. Each and every one of the people that we would ever try to emulate will disappoint us – except one. That one is Jesus Christ. He is the only example we can ever try to emulate that will never disappoint us. As one of my favorite songs puts it, “He’s the One who lived a perfect life/He’s the One that always gets it right/He’s the One and only Guiding Light/ Oh yeah.” [Don’t Look at Me by Stacie Orrico] This is so true.

​My grandpa (my mom’s dad) passed away a month before I was born, but there is something he said many times to my mom that I think applies. He told her, 

​Although I never met my grandpa, I clung (and continue to cling) to these words of wisdom as I realized that I needed to rethink the way that I admire those I look up to. In the end, the Jonas Brothers let me down and disappointed me with the choices they made for their lives and careers. But because of them, I now know what it means to look to Jesus as my ultimate example of how to love God and love others every day of my life. That’s more valuable than a retweet or an autograph any day.

By the time Joe Jonas’ story came out, I had been following Jeff’s work for almost a year and I just started following the Anima Series a few months before. But because of my lack of success in interacting with the Jonas Brothers online, any hopes I had of getting any celebrity or famous person I admired to notice me on social media was gone. The people I liked simply did not have the time to notice me on the Internet, and especially not in person. Or that’s at least what I thought. But in the end, Jon and Jeff both proved me wrong.

​Some of you that read my post about Jon [link at the end of this post] know that Jon and I came to have an online connection before it finally worked out for us to meet in person. Jon actually took time to answer my emails and give me feedback on my art, which totally blew me away (and still does). With Jeff, I only recently connected with him through being on his book launch team, but it was even more awesome to have made that connection with him since he’s even more famous than Jon. He responded to a couple of my posts on the book team’s Facebook group and even read my review of his book [link at the end of the post]. I was also blown away that Jeff would take the time to respond to our reviews and our comments. 

​When it finally came down to meeting these guys, it was like I already knew them because I was so familiar with their work and their life stories. They both knew who I was, and they were so sweet and appreciative of what I’ve done for them (for Jon’s tour show and Jeff’s book team). They even both told me that they enjoyed meeting me. I was humbled by their acknowledgements of what I’ve done for them, because they have both done so much for me. I simply felt like I was returning the favor.

Because of what happened with the Jonas Brothers, I have stopped using the term role model, especially about celebrities and famous people. I stopped searching to imitate a whole person and have instead chosen to look for individual traits within a person that I wanted to aspire to. It’s a smarter way to better yourself, because you can admire people for their strengths without rejecting them for the weaknesses. One of the common traits both Jon and Jeff share is that they are honest about their weaknesses and past struggles. That makes it easier to admire someone’s strengths when they are willing to admit they aren’t perfect or they don’t have all the answers.

​Now that I’ve met Jon Jorgenson and Jeff Bethke in person, I admire and respect them more than I did before. I hope that everyone can find people like this in your own life to admire, all the while remembering to follow Christ as our ultimate example of how to become a mature and complete person. “He’s the one that always gets it right,” and His example will never fail us.

​[To read my review of Jeff’s new book, It’s Not What You Think, click here]
[To read my story about meeting Jon Jorgenson and The Anima Series Tour, click here]
[To read my brief reviews of Jeff’s other book & Jon’s first two books on my favorite Christian books list, click here]
[If you are interested in checking out my spoken word poems on YouTube, click here]

​​Many Christian struggle to see their faith and understand their life purpose from a new perspective. We often get so caught up in the way our Western culture has presented Christianity to us, it’s hard to know or remember the truth of the deeper meaning in our faith and all it represents. We get stuck in our favorite New Testament passages without understanding them in light of the Bible Jesus read, the Old Testament. We struggle to understand who we are in the midst of God’s plan to redeem mankind, especially in light of our own personal struggles. It leads us to ask to question: what if we’ve been getting the greater story all wrong?

In Jeff Bethke’s new book, It’s Not What You Think, he explains that there are many aspects of our lives and our faith that we have been thinking about the wrong way. In a similar way he does with his first book Jesus > Religion, he takes much of what we know about Christianity and turns it on its head, giving us a much needed change of perspective. He takes us on a journey through the Bible that is so much different and more refreshing than any book I’ve read in a long time. We are reminded of the importance of God’s kingdom in the here and now, and not to just wait for heaven to see it fulfilled. Our view of ourselves and everyone around us changes, as we are reminded of the significance of being image bearers of God that Christ suffered, died, and rose again to redeem. We are taught how to celebrate the Sabbath in ways that are applicable and relevant in today’s culture. We even learn about the significant and sacredness of sharing a meal in fellowship with others. This is all done within the context of Jeff’s honesty and understanding of God’s saving, redeeming grace at work in his own life.​

​This book is a must read for Christians of all ages, but especially for teens, young adults, and those that desire to understand these topics with a new perspective. I would encourage anyone to read It's Not What You Think. This book is releasing today in book stores everywhere, so get you copy today!