Jessie North’s Walking In The New (Cultivating Holy Beauty #3)
Description
You have a personal relationship with God, but how do you grow more confident in His love and leading in your life? How do you continue to build that relationship?
Through the two previous books in the Cultivation Holy Beauty series, Jessie North has guided readers to build a personal relationship with God, strengthening it through habits and biblical study tactics, and to heal their hurts by confronting Satan’s quiet lies. Now, North invites you to evaluate how you prioritize God in your live, and to determine how you can continually pursue, draw near to, and deepen your relationship with the God of the universe.
Disclosure
I received this book for free as part of a bible study group in our Church, it was provided for my personal use. There was no agreement with the author, publisher, or any third party that I would publish a review. The following review is unsolicited, unbiased, and all opinions are my own.
Review – Spoiler Free
I worked through this book, and the previous two in the series (read the review for book 1 here), with a small bible study group. As with the previous two books, I love the weekly lesson layout – it is easy to follow and work through, and the whole book is designed so anyone in the group can lead lessons.
More than the others, this book focused on encouraging everyone in the group to lead a lesson – offering readings to get them comfortable with it before actually doing it. I really appreciated this, because it’s not something that is usually taught and people can feel thrown into leading something. These lessons are incredibly easy to lead, reducing confusion and the unnecessary pressure to be perfect or know everything.
I also really liked the emphasis on choices and being purposeful without time. This is slightly echoed from the first book, but was approached in a way that led you to evaluate your time and priorities more. You may say that your relationship with God is a priority, but is that actually what is shown in your life through the choices you make? What is taking up your thoughts and time> Are those things putting God first and glorifying Him, or not?
North stressed this use of our time and choices to show how we can continue to pursue our relationship with God – in our daily lives, through rough times, or even when we may be alone in our faith with no one to walk alongside us or keep us accountable.
While there is a lot of good in this book (I especially love how North calls us out to our own choices), I feel like a lot of it gets lost in the presentation. The lessons are easy to work through, but I found myself forgetting what was in the previous lesson, or not seeing a continuing trail through the current lessons, and by the end of the book, had to go back through my notes to remember what I had even learned.
Also, as with the previous two books, there are a lot of ‘requirements’ that go with each lesson. This can be very intimidating or disheartening for someone struggling to make this book a priority in their time. While we do choose what we do with our time, and how we draw closer to God with our time, for many who are working on this, or just starting out, completing all the ‘requirements’ in this book could be tricky or even defeating. This book is designed for group study, and I encourage groups to evaluate what they want to do here, being flexible to meet all members where they are at.
Overall, this book was OK. There were lots of good things peppered throughout, but it had a disjointed feel. It could benefit from a heavy edit and restructuring to remove confusing or extraneous parts and bring the focus points to the fore. I will probably be giving my copy back to the Church for anyone who might want to use it.
Quote
An idol is anything in our life that you put ahead of God – yes, anything.
Walking In The New, Jessie North
Ratings
- Quality of Writing – 2
- Insightfulness – 2
- Ease of Reading – 4
- Ease of Application – 3
- Pictures/ Illustrations – 2
- Overall Enjoyment – 2
- Final Rating – 2.5 (Actual: 2.5) – It Was OK/Liked It
Want to learn more about the numbers I use for rating, and the qualities I’m thinking about when writing a book review? Check out my post How I Rate and Review.