Book Review: LOVING MY ACTUAL CHRISTMAS

Today's the day! LOVING MY ACTUAL CHRISTMAS is available! And if you have trouble with Christmas, you will WANT to order your book!!!!

The author had already signed her contract to do this book during last Christmas season - and it ended up being a very difficult one. Her father-in-law passed away, and this was their first Christmas without him. But Alex knew that her family needed to celebrate, so she set herself tasks as she did in LOVING MY ACTUAL LIFE - which was her book we launched last year.

I recommend this book for anyone who's tired of the same ol' Christmas games, who's looking for a deeper, simpler celebration. She talks about the entire Advent season, and using the days between Christmas and New Years as days of cushion for your family and senses. It ALL makes sense!

Get this book. Read it. Follow its direction. Maybe not everything you can use, but I'm willing to bet a lot of it will be useful for you! (And if not, you have a fantastic book to gift!) :D

Book Review: TABLE MENTORING: A Simple Guide to Coming Alongside

This is an excellent resource for individuals and/or women's groups! Sue Moore Donaldson (the author of the book) has a true heart for mentoring. This is a post she wrote just for you!

A growing relationship with Jesus Christ.

That’s it. That’s the main thing.

I didn’t say a perfect relationship or sinless existence. Perfection and sinlessness is for later on when none of us will need to mentor or be mentored.

But qualified mentoring does take a pressing on mentality. Pressing on to know and love Christ better and deeper. As Paul, again the model mentor, cried out passionately to the Philippians:

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.  Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Philippians 3:f1f2-16 ESV

Paul put himself in the mature camp, but he knew he needed to keep pressing. And he did. “I press on to make it my own.” To mentor well means we keep on pressing to make it our own. We share our own stories, our own walk with Christ, our own victories and losses and pressings to know and love Him more. That’s all. A going-on-with God til He comes or we go.

Yesterday a conference director called about the possibility of my speaking and she asked me: “Tell me when you first fell in love with Jesus. When did He grip your heart?” She went on: “Tell me how He is entering your world right now and making a difference in your life?”

Both great questions and I loved answering them. I know I love Jesus more today than fifty years ago, but that’s when it started. I can tell you right now how He’s leading and training and teaching and loving me. Today. Right now. He keeps after me, and--by His mercy and grace, I’m keeping after Him. Not perfectly. I’m not finished loving Him. He still has mounds of work to do in me. But He doesn’t want me to wait til Glory to share my walk with Him with someone else.

Same with you.

If you feel God leading you to mentor, ask yourself:

1. Do I love Jesus more today than ten years ago? One year ago?

2. Do I trust Him for the unknowns in my future?

3. Do I know some of His promises in His Word?

4. Do I live like I trust in those promises?

If you answered: “Sort of. I’m working on it.” You are ready to mentor. Paul wasn’t perfect, just pressing.

If you think you know everything, think again.

If you know one promise in God’s Word, you are ready to mentor that one promise. Ask God for someone to share it with today.