Books like Blood Transfusions

A good book enters into your blood stream.   These 15 books are vitamin rich and will leave you a more thoughtful and infused Christian.

 

This secular work follows an Ethiopian woman, who out of deep grief, starts taking in children till her house is overflowing.  It will pull heart strings and infuse your soul with the real stigma of being an AIDS orphan. The story is masterfully told and will stir even the compassion fatigued.

The genocide in Cambodia of two million people came with Communist ideology.   "Equality" comes at a sickening cost.   The young survivor who pens this story struggles with anger, survival guilt and a numbness of conscience.  It is a gruesome and yet important read to understand history repeats itself everywhere class warfare takes hold.  This book inadvertently shows the hopelessness of the author's Buddhist beliefs.  Sadly, she holds tight to something that gives her no peace.

This is a sweet glimpse into a different day in age when words meant something and self-discipline was taught as an admirable trait.   Though I can not agree with all of Charles Wesley's views, the sincerity he lived by was winsome and the struggles he endured for the sake of Jesus were heroic.  The author writes with maturity and fairness to reveal the flawed man in awe of the flawless Christ.

 

Get ready for some supernatural miracles and a young woman who stumbles into her life's calling.

This true account will help you understand how financial help from overseas has stimulated greedy, unethical people into "helping children" while pocketing the money.  The exploitation of orphans is horrifyingly commonplace.  This courageous girl changes things in Haiti through the power of God. 

 

Read aloud to my children.  I loved this spunky woman who moved into a need and began an amazing ministry that brought 7,000 people to Christ.  Because our lives are so much more insulated now, I particularly was touched how constant severe hardships did not discourage her from the work of God.  Florence Young was immovable because she knew she served a steadfast, loving God.  Her life was spent in obscure beauty. 

 

 

 

This autobiography of Ravi Zacharias takes you from the exotic smells of India to the halls of Harvard.  More than that it is an unapologetic thread of how God weaves our stories and how God is present even before we are aware of his working.    The reshaping of a man takes as long as it does to walk from east to west.   

 

An extraordinary tenacity and hunger to know the Word of God, leads a man to groom his young son to translate the Bible in the language of their tribe.  It is a nonfiction book that balances a deep sense of obligation and yet privilege to be the bearer of such a great mission.  Truly inspiring to not give up when God gives you a task that seems insurmountable.

 

 

A young California couple pack up and decide to move to Ethiopia to prevent the killing of the marked children.  Children killed to appease the spirits and prevent misfortune to the village are rescued by their pleadings.  It is a sobering reality that sees failure and death as often as rescue.   They live in a hard place where God demonstrates that true love is sacrificial and emotionally costly.

 

 

A fascinating account of Christianity in China through personal interviews from the eyes of an avowed non-believer.  Perhaps the author doesn't fully understand that a human government could never squash a work of God.  Despite being spiritually dead, the author is very aware that the underground church is alive and well in China.

  

Our parenting styles may be quite different, but I still appreciated how she could write with self-deprecation and humor about the process of adopting and assimilating different cultures into her Jewish family.  Married to a criminal defense lawyer in Atlanta and having 9 children makes for a

interesting mix.  Be warned there is a little bit of language and risque themes.

 

 

A Messianic Jew tells how he escaped war-torn Sudan.  It is a gripping first-hand story of a refugee and the courage it takes to embark on such a journey not knowing the outcome or the end.  His horrendous journey made him the man he would need to be to go back and bring hope and healing to his countrymen. It is one of those books which demonstrates that beautiful stories are written from sorrow and lessons are learned in pain.

 

Given to me in Idaho.  It is a full-throttle, in your face, encouragement to truly live.  The small moments make up a life and as the calendar keeps flipping I realize I don't want to waste precious time.  I want to die by living.  I want to be spent in Christ and love people well.  It is a carpe diem book for Christ-followers.

One of my sweet blog friends from the past few years wrote this book.  As a mother to over a dozen kids, she loves to recount the work of the Lord in their lives. She is a radical lover of Jesus and advocate for the orphan.  Her daughters on the cover are both testaments of God's goodness.  The older one serves medically fragile orphans in Uganda.  And as for little Ruby, you just need to read the story. 

