Christian Book Recommendations

 "Out of the Salt Shaker and Into the World: Evangelism As A Way of Life" By Rebecca Pippert 

    This is my top favorite Christian book that I've read. It was recommended to me by a friend when I wanted to learn more on the topic of Evangelism. I took so many notes off of this book, and even bought a copy for myself after returning my friend's copy because I loved the book so much. This book paints Jesus as the main evangelist, and biblical examples from his life.  This book is encouraging, and offers practical tips at becoming better at evangelism. 

"The Final Quest" By Rick Joyner 

    I was introduced to this book when attending the School of Worship. One of our teachers read us the first chapter out of the book, and I was immediately hooked. I needed to get a copy myself to find out what happened next in the story. This story is written about a vision that Rick Joyner, the author, had over a year.  The vision provides a visual of the battle between light and darkness. It also provides great imagery of spiritual warfare. This book is a part of a trilogy with this one being the first.

 

"God's Lavish Grace" By Terry Virgo 

This book was recommended to me by one of the people at my church, when I had first joined Living Light, and had gotten serious about living for God. They let me stay at their house a couple of days when my anxiety was bad. (Going home always gave me a lot of anxiety, thankfully it doesn't anymore). This book was left out on the nightstand, and the lady recommend I read it if I wanted. I read part of it then, and really liked it.  On the School of Worship this was one of the required books to read, and each week we would read a chapter and discuss it more thoroughly. It gives in depth information on God's grace that he has given to us, and how great of a gift it truly is. 

"A Little Book on the Christian Life" By John Calvin

I just got done reading this book in a women's small group. At first glance looking at it, and knowing the author lived in the 1500s was really daunting. I wasn't sure I'd be able to understand the words he would be using to get his point across. However, I was shocked at how relatable to the world now this book is. A book written over 500 years ago. It was also pretty easy to follow, even though we were reading it at around 6:30 in the morning. This book is heavy, but uses examples on what the Christian life looks like, and the right way to be one. 

"Awake & Alive to Truth: Finding Truth in the Chaos of a Relativistic World" By John Cooper

I was really excited to read this book, once I had heard about it being released, and got a copy for Christmas. (I finished it shortly after :P). This book describes how to live in the world today when there are so many different things trying to tell you what to think. John brings out how to find what is the biblical truth we should believe in the midst of the chaos all around us. It also describes different world views, and what our culture believes and why, and uses stories from his own life. This book was encouraging to stand firm in God when things are tough. 

"You're Not Enough (and That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love" By,Allie Bell Stuckey

The title of this book is counterintuitive, especially when constantly in culture we are told "you are enough." Self-love we are told will make us happier, but we are more self-obsessed than ever before, and we're actually the saddest we've ever been as a culture. We think to much about ourselves, and what we want, think we deserve, but this is shallow and leads to loneliness. Constant reflection on ourselves and our inadequacies as humans instead of looking to God who is truly perfect in everyway. (I've only started reading this book, but I am excited to read more.)

"Humility: The Journey Towards Holiness" By, Andrew Murray 

Humility is a virtue we all need in order to become more Christ-like. It is one of the hardest virtues to accomplish especially in an individualistic society where everyone is so focused on themselves. Even when we think we are doing well with being humble, we probably aren't. It's a consistent battle in life to stay more humble than prideful and this book highlights the importance of humility and how to become more humble. This was another book we went through when I was on the School of Worship.

"The Pursuit of God: The Human Thirst for the Divine" By, A.W. Tozer

The pursuit of God, as the title reveals is about pursuing God in our Christian walks. Not to just believe in him, but to actually pursue what his will is for our lives, and his wants for us. Continuing to follow after him and do his will, even when things get tough. I read this book on the School of Worship, and will pull it out to review it sometimes, just for the great reminders that are within this book. 

"StrengthsFinders 2.0" By, Tom Rath

   Strength Finders is a book based on the Clifton Strengths Asssessment which is an online test you can take in order to assess your strengths. It's not free, however I think it is a good investment. I took it a few years ago and I think it was around $20. The book helps you discover more about your strengths and how to apply them within your workplace, or in the case of Christianity, networking God's purpose in your life. I took this assessment years ago and still I have access to the results of the test to look back on as a reminder. Though not necessarily a Christian book, I feel it is helpful for that as well.

"The Lion and the Lamb" By, Tony Ling

      The Lion and the Lamb contains two books that go through the symbolism/imagery and its meaning in Revelation. This makes Revelation, a relatively difficult book to understand because of its high use of symbolism, easier to understand. It also provides a hopeful and encouraging insight on the end times when it's usually viewed as a frightening topic. A friend had an extra copy of this book, and gave it to me as a gift. 

