Author: Jen Wilken    Reviewed by Tim Challies

Wilkin loves God’s Word and she loves to teach others to love it as well. Her book is designed to awaken that same love in others, and especially in other women. It is, after all, meant to call women to the Word so they can be women of the Word.

She opens biographically, telling about her growing passion for the Bible—for reading it, for knowing it, for teaching it to others. She explains that the book’s purpose is “to teach you not merely a doctrine, concept, or story line, but a study method that will allow you to open up the Bible on your own. It intends to challenge you to think and to grow, using tools accessible to all of us, whether we hold a high school diploma or a seminary degree, whether we have minutes or hours to give to it each day.”

Before she gets to a method of studying the Bible, she tells about two turnarounds she had to make in her life, where she replaced backward approaches to Bible study with better ones. The first was to allow the Bible to speak of God. She had been approaching the Bible as a book about her, a book answering the question “Who am I?” more than “Who is God?” The second turnaround was thinking that she should allow her heart, rather than her mind, to guide her study of the Bible. She let her feelings dictate what she read and how she read it instead of first allowing it to transform her mind. She wants her readers to know that they cannot love what their minds do not know.

With those foundations in place, she makes a plea for biblical literacy and follows it with a five-part method meant to bring it about. Her description of this method, along with examples of it in action, consume the bulk of the book. She teachers her readers to study with purpose, perspective, patience, process and prayer. This method is simple enough to be practical, but significant enough to lead to deep understanding, reflection, and application. She closes with some guidance for teachers and a final call to a commitment to the Word.  Read more…

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By Deborah Kirsten (reviewed by Sylvia Bester)

When I first read the title I thought:  How quaint!  However this inspiring, honest and sometimes poignant book is far from quaint…

What I enjoyed most about the book were the quotations ( duly acknowledged and in italics) interspersed throughout the chapters. The author blends all the spices  and flavours of life, different characters, exotic destinations into a charming and challenging story.  The book is beautifully illustrated with Debbie’s mother’s ink drawings and many photographs.

Throughout this engaging and “hard to put down” biographical work Debbie reminds us that our story is actually His (God’s) story

“ I am but the pen in God’s hand- He is the Author of my story” Mother Theresa

As we delve into the pages we quickly realise her wisdom, honesty  and strong spiritual commitment that have guided her and her family through the many challenges of life as the wife of a famous sports star. Debbie takes us on an amazing journey, filled with joy, disappointment, sadness, loss and grief all woven with the thread of her firm faith in the Author of their story.

From her childhood adventures  as a small town girl, daughter of a missionary father and teacher mother to wife of an international cricketer, mother of three and accomplished journalist and motivational speaker, Debbie keeps us enthralled.

This book is definitely a page turner, encouraging yet challenging, heart-warming yet heart-rending, insightful and thought provoking, funny yet heart-wrenching. It’s about ordinary people who realise and acknowledge the Author and Finisher of their faith.

“You can’t write a story together if you’re not on the same page”  Anonymous

Another must read and “proudly South African” product.

CBD PRICE: R135.00

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Author: Helen Thorne   Reviewed by Tim Challies

New from author Helen Thorne, this book addresses fantasy, erotica and pornography, and does so from a female perspective. Thorne is transparent (but not vulgar) in describing her own struggles with lust and in sharing how she has gained increased victory over the sin. She writes in a friendly and conversational tone, inviting the readers to join her arm-in-arm as they pursue purity together.

There is a rumour going around that women don’t watch online sex. There’s a school of thought that says that our fantasies are romantic rather than explicit. Some argue that we don’t think as visually as men, so pornography is rarely appealing. A few believe that we are, by nature, more pure and innocent.  I wish the rumors were right. They’re not. Not in my experience, and not in the experience of most women I know.

But there’s another rumor going around… That there is a way out. That, in Jesus, God offers forgiveness and change.

I’m so glad that rumor is true; that it can be the experience of any and everyone.  Eternity is open.  Purity is possible, and Thorne shows from God’s Word just how it is possible.

One strength of Thorne’s work is that she carefully addresses the heart and not merely the outward behavior. When it comes to sexual sin or any other sin that is manifested outwardly, it is so easy to fixate on behavior modification. But she coaches the reader in examining her heart, and learning the deeper sin problem that is causing her to act out lustfully. She deals well with true repentance, pointing out the difference between tears that flow out of shame and tears that flow out of a true desire to repent. “You can’t cry guilt away. You need to give it away.”   Read more…

CBD PRICE: R120.00

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Anne Bradstreet by Faith Cook

Published by Evangelical Press

At eighteen, Anne Bradstreet left England for the New World in search of religious liberty. Despite many hardships, she became famous as America’s first published poet. A devoted wife and mother, she was a woman of deep spiritual convictions, seeing the Christian life as a pilgrimage with a better world to come. Faith Cook shows how this woman lived ‘not to set forth myself, but the glory of God’.

Anne’s writings reveal the biblical truths that shaped America’s early laws and underpinned its society. Her humble dependence on God and her desire to live constantly in the light of a better world yet to come, ‘whose builder and maker is God’, provide a challenge to our frequently materialistic, earthbound outlook

‘Faith Cook’s biography of Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) is moving, delightful, God-glorifying, and packed with heavenly piety. In it, Bradstreet, America’s first published poet, declares that she wrote not ‘to show my skill, but to declare the truth, not to set forth myself, but the glory of God’. She exemplifies how a godly woman can balance standing in the limelight through poetry and politics, while raising eight children and battling illness, all the while maintaining a biblical posture of submission and humility. This stirring biography is great reading for men and women of all ages but is a particular gem for young women looking for godly mentors.’
– Joel R. Beeke, President, Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids

Faith Cook, the daughter of OMF missionaries, was born in China and now lives in Derbyshire, England. She is the author of a number of books, including Fearless Pilgrim – the life and times of John Bunyan; Lady Jane Grey, the Nine-day Queen of England; Our Hymn-Writers and their Hymns; Seeing the Invisible; Lives Turned Upside Down and two historical novels, Under the Scaffold and Caught in the Web, all published by EP.

Retail Price: R157.14

Special Equip BoM Price: R100  (price valid until 1 October 2015)

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