Lazarus Awakening

I just finished reading my second Blogging for Books book. It was called Lazarus Awakening: Finding Your Place in the Heart of God by Joanna Weaver. I have read parts of another of Weaver’s books, Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World and neither book let me down. I feel as if Weaver has a good balance of providing ideas of how to grow in our faith yet doesn’t come across as a step-by-step guide or a checklist of things to do. She is real in the fact that the process of building relationship with Christ and going deeper is often messy and anything BUT a step-by-step process. However, though her use of Scripture, story, humor and more she helps open hearts (or at least mine) to God’s true love in Lazarus Awakening.

I feel like this would be a good book for anyone whether they’ve been a Christian one day or one hundred years. God’s love is so big that we can never understand it yet, books like this help remind us to stand in awe of how big and great and deep and wonderful it really is. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the book:

• “God is love—therefore I am loved.
  God is good—therefore I am safe.
  God is faithful—therefore it’s going to be okay. ” (pg. 55)
• “For the coming miracle hinged, at least partly, on the willingness of the grieving family to give Jesus access to their pain.” (pg. 86)
• “For the Lord wants to accomplish more than just telling us where to go, what to do, and when to do it. He wants to take us by the hand and lead us out of our tombs. Wooing us out of our fear with His tender love. Calling us to higher purposes and deeper places in our walk with Him. All as we respond to His voice.” (pg. 109)
• “For while Jesus Christ did what only He could do—bring a dead man back to life—He invited those who stood around watching to help with the process.” (pg. 125 when talking about the part of the story where Jesus tells the people standing around to “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”)
• “If we want to live resurrected … we must first get around to dying.” (pg. 145)
• “Perhaps God has called you to lay aside a lifetime of striving so you can experience abiding.” (pg. 153)

(I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.)