Giveaway and Book Review: The Life Ready Woman by Shaunti Feldhahn & Robert Lewis

About the Book: Are you a ‘Doing it all’ or ‘Do what matters’ woman?

Whether a stay at home; or working mom, an airplane-hopping executive, an empty-nester caring for multiple generations or a single juggling high demands of career and personal life, today's fast-paced modern world leaves women gasping for balance. We as modern Christian women want to look to the Bible for guidance on how to manage our lives -- but because the world of women looks so different today than it did when the Bible was written, it is hard to find chapter and verse that seems to apply to our situation today.

Thankfully, God has given us exactly that timeless, unchanging guidance for how to find peace, clarity, and God's best for our lives once we know where to look! The Life Ready Woman: Thriving in a Do-It-All World, reveals a profound biblical roadmap for how each of us can find the abundant life we are longing for, rather than the stressful, torn, how-do-I-balance-it-all life we often feel like we are trying to keep up with today. Actually being a LifeReady Woman means that you are clear about your life, bold in your faith, and able to find God’s best for you, and the end result will be that you not only survive but thrive in our do-it-all world.

God has given every wonderfully unique woman different skills and abilities, different desires, and different temperaments -- and every woman around the planet and through the ages is certainly living in different circumstances. But no matter what a woman’s life looks like, the Bible says that God has an individual mission and plan that He’s carefully designed for each of us. And He wants us to find it. Starting January 2011, The Life Ready Woman and the Life Ready Woman Video Series will help every wonderfully unique woman to thrive as she identifies and courageously pursues God's unique design and callings for her. LifeReady Woman puts you on a roadmap to make decisions that will lead to relief, delight, and fulfillment instead of regret.

My thoughts: Despite my poor first impression due to what I consider to be a boring cover and book title, I really enjoyed this book, found it to be very thought-provoking and would highly recommend it to women in any stage in life.

The first two chapters I found a bit slow and hard to get into, but after that I was definitely hooked.

After the slow introduction, Feldhahn identifies the five issues behind the problems women face today, issues that cause us to live contrary to God's design and purpose for our lives. She then goes on to define biblical manhood and womanhood, drawing on the Biblical accounts of Adam and Jesus, Eve and Mary.

A real man rejects passivity, accepts responsibility, leads courageously, and expects God's greater reward.

A biblical woman embraces God's callings, chooses wisely, lives courageously, and expects God's greater reward.

She goes on to explore biblical marriage and how God's call for men to be loving, servant leaders and women to be respectful helpers (as equals!) brings balance to each gender's sinful tendencies.

She then defines our core callings as human beings made in God's image, our feminine callings as women, and then our personal callings as unique individuals.

Our core callings as humans are to leave and cleave (we are to become mature individuals who achieve deep, lasting companionship in marriage), be fruitful and multiply (we are to raise up and launch a healthy, godly next generation into the world - not limited solely to childbearing/rearing) and we are to subdue and rule (we are to advance God's kingdom purposes beyond the home and into the earth, in ways specific to our gifting).

She says that we need to live from the inside out instead of the outside in. Instead of allowing the world's values, our own desires or even our God-given personality and gifts to dictate our actions and life choices, we need to be purposeful about letting God's core callings decide how we should use our wants, desires and gifts, and how to confront the world's values. We need to keep eternity in mind.

We need to recognize that the world has sold us women a lie - the lie that we can have it all, all at the same time. We can't.

We need to understand the different seasons of our lives (there are 10 in the book ranging from single adult to married with grade-schoolers to glorified saint) and how to make purposeful decisions about our lives during each season, keeping the big picture in mind and always with our core callings at the forefront.

I loved the point that she made that making a choice for something, is also automatically making a choice against something else.

She quotes Pastor Andy Stanley... There is not enough time to get it all done. Somebody is going to feel left out, neglected, or cheated. So the real question is not are you cheating, but who are you cheating? You need to be intentional about the choice.

We need to realize that our choices in one area of our life, at one season of our life, can impact the rest of our lives. And so we need to be intentional about our choices. We need to see where our choices are leading us and make sure we know that's where we want to be going.

This book is definitely meant for personal reflection and prayerful application. I'm definitely going to have to re-read and continue to chew on it for awhile to come.

Highly, highly recommend this book.

Thank you to Stephanie and Amy from Litfuse Publicity for organizing this tour and providing me with my complimentary review copy.

I was also given an extra copy to giveaway on my blog! For the few of you that read to the end of this post, enter (US or Canadian residents only) by commenting - I will pick the winner on Thursday, March 3rd.

In celebration of Shaunti Feldhahn’s Life Ready Woman, MomLife Today is giving away 2 Weekend To Remember Gift Packs and much more! Click here for more details.

Not only, is MomLife Today helping promote Life Ready Woman, but they are thrilled to announce that Shaunti will be joining MomLife Today as a regular contributor!!!