I had to read this book for Health class in high school. This might sound kind of strange, but it’s not when you understand that I attended a Christian school. They chose to split up the boys and the girls to talk about purity, as was common with youth groups at the time. I remember enjoying the study at the time since I was doing it the girls in my class. As I look back, I realize that there were good things I learned from this study and some things that had a negative impact on my perspective of purity and relationships. As was common of many Christian purity books and studies, there were many things that were taught during the purity movement that were not helpful or biblical grounded, while there were also other helpful that have been overshadowed by the negative impressions of this movement. As I look as this book and other books like it, I hope to identify the positive and negative elements to discern what still be useful for parents and youth leaders to teach students today ~ Bethel In her book And the Bride Wore White, Dannah Gresh helps teen girls break down lies that many of us believe about sexuality and reveals seven “secrets” for living a life of sexuality purity. Through understanding these lies and presenting these keys to pursuing purity, Gresh is able to offer foundation truths about the way that God designed sex. The updated edition includes additional information on understanding purity, “celebration stories” of young women successes or redeemed failures in their pursuit of purity, and some letters directly at readers with specific struggles. While this book does have some great content and biblical truth, it falls into some of the pit falls of many of the teachings of the purity movement of the 90’s/2000’s. This book does a great job of helping readers understand that sex is a beautiful gift from God that we should wait until the right time and place to use. It also does a great job at addressing lies many of us believe about sex and offering practical tips to help readers live in purity. One of my favorite parts is its emphasis on purity embracing the wise guidance of parents, grandparents, and mentors, since that is something that many young people struggle to do. Overall, it has some great insights to help young women pursue sexual purity. However, this book does have some issues. One of the “secrets” she suggest to achieve purity is to envision a godly husband, even suggesting that you should write down in a journal a description of your future husband. While I believe a young woman should figure out the qualities he wants in a future husband, the way that she suggests doing the exercise implies that you should even write down exactly how you expect him to look. Doing this exercise as a teen fueled different lies than addressed in the book. First, God often surprises us by doing things in His time and His way. It often doesn’t match up with what we picture for ourselves, especially when we get caught up in trivial details like his eye color or favorite movie. We aren’t even guaranteed a husband. We should instead be teaching young women to look at young men for their godly characteristics, like how responsible they are with money or how they treat their family. This book also tends to struggle with leaving those who have failed in their pursuit of purity feeling like unforgivable because of the high emphasis on virginity. We need to make sure that young women understand that premarital sex, other types of sexual immorality, and abortion are not unforgiveable sins that make you “damaged goods.” Instead, if you do the work of repentance in those areas, they can can become scars that God can redeem for His glory and even turn into your greatest ministry to help others. One of the reasons young women struggle with confessing sexual sin is because there is so much shame associated with other people know their struggles. They will be more likely to open up about their struggles if we help them understand that redemption is their sexual past is possible. I am grateful for what I learned from this book as a teen, and believe that even though some of the content has flaws, it could still have value for teens today, especially as a way to introduce purity to older pre-teen girls. Get your copy today.
