Latest / How to Faith a Life Podcast with Faith Womack / My July Book Reads

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My July Book Reads · How to Faith a Life Podcast with Faith Womack

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you're listening to the How to Faith a Life podcast, where we wrestle with questions on how to live a life of faith, from everything from books to Bible studies, even Bible study tips.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is your place to wrestle with the hard questions and dive deep into what scripture really says for the Christian walk.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you've subscribed to this podcast and your favorite podcast streaming services, review this podcast so other people can find it, and share with other believers who want to ask the hard questions.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, with all that said, let's begin.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, and welcome to the fourth episode of the How to Faith a Life Podcast.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Today is a much anticipated episode, at least for me, and I know for a few of y'all.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to share with you the books that I read through in July.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, yes, July.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Today is August.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, cool.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I really had a lot of fun reading through these books with the constant knowledge in the back that I was probably gonna share my thoughts about these books.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: And this meant that I did a couple different things while I was reading through the books that actually made the process more enjoyable.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: I would write my start date and my end date through each and every single one of these books.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I that would give me an estimate of how long it took me to read through this book.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: It would also show me if I was taking a little bit too long, whatever.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: I also turned uh over or under I would I would fold the corner of the page, whatever you guys want to call that.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: I know librarians hate it when you do that because I was that kid that turned over the corner of the page in my library books, and the librarians loathed me.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, I do that in my books now, like the books that I own, because that is my way of saying, hey, write all of like write these notes or write whatever you've underlined on this page in your Bible later or do something with this.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's some kind of call to action for myself.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm actually gonna sit down and do that sometime this week, hopefully after I finish recording this.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: That is an important detail that's gonna come up on why my favorite book is what it is, because that one has a lot of turned over corners.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like more than half the book is turned over.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, anyway.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, let's just start at my very first book.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: I got a little bit of a stack here.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: My first book that I read this month was The Blue Parakeet by Scott McKnight.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, let me just read his little bio in the back of the book.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Scott McKnight, this is always important by the way, if you ever like pick up a book and you don't know who the name is, like you can't give your own little bio for the person is, just you know, read their bio.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've learned a lot of hard lessons that way.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, they taught their oh, that's why I shouldn't have read that book, you know.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Scott McKnight is the Julius R.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Matinee Chair of New Testament at Northern Seminary in Lyles, Illinois.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: He is the author of more than 60 books, including the award-winning The Jesus Creed, as well as the King Jesus Gospel, A Fellowship of Difference, One Life and Kingdom Conspiracy.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: And in this book, um, he mentions that he has a blog of sorts.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I was actually recommended this book.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: So this isn't a book that I picked up and I was like, oh, I need to read this.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: This was a book that was recommended to me by a friend that I graduated college from.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and she said, This is a great book to struggle through your hermeneutic when you're looking at women in ministry and um formulating your own kind of thoughts and processes.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: Many people, when it comes to women in ministry, they'll say, Well, if you concede to that, if you say, Okay, women can be in ministry um and kind of open up the floodgates for that, then you'll just go down this downhill.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure all of you guys have heard this.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: This is the lazy man's excuse on why we don't address women in ministry.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Is it's just this downhill, it goes downhill from there.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I would argue no.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: And Scott would also argue no, um, although that's not like the per the uh main argument of his book.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: And granted, there are some things that I would not completely embrace, but I actually there were so many little things I wanted to share with you guys.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: I took a piece of scrapbook paper and wrote them down.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: So it's been a little while.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: I probably should have reviewed this before I started turning on the camera, but the podcast is low effort.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: So here it is.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Let me just read it to you guys.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone picks and chooses from the Bible, everyone.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: And that is so true.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone always, you know, you can be the most conservative of conservatives, you can be the most literal of the literalists when it comes to the Bible.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: There are still things that you cut out of your Bible because they're inconvenient, because you don't like the consequences of them, whatever.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a great example of this is I I love when um kind of like fundamental, like conservative Christians will say, Well, I just when it comes to the women in ministry issue, they're like, Well, I just believe what the Bible believes.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, really?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: So why aren't you like speaking in tongues right now?
