Lazarus Awakening: Finding Your Place in the Heart of God [Paperback]

Lazarus Awakening: Finding Your Place in the Heart of God

Joanna Weaver has a gift of taking a Bible passage and looking at it from new angles. In the passage where Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, most commentators focus on Mary and Martha, but Joanna shows us that Lazarus plays a vital role as well. What did he do? He died. He never speaks in the Bible, never does anything dramatic, but when Jesus is sent for, they tell Him that the one He loves is sick unto death. We live in a performance-oriented world and it is hard to believe that God loves us and it has nothing to do with what we do or don't do. Joanna shows us how to live in His love and how Jesus can bring us back to life no matter how dead our circumstances and life seems. There is a resurrection awaiting each and every one of us if we reach out and accept His love.

Jesus rolls away the stones of our lives and commissions others to remove our grave clothes. Lazarus Awakening speaks about how God deals with the stones of unbelief, unforgiveness and unworthiness that cover the tombs of our lives. Jesus calls us forth from our tomb, but we need to take the first shuffling steps out. With study guides that provide provocative questions, individuals and small groups can begin to look at what stones need to be rolled away and how to shuffle out of our tomb. Joanna answers questions that we have most likely asked, such as, why did Jesus wait for so long to come to aid Lazarus? Why do circumstances seem to repeat themselves in our lives? Why is God taking so long to answer my prayer? This book provides answers that make it easier to trust in God and wait on His timing. She points out that Jesus loves us so much that He is willing to wait until we are willing to die to ourselves so He can restore us.

Once out of the tomb, we do not grow spiritually in a vacuum. Restoration is a process, but true restoration comes only after what is old and no longer working in our lives dies. One of the most helpful chapters for me in Lazarus Awakening was Joanna Weaver's guidelines of things we can do to lovingly help others unwind the grave clothes that bind. The one who is in charge of healing is the Holy Spirit but there are things we can do to help. She also shows us how to avoid hurting others in our zeal to help them.

Besides the study guide, there are appendixes that provide websites and resources for resurrected living, reminding us who we are in Christ, hints for unwinding grave clothes, and recognizing strongholds in an individual's life. I was so blessed by this book that I plan to purchase extra copies to give to friends that I know have been delivered from their own tombs.

I highly recommend this book. To find out more about her and her other books, you can visit her website at [...]

Waterbrook Multnomah books provided me with a free copy of Lazarus Awakening for review.

God loves us. We seem to know this in our heads, but do we truly believe it and feel it in our hearts?
In her book, Lazarus Awakening, author Joanna Weaver gets to the heart of this issue: "Until we get around to accepting His (Jesus') amazing undeserved favor, I fear we will miss everything a relationship with Christ really means."
Weaver explains that this "love-doubt" we experience can be "traced back to troubling contradictions not unlike the one in the story of Lazarus." Then she skillfully takes us through the bible story, exploring both the obvious as well as the deeper, more subtle layers of meaning we can uncover there, as she relates them to our own struggles, fears, and tough questions.
Weaver says, "Suspended halfway between death and life, we've accepted the Lord as our Savior, but we have yet to step out into the fullness of life Christ came to give. Instead, we're holed up in the dark, held captive by our hurts, hang-up, and habits." Weaver then gently and humbly provides us with new insights and fresh perspectives as well as practical help in overcoming our hurts, feelings of unworthiness, and unbelief that hinder us from allowing God's love to flow from our heads to our hearts.
Lazarus Awakening includes a ten-week Bible study, filled with thought-provoking questions, and it encourages further exploration of the Bible as it relates to the theme of the book. The appendix includes the story of Lazarus in full, as well as a list of books and other resources that the author has found helpful in her journey. Sidebars placed throughout each chapter help us to further apply what we learn in real, practical ways.
While Weaver never provides cut-and-dried answers to our toughest questions, her guidance led me to a place where I could rest easier in the questions themselves.
As I read Weaver's book, I found myself discovering my own new insights growing from hers. When you find a book that can do that, you've found a treasure.
I highly recommend this book, and I am looking forward to reading it again, this time more slowly, so I can take my time to reflect more deeply on the truth of God's love.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

I am not a big fan of buying books just to sit on a bookshelf; I am definitely more of a library kind of gal. But this book is one you will want to buy, keep close, and reread many times. I first became aware of Joanna Weaver when my aunt gave me a copy of Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World. I loved that book and tagged pages, highlighted, and underlined several passages. Joanna's newest book Lazarus Awakening is just as good, maybe better! She takes the story of Lazarus, the one Jesus loves (John 11:3) and shows us how a relationship with Jesus is the most important thing. Just like Martha was taught, only one thing is needed .

I have to admit my favorite chapter in this book is chapter 4, When Love Tarries. Joanna talks about her need to take control over situations when they aren't going as she has planned. She wants to plot, plan, and scheme when things aren't going so well. Yet in these times, if she listens closely, God is saying That wasn't my plan. If you want to walk with Me, you have to SURRENDER your itinerary and TRUST Mine. This is when we must make the choice to choose the "one thing" and not "our own thing". This is my new prayer after finishing this book, "Help me to surrender my agenda and trust Yours, Lord!"

*I was given a copy of this book by the publisher in exchange for my honest review*