After reading The Blessed Church and hearing a lot about The Blessed Life by Robert Morris, I was
excited to read the The Blessed Woman written
by his wife, Debbie Morris. I must say though that as I began to read it I was
a bit disappointed. I was expecting it to be similar to the other books, but
written specifically for women. It was sort of that, but fell short in some
ways. Not to say that it was a bad book, or even one that I wouldn’t recommend,
it just wasn’t what I was expecting.
The book is basically
comprised of stories of different women (with a few men thrown in) from the
Bible who Debbie has learned some great life lessons from. Within short snippets
of the retelling of the Bible characters stories she interweaves stories from
her own life and how she related to, or learned from the Bible characters. Debbie
writes in a way that is easy to read and she tells the stories from her life in
a very welcoming way. The Blessed Woman
is subtitled Learning About Grace from
the Women of the Bible. Honestly I’m not sure that that subtitle really
fits with the book. Sure the topic of grace was talked about, but there were
also many other topics that were covered. To read that you may assume that the
book is about grace, but it really isn’t.
One great thing about this
book is that it comes with a study guide in the back of the book that is
designed to be used in a small group or Bible study setting. This is a great
bonus because it means that if someone wants to use the book in one of those
settings they don’t have to buy a separate workbook or come up with their own
material. I do think that this book would be even better and I probably would
have gotten more out of it if I had read it and then been able to discuss it
with others. And considering that Debbie is the executive pastor of women’s
ministry at Gateway Church, maybe that is how she really envisioned this book
being used.
I know they say, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
The cover is one thing that drew me to wanting to read this book though. Just
wanted to throw that in here.
I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this reviewing purpose.