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like that is more frequent in the scriptures than we want to admit.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: And if we're not intellectually engaging with these questions and these issues, we're just hypocrites because we all cut out things in the scriptures.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: But the question is, why?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: Why is this not universal?
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: Why does was this culturally um or whatever?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like there's just there's a lot, but so he gives a couple examples of that with the Sabbath.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: We if you really look at the scriptures on the Sabbath, we have a different understanding of what it means to follow the Sabbath and what the scriptures say.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: Tithing, same thing, foot washing, same thing, charismatic gifts, like speaking in tongues, and giving to the poor.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: So then his question is how then are we to live out the Bible today?
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we don't read to retrieve because we can't, like it's impossible to live a first century life in 21st century.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: And if we just salvage, that means culture dictates what is the value in the Bible.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Ooh, that's very interesting.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: See, I haven't reviewed this.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: We often read through tradition, we read through our theology and what we believe it says or should say.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: So he presses some of my buttons.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one of his phrases that I still am not sure about what I think is God spoke in Abraham's day in Abraham's ways, God spoke in David's ways, and and I'm butchering this quote.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not trying to quote word for word, but God spoke in David's days and David's ways, God spoke in Paul's day and Paul's ways.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um now that I think can be manipulated.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'd be careful, I would really want to hear him unpack that even more.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Though he does do a fairly good job of unpacking it in this book, I thought basically, here's the thing.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: If you love hermeneutics like me and you love wrestling with how are you supposed to read the Bible and how do we ask hard questions about what this verse means, this might be a good book to stretch those muscles and to get you to think um hard about some of the hard questions.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I would not say every Christian needs to read this book by any means because um I think you need to read it loosely and not read it like every single instruction to reading the Bible is the end all be all.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like when I tell when I tell you guys to go read how to read the Bible for all it's worth, I'm like, read that book and everything that it says is basically the end all be on.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, every single time I go back and reread that book, I'm always like, oh, I forgot it said this, and I I I've now learned this is so true, you know, whatever.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: This book, I would not say the same thing.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think there are things that are good for Christians to read that are wrestling with how to exegete, how to, you know, properly approach the scriptures with a good hermeneutic.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: And you guys can see, um, if you're watching this on YouTube, I folded over a good amount of pages where he brought some good points to mind, but I would not say all of this, I do not, I definitely don't endorse everything, but it was really good, muscle stretcher, and reminded me just how much I love hermeneutics.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, next book I read was an easy book.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: I was ready to kind of rest my intellectual mind, and it was Audacious by Beth Moore.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is a short book.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I didn't tell you how long it took me to read the blue parakeet.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: I technically started it on June 28th and finished like nine days later on July 8th.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it was like a nine, 10-day book, but that's because it was meteor.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but this is where I started kind of picking up on my books.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: Beth Moore's book is really super short.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it took me two days.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a good, like I would encourage new believers to read this, um, old believers who want to refresh their faith.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: It is a really good, like feel-good encouragement um in what it means to follow Jesus with that audacious love in response to his audacious love for us.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think there was anything that I wasn't like, I don't like this.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I know people have mixed feelings about Beth Moore, but I actually grew up in our like groups that didn't like her, and so now I'm kind of like, why haven't I read her?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: Let me let me check her out a little bit.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so I've got Breaking Free on my list that maybe I'll get to this month.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: I just didn't feel like getting to it in July because I had already read this one, and it's very Bethmore talks like I talk in my podcast, you know.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: Not that she's not intellectual, I should I shouldn't maybe I shouldn't say that, but like y'all get what I'm saying.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: She's just kind of all over the place.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes, no, not even that's not true.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: Bethmore is just, I don't know, it's she's like reading a friend, and you don't always want to read a friend, so that's why I maybe not didn't want to read her this month.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: But as you guys can see, and if you're watching on YouTube, there was a fair amount of the book that I folded under.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: And there's construction outside of my studio, so if you guys can hear that, I apologize.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, moving on.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: The next book that I read, what was it?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: Searching for Sunday, Rachel Held Evans.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Not everybody has very good feelings about Rachel Held Evans.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: This took me two days.