For the Love by Jen HatmakerFor the Love: Fighting for Grace in a World of Impossible Standards by Jen Hatmaker
Published by Thomas Nelson on August 18, 2015
Source: Gift
Genres: Christian Life
Pages: 224
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four-stars

The popular writer, blogger, and television personality reveals with humor and style how Jesus' extravagant grace is the key to dealing with life's biggest challenge: people.

The majority of our joys, struggles, thrills, and heartbreaks relate to people, beginning first with ourselves and then the people we came from, married, birthed, live by, live for, go to church with, don't like, don't understand, fear, struggle with, compare ourselves to, and judge. People are the best and worst thing about the human life.

Jen Hatmaker knows this all too well, and so she reveals how to practice kindness, grace, truthfulness, vision, and love to ourselves and those around us. By doing this, For the Love leads our generation to reimagine Jesus' grace as a way of life, and it does it in a funny yet profound manner that Christian readers will love. Along the way, Hatmaker shows readers how to reclaim their prophetic voices and become Good News again to a hurting, polarized world.

For the Love is more a collection of essays, and random funny bits, centered around loving ourselves and loving others, rather than a unified book. I wasn’t expecting that, so it kind of put me off at first, but once I got into the groove I found a lot it relatable and funny and occasionally inspirational.

I really enjoyed Hatmaker’s voice. For a Christian writer, she is hilarious and hits on some of the exact things I feel. The book is pretty light overall, in part because of the amusing tidbits and asides. It’s about loving others, near and far, but there isn’t really much new in it. At the same time, her love of Jesus, of the church, of people shines through.

Some things that stood out for me:

“We need to quit trying to be awesome and instead be wise.” (7)

“If it isn’t also true for a poor single Christian mom in Haiti, it isn’t true.” (19)

Two of the later chapters were particularly thought-provoking, Poverty Tourism and Dear Church. They made me think about how our church handles mission trips and how much we rely on staff-led ministries.

And I’d really like to belong to a supper club like Hatmaker’s or hang out on front porch. She’s that kind of person, someone you feel like you could be friends with. I feel like she’d be supportive and non-judgemental, but also let you talk through issues. And she’d always have a funny story to tell.

 

About Jen Hatmaker

Jen Hatmaker is the author of the New York Times bestseller For the Love and happy hostess of a tightly knit online community where she reaches millions of people each week. She and her husband, Brandon, founded the Legacy Collective, a giving community that granted more than a million dollars in its first year. They also starred in the popular series My Big Family Renovation on HGTV. Jen is a mom to five, a sought-after speaker, and a delighted resident of Austin, Texas, where she and her family are helping keep Austin weird.

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