60 Days of Happiness

60 Days of Happiness: Discover God’s Promise of Relentless Joy

By Randy Alcorn

60 Days of Happiness is a devotional that I believe is best fitted for personal use. While you could use this for group study, there is no study questions and the devotionals are straight-forward instruction with the occasional addition of a personal story from the author. However, it is definitely worth adding to your bookshelf for your personal reading.

Each chapter is about 3-5 pages long and contains a verse, quote, devotional, and prayer. Each chapter is entitled with a different question about happiness, which i found to be quite interesting. The devotional themselves are packed with good information and reference listed so you know you’re getting truthful information. Also, I wanted to note that I liked the addition of a quote to each chapter. Verses are a typical addition, but the quote as well was good choice.

I received this book for free from Tyndale Publishing in exchange for this honest review.

Vision Map

Vision Map by Joel Malm

This book is a step-by-step guide to creating a map to help you achieve your goals, also known as creating a vision map. Malm really does a great job describing how to make that map. He also keeps it pretty interesting throughout the whole book even including red scribbles (underlines, circles, arrows) as if he has personally written in your book.

The introduction states “There  are no overnight success stories” and I think that’s great to include right there in the beginning of the book. This book is a guide to making your plan, not a guide to fix all your problems before your morning cup of coffee tomorrow.

So for people like me, self-help books are usually too boring a read. This one is not so. Each chapter starts with a piece of Malm’s journey to success and his story truly is both interesting and inspiring. It follows with the portion explaining the part of the step that the chapter covers. Lastly, it ends with a verse or quote of inspiration.

This is a wonderful faith-based self-help book to create your vision map. It even includes a few samples in the back!

I received this book for free from MP Newsroom in exchange for this honest review.

Kingdom Family Devotional - 52 Weeks of Growing Together

Kingdom Family Devotional

By Tony Evans and Jonathan Evans

This devotional is family-based, meaning it should be read with the whole family. Personally, I think dinner seems to be a great time to pull out this book. The devotional is focused around a weekly topic, where each week contains five daily devotionals.

Each day contains a verse having to do with the topic and then a mix of devotional, questions, and the occasional activity relating to the verse. While there is always a devotional of a paragraph to a whole page there is not always questions or an activity to do.

I was very excited to receive this book because I am a fan of Tony Evans. While not my favorite devotional, it definitely lived up to my standards of a good read.  While this book had a lot of things I like I didn’t like how it occasional mixed in questions and activities. I like my devotionals to have a daily portion of everything they include such as a daily verse, daily question, and daily activity. I don’t like mixing it up to much.

Overall this is a pretty good family read. The verses relate well to topic and the devotional to the verses.

I received this book for free from Tyndale Publishing in exchange for this honest review.

31 Verses to Write on Your Heart

Hi guys! I’m back from a much needed book-reviewing break. I had some very serious family/personal issues to attend to. No worries though, I’m back and ready to review books! Let’s start with a good one from Liz Curtis Higgs entitled 31 Verses to Write on Your Heart.

When you first open the book you get the nice table of contents which basically gives you what to expect in the rest of the book. At this point, it’s important to realize that there is a study guide in the back of the book. This is a tool that should be used while reading the book.

Then, a lovely introduction that details how Higgs came to fall in love with the Word of the Lord and why it’s so important to write verses on our hearts (memorize them).

Finally, the first chapter where we get to dive in! Each chapter features a verse at the beginning. The body of chapter is a breakdown of that verse which means that they take the verse apart and then explain that small portion of the verse in one or more paragraphs. The chapter ends with a tip for memorizing, the verse written again, and a place to write the verse in your favorite translation.

The back of the book holds my favorite part. There, it lists the reference to each of the 31 verses and how you can apply them to your life. Each explanation on application is a short 2-3 sentences. I personally think it serves as both a nice refresher of the verses and it’s great as a take-away.

Also in the back you’ll find the study guide filled with questions for each chapter and notes that include further reading for each chapter in the form of verses and other books.

As you can see, this smallish book is a huge tool. If you’re looking for a quick devotional you can do the day-by-day devotional. If you really want to study the word of God add in the study guide questions and look up the resources found in the notes. Definitely a five out of five star devotional!

I relieved this book for free from blogging for books reviewing program in exchange for this honest review.