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I at first was really excited to read this book because I had heard so many great things about it, and I only have like five things folded under.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: I did not agree with a lot of the things she was saying, and I couldn't relate as much as someone once again recommended this to me, and I couldn't relate with a lot of what she was talking about, but boy oh boy, did I learn a lot about those who have walked away from the church or those who have been hurt by the church.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: It really gave me new eyes to see, hear, and understand church hurt with a new light because that is what she's talking about here.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: And she talks about her experiences feeling rejected by the church, um, starting a new church, you know, or being part of like the leadership team at a new church.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: And um it's really she had such a sorry, Rachel Held Evans has passed away, but she had like such a great way of writing that it was an easy read to fly through because she talked like a friend.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: But granted, she is a friend that I wouldn't agree with everything on.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: She does talk a fair bit about her standpoint on homosexuality and same-sex attraction and and you know, all of that stuff, which I do not agree with her on.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: But when it came to her talking about how that led to church hurt, it was very convicting because I feel like that's where the church has failed.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: Most of the time, when we are disagreeing with people, we lean towards hating rather than loving.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: So it was a really helpful book.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: If you're struggling with love for the church, if you feel like the church has rejected you, and if you've walked away from the church and you can't imagine going back to the church, or if you're having a hard time mustering the strength to go back to the church, I would really encourage you to read this, especially if you've had questions that you don't feel like the church can answer.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: She, this is like one of her main points in the book is you know, I had hard questions and the church didn't even want me to ask them.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: Never mind trying to answer them.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: So that was really, really good.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna be honest with you guys, I couldn't relate with her on a lot of the things, but I still learned a lot.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: So even if you have a child that's in a similar instance, it might be a good book for you to read.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Next up, I read Philip Yancey's The Jesus I Never Knew.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna be honest with you, I did not like the way that he wrote.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Beth Moore and Rachel Held Evans were like really easy reads, and so then jumping back to Philip Yancey um was a harder read for me.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't follow his brain waves quite as much, but there is a fair amount of stuff that I folded under because he made some really pro thought-provoking statements about who Jesus is.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: The premise of this book is um kind of peeling back tradition and these ideas that we have about Jesus from like, you know, the Jesus movies that we watch, where Jesus is, I don't know, basically just a quiet white dude.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he peels that back and he talks a lot about Jesus' Jewishness.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a little bit of a picture into that first century culture, into Jesus as a person rather than as some kind of symbol.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think sometimes we do that with Jesus, is we we uh make him into a character rather than a person.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus was 100% man, 100% God, and his historicity, his personhood is so easily forgotten because we think about his godness.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I don't know, Philip Biensi did a pretty good job of just kind of like bringing thought-provoking stuff to mind.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: Let me let me flip open to some of the things I folded under.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: I should have done this on the other books.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: So he said, I'm just flipping open to random pages I folded down.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: The cross is not a detour or a hurdle on the way to the kingdom, nor is it even the way to the kingdom.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: It is the kingdom come.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's good.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: I literally wrote in the margin.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, oh, here we go.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote gold in the margin here.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um Philip Yancey wrote, he let himself get distracted by any nobody he came across.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: So nobody's in um quote unquote.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: So he let himself get distracted by any nobody he came across, whether a hemorrhaging woman who shyly touched his robe or a blind beggar who made a nuisance of himself.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Two of his most impressive miracles, the raising of Lazarus and Jarius's daughter, took place because he arrived too late to heal the sick person.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's interesting.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, one more.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: In contrast, the gospels present a man who has such a charisma that people will sit three days straight without food just to hear his riveting words.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: He seems excitable, impulsively moved with compassion, or filled with pity.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: The gospels reveal a range of Jesus' emotional responses, such as sympathy for a person with leprosy, exuberance over his disciples' success, a blast of anger at cold-hearted legalists, grief over an unreceptive city, and then those awful cries of anguish and Gethsemane in on the cross.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: He had nearly inexhaustible patience with individuals, but no patience at all with institutions and injustice.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: So um, yeah, he he really kind of broke down what do we see in the gospels, and let's cut away the pictures that we see in like Jesus movies and things like that, like this idea that we have of Jesus, and let's just get down to what is what does the gospel say, how he was.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it was really interesting.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: Next up, I read worthy, and I mentioned this in my last podcast by Elise Fitzpatrick and Eric Schumacher.