5 Books that Changed Me:
(Obviously God’s word is one of them and one that changes me on a daily basis. But beyond the Word of God, these are other books that captured me and changed me.)
1. Lioness Arising by Lisa Bevere
In “Lioness Arising” Lisa Bevere urges her fellow women to Rise up and recognize their position as a Lioness. This book captivated me so much and I simply could not put it down! This powerful message came in a timely season of my life resulting with a stirring in my heart to awaken and respond.
This title is based on Numbers 23:24 – “These people rise up like a lioness; like a majestic lion they stand.”
Truly, this has been the most powerful book that I have read in a long while. This is the call to rise up like a lioness – combine ease with strength and rest with power and a fierceness combined with gentleness – this is a message like I have never heard before.
Lisa writes, “God did not save you to tame you!”
We are called for more than this! It is time for the women to awaken and to rise up!
This inspirational book is a call to awaken “to a life of fierce passion”, to “wake up and change your world!” I highly recommend that every woman read this! Old or young, there is no mistaking the need for today’s women to take a join voices for the Pride!
2. Love Story by Nichole Nordeman
Never have I been so quickly captured and captivated by such a book as when I picked up Love Story: The Hand the Holds Us from the Garden to the Gates. Nichole Nordeman writes with such a depth and rich language that I was stolen by this story. Above all the others, the way she captured the creation story took me the most:
IN THE BEGINNING, God created the heavens and the earth.
Somethingness from nothingness.
Fullness from emptiness.
Presence from vacancy.
The great week of wonder had begun.
If God is God and knows all things past, present, and future…if He already knew about the runaway train on the tracks ahead, why did he create at all? Why bother with every luminous shade of orange on the flimsy wing of a monarch if He knows how the story will end?
Wow! What a start! Like I said, captured!
I don’t think he began and then completed his whole work in a week and then, on rascally serpent and an apple later, had to come up with a redemptive ending on the fly. I don’t think he was standing there in from of trembling Adam and Eve with his hand on his hip thinking, well howdaya like that? Figures.
Of course he knew we would toss a grenade into all that beauty.
Nichole paints an amazing portrait of creation and our current state that one can’t help but be drawn to this book. Finally at the close of the chapter:
. And though it is our capacity for utter darkness and destruction that leaves me wondering why he bothered, it is our capacity to reflect the perfection of his light and love that reveal why he did. Of course he bothered.
It was good then because he was good.
And it will be good always because love knows no other way to be.
3. Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers
This summer, along with the church book club I read a personal favorite of mine –Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers. Redeeming Love is such a powerful story based on the Old Testament book of Hosea told in a modernized format. I am amazed how beautifully Francine captured the emotion and truth throughout this book. One line from this book haunted me for weeks:
“Would you have her hang on her cross forever?”
For Angel, the main character, she was chained to her past – a life filled with unspeakable horrors. She was delivered, but the physical deliverance did not free her mind. She was so stuck in the shame of where she had been, she didn’t realize that she was free. Her husband Michael tells her this: “You’re free. You just don’t know it yet.”
As Angel returns to her past life, I realized the weight carried in the words: “Would you have her hang on her cross forever?” And that is even when healing comes to your heart, sometimes you have to go back still in order to move forward. Even after healing comes, sometimes the mindset still is where you have been, or who you were. It may be true that the pain is not as prevalent as it was, but you still don’t see how you “fit” in the place that you are now. You are tormented in paradise because you know that you do not deserve to be there.
Going back allows you to see that the you who has been transformed by love does not belong in the past either. It brings a shift in thinking and a recognition of redemption.
In choosing to risk and step out, your heart is transformed by the love of God.
4. Praying God’s Will for Your Life by Stormie O’Martian
“Often the desires of your heart are the desires of His heart, but they still must be achieved His way, not yours, and you must know that it is He who is accomplishing them in yourself. God wants us to stop holding on to our dreams and start holding on to Him so that He can enable us to soar above ourselves and our own limitations. Whenever we let go of what we long for, God will bring it back to us in other dimension.”
5. A Woman’s High Calling by Elizabeth George
I read this several years ago…I don’t remember everything that I read in it. In fact, I probably remember very little. But one thing that I do remember about this book is one story I read in it about a woman who changed the author’s life. She was different than other people and always refreshing to talk to. What was the secret?
She always spoke of the Lord!
No, it wasn’t being super-spiritual, but the Lord was so much a part of her life and of who she was that is what spilled from her mouth.
This became my ambition. I wanted to be like that. God should be so much a part of me and a part of my life that His words flood out of my mouth.
Single Seasons ~ Lady-in-Waiting 