Thursday, September 8, 2011

Voices of the Faithful--book 2; Kim Davis & Beth Moore

Inspiring Stories of Courage from Christians serving around the world

So I have been a bit of a slacker on getting this blog done. I believe I selected this book in December or January from the Thomas Nelson list of available free books to blog on for BookSneeze. Voices of the Faithful—Book 2 is another year of powerful devotions from a series created by Kim Davis and Beth Moore. It is no secret to anyone that I will read, buy, enjoy just about anything that Beth Moore puts her name on. This devotional did not fail to live up to my expectations!

The book provides a one page devotional for each day of the year. The devotion includes a verse, story of courage from a missionary around the world, and a suggested prayer. It is a great way to focus your day on things outside your normal day to day view.

For me, the devotional spurs me to focus my vision outside my small town or 6X6 cubicle, to the people on the other side of the world. While God cares immensely about my individual situation, He also pushes us to have a broader world view like he does. He loves the whole world and calls us to as well!

I really liked how this devotional was set up. The verse engaged my mind in God’s living truth. The story provide a tangible way for me to connect with real people with real needs from 1000s of miles away, and while the prayer provided specific items to pray about for the missionaries, it also gave a suggested prayer for how my heart needs to change to be more like God’s. The book is set up to walk you through a year of devotions, but I don’t think it has to be a once and done. It is a devotional that could be used year after year, one thought that came to my mind was to mark each page with the year in which I prayed for the people. If I make it back through the book again, I will see that I have prayed for these needs more than once and see how my life has changed.

One of my struggles with this type of devotional is that I start to focus too much on the rigidity that I missed June 4, 5, 6, etc. and not on the discipline of just spending time in the Word and in prayer. That struggle, however, is not the book’s fault; it has more to do with my own OCD…

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