0 Comments
I remember being quite curious when I heard about this book for the first time. I was in my fourth year of college and was enrolled in a reading course on apologetics, which meant that I had a long list of books I had to pick to read during the semester. I picked this one because the title sounded interesting, but I found this book to be so much more than I anticipated. I loved the premise and the sincere nature with which the content is presented. Even almost 10 years after reading it, I still think fondly of my experience reading it and what I learned from it. This review happens to be based on the book report I wrote for that college course. If you want to have a sincere and honest dialogue with skeptics in your life, I highly recommend this book ~ Bethel In his book Letters from a Skeptic, Dr. Gregory Boyd takes a very unique premise in addressing the major questions of the Christian faith. Instead of just presenting theological arguments from the start, this book contains the correspondence between Dr. Boyd and his father Ed, a man who was a true skeptic of Christianity at the time. Dr. Boyd told his father to ask him any question he had about his faith and his father gladly accepted. Ed had many questions burning in his mind for a long time and many of them were legitimate questions of honest struggles, everything from the loss of his wife and the nature of suffering to the reliability of the Bible and everything in between. Their conversation was very civil, for Ed never told his son he was wrong and Greg was always patient and understanding with his father’s questions. Greg was hopeful that his father would someday come to understand this truth for himself. After about two years and a half years of writing these letters, Ed decided to give his life to Christ and he was transformed into a different person for the last 10 years of his life. This is a wonderful book with one of the most unique approaches to this subject I have seen. It was incredible to see how Dr. Boyd was so clear and concise with the way he explained things to his father. His father could hardly argue with him. The honesty of the struggle on the part of Ed Boyd was also incredibly insightful. Seeing the struggles of someone unsure of who God is in a real-life situation was incredibly helpful. Greg’s persistence with helping his father see the truth of salvation in Jesus Christ was inspiring. This is a wonderful resource for apologetics, which I read entirely. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who wants to defend their faith to a skeptic and possibly lead to them to Christ in the process. To read my review of the apologetics classic Mere Christianity, click here
To learn more about my latest book, Are You Ready to Take Communion?, click here I was so excited when I heard that Caleb Kaltenbach was going to be releasing another book on the topic of handling LGBTQ discussions and issues within the church. I was so encouraged and impacted by his first book Messy Grace that I knew I had to read this one. In the end, I found this book to be just as good and is a fantastic companion to Messy Grace. Speaking from his experience of being raised by gay parents, becoming a pastor, maintaining his convictions about the biblical definition of marriage, and still making how to love others and foster community with those who disagree with him, there is a wealth of wisdom to be gained from this book. Besides all this, I have to give him extra brownie points since he graduated from my alma mater, Ozark Christian College. If you read the first book, this one is a must-read. If you haven’t read either book, I highly recommend both of them together ~ Bethel Living our lives in light of the truth can sometimes be messy. This is because we live in a world that at best undervalues the truth and at worst is dismissive of any form of objective truth. This can make it difficult for those that embrace truth to build community with those that only embrace truth subjectively. This principle is proven true when observing the LGBTQ community and its activists. Finding ways to walk the tightrope of balancing grace and truth for Christians towards these individuals is a journey that too few Christians and churches have embarked upon and those that do are often left with more questions than answers. It makes us ask the question: how do we build influence and an inclusive community without sacrificing our convictions? In his book Messy Truth, Caleb Kaltenbach walks through ways in which Christians and church leaders can build inclusive communities without sacrificing theological convictions. Speaking from experience of years of pastoral work, Kaltenbach acknowledges the difficulties of balancing grace and truth and concludes that it is necessary to build the community and influence we need to reach those that need Christ’s love. We are reminded that more than our stances on the biblical definition of marriage or any other theological convictions, we need to see everything we meet those the lens of value they have as an image-bearer of God that Christ died to redeem, and that knowing their value should dictate how we treat them. We learn that we need to be willing to surrender all of our convictions and personal views to align with Christ, even if we disagree with Him. With these principles as the foundation, we can start using our influence to make our churches into places where the people we disagree with belong by acknowledging their experiences and learning to empathize with them. This will put you in the best position to walk alongside those who may be walking away from sinful choices or to confront them in a God-honoring way. The principles on how to prepare for and facilitate discussions are insightful and practical, regardless of the type of difficult conversation you are facing. This book needs to become a significant part of the conversation on how to unify churches when people disagree, not just about LGBTQ issues, but about any issue that has the potential to divide us. I was