Romans 12:1-2

So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. Romans 12:1-2

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Secrets of the Vine for Women

Secrets of the Vine for Women, Breaking Through to Abundance is a delightful book that shows how God works in our life for us to bear fruit, bear more fruit and bear much fruit. The book is visually pleasing in that each chapter has beautiful vineyard artwork with a Scripture. It touches emotionally by including a fictional vignette of a daughter and her father’s grape harvest. In addition to the main purpose of the book, it encourages spiritual growth by including excerpts from Secrets of the Vine Bible Study, a “Three Seasons in God’s Vineyard” chart that is built upon throughout the book, and a study guide with seven questions for each chapter. The book can be read straight through in a short span, be used as personal study or devotions, or be used for a group study. Scripture is abundant throughout.

Just as Jesus used a vineyard analogy in John 15, Wilkinson continues that theme and explains some grape growing principles. Most meaningful to me was where she explained that a stronger rendering of a Greek word that means “cut off” would be “lifts up”. According to a vineyard keeper, a branch that is trailing in the dirt is too valuable to cut off; instead it would be lifted, washed, and tied up in the sun so it would produce again. Although I know that sometimes God removes things in our lives, I thought this was a beautiful picture of Him tenderly retraining areas of our lives to grow again.

Now that I have read this book through I am going to go back and examine it more closely and use the study guide in some times of reflection. Secrets of the Vine for Women is definitely worth the read!

I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.

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