Two Book Recommendations

I recently finished reading two amazing books I want to recommend to my readers. The first is When Strivings Cease by Ruth Chou Simons. My D-group did a slow walk through this book. I wrote one post on it in Perfect? For Who? since I am a recovering perfectionist!

Ruth takes us from a “self help” mentality to a grace mentality as she reminds us of who Christ is and what He has done for us. Because of His grace we can walk in confidence in His image and stop striving to work our way through self-help methods. Yes, there are things we do to become disciplined disciples, but even those things do not make us more righteous than we already are in Christ. But those disciplines do help us know Jesus and understand His grace more deeply. When His grace overflows from our life, we can give grace to others. It is so freeing when we understand that we don’t have to “do” our way to grace. We just live in grace as we live it out.

The second book I want to encourage you to read is The Scars That Have Shaped Me by Vaneetha Rendall Risner.

Vaneetha walks us through the stages of her life, the ups and downs, the answers to prayer, and what we would consider unanswered prayers. These are the very things that God uses to draw us to a place with Him we would never be without struggles, pain, and loss. She is honest and completely transparent about what a walk of faith in the midst of suffering really looks like.

She is actually in the process of writing a Bible study for LifeWay, so keep watching! I cannot wait! As you may know, I love to read and wanted to make sure you don’t miss these two books that are well worth reading! (See also her book Walking Through Fire.)

Banner photo by Tom Hermans on Unsplash