Try this Book to Carry You Thru’ the Holidays and into 2021...
Friends! Anybody besides me overwhelmed with thinking about Thanksgiving and Christmas? My spinning brain reminds me of Christopher Robin with Winnie the Pooh, “Oh, what to do, what to do, WHAT TO DO???”
By now you can reason I’m offering a BOOK recommendation (shocking!) to help start your day well. It’ll clear your head, keep you focused, and bless you as the holidays approach. Because it has thirteen chapters, if you start reading this very week(or as soon you can), only reading one chapter a week, it will carry you thru’ the holidays and on into 2021, all the way thru’ January!
The book? The Jesus Who Surprises: Opening Our Eyes to His Presence in All of Life and Scripture by Dee Brestin.
A big fan of anything Dee writes, I was happy to discover this particular book. (It released in 2019.) I read it all first, and then went back, chapter by chapter, to do the Bible study questions. How you read it is totally up to you.
There are many things I love about this book, especially the resources Dee recommends at the beginning of each set of Bible study questions for when you want to go deeper. She suggests listening to specific sermons by Tim Keller, Michael Reeves, free video lessons at www.DeeBrestin.com as well as recommended worship songs.
You’ll be excited to learn about a jaw-dropping interview of Eugene Peterson (author of The Message and many other beautiful books) with, drumroll, are you ready....Bono! They discuss the Psalms in twenty-one short minutes. Bono goes to Eugene’s home—can you imagine? Here’s the link:
The book’s divided into three parts:
Part One: How the Story Began: The Books of Moses
Part Two: How to Live in the Story: The Psalms
Part Three: How the Story Will End: The Prophets
Dee teaches us how to go on a daily “God hunt” and how to watch for certain Scriptures to become “radioactive,” jumping off the pages of your Bible. This reminds me of what I must remind myself each time I’m with one of our grandchildren...I pray to “wonder in the wandering,” seeing the world thru’ these children’s eyes.
After each day’s questions (there are five days’ of questions for each week), Dee has you complete this sentence: “Today I spied God when...”. This causes you to reflect back over your day. There’s also a prayer time section after all the questions, each with different ideas that would be wonderful for small groups.
Chapter Five, Religion Versus the Gospel: From obligation to Grateful Joy, is one of my favorites. It includes a chart I believe you’ll consult when you run into challenging conversations with seekers. It comes from Tim Keller’s book, Gospel in Life Study Guide: Grace Changes Everything. The chart has one column on Religion and one on the Gospel.
Another one of my favorite chapters is Chapter Nine, Learning from the Psalms How to Pray. Check out this beautiful quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer from his book, Psalms: The Prayer Book of the Bible,
“It is a dangerous error, certainly very widespread among Christians, to think that the heart can pray by itself...Prayer does not mean simply to pour out one’s heart. It means rather to find the way to God and to speak with Him, whether the Heart is full or empty...If we wish to pray with confidence and gladness, then the words of Holy Scripture will have to be the solid basis of our prayer.”
Dee’s husband, Steve, died of cancer a few years ago. She candidly tells of her struggles before and after he died. Before he died, it was Steve who inspired Dee to search the Psalms, pray the psalms, sing the psalms, and listen to songs about the psalms. They did this together. Steve even encouraged Dee to write a Bible study on the Psalms.
We learn, “One of Steve’s favorite passages was:
Steve and Dee memorized Psalm 103 together “to help calm their souls in the night.” Dee said Psalm 126 helped show them how to “sow in tears” and we get to see first hand how that psalm “can give you power for effectual soul talk.”
The Scriptures, coupled with how Dee’s daughters dealt with their Dad’s death, how they found Christian husbands, etc., in Chapter Nine, will blow you away. I’d say each scenario fell like divine dominos. God is good.
Dee’s book will grow your faith and expand your knowledge about our Lord Jesus as well as your relationship with Him. Carol Kent says, “Dee skillfully weaves memorable truth throughout this well-written book while directing her readers to the discovery of Jesus in every part of life and in unexpected places through the Old and New Testaments.”
Now you know by now how we end, “Run, don’t walk, to your nearest bookstore and grab this book to help you thru’ the holidays and into 2021!”
The next few weeks leading up to Christmas, I’ll be giving you some gift ideas...always the “so many books, so little time” predicament—oh but it’s a lovely one!
‘Til next time!
P.S. Checkout all of Dee’s books on her website:
One of my favorite books of Dee’s is: The God of All Comfort: Finding Your Way into His Arms
This is the book Dee wrote right after Steve died. She helps readers find their way into the arms of God by using psalms and classic hymns to speak truth to our fretful souls. It is powerful and a book you’ll want to return to over and over. I’ve given it as a gift to several friends who’ve lost loved ones.
Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the page above are “affiliate links.”