Fight Back with Joy - Margaret Feinberg

In Fight Back with Joy, Margaret Feinberg teaches us that no matter what your circumstances are, you can practice joy and when you practice defiant joy in the face of adversity you will embrace a life that is much richer and fuller than you have ever imagined. She explains in her book how you can expand your joy-threshold by awakening God’s fierce love for you; overcome anxiety as you reignite your imagination for laughter and celebration; escape fear by applying biblical principles to the crises you are facing; get past over the demands of life and become genuinely winsome and cheerful and; find freedom from the past by turning mourning into joy. Feinberg has some excellent advice on mourning and grief. She writes, “mourning is a river that carries us to joy.” No one is immune to sorrow, and only those who learn to grieve well can recapture the healing it brings. Just as light needs darkness, so joy needs grief and just as night precedes morning, joy comes in the mourning. Read this book!

The Miracle of the Kurds

The Kurds are often known to the rest of the world as a people group isolated from the rest of the world. In The Miracle of the Kurds, bestselling author Stephen Mansfield traces the history of Kurds and recounts how these people were betrayed by the Europeans after World War I and were forced to be part of the oppressive Iraqi regime and murdered in the thousands by Saddam Hussein. In Chapter 2, Mansfield provides a timeline and traces their history all the way back to 6300 BC till present day. This gives a brief overview of their history and the events that had transpired.

Towards the end of the book, Mansfield has an appendix where he provides 100 proverbs of the Kurds. Reading and reflecting on these proverbs is worth the price of the book because these are wise sayings that can apply to any human being located at any part of the world. He also provides a list of films that were made about the Kurds and also how they were portrayed in the novels.

ROAR

In Roar, Scottie Nell Hughes urges conservative women to ROAR and voice their opinions and points them to the “right” direction which has been heavily influenced by the liberal left. Hughes is the director for the Tea Party News Network where she serves in an informed and empowered position to speak directly to the problems facing people who are concerned about the direction of this nation when it comes to issues of life, family, their communities and their government. She states, “we need to realize the strength we have as individual conservative women to make a difference and, when united, to tap into our collective, unlimited potential to fight those in the left.“

In her book, she rightly points out that many in the conservative movement have decided to stay quiet. Hence, very few know how to critique much less demolish the bankrupt arguments of the left. This book serves as a wake-up call for conservatives all around this nation to exercise their right to be heard and make their voice count.

Love. Period. - A review

In Love Period, Pastor Rudy Rasmus takes on one of the most important and challenging virtues of the Christian life, namely love. He states that when we choose to love, we are signaling to the world that a revolution has taken place in our hearts. This of course is not a revolution started by us but by God Himself who has planted that desire in us. What would ensue if we truly loved those who are different from us in economic status, identity, social status, race, background, etc? How will life be different if we loved people without conditions? What about people we do not get along with? What might happen if we embraced the principles of 1 Corinthians 13 and applied it to our personal relationships? What if we truly considered the other person more important than ourselves? Can these virtues be actualized in our lifetime?

There are 12 chapters in his book and he exposits each of the characteristics of love. Some of them are love has no conditions; love never quits; love must be learned; love is kind; love honors others, etc. He states that the three qualities of loving leadership are: consistency, integrity, and dignity. Consistency has a lot to do with discipline and living an orderly life. Integrity as it was modeled by his mother had to do with belief and behavior. In other words, his mother modeled this principle by believing what she said and saying what she believed. There was no guile or duplicity in her speech and behavior. Dignity has to do with giving respect to others as they are made in the image of God. Rudy Rasmus has written a book that is eminently readable and he offers practical principles that can be applied to any person’s life.

Making Happy - Review

In Making Happy, Drs Les and Leslie Parrott provide practical methods for finding true joy in marriage. They claim that the “3 week happiness plan” is based on cutting edge research that really works. Drs Les and Leslie Parrott have spent years exploring the art and science and the practice of long-term happiness in marriage. They are founders of Realrelationships.com and the Center of Relationship Development at Seattle Pacific University. They have also authored several books including Love Talk and Saving your Marriage Before It Starts. There are ten chapters in this book and they are brief so the reader is not intimidated by the size and content of the material covered in this book.

The authors are dedicated to helping you keep the vital sign of happiness healthy and strong in your relationship. They do this not with armchair psychology but the strategies that they present built on long time research. In recent times many have stated that marriage is not about happiness, it is about holiness. This might seem as though happiness and holiness are mutually exclusive. But it need not be the case. Why can’t married couples be both happy and attain holiness in the context of a Christian union? They define happiness as “the emotional state of feeling satisfaction, playfulness, contentedness, amusement, cheeriness, serenity, gratification, elation, triumph, joy, and bliss.” This book is permeated with interesting quotes (that itself is worth the book). It also has “Reflection Questions” at the end of each chapter which makes for a great group study.

Stephen Mansfield - "Killing Jesus" Review

In Killing Jesus, Stephen Masnfield attempts to tell the unknown, fascinating story of the death of the world’s most fascinating person – Jesus Christ. Stephen Mansfield has written other books including The Faith of Barack Obama, The Faith of George W Bush, and Lincoln’s Battle with God. According to Mansfield, “the execution of Jesus was a crime born of the streets, the barracks, and the enclaves of the privileged and the smoke-filled back rooms of religious and political power brokers. Its meaning lives in these places still”

There are twenty one chapters but they are brief and fast paced. Each of the chapter titles are one word Latin words with an English translation (e.g., Inceptum: The Beginning, Piaculum: The Sacrifice, etc). The chapters are short and it is fast paced (in the sense that you are moving along with the story quickly). Also, there are no footnotes to slow you down or distract you. In the author’s own words, footnotes are “little numbers stinging the eye and desecrating the text.” Instead, he has chosen to put his sources and commentary at the back of the book where other scholarly input is also listed. At the end of the book, he also lists the five earliest and most attested references to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ by non-Christian writers: (1) Josephus – Jewish-Roman Historian; (2) Cornelius Tacitus – Roman Historian; (3) Lucian of Samasota – Satirist; (4) Mara Bar-Serapion – Philosopher; (5) The Talmud.