Reading People - If the viral personality quizzes strewn about our social media accounts are any indication, we are collectively obsessed with the idea of defining and knowing ourselves and our unique places in the world. But what we’re finding is this: knowing which famous movie character you are is easy, but actually knowing yourself isn’t as simple as just checking a few boxes on an online quiz. Backed by extensive research and illustrated with engaging stories. Reading People explains what makes you uniquely you, what makes the people in your life uniquely them, and why it all matters. Popular blogger Anne Bogel makes it easy. In this fascinating book, she collects, explores, and explains the most popular personality frameworks, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, StrengthsFinder, Enneagram, and others. She shares the life-changing insights that can be gained from each, along with practical applications across all facets of life, including love and marriage, productivity, parenting, the workplace, and spiritual life.
No More Dragons - Becoming a dragon is a dangerously subtle process. It never happens all at once. You make a long chain of bad choices. The chain gradually wraps around you. Layer by layer, it begins to take on the aspect of scales. One day you glance at yourself in the mirror and a monster is staring back at you. You aren’t who you used to be. Instead, you’re a dragon. Jim Burgen was raised believing in Jesus, but by the time he was a college student he was very disappointed and disillusioned by “church.” As Pastor Jim Burgen narrates the remarkable process of Jesus reaching into his life and reclaiming him from himself, he implores modern church folks to shake off the trivial, sometimes weirdness, of religious churchiness in favor of the more important questions that make spiritual transformation and “undragoning” even possible to those who are looking for truth and grace.
Half the Battle - Do you ever feel the pressure to hide your struggles in order to look like a “good Christian”? The truth is, we all face battles and hurts in our lives. Scripture is full of God-fearing men and women who tried to cover up their problems. For Mary and Martha, the death of their brother, Lazarus, was the ultimate devastation. They put his body in a dark place and rolled a stone in front of it. But God knew where they buried their pain, and He knows where you bury yours too. Jon Chasteen explores Old and New Testament examples of people whom God invited to begin the healing process by confronting their secret pain.
In the three books that I chose to write about this week, the authors all seemed to be wrestling with the same questions at one point in their lives. Is God truly there when I fight my battles? Who does God want me to be? Honestly, I can think of a few times in years past that I even asked myself those exact questions. Wondering if and when the struggles would end? And trying to figure out if who I was, was ever going to be enough. That is exactly why I found these books so interesting. In Reading People, Anne Bogel breaks down all the different personality indicators and what insights they can give you on who you truly are. But also, she reminds us that, no matter the personality type you may have, God still loves you. Next, in No More Dragons, Pastor Jim Burgen starts out by explaining how he became a “dragon” and how he slipped out of his monstrous form. But then he goes on to tell how to avoid becoming a dragon like he did. What I loved the most about his testimony was the example the pastor used when Jim came back to Christ. He recalled the story from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader where Eustace was turned into a dragon after discovering the cave of dragon’s treasure. As the story went on, Aslan the Lion helped Eustace remove the dragon scales, and he was transformed back into a boy. When we find ourselves covered in dragon scales and doing the destructive things that dragons do, we can only shed that all away with the help of Jesus Christ. The final book that I chose from our selection of new items, was Half the Battle. This book was filled with so many amazing quotes. One of my favorites was, “You can never tear down the walls of Jericho unless you first let God tear down the walls of your heart.” In the beginning of Jon Chasteen’s book, he uses the example of the Battle of Jericho when we think about battles that occur in the Bible. And that quote is the perfect representation of what must’ve been going through the Israelites’ heads as they were walking around the wall. Come on down to the Cross Reference Library, where advice on personality and spiritual battles can be found in these three remarkable books.