Learning, Light and Living: A Daily Devotional Guide with 365 Learning Activities
Donald B. Hamilton
Sleepytown Press, 2019.
Donald B. Hamilton has gone to great lengths to lead readers into a daily time of study and prayer for every day of the year, and the result is a nearly 400-page workbook-style guide that is filled with simple teachings that point to eternal truths.
The three title phrases provide the structure for each day’s message. The “learning” aspect begins with a Scripture verse followed by a brief lesson. The reader then moves on to the “light” part, which is a story, anecdote or cultural reference that illuminates the teaching. The “living” section is about application, as Hamilton offers guidance on applying the learning and light drawn from the verse. Each day’s devotion wraps up with a prayer.
The book is written in a conversational style, with Scripture-based daily devotions presented in sequence from Genesis to Revelation.
Hamilton is a resident of Anniston, Alabama, and has retired from a career in law enforcement and fulltime ministry.
What Are You Going to Do with Your Life?
J.D. Greear
B&H Books, 2020.
In May 2000, J.D. Greear was in the audience of a Passion Conference when a well-known pastor, John Piper, delivered a sermon before 40,000 college students. Today Greear is the lead pastor of The Summit Church, a multisite congregation in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina. Yet he still remembers the impact of Piper’s fateful challenge from that day — “Don’t waste your life.” In “What Are You Going to Do with Your Life?” Greear revisits this challenge with an updated message for a new generation.
“We want our lives to count,” Greear writes. “If we are asked, ‘What are you going to do with your life?’ we want to be able to answer in a way that shows our life has some significance.” However, as Christians seek significance, he notes, “one cause should outweigh them all.” That cause is sharing the gospel with the lost — whether in full-time ministry or any other career. God calls some to leave their careers; others are called to leverage them for the Great Commission, he explains. “The right question, you see, is not if God has called you to His mission, only where,” Greear writes.
Importantly, the message of “giving your life away to the greatest cause of all” isn’t just for college students. As he says in his concluding recommendations, retirees are the second most sendable group in his congregation, and he issues a challenge for them to give the first two years to living on mission for God.
A Bargainomics Lady Mystery: A Bargain to Die For
Judy Woodward Bates
Bargainomics Publications, 2020.
The new mystery novel, “A Bargain to Die For,” is a blend of fiction and reality. The story itself is the fiction part, as Judy Woodward Bates joins her cousin and sidekick Millie in a murder investigation. As the middle-aged ladies weave through their usual life transporting Millie’s art to a gallery, conducting Bible studies and making lunch stops, they’re brought into a mystery involving an unknown but highly valuable collector’s item that is costing lives.
The reality part is that Bates is the author as well as the main character, and her local fame as The Bargainomics Lady figures into the story. Readers who know the Birmingham setting will also recognize routes the characters take to work through the plot.
Bates knows how to tell a story, and she does so with humor and speed while offering tender moments as well. There’s a lot to enjoy.
Although this is her first work of fiction, Bates brings to the job her long experience as a speaker and writer, having authored three books on finance and appeared regularly on television to discuss money-saving tips.
Whispers of Rest in the Storm
Matthea Browning Glass
Energion Publications, 2019.
Matthea Browning Glass pours an honest heart and a dedicated faith, along with her experiences with sorrow and grief, into her 30-day devotional book, “Whispers of Rest in the Storm.” This is a thoughtful book born of personal pain and a sensitivity for communicating truth to readers.
“Our nature protests rest, especially in times of upheaval,” Glass writes in the introduction. Yet she offers an invitation to “Come along and take a deep breath with me. Each day for the next month, learn to rest in God’s truth.”
A mother of five, Glass experienced the loss of a son due to stillbirth in 2014. She writes, “As I walked through the valley of darkness after the death of my son, I found God’s rest. Much of my sorrow in my storm flowed from unbelief or wrong beliefs. I found that God is more loving and compassionate than I can even comprehend.”
The devotional book is well organized in that it begins with a “rest-related” theme — such as “Rest in God’s Faithfulness” — and an applicable Scripture verse. Glass then digs deeper into the topic through a short piece that encourages a time of reflection. Glass is an artist as well, and the full-color book includes photography and artwork throughout.
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