My Kindling Launch Big Book Giveaway
Kindling—Starting Fires in Hearts and Minds--has been my blog name and theme for seven years. Last month I launched a redesign—a clean, fresh look. With it I promised a big book giveaway—and here it is.
Eight books, each one from a friend of mine in the Redbud Writers Guild, will be given away to a subscriber to Kindling. The drawing is on my birthday, April 17. These are great reads, and I would love to give one to you or a friend of yours.
If you are already a subscriber to my newsletter or my Kindling blog, you are eligible to win in this giveaway. It’s not too late to get your name in—just click on the Click Here and Sign Up right under my photo on the upper right side of the blog. And if you have a friend who would enjoy my spiritual fire starting and like to win a book, share this post with them.So what are these fabulous books? There is something for most everyone: for your marriage or as a mother of young children; to overcome fear or dream big dreams; and a moving story of an international adoption.
Let me tell you about these books:
Don't Hide Your Light Under a Laundry Basket: 150 Bright Ideas for Wannabe World Changers
Don't Hide Your Light under a Laundry Basket is packed with creative ideas that will help women tap into their passions and leverage their influence for the good of the world and the glory of God—even if they have a baby strapped to their chest and a toddler clinging to their knees. When your world is dominated by dirty diapers, the fair distribution of animal crackers, and nightly battles over proper dental hygiene, it’s easy to feel as if your unique gifts and callings have been swept aside like those stale Cheerios collecting dust bunnies under the kitchen table. Moms with a passion for missions, social justice, and evangelism may even feel like their families are "hampering" their ministry, though few would dare admit it. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Written in a chatty, conversational tone, Don’t Hide Your Light is a collection of fun-sized essays that can be read in five minutes or less—perfect for sleep-deprived moms who need reading material that can be picked up without guilt and put down without frustration. Readers will be armed with an array of ideas on how to impact their home, workplace, community, and world, and tips and testimonies from everyday moms will get women excited about how God could use them right where they are, spit-stains and all.
Rich, soul-inspiring practices for moms who have neither quiet nor time.Dirty laundry, crayon-smeared bills, and smashed crackers . . . And there's your Bible--buried under a pile of diapers. Bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, without a moment of peace and quiet, you wonder if the spiritual life you crave is even possible. But God sees you. He designed this parenting journey, after all. He understands the chaos of motherhood. And he joins you in everything--whether you're scrubbing the floor, nursing a fussy newborn, or driving to soccer practice. Catherine McNiel invites you to connect with God right here, in the sacred mundane of every mothering moment.
What makes a marriage beautiful? Honesty? Compatibility? Physical and emotional intimacy? All of these are important, but there’s one component that determines the quality and longevity of a marriage more than anything else: a willingness to grow.
Because a wedding joins together two imperfect people, all couples experience disappointment, conflict, and pain. How husbands and wives respond to these challenges determines the kind of people they will become and the kind of marriage they will have.
Making Marriage Beautiful reveals how the pursuit of Christ results in profound transformation for both the individual and the marriage. Rather than offering clichés and formulas, Greco relies on candor, humor, and real life stories to bring encouragement and wisdom to all couples, regardless of whether they have been married four weeks or forty years.
Do you battle fear and worry? Do such emotions dominate your life? JoHannah Reardon, a former Christianity Today editor, experienced lifelong fears that controlled her waking and sleeping thoughts. Even when she became a Christian, she was not able to conquer her fears. It wasn't until she took 40 days to concentrate on overcoming that one sin that she found freedom and victory. No More Fear offers a way out of the cycle of anxiety that permeates many believers' lives. Because fear is an emotion, we must engage our emotions when thinking about God. It has to go from head knowledge to something we truly experience. By taking 40 days to examine God's attributes, you can find freedom from fear in the knowledge and experience of who God is and how he wants to care for you.
Ready to Change My Name: A Spiritual Journey from Fear to Faith
Fear can consume us and rob us of the precious present. How truly blessed we are by the grace of God to have been given abundant and eternal life through Jesus Christ. Our lives are constantly being unfolded to reveal our place of purpose, peace, and power within the Lord's redemptive plan. Yet we inevitably face along this life's journey much that seeks to interfere with our growth, frustrate our prosperity, and impede our forward motion. Without the necessary tools that permit our victory in Christ to be translated to victory in our daily living and relationships, we end up being accomplices to our own injury. Through this book you can experience a life altering freedom when you surrender it all to God. You will explore how to discover faith in the midst of your deepest pain, walk in freedom, remove the masks, and experience a transformational process from fear to faith ~ then walk in peace that can only be granted by God.
Redeeming Ruth is the inspirational, true story of an abandoned baby, a devastating diagnosis, and the way God loves broken, hurting people through us even though we may be broken and hurt, too.
When Meadow met her, Ruth was a sixteen-month-old child that some church friends were hosting from an orphanage in Uganda. She had cerebral palsy and was so weak she couldn’t lift her head. Meadow had always felt a call to adopt, but was this what God meant? Part family drama, part travel adventure, and part spiritual memoir, Redeeming Ruth is a heartwarming, against-all-odds story about the most unlikely pairing of a small-town New England family and their adventure in adopting Ruth, an abandoned baby from Uganda. Much more than an adoption story, this book explores what happens when we sacrificially reach out and share God's love with others.
"The first time the sound of a dream slammed, hard, in the center of my spirit, was almost a decade ago. It's the sound that has led me on the journey whose threads are pulled through this book, an intimate pilgrimage, often ironically nomadic, that I've struggled to comprehend; it's been unlike anything else I've ever known. It happened in a coffee shop during my thirtieth year, and in less than two hours it caused me to listen to my life anew."
In these pages writer and speaker Suanne Camfield writes of the varied dreams that she has pursued over the course of her life. With captivating and eloquent stories and concepts, she guides us through what it feels like to have a stirring deep inside of us and how God guides and shapes us through that sense of calling. This is not a book primarily about vocation or even discernment. It is a book about being a dreamer who is shaped by God. It is about having the wisdom and courage to step into the places of our most vulnerable longing.
Women, Leadership and the Bible
by Natalie Wilson Eastman
What do you believe about women's roles in church leadership? Should women lead groups that include men? Should women preach? Should women be ordained? More importantly, why do you believe what you believe? Plenty of books exist telling women what to think; precious few help women think for themselves, particularly about theological issues. Women, Leadership, and the Bible helps women learn to interpret the Bible and discern for themselves answers to their questions about women's roles in the church, along with any other issue they may face in life.
So there you have it! Eight amazing books in a giveaway! Which will you win? Be sure to subscribe.
And I hope you come along to start some fires with me.
C2017 Judy Douglass