encouraged, impacted, and challenged by this book, and I believe you will be too. Get your copy today! To read my review of Caleb’s first book, Messy Grace, click here. Have a Christian non-fiction book you would like to see reviewed? Then review the requirements and submit a review request by clicking here I was quite excited to hear about the publication of this resource. I became aware of 40 Days for Life and their resources when I first watched the movie Unplanned. After some research, I can to have a lot of respect for this organization and what they do. So when I had the opportunity to read this book through a free trial for Kindle Unlimited, I was excited to read it. This is a great resource addressing many of the flaws in the pro-choice movement. I think this book should be on the shelf of anyone who claims to be pro-life ~ Bethel Abortion is one of the most controversial topics in American culture. When it comes us in discussion between people that disagree, it has the potential to destroy relationships and reputations. Those that support the pro-life cause struggle with knowing how to engage in discussions with someone pro-choice because of the vigor and repetitiveness of the arguments. Many who believe are pro-life are held back from the discussion by fear, while others don’t hold back and end up doing more harm than good by the methods they use in their discussion. It makes us ask the question: what should I say when someone tries to defend abortion? In their book What to Say When, author Shawn Carney and Steve Karlen walk pro-life supporters through intentional and grace-filled ways to address many of the most popular arguments in favor of abortion. With years of experience and diligent research, the authors break through the harmful rhetoric of the pro-choice movement and give their readers practical and straightforward tools and insights on how they can bring the discussion about abortion back to the reality of what this procedure does: kill a living baby. You will quickly find that many of pro-choice tactics are become distractions to change the subject, because modern medical knowledge and technology is making it harder and harder for anyone to deny the viability of an unborn child. This book will strengthen any pro-lifer’s resolve by giving them the resources they need to stand on the truth of value of all human life, not matter what way a discussion turns out. This book is well-written and easy to understand. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know how to speak up for the pro-life cause. Get your copy today! From the moment I heard about this book, I was quite curious about it. Not only because the author was one of my college professors, but also because I was intrigued by the concept behind the book. I was so excited to read it when I got a free trial for Kindle Unlimited and I was not disappointed. Determining which doctrines are essential has been a struggle for me personally, and I was so grateful to have found a framework to determine which ones are essential and which ones are important or preferential. This short but significant book is a resource any Christian should read ~ Bethel When it comes to what we believe, differences of opinions can become so divisive. This seems to be especially true in the church when it comes to our biblical and doctrinal beliefs. Many of us struggle to prioritize our relationships over standing by our convictions on matters that are not important to our faith. Many of these controversies not only damage individual relationships, but have caused most of the denominational divisions we know today. In truth, the origins of most of these controversies comes down to not knowing which doctrines are essential and which one are essential to our faith. It makes us ask the question: how do we learn how to tell which of our beliefs are essential to our faith? In his book Christian Convictions, Chad Ragsdale walks his readers through the difference between beliefs that are essential, important, and preferential, to help them better understand the nature of our own beliefs. Through carefully examination, you discover that there are not as many doctrines that are essential as most of us think and that many of us have a tendency to prioritize our belief into the wrong category, which can negatively impact our relationships with people we disagree with. With this short but impactful book, you will be given the tools needed to discern the importance of your doctrines and beliefs and the ability to bridge the gap between other Christians’ personal preferences. This book is one that I highly recommend. Get your copy today. |
Lion's Eyes Reviews is a blog dedicated to reviews of Christian books, most of which are non-fiction, but may also occasionally review movies and musicals. It will also feature the work Bethel does to help launch and promote the works of Christian authors.
The name is derived from one of Bethel's favorite books, Through the Eyes of a Lion by Levi Lusko. Through these reviews, Bethel hope to give Christians the tools they need to look at the world "through the eyes of a lion" so they can find the courage to "run toward the roar". To find the detailed archives of these reviews, you can check them out here: Books In Review Movies in Review Broadway In Review Quick Reviews To understand the rating used in these reviews, click here Categories
All
Archives
May 2024
|
Bethel Grove is a Christian young woman who loves to read and write, eat Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Blizzards, and disciple teen girls as a youth leader. What started as a hobby of writing book reviews and doing deep biblical studies eventually led her down the path of self-publishing and helping other Christian authors launch their books. She hopes to someday be a vocational youth minister and well-known author.
Follow AUthor Bethel Grove
|
Receive This eBook for FreeSign up for Bethel's newsletter to receive monthly updates for Abiding Grace Ministries, and you will receive a copy of this exclusive eBook for free
|