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, this is where the folding over um came into play because I folded over, I would say, probably about 50% of the book.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: The part at the end that's not folded over is just notes.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: So when you look at like the bulk of the book, where the meat of the book is, it's like every other page is folded down.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: I really, really enjoy this.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: So interestingly enough, Worthy is a book on women's roles, the uh or the gift and calling of women.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: And um these two authors write from it's a woman and a man.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: The man's a pastor, the woman is um a speaker and author, and they write from a conservative complimentarian perspective.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: The best soft complimentarian argument that's most like biblical and um faithful to our questions of like, okay, why did this woman get to do this in the Bible?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like, they address so many good things.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: I've never found a book that I so resonate with on my standpoint on women in the church.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I would disagree with them on the most important part about women um like behind the pulpit.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: I do think there are scenarios where women can and should stand behind the pulpit, but I give grace to those who don't, and I resonate the most with these complimentarians who would not say that women should ever stand behind the pulpit.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: So um, there's that, you know.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: I I really, really resonated with this book and the truths and the convictions that they hold.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: Eric Schumacher has some really good points about like the pastoral viewpoint of this, so I really want Joe to read this book.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he talks about like how pastors can, even in complimentarian churches, affirm and use the gifts of the women in their church because just because we're complementarians and we say, you know, women can't stand behind the pulpit doesn't mean that they can't be used and they can't pray or they can't read scripture or they can't, whatever.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I found this very, very encouraging.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know if I said this already.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: Let's see.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: It took me how long to read through this?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: Five days.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, I was savoring this book.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I brought it to the beach with me.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: It was like every two seconds I was going, Joe, look, listen to what they just said.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: Here, I'll open up a few things.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Eve is the first recorded human being to speak the divine covenant name of God.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Really interesting idea.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like that was obviously there for a reason.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's a reason why Eve is the first one to speak that name.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we have no okay, so this is talking about uh Adam and Eve.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: We have no record of his trying to stop her or helping her fight Satan's attack.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: They were both there together.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: She was deceived and ate first.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: He ate next in wide-eyed disobedience.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: No scripture presents the woman's action as one of seduction or temptation.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: The scripture is not afraid to call out and name seductresses elsewhere.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: Next line that I underlined is the effect of sin comes only after the man eats.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: When the Lord appears in the garden, he questions Adam first.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: This is a sign of Adam's special response, special responsibility as head of humanity.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's their standpoint on headship, on leadership, but also the roles and the ways that scripture presents it is very theological.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we look over those things and we don't address them.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: Which leads me to a book that I read somewhere in here.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: I did not finish it.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: I it was Louis Giglio's Don't Let the Enemies Have a Seat at Your Table.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I was reading it.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, a friend at church recommended it.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: We were thinking about doing it as a Bible study at our church, and we have since kind of walked away from using that book.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm glad because I did not enjoy I I grew up listening to Louis Giglio a lot.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Y'all know I was born into the Catholic Church, and then my family jumped over to the Southern Baptist Church and told me it was no big deal, right?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: So it was super funny there.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: But um, growing up in the Southern Baptist circles, I heard Louis Giglio at many conferences and you know, loved watching his little worm show, whatever it was called, you know.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm well aware or well-acquainted, acquaintanced, whatever.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like I grew up with Louis Giglio.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, however, it'd been a long time since I've listened or read anything from him, and I was really disappointed with the book.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: The premise of the book is Psalm 23 and not letting the enemy sit at your table and speak lies into your mind and heart.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I think he just took the metaphor a little bit too far.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: I would I don't like the idea that like God's just passively sitting at the table and going, Oh, please don't let the enemy sit here.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like that is a misrepresentation of the spiritual warfare, and God is not passive at all.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um and to do that is to belittle the cross.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: The cross is as active as it gets, right?
