FROM AMAZON: Jesus Calling is your yearlong guide to living a more peaceful life.

By spending time in the presence of the Savior with the much-loved devotions in Jesus Calling, you will: Feel comforted by words of hope and encouragement; Be reassured of Jesus' unending love for you; Receive gentle guidance based on Scripture; Strengthen your faith with Scripture verses; Connect with Jesus further with reflection and meditation based on God’s Word
With 365 devotions, this padded hardcover edition is a favorite for its small size

Excellent for every day of the year, inspirational and good for the mind a great gift from my sister in law, Libby, as both of us have gone through losing a parent and gone through tough times with close friends .Not a book club book ( )

Uniquely inspired treasures from heaven for every day of the year by missionary Sarah Young.

I’ve read this book a lot, more than once, but my Enthusiasm for it has gradually petered out, as I’ve gradually realized that it’s more Calvinist than I am (next stop: Saint of the Day), and more bent than I am on stripping ideas down and simplifying them, although I do read devotionals, (two, now), and she is gracious or whatever in her way. I’ve also come to like her Bible quotes better as time goes on, as I’ve come to realize that we do not really know the Bible as we think we do. I’m not saying this as a put down—that she can’t write, or that creativity is bad—but that even a personal selection of Bible quotes bears with it a stamp of individuality….

Although I do think I understand now her humility and her stance towards the two parts of the book…. I find, you know, that many of us have strange ideas about inspiration, that it’s hyper-spiritual to compensate for being curiously material—a hand comes down from the sky, perhaps…. But it is inspired text, and more work went into the Bible, than probably we will ever know…. and there is value is being merely an editor, if you like.

…. I’d like to say something else about this that might suggest it to rather than further alienate it from the skittish and suspicious, (a possibility, I suppose, if an outside one, ha), so I guess I’ll just say that most of the points—like the one about not whipping yourself like a race bourse: although that’s what I do because I’m So Smart 😹—are pretty Reformation-y; people get afraid of new ideas sometimes, (—I’ll call my movie, The Triumph of Fear), but nothing’s ever really new, and not everything is Really Awful just because it’s like, more broadly, coming through the traditional Christian woman, you know. Some people might even find that reassuring. I guess not everybody! 😼

Special note: Who remembers what they write; I do NOT. 😹🙀

Saint of the Day was okay, I guess, not unlike this except in theology, both very devotion-y, centrist, although I think this was actually better; the Saint of the Day book was a little…. I don’t know. You know how devotions can be. The faith is a good idea; there are no problems in faith—AND—I’m going to bed. 😺

This book felt more, through a traditional woman sure, but what’s coming through isn’t incapable of saying, I don’t know, strong words. I don’t mean strong like a curse or a drink, just…. Strong. Strong medicine.

But seriously—Lord help me and people who take me seriously! (if any!) 😸

This is the second 2 star review i've written in years and years and it happened just 1 week after my previous 2 star review. I very rarely rate any book 2 stars (or 1 star) because my normal practice is to abandon a book as soon as i consider it to be a 1 or 2 star book, and i don't review any books which i don't finish.

I did finish this book even though i knew it was a problematic book, because it is significantly different than anything i had ever read. The reason it is problematic is the same reason that it is very different. The author, who is a missionary, believes that an essential element of praying is to listen so that God can communicate back to us. This belief that prayer is two way communication, and not just the presentation of requests to God, has been practiced by believers for thousands of years and is clearly demonstrated throughout both the Old and New Testaments. I agree with this practice and it is a part of my prayer life. Here is what makes the book problematic: the author has taken the things God has communicated to her in her prayer time and that she has recorded in her prayer journal, and made those communications the essence of this book, and does it in the first person as if Jesus is speaking directly to not just her, but to everyone. This moves God's communication from the personal realm into a public realm which actually seems very much like the author is writing a book of scripture for public use. I have a problem with this. If the book had been written in the third person and just expressed the idea that these are things God had communicated to her personally, i would give this a book a higher rating.

The book has one more problem, though this problem is not at all unique to this book, but is common in far too many (in fact, in most) Christian non-fiction books. After giving us a "word from Jesus" the author then lists several Bible references. Not the actual verses themselves, but rather the location of verses. i.e. Rom 12:1, I Cor 13:5 etc. I consider this to be the very worst aspect of most Christian non-fiction books. I feel that if a passage of scripture actually adds to the points being made, then the actual scripture should be quoted, not just alluded to by reference. It's bad writing as well as bad theology. The scriptures as originally written, were NOT divided into chapters and verses. The scriptures were written as books (with the exception of Psalms which actually were individual Psalms as written and then were collected into the book). The divisions into chapters and verses were done by men long after the books of the Bible were actually written. The purpose was to make it easier to find specific passages. However, the result of these divisions into chapters and verses is often to destroy the context and flow, and by extension, the thought being expressed in the passage by removing it from its context. The use by authors of just tacking on a list of references instead of quoting a passage further exacerbates the problem by further decontextualizing the passage because it makes the actual text unimportant to the book by not quoting the text. ( )