 

After reading God is Red, I was curious to read this as well.  This one is not as gentle and there are some seriously disturbing personal interviews.  That being said, I am so thankful I have a Chinese son who will not be a factory worker with other handicapped children or a street beggar.  I am so thankful that as an American I can have a big family and move without permission from the government.  This powerful book unfolds the despised parts of Chinese culture.

 

Oh, how I love the subtitle: when God rescues messy people.  Through vulnerable beginnings and the ugly side of an abusive marriage, God reaches into their individual lives and woos them to himself.  Christ's love compels this couple into action.  They choose to bring home damaged foster children and show them the undeserved love they experienced.

Have a Beautifully Bookish Summer

 

Though this is a painful, sobering book of the real cost of following Jesus for a former Muslim, Rifqua writes naturally of her head over heels love for her Savior which makes it surprisingly uplifting.   She wants the world to know that she does not regret fleeing from the death threats of her own family into the arms of Jesus.  Her courage in the midst of extreme persecution and severe testing is extraordinary.   This is a story told about life in America as a Muslim background Believer and the disturbing world of Child Protective Services and court rooms.  It is a powerful read.

 

 

Maybe because I can't read music, I have a natural awe of those who can.  The lyrics of music and haunting melodies stir the heart of a young boy and make him into a musical genius.  I found this an interesting read about the man who preserved many of the negro spirituals for an entire new generation.  The author weaves Burleigh's parents and grandparents stories into the narrative and it makes for a rich multi-generational reason why songs can act as oral history and help cause people to remember that which shouldn't be forgotten.

 

Here a raw, real life wife shares why sharing her husband did not bring about marital bliss.  As a polygamist's wife she learned firsthand how another human can't satisfy and her works-based salvation was a hoax.  If you have Mormon friends, this is a book that might give insight into how their communities are very closed and cautious with outsiders because of the fact that their founder and forebearers were pretty much all polygamists.  How social services are needed for such large families is not surprising or how the young pretty girls become prey for ridiculously older men.  It is a frightful existence and a once staunch supporter of polygamy shares how her dreams were shattered.  The best part about the book is that in her later years Jesus mends her broken heart and she encounters the love she always wanted in Jesus' unconditional, full attention way.

 

 

 In the former Soviet Union persecution as a Christian was as common as food shortages.  This testimony of a pastor's child shares how her world turned upside down when her family members were arrested.  The conditions of their multiple internments were faith building, yet bitter with longing to be together as a family again.  God preserves her family in an 11th hour miracle, but it comes at great cost.

 

First I'll say the author is a scoffer of Christians.  However, she writes with soul-searching candor about her year in North Korea teaching ESL that the book proves fascinating.  Though she doesn't quite understand all she sees, she wants to dig deeper and expose her students to the world outside of their birth country prison.   This is a book that you can feel the author's pulse rise and legitimately so. I think the author unwittingly argues for the softening effect of Christianity as she is distressed to see the winsome boys morph into foul-mouthed rabid animals.  It is not surprising that a nation that arrogantly topples Jesus' rules become foaming at the mouth fanatics that scare even another unbeliever.

 

By being smuggled out of China, Tiananmen Square comes alive through the eyes of a highly-visible leader and speaker of the student movement.  Besides recounting the bloody democratic push of China's young elite college students, Chai Ling vents her other frustrations with the communist system through her own personal story.   I learned a bunch about the land of my fifth treasure and am extremely thankful for the author's present push to expose the horrifying way the government handles population control.  She is a woman full of courage and a warrior for truth and freedom.

 

Like the last book, I read this one and couldn't feel more blessed to have been born a woman in America.  Life is hard for most of the world's women.  One unusual man is trying to influence a male-dominated Muslim culture with the idea that girls deserve an education along with their brothers.  A former mountaineering bum becomes a resourceful, committed promise-keeper and repays a small community that saves his life by coming back to build a school for their children.  The building doesn't stop there.   He tirelessly travels thousands of miles on behalf of his rural children and asks to build further schools in the world's most dangerous pockets.  The fact that he gets permission and follows through and constructs is quite astounding.

