Book Review: Everyday Faithfulness

Everyday Faithfulness

The Beauty of Ordinary Perseverance in a Demanding World

by Glenna Marshall

Crossway

Crossway

 Christian 

  Religion & Spirituality 

Pub Date 02 Jun 2020

I am reviewing a copy of Everyday Faithfulness through Crossway and Netgalley:

Everyday Faithfulness is about remaining close to God, even when times are busy.  It is about settling apart that time for God.

We are reminded that Faithfulness to Christ isn’t a one time decision, it is a daily decision.  We are reminded too that  Faithfulness In God cannot be sequestered to a faded memory of standing next to a pastor in front of a church and signing your name to a membership card. Nor can it depend on mountaintop experiences like conferences or concerts for nourishment. It can’t breathe between tiny spurts of Bible reading or emergency prayers. It can’t grow disconnected from the truth of Scripture, and it is unlikely to flourish apart from the body of Christ.

Like any living thing that grows, blossoms, and produces fruit, Faithfulness requires daily feeding and watering to grow.  In order to be faithful to Christ, dying to ourselves needs to be a daily process.  We need to not give in to desires that do not come from God.

Everyday Faithfulness stops us from going back to the lives we had before coming to Christ.    It can be challenging at times, but God promises us to be there for us..

We are reminded that Jesus tells us to abide in him, which leads to fruit bearing.    We need to exercise in the individual spiritual disciplines and the corporate ones. Though it isn’t always easy, abiding in him is not a complicated thing. To use Jesus’s vine/branch imagery, abiding means being attached to him. And being attached to him means feeding your faithfulness to him with what he has given us. Friends, we always come back to his good words that fill up the pages of our Bibles. Remember, Jesus tells us that the way we love him and remain in his love is to obey his commandments (John 14:15). Obedience to his commandments cannot be done apart from knowing what those commandments are and building our life around them. 

The way you abide in Christ today is the way you had to abide in Christ yesterday, and the way you will abide in him tomorrow.  We grow in Christ by spending time in prayer and fellowship with him in a daily basis.  And though in life we will have difficult times, he will be with us in times of pain, heartbreak, times of suffering.

We are reminded too the importance of what we watch, what we listen to, and  what we believe.

I give Everyday Faithfulness five out of five stars!

Happy Reading!