It has been a great month of
learning from books! I finished four books this month and enjoyed all of them
so much. I’m excited to tell you about them today.
The first book I read was one I ordered in that big book haul last
month. My friend Jodi recommended it to me, and she did not steer me wrong.
Jodi has worked in church hospitality for years and now speaks on the subject
at conferences around the country. She recommended several books to me that she
has found helpful as she welcomes first-time visitors and helps them connect to
people and ministries within the church.
I
confess I was curious how this pick fit in with that, given that the book, Excellence Wins, is written by Horst Schulze, the co-founder of the Ritz-Carlton. He
may be writing about hotel hospitality, but his principles translate well to
ministry and, honestly, to any person working with people anywhere.
Horst
is German and began working in the hospitality industry as a very young
teenager. He knew from the time he was a child that he wanted to run a hotel
someday, and although in Germany that was considered to be a very subpar
career, his parents saw his desire and helped position him to learn the skills
he would need to make it a reality. He worked hard, observed people, and
learned everything he could. And now he oversees hotels all around the world
and has been quite successful.
The
book focuses on how to serve people (customers and employees) well, offers practices
for learning to truly evaluate the health of an organization, and shares extremely
practical tips for discovering problems and finding good ways to correct them.
I
underlined so much in this book that I hope to implement in my own roles
from this time forward, and I had such a great time reading this book that Ryan
picked it up from the stack and started reading it too. (He is a leader and
manager in his new role at work, so this applies to him right now!) Ryan really
doesn’t enjoy reading, so for him to voluntarily choose a book, read it
quickly, and love it, speaks louder than any review I could write here.
I
will also confess that I judged this book (not favorably) by its cover, but I
was pleasantly surprised to be very wrong. The information is useful, and the
writing is conversational and relatable. Even if you’re not a manager in a
workplace, I think you can learn something about relating to people and living
with excellence!
**
Back
when we lived at WillowBridge, I did my very first Time Warp Wife Bible study,
and it was on the armor of God. I’ve shared with you about Darlene Schacht of
the Time Warp Wife a few times this year, because I did her studies on Jacob
and James in the second half of 2024.
Over
the past few weeks, I have also been facing deep, dark, discouraging spiritual
warfare that has threatened to undo me, body, mind, and soul. God unmistakably
pressed on my heart that I needed to study the armor of God again, so I went
back and did Darlene’s updated version of The Full Armor of God.
Though
it wasn’t the first time I have studied this topic or even THIS ACTUAL STUDY, I
found it meaningful and helpful. The armor of God is a small passage (about ten
verses) in the book of Ephesians, but it is rich and deep to study at length. I
spent days poring over each piece of the armor and learning more about how to
suit up and why I need to do it consistently and intentionally. Correlating the
actual Roman armor to the figurative armor we must wear to protect ourselves
from Satan’s nastiness has been a huge part of what I relearned in this study.
Maybe
you’re not going through a deep, dark season, but there is always a war waged
against your heart. I would highly encourage walking through this study on this
topic. It’s not terribly long and IS terribly important!
**
And
speaking of dark seasons, my friend Charity surprised and blessed me with a
gift to also assist me in this recent battle. A package showed up on my porch
one day, and inside was the book Walking Through the Valleys by her
friend and former pastor, Dave Choutka.
I
read it immediately and felt a kinship with the author as I went through the
chapters. He lost his dad to a glioblastoma – just like we experienced with
Ryan’s mom. He went through a subsequent series of other hardships, some of
which I also experienced and some I did not. But the wounding he described was
so familiar, even if details were different.
The
book is written very conversationally – as one friend talking to another. It
was easy to read, laced in Scripture, and even had questions at the end of
every chapter if the reader wanted to spend time in reflection.
I
found so much encouragement in his words, including quotes like these:
“You
can’t rush out of the valley to experience the transformational work God wants
to do in each of our lives.”
“It
is important to recognize that our expectations of God are often influenced by
our personal agendas. And God is not trapped by our agendas.”
“Courage
is never the absence of fear – rather the commitment to continue in the face of
it.”
“He
didn’t waste his wait.”
I
was so thankful for the blessing of this book in this month. It wasn’t on my
radar. I’d never heard of it. But I was blessed by Charity’s obedience to a
middle-of-the-night nudging from God to order the book and surprise me with it.
I was grateful to feel like I had a friend in the fire (and in truth, I have
had MANY friends in this fire, but this one – in the form of a book – could sit
with me in the moments all the rest of them were busy).
**
The
final book I finished this month was Practicing the Way by John Mark
Comer. It’s rare that I read a book that is trending now, but this one came
highly recommended by good friends, and it also served as the spine for a Bible
study I’m co-leading through church. (Fun bonus: Ryan and I are also both
reading this book and using it for great discussion in our home!)
John
Mark Comer is two months younger and a whole lot wiser than I am, and I enjoyed
learning from him in this book. I have another of his books, The Ruthless
Elimination of Hurry, on my to-be-read list, but I haven’t gotten to it
yet.
Practicing
the Way brings a new vantage point to what most of us who have grown up in
the church would call discipleship. He explains how those in the first century would
apprentice under a Rabbi to become like them and do as they did…and essentially
that is what we need to do in our relationship with the Lord. It’s not about
head knowledge. It’s about learning to “be with Jesus, become like Him, and do
as He did.”
I
learned so much from this book. One of the most profound (to me) things I
learned is how the person we are when we are old is formed and shaped
throughout the beginning of our lives. Who I am now directly impacts the person
I’ll be when I’m 90. I learned so much about how each part of our lives – the silent,
contemplative, solitude parts and the community-saturated parts – contribute to
the way we learn about and live like Jesus.
There
is both conviction and grace in the pages of this book, and I came away
challenged to live more intentionally, more simply, and more deeply rooted in God.
This
isn’t the kind of book you read just once. You go back to it again and again
and remind yourself of the truths and reread the quotes from wise scholars.
I
still have a few weeks left in this book both with Ryan and with the girls in our
Bible study, but I loved reading it for myself and would heartily recommend it!
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