Own a New Mindset in a Month

Much of our material life can be taken away in a blink of an eye, yet what shapes our ideas, thoughts and devotion is an area that we can own forever.  I tell my kids that Americans invest so much time on gym memberships as if a flabby body is the worst that can happen to them, yet their minds are turning flabby with lack of use.  Education has become test-taking regurgitating rather than training minds to form original thoughts and conclusions.   Here are my suggestions to own a new mindset in a month:

The 5 Pound Mental Curl

You can smell the gunpowder and taste the salty tears.  The Civil War becomes very familial through the telling of four women's lives.  Whether you are a northerner by upbringing or a southerner by choice, you will feel the virtues and shortcomings of both sides as they devise codes, hide strangers and fight in disguise.  Because it is nonfiction that is written to entertain rather than compel action, I have ranked it as a beginner weight.

The 7 Pound Mental Lift

You get to read how a Canadian family sells their possessions and follows God's leading to the mission field in the early days of Youth With a Mission.  The presence of the Holy Spirit is at work in this book as the author discusses the tensions of living in close community and the rewards of a full faith lifestyle where you are not sure how you'll pay for the food or the laundromat.  It is a personal journey that is surprisingly open and humble.  Not everything is perfect and the author understands that God's timing transforms the impossible situations.  Weighted lighter, because the book could dismiss personal accountability as you think, "That is fine and grand for him, but I'm on a different path."

The 15 Pound Mental Rep

A free Kindle read.  I loved how the author shares his own kidnapping story and yet titles the book Rescue the Captors.  He really understood that after almost half a year with Marxist Columbian guerrillas, they were the real ones taken captive by the prince of darkness and a brutal political system.  He used his time with them to recount how God has worked in his life and even how he made some very foolish decisions and yet God was merciful to him.  After his release, he willingly endangers his life by creatively sharing Christ to his former captors.  This book packs a lot of punch in a small spine.

The 25 Pound Mental Hold

I have often thought my life has turned out differently than I expected, so I was intrigued by the making peace of it all.  I found this book a precious personal story of how Jesus teaches a lady his sufficiency in being utterly undone.   The story was never suppose to be about us.  Over and over again the church can pretend there are unacceptable sins like ruined marriages and the speck they see in the churchgoer's eye is awful big to the plank in their own.  Though this book delves into living free from censure, because Christ took the ultimate condemnation, there is a painful struggle which endures that is healing and then broken open again.  True to life are self-doubts and hurtful labels.  The universal need to find our peace in God make this book contend for some real muscle building.

The 35 Pound Tie

These two stories come from two different continents and yet the brutality might as well as come from one.  Both books have highly graphic word pictures that are disturbing.  The Camp 14 book allows us, well-fed Americans, to understand how the power of survival and the dream of food drive a North Korean labor prisoner to escape.  Freedom means nothing to the hungry.  Give a starving man a steamed bun and he will be your slave.  Sadly communism tapped into that principle by making millions unable to eat without a government handout.  The track record around the world is you gain more control of your populace when they are eating from your hand. 

This Voice in My Heart tells a similar story of surviving a genocide with a huge amount of guilt.   The wings on his feet may be a gift to run from his past nightmares.  This book is far more redemptive as sufferings of Jesus remind this young man that he will survive.  As God whispers to his heart, you are amazed that one so brutally hurt can say,"I am a very, very fortunate man to have lost and to have gained so much."  After reading this book, you will have no doubt that forgiveness is divine and humanly impossible without the Spirit of God.

The 50 Pound Mental Giant

This book redefines who our neighbor is as the world shrinks with technology and knowledge.

Is it an easy read?  No.  It might even leave you feeling burnt out with the enormity of the task.  I think this is a book you read slowly and pace it with prayer and lots of Scripture.  Caution should be used that you don't pull a muscle so badly that you quit.  Know that Ephesians says that Christ prepared good works for us to do in advance and ask him for the ability to see what they are and walk in them.   Remember that when you follow Jesus you will never be overextended.  He promises to carry our burdens and give us rest.  Rest in the fact that changing the world is not solely up to us; God is the force behind all significant and eternal change.

In Season Reads

This is a miraculous nonfiction story full of human energy and effort and God's goodness.  A Lost Boy of Sudan becomes a refugee and runner.  God's preserving hand was so evident in his life, and he speaks without bitterness of his difficult childhood.  As a teen boy he came to the U.S. with little to no formal education and graduated from high school in a language he did not speak. Sweet humor and secrets to running fast lay in "zebra meat."

Zany, fast-paced mystery.  A precocious twelve year old girl is the sleuth in 1950s England.