 

   I will probably add more books to this list as time goes on. I read a lot of books on Christian topics and I'm sure I probably missed one. 😊

 

 

Kentucky Trip (Part 2)

      On Tuesday we headed out early again, in order to get to the Creation Museum when it first opened. Again it was a really nice day. Although the Creation Museum wasn't quite as cool as the ark replica it was still worth seeing. The Creation Museum had a lot of exhibits which showed the biblical view on things, as well as the Evolution or Scientific view of things. The exhibits go in order of the 7 C's of Christianity. Creation, Corruption, Catastrophe, Confusion, Christ, Cross, and Consummation. 

    These exhibits also answered questions I didn't know I had about "The Bible". Like why didn't the animals go after each other before the fall? The answer to this question is because there were no carnivores before the fall. The humans didn't need to hunt animals in order to keep from getting hungry, and the animals didn't have the urge to prey on other animals. Through the exhibits I also discovered that the first animal sacrifice happened right after Adam and Eve had sinned and tried to cover themselves up with the leaves and figs, God sacrificed an animal in order for them to cover up themselves with the hide. It is in "The Bible" but I never realized that, that was the first time an animal had been killed. They had a whole exhibit dedicated to catastrophe/destruction in the world which was really moving. On one of the exhibit doors a message was scratched saying "the world's not safe anymore" and the exhibit also had a lot of screens switching between different dark things in the world. (Nazi's, starvation, drug addiction, etc. ) One of the exhibits went through how we tend to think that the first people were stupid and cavemanlike when they were actually pretty brilliant, and used amazing architecture techniques. Just think of Noah's Ark, or the look of ancient architecture like the pyramids. I have included pictures of different exhibits I took pictures of that answered questions I had or that I thought were cool. Outside the creation museum there were paths, one had a garden with a koi fish pond, and a cherry blossom tree. 

    After exploring the Creation Museum we ate lunch and rested once again. You can fully get through both the ark replica and Creation Museum in 2- 2.5 hours without rushing. That evening I thought it would be a fun idea to go to Cincinnati since the part of Kentucky we were in was very close to there. However, before going into Cincinnati we hit traffic and a 25min drive turned into 40min. We stopped at Findlay market which turned out to be in a sketchier part of the city. I explored the shops around and then we sat outside to enjoy the weather and drank our separate drinks. Mine being an iced caramel latte, After the Findlay Market we went to Eden Park. A park that is located on a hill and overlooks Kentucky. The park also contains a reflecting pool and fountain. The part where you can look over at Kentucky was pretty crowded so we could only get rushed pictures as we drove past. We drove back into Kentucky and I took pictures of the Cincinnati skyline on a bridge back to Kentucky from the car. We got ice cream once we were back in Kentucky since the ice cream place I wanted to explore was closed on Tuesdays in Cincinnati. 

Kentucky Trip (Part 1)

        Since last year my mom had been talking about wanting to go to Kentucky to visit the replica of Noah's Ark. We were finally able to make that a reality during Spring Break, and I organized the trip and booked our hotel. The trip was fairly quick, we left on Easter around 11am and got back Wednesday evening. For our Easter supper we had Dairy Queen, but we were able to eat it outside due to the great weather. 

   We arrived at our hotel at 7pm on Easter, and I was excited to note that they actually had the pool open. When I was originally booking the hotel back in February they had said the pool/hot tub would be closed due to Covid. We never utilized either, but it was great to know. The hotel I picked was actually the perfect spot between the two attractions being the ark replica and the creation museum, which are apart of the same organization. The hotel was also clean, and offered free breakfast, so there isn't anything bad to say about it, thankfully. 

   On Monday we went to the ark replica, built following the directions given to Noah by God in "The Bible" Since we no longer use the measurement of cubits to build things, the researchers tried the best they could to make the best representation of what they thought it would mean (look like). A lot of research went into this project as a whole in order to best answer commonly asked questions on the ark and to build exhibits. The ark was also part museum so it did contain some exhibits and painted a story of life on the ark. This included the living quarters of Noah and his family, and cages with animals that are now extinct that may have been on the ark. For me I took pictures of things that answered questions I never really thought of. Like: How big is a cubit? How did they feed the animals? How many animals did they have to take care of? etc. (They studied ancient civilizations to best guess on what the answers to these questions might be.) For feeding the animals they had bags for food and pots for water which they kept piled up on the side of the ship as away to store them. They also guessed that they had a feeder for the animals which you would only have to fill every couple days and a system of getting rid of the animals poop. Each person would have to take care of an 1/8 of the animals which was a big number but not overwhelmingly big. The animals were kept in cages and not roaming free so they wouldn't harm each other, and only land animals mainly would need to be kept on the ark. I have included the pictures here of answers to common questions so you can read for yourself this cool information. Along with pictures of the ark replica itself.

  After the trip to the ark we had lunch then went back to the hotel to rest. After resting we went to a local mall.