Waiting Here For You: An Advent Journey of Hope

Louie Giglio is the pastor of Passion City Church in Atlanta, GA and the founder of Passion Conferences, a global movement uniting university students to live for the fame of Jesus.  With a desire to elevate God's glory above all else, Louie has also authored The Air I Breathe, i Am Not, But I Know I Am, and Indescribable, which was co-authored with Grammy Award winner Matt Redman.  Louie and his wife, Shelley, live in Atlanta, GA.

You can connect with Louie at www.louiegiglio.com as well as on Twitter.

Waiting Here for You helps us anticipate rather than dread the busy season of Advent and Christmas.

Life is full of waiting – we can’t escape it. We find ourselves in the middle of it every day – waiting on a prognosis to be given…a verdict to be reached…a promotion to be announced. And in these seasons of waiting that anxiety, desperation and hopelessness creep in.

Waiting Here For You takes us through the advent – the season of waiting. In it we see the story of the coming of Jesus. It teaches us that waiting is the means God often uses to carry his plans in our lives. And it brings us back to the truth that our waiting is never wasted when we are waiting on God.

Join pastor and author Louie Giglio and take hold of the chance to uncover the vast hope offered through the journey of Advent. Find peace and encouragement for your soul as anticipation leads toward celebration!

Waiting is not wasted when it is waiting with the Lord.

My Thoughts:

I was blessed by using Waiting Here for You as my devotional focus during this past Advent season.  The book is organized into daily readings beginning with November 26th and ending December 24th.  Each reading begins with Scripture and is followed by a short Reflection from Louie and ends with a Hymn for Meditation and Prayer guide.  Black and white Winter scenes are interspersed throughout the book.  Louie's reflections and Scripture passages focus on the theme of waiting and the constant, faithful nature of God.  While Waiting Here for You is written specifically as an Advent resource, I think it would be perfect as a devotional guide for the month of January to begin the New Year in anticipation of great things from God.  Get yours today!

*I received a complimentary copy of the book for the purpose of review from the publisher.

Happy Reading Ya'll,

Jennifer

The Wedding Chapel

About the author: 

Rachel Hauck is an award-winning, best selling author of critically acclaimed novels such as The Wedding Dress, Love Starts with Elle, and Once Upon A Prince. She also penned the Songbird Novels with multi-platinum recording artist, Sara Evans. Booklist named their novel, Softly and Tenderly, one of 2011 Top Ten Inspirationals. She serves on the Executive Board for American Christian Fiction Writers and is a mentor and book therapist at My Book Therapy, and conference speaker. Rachel lives in central Florida with her husband and pets.

Connect with Rachel: website, Twitter, Facebook

About the book: 

The Wedding Chapel (Zondervan, November 2015)

For sixty years, a wedding chapel sat silent, waiting for love. But times have changed and the hour has come when it just might be too late.

Retired hall-of-fame football coach Jimmy "Coach" Westbrook never imagined anything would come of his labor of love---the wedding chapel he built for Collette Greer, the woman he fell for back in '49. But now an offer has come to turn the chapel into what it was meant to be---a place for love---and Jimmy sees no reason to hang onto his dream any longer.

Photographer Taylor Branson is trying to make a life for herself in New York. Leaving her hometown of Heart's Bend, Tennessee, she put a lot of things behind her, including her family's abysmal marriage rate. But love surprises her when she falls head-over-heels for Jack Forester, a top ad man. Their whirlwind romance results in an elopement, and a mountain of doubt. Jack, while genuine in his love for Taylor, can never seem to overcome his own demons to find the words of his heart.

When Taylor takes an assignment in Heart's Bend, the job does more than send her back to her hometown, but into a world of family secrets buried beneath the sands of time.

When Taylor's journey intersects with Coach's, they rediscover the heartbeat of their dreams and that the love they long to hold is right in front of them. And worth every waiting moment.

Purchase a copy: http://bit.ly/1RlAvCm

To see what others are saying about the book, you can visit HERE.

My Thoughts:

The Wedding Chapel is the first book by Rachel Hauck that I've read.  To say the least, I was blown away!  Hauck's cast of characters and the way their lives intertwined with one another make for a very compelling read.  The stories of Taylor and Jack, Jimmy and Collette, Peg and the place of Heart's Bend, TN are filled with crises of faith, love, hope and the beauty of reconciliation.  Hauck keeps readers riveted and turning pages with a thread of suspense and masterfully tells the story of a wedding chapel hid away in TN.  The revelations are surprising as Hauck tells the story switching flawlessly between the past and the present.  Don't miss this endearing story!  Your heart will be encouraged.

*I was provided a complimentary copy of the book by the publisher for the purpose of providing an honest review.

Happy Reading Ya'll,

Jennifer

Delighting in God

A.W. Tozer  (1897-1963) began his lifelong pursuit of God at the age of seventeen, after hearing a street preacher in Akron, Ohio.  Tozer was a self-taught theologian, pastor, and writer whose powerful words continue to grip the intellect and stir the soul of today's believer.  He authored more than 40 books.  The Pursuit of God and The Knowledge of the Holy are considered modern devotional classics.

Get more Tozer information and quotes at twitter.com/TozerAW.

Understand your life's purpose by better understanding God.

"My worship grows and grows as my perception of God grows.  God cannot grow.  My perception of God grows as I experience Him day after day.  I should be more capable of worshiping God today than I was ten or twenty years ago."

Delighting in God is the message A.W. Tozer intended to be the follow-up to The Knowledge of the Holy.  He demonstrates how the attributes of God -  those things God has revealed about himself - are a way to understand the Christian life of worship and service.  Because we were created in the image of God, to understand who we are, we need to understand who God is and allow His character and nature to be reflected through us.  

We are here to serve and adore Him, and we can only fulfill that role by acknowledging who He is. This is the essence of the Christian life and the source of all our fulfillment, joy, and comfort.

My Thoughts:
Compiled and edited by James L. Snyder (a recognized authority on the life and ministry of A.W. Tozer),  Snyder has been given the rights from the A.W. Tozer estate to produce new books derived from over four hundred never-before-published audiotapes.  Delighting in God is the compilation of sermons Tozer preached after the publication of The Knowledge of the Holy.  Snyder says this in his introduction:

"The purpose of this book is to stir up your heart with a passion for God that will lead you into following hard after God, even disrupt those who are content with their current passion for God.  If someone reads this book and is deeply disturbed, such that they seek God with a passion that cannot be satisfied apart from God, this book will have met its goal."

After reading the book devotionally over the past several weeks, I can say that the book does indeed meet the goal of stirring up the passions of the heart for God.  Snyder has adeptly taken the words and thoughts of Tozer and arranged them for the reader and expounded thoroughly on Tozer's thought that "what we think about God infiltrates every aspect of our lives".  Delighting in God offers a concise and deep look into one's perception of God by exploring our perception of God's perfection, grace, mercy and delves into how our perception of God affects our prayer life and relationship with God and with others.
The book is not lengthy so as to overwhelm, nor is it filled with lofty language that is hard to understand.  Tozer's passion was that others know God and his heart comes through in a more conversational style rather than a "preachy" treatise and through a book that is devotional in nature.

*I received a complimentary copy of the book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

Blessings,
Jennifer