 

This book is a dichotomy of a winsome Iran before the revolution and a sickening spiraling of a nation in turmoil. The writer's father was executed by the new regime and she saw her safe little world warp into an unrecognizable future.  I found the book subtlety addresses many social issues through the survival of her mother in a patriarchal society which does not honor women.  She reveals her privileged upbringing and the escape from the reign of terror.  It was a sensitive account of how things might have been and her personal confessions.   The book takes it title from this beautiful poem below.

 

After reading that, tell me is not God's goodness to his Creation written on each man's conscience?

Makes me think of the True Son.

 

This is the eyes wide-open version of the Iranian revolution.  It is a horrific story, but somehow written with beauty and dignity.  I found it fascinating, painful and a plucker of the heart strings.

 

The odds are crazy.  The outcome miraculous, but what after 20 something years you discovered that you have a famous twin on the other side of the world?  Two Korean adoptees find out that though they were single birth babies born to different women (according to their birth certificates), adopted by different couples, grew up on different continents, speak different languages...in fact they were identical twins separated at birth.  Makes this mom wonder just slightly, does my Teddy have a twin?

 

Led by the Hand or Dragged by the Coattails

A powerful book has the ability to take you gently or forcibly to a place you might not venture on your own.  Here are my recent reads to move the most complacent to think.

 

Beware of some strong language.  This is a book of a North Korean defector and the inside workings of the hermit kingdom.  Freedom is so precious that many attempt escape from their repressive homeland, but few make it.   Even fewer escapees pen what they know, due to the fact that family and friends left behind will face certain disappearance. 

 

Fast moving and quite incredible that a Jewish lady finds help among the Muslims as she flees her native land in front of Hitler's advances. 

 

A book to confirm that God's plans can never be thwarted.  He placed a pharmacist behind bars so that she might meet Himself.  The prisoner becomes free as only God can do.   In a place of despair and brokenness, Jesus reshapes a woman's whole way of thinking and consumes her with His grace. 

Crazy and well-researched.  God is indeed humbling the proud and working all things to his good purpose.  Thought provoking for America's future.

 

Out of intense grief, a woman pours herself into a worthy call.  She rescues kids from human trafficking and sets up safe havens for them in which to learn and grow.  This book is a transforming tale of how her cause for the rejected and misused sweeps away her former expectations for what makes a good life.  She finds she doesn't miss the things and wishes she could only do more for the people.

 

If I ran a high school, this would be required reading for every graduate.  This is where Communism will eventually lead.   The personal epic moves without justifying survival behavior.  A Cambodian man traces his heart-breaking escape story from Pol Pot's genocide.

Slowing Down the World

 Reading is my way of slowing down the world.  The pages wait for me to turn them.   

 

 How do you condense the tears of a ninety year old? How do you allow strangers the peek into your most horrendous heartaches? Somehow this book was tender and miraculous without being weepy.  A mother waits her entire life to see her first-born daughter, adopted at infancy.  Only God could write such an ending.

The poor of Mozambique have seen the richness of Jesus.  Heidi and Rolland Baker are an amazing missionary couple that believe with all their hearts that Jesus is always enough.   They live out the sufficiency of Christ in a radical faith and away from the physical bounty of the first world.  I have a deep respect that they are not victims of impoverished spirits.  They are abundantly joyful where they are stripped of everything to rely on, except Christ. 

N.D. Wilson has an intellectually stimulating, but refreshingly light writing style.  You may find this book a bit scattered, unless you are already a dreamer and see the world with wonder-lit eyes.  However, the book's crazy whirl encourages you to look at the world with curiosity, ask questions again, and savor mix-ups and messes.  All the pieces (even the ones I wish weren't) are the telling of Christ's unique story in my life.  Wilson writes in confidence that Jesus puts all things right in the end.  People who live like this can never be bored.

 

G.K. Chesterton could have written the forward to this book with his succinct quote, "The world will never starve for want of wonders but only for want of wonder."