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I couldn't make it through the rest of the book.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: There were also a few other times where Louis Giglio um paraphrased the scriptures and in misrepresentative or irresponsible ways, where he would kind of combine scriptures or combine ideas and wasn't like faithfully paraphrasing them.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: And it really started to bug me.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is stuff I would not have noticed if I didn't like go to Bible school and just kind of have an ear for that.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: When someone's paraphrasing in their book, like it's one thing if you're paraphrasing in a conversation with a friend or something like a casual setting like this, but when someone in a book printed like purposefully paraphrases and it's not faithful and it actually kind of twists the scriptures, it gets problematic.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: And what finally set me over the edge, I'm gonna be completely honest with you guys, is he paraphrased um what happened there in the garden with Adam and Eve, and he said something on the lines of like Eve beckoned Adam over after she had taken taken a bite of the apple.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: And um that is just not true.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: He was right there, and the scriptures make it very clear, and so to do that is just not to be faithful, and it's to imply a lot into those scriptures about the women's roles in the fall, and then the man's role in the fall, and I didn't, I I just couldn't make it through like that, just like ruined it for me.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: So um, that is my DNA for the month, or DNF for the month.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't finish it.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't say that you shouldn't read the book, I just I think it has too many theological implications if we're gonna take it that far with like the enemy sitting at the table and not letting him sit at the table, like all that work is done on the cross, and while we do have a spiritual fight after the cross, and there is we're a lot more passive, and God is a lot more active.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: All right, and then my last book that I read is actually not a Bible study book, it's not Christian living, it's not Christian at all, but it is honestly what I read, and I've plowed through this in two days.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: This is Primal Branding.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: My boys were really freaked out by this scary-looking mask on the cover.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: I was not prepared for it when it came in the mail.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: But it's by Patrick Hanlin, and what I why I was reading this book is because it says a lot about the way that the Lord made us to respond to brands and branding.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I found it very interesting because we respond to stories, we respond to um belongingness, but it's interesting how woven all throughout it is this common grace of like people yearn for the Bible.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: They yearn for a relationship with the Lord, they yearn for that story that has been unfolded in the Bible.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing just how often in these secular books that is so blatant and so vibrant there.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, I've really been enjoying kind of reading that and seeing the heartaches of humankind.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm in a bubble, you know.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm a pastor's wife, and I do this for my job.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like, there's there's not a lot where I get to truly see and hear the heartaches of my culture and my time and see a worldview that's not got Jesus in it.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I just went to the bookstore yesterday and I stacked up, I got a stack on my bedside table like this.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm so excited to share with you guys this next month's read.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm on a like I'm reading faster.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: Now that I'm at a seminary, in seminary I was doing a lot of like skim reading, and I was reading a lot of books I didn't want to read and just learning how to like get what I needed out of them for my test or my paper or whatever, and not reading as much for joy and for like this is what I feel in the mood to read right now.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so I am flying through books because I get to choose them, and I am really enjoying that aspect of being out of seminary.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I forgot how much I love to read just for myself and not for like a paper or something.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: So this has been a really fun process to um do and share with you guys.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you enjoyed hearing about my thoughts on these books and um learned something maybe along the way.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: I would encourage you guys, if you love reading, um, to fold over corners of your paper.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, fold under fold under the corners of the paper of your book that you're reading and add those notes into your Bible after the fact.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um I would encourage you to record like your start day and your end day.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know why, but I find it really fun to just see how long it takes me to get through the book.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: Let me pray and um just ask the Lord's blessing over this time and that the Lord will encourage you guys to read the most important book.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: Father God, um, we thank you for your word and we thank you for the truth.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um God, we confess we're uh so easily distracted by this world.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: And um, while it's so fun to talk about these books and the things that we're learning, God, we confess that there's no better or sweeter book that we can read than your word.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so, Lord, um, we pray and ask for you to give us every single day more and more that hunger and that thirst to study your word and that fire within us that cannot be quenched, to just want to consume your word and delight in your word more and more.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: God, um, I pray that the books that I shared um in no way are some sort of stumbling block or um confusion or anything like that, Lord, but that they encourage others to just go read and to go learn and to listen to other people's thoughts, whether it's hermeneutics or women or you know, whatever it is, Lord, um, to just read and to enjoy your truth and your word, God, um, uh and the many different applications that it can have in our lives from branding and stories to um hermeneutics and theology or the way that we interact with those who are hurting and are hurt by the church, Lord.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um I just pray and ask for your blessing over the listener and I thank you that um we get to spend this time together every week.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: God, um we thank you that we are yours and we thank you for the cross.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: And it's in your name we pray.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: Amen.