It’s not until she is stranded at a small bed and breakfast with her mother, unable to leave, that she accepts Jesus Christ into her heart.  This small act opens her eyes and allows her to see Beryl in a new light, freeing her to forgive her mother for the mistake of the past and opening her life to a new relationship with her. Jade’s story has much to teach us if we can open our hearts and minds and learn to forgive those who have hurt us. Though I wouldn’t classify this as a religious or theological story, there is obviously a theme of forgiveness.

Not my typical genre, but I thought I would give Sara Evans a try and now I am hooked.  Any more stories planned for the future, Sara?  I’ll be waiting.

Not only is it an easy to read book, but the different sections in the book make it easy to read in bits and pieces, which makes for a great devotional for a young girls; short attention span. It is broken down into small features that have much variety for children.

Features include:

Scripture memory
Girls/Women of the Bible
Dress Up/Role playing ideas
Kids song & worship
Ideas to teach manners

My favorite feature of this book is that there are stories for you and your daughter to read and then an activity to reinforce what they learned in the story. For young children, this is an ideal way to learn. While my 11 year old loved it, my younger, more independent rough and tumble girl didn’t find much use for it. So I highly recommend this book to any little girl who is the frilly dress up, girly type.

Max uses simple language while really breaking an idea down to its’ core, making a complicated idea easy to understand. In Fearless, Lucado tackles the subject of, as you can guess, fear. But it goes much deeper than fear. He covers the innate fear in humans: the fear of whether or not we matter. Do we matter to others? Do we matter to Gd? Are we good enough to matter?

But he shows us how God says, through his Word, that we are”worth more than sparrows.” He covers many fears including fear of running out of luck, whether we have enough, not protecting our children, violence & not having enough. He even covers intangible fears like global collapse and changes in our circumstances.

With each fear he shows us through God’s Word, how to trust in God and fear less. It was a very comforting book to read. I’ll be referencing it many times during my years. That I am sure of.

For anyone who wants to delve deeper into the topics of the book, Max has added a discussion guide for groups or individuals at the end of the book. Overall, I really enjoyed the book. For being a quick  218 page read, it was packed with insight we may not always be able to glean from our own study of fears or through reading the Bible. Highly recommended by this less fearful mother of five.

Then one day while visiting a church with the “Bowheads”, a nickname she gave to 2 young Christian girls who always wore bows in their hair, she had a change of heart.  More precisely, she had a life changing spiritual experience with God.

In this book, she chronicles her personal life at home, her struggles in school and her continual denial of God. Though her story is interesting, I really struggled with keeping my interest.  Each chapter alternated between her story and her reflections on Atheism, making it difficult to follow.  The chapters about her personal life tend to jump all around adding to my confusion.

The thing that pulled it all together was the fact that the chapters were short which allowed me to read in short bursts, while cooking, doing laundry and relaxing at home.  She tells a story that really struck a chord deep within me. She was in college, and started debating with a Muslim man about religion. When there was a pause in conversation, he commented that “followers of Jesus were supposed to love people.” She then realized that winning an argument mattered little.  It’s stories like these that really held my interest.  Overall, despite the story jumping around in time, Alicia offered some real nuggest of truth in her book.

Thomas Nelson Publishers did a terrific job of creating this audio Bible.  It was created to help children and teens become more familiar with the Word of God.  I think, if you can get your kids to sit down and actually listen, they would get a lot from hearing the Word instead of having to wade through a confusing and wordy bible.

Although I enjoyed listening to the audio Bible, my attention often wandered to other things.  If you are the type of person who enjoys learning through spoken word, I highly recommend this product.  If, however, you are more of a reader, you may just want to stick with a Bible from Thomas Nelson Publishing.