 

 

 

Why did I read this?  Ben and I love John Piper.  Sadly, his son seems to currently struggle to be his father's son.  This is a melancholy rambling book that really came to no conclusions and offers little resolution.  I could understand it quite well without being a pastor's kid, because what Barnabas observed is more universal than the ministry (even though he might not know it).  All young adults go through a growing up stage that is painful.  They question their spiritual identity, the expectations set on them, and the values of their parents.  Everyone wants to be valued for themselves rather than who their dynamic relatives are or what their kinfolk think.  Paradoxically, it is often the young adult with the most to be thankful for which struggle the most to have grateful hearts.  In another decade lived, Barnabas probably would have found a better topic to write on.  His heart bleeds with wanting to be understood, but it seems he hasn't quite come to the place of beauty and security where he is fully known and loved in Christ and where the wound of human disappointment is healed. 

 

 

When Words and Worlds Collide

 

This is a powerful testament to God's hand on a family of Chinese Vietnamese refugees.  The wind in the title can be none other than the breath of the Almighty.   Jesus' mercies are new every morning and it is so intimately portrayed in this touching memoir.  The author has remarkable ability to speak humor and deep lessons in the recounting of his difficult journey and settling in a foreign land.  Loved this book.  Wish there were more like it.

 

Oh, how I can relate to the title.  I, too, once questioned the sanity of God.  This book takes some grit to read the first half.  It is a humanly depressing account of "absent" God in a land of desperate need where a missionary family just wanted to obey Jesus.   Obedience came at a great personal lost.  I think if you haven't questioned God's goodness before, the author's words might cause your safe little perceptions a jolt.   In the second half of the book the author visits with the persecuted church, and his faith is indeed resurrected as only God can do.  Through the darkest of places, Jesus can teach us to speak in confidence that He deals wondrously with each of us. 

 

 

Joel 2:25-27 sums it up.

 

"So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten....

²⁶ You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied,

And praise the name of the Lord your God,

Who has dealt wondrously with you;

And My people shall never be put to shame.

²⁷ Then you shall know that I am in the midst of Israel:

I am the Lord your God

And there is no other.

My people shall never be put to shame."

 

 

As in the conclusion of The Insanity of God, Jesus reveals himself where you least expect him to be.  Jesus is the very real sustainer and protector of these two Iranian Christian girls who spend many harrowing days in Evin Prison in Tehran for distributing the Word of Life.  Loving the unlovely, sharing the Peace of Christ with their fellow prisoners make this book a glowing account of how God places Christians exactly where he wants for a season to minister.  Prison walls mean nothing to Christ.  After all, Jesus has already released the captives.  These girls knew they were freer in prison than in public and used their time in prison to proclaim the Hope of the World to the hopeless.  To western Christians the book begs a question...Is Jesus worth loss of reputation, loss of freedom, loss of homeland, loss of choice, loss of health, loss of family, loss of privacy, loss of nourishment?  May we have the same courage as these lovely girls and answer in the assertive.

Ink and Tears

Some books just make you cry.  Hence, you have our melancholy suggestions. 

 

Neighbor turned against neighbor, and within 3 months 1 million Rwandans lives were violently ended.   This book is written by a Tutsi who was hidden by a Hutu in the midst of the genocide.  As a survivor, she writes through the horrific pain and guilt of being alive while her loved ones were buried.   She writes about her Catholic faith sustaining her and how the message of Jesus' love and peace can rebuild a war torn country. 

 

As my hero here on the home front read a moving paragraph towards the end of the book to me, his eyes watered.  I know this has to be the real deal to illicit such a response from my Mr. Unemotional.

 

Another Ben read.  This one I hope to read too.  The author seems to have a great conversational writing style.  This is the reason I often choose books by their titles. 

 

After adopting, I now want to understand more about the life of orphans everywhere.  This book will incite anger and cause more mixing of ink and tears.  The great news is that the book has an incredible ending. 

 

This is an insider view into Islam and how the pure message of Jesus will cause internal friction to any other worldview.   Though externally there may be rejection of truth, Jesus used a persevering Christian to love a seeker of meaning into the Meaningful Life.  This qualifies as an ink and tears book, because the author had to weep as his journey to Christ meant his family and community turned their backs on him.

 

 

My Chinese son has changed me, so I quite understand how an organization was born through the author's own adoption story.  With approximately 600,000 orphans in China alone, you can understand the need for love and attention to those who have already lost so much. The year we adopted Teddy, he was one of 7,092 children internationally adopted by American families.   When you single out China, Teddy was one of only 2,306 children adopted by Americans that year.  Despite all the good work Half the Sky has introduced into orphanages, it is no substitute for a real mom and dad.  Many children wait for the stability and affection of a family.