Review: "Prayers for New Brides" by Jennifer O. White

We love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19)

Prayers for New Brides: Putting on God's Armor After the Wedding Dress is a 40 chapter devotional for newly married, soon to be married, or even long-time married brides. It focuses on praying for your husband and God's will for your marriage. It also spends quite a bit of time talking about spiritual battle and truths about marriage.

Each chapter has a discussion, prayer, and "call to action"/journal suggestion. Example chapters include "God Is Fighting for You," "See Your Spouse through God's Eyes," "Praise: Your Love Song to God and First Line of Defense," "Cement the Experience of Unity," and "Communicate as a Team." The prayers are personalizable, frequently using blanks for you to fill in your husband's name and sometimes require more in depth thought to fill in the blanks with personal examples and experiences. At the end of each small paragraph of prayer, the Bible verses that inspired it are cited so that you can look at them further.

Overall, I thought it was a well-compiled discussion of God's role in marriage and how to go into marriage sure-footed. I would recommend doing no more than one chapter a day to get the most out of it -- the book even suggests if doing it as a devotional with a group that five chapters a week for eight weeks is a good way to tackle it. There's not many personal examples in the book, so it can be hard to take in a bunch of chapters all at once and still take something away from them.

Though I'm sure every woman would take something different away from this book, I'll share a few points that stood out to me. In the "Sacrifice Your Expectations" chapters  the prayer invites you to bring your expectations of marriage before God including all the outside influences from media and couples in your life. The prayer describes these expectations as "limiting," which was a refreshing way to look it. In the "Covering His Priorities, Time, and Energy" chapter, the prayer included thanking God for creating your husband with his specific passions, personality, and talents as well as talking about how God knows the rhythm of time your husband needs to divide his time between work, marriage, serving God, and rest. As a last note, the chapter on "Fear Less: Your Privilege as a Wife" quotes 2 Timothy 1:7 "For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control," where the whole chapter focuses on surrendering your fears to God.

While I thought most of this book was well done, there were some parts that I didn't agree 100% with the author, her discussion, or the Bible verses she used to support her ideas, but some disagreement is to be expected and it didn't interfere with the parts I did find helpful.

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for free from Cross Focused Reviews for this review.  The opinion in this review is unbiased and reflects my honest judgment of the product.

Review: "30 Days to a More Beautiful You" by Kylie Bisutti

30 Days to a More Beautiful You is a devotional for teenage girls written by former Victoria's Secret model Kylie Bisutti.  Each day includes a Bible verse, a 2-4 paragraph connection, two reflection questions, and a true beauty tip, such as "Let the roots of your life grow deep into Christ" (37).

The devotions are so short that it makes it easily manageable for the teen reader to fit into a busy schedule.  The book covered a lot of really great topics and encouragement for young women of faith: finding your worth, valuing modesty, being good enough, putting God first, and accepting forgiveness.  However, nothing stood out to me as being particularly ground breaking or inspiring. Instead, it was more a general overview.  In fairness, in only a few paragraphs, it's hard to tackle major life struggles that girls face, but I expected more from this devotional.

I was disappointed that the Bible passages were so short, usually only a verse or two. When I was a teen, I would've rather seen more of a passage for context.  There could've been a focus verse for Bisutti's personal connection and life applications, instead of only having one verse to work off. It just didn't feel like much care was put into the God's Word part of the devotional, especially with a typo in the one verse that was featured for day two.

Bisutti also has a book titled I'm No Angel, and I'd be willing to give that a try someday.  This devotional didn't have enough depth to make it worthwhile, but her points were solid and perhaps a different medium is all it needed to blossom into something great.

FTC Disclosure: I received this book for free from Tyndale Publishers for this review.  The opinion in this review is unbiased and reflects my honest judgment of the product.