Category: Book Reviews

By Dr. John Townsend 

• Don’t forget about your teen years. You were not perfect, had attitudes, and probably messed up.

• Get to know your teen instead of just trying to fix them.

• Listen more and lecture less. 

• Your teen needs to know that you care for him at a heart level.

• When it comes to parenting, who you are carries much more weight than what you say. 

• Be careful of knee-jerk reactions. 

• Do not try to match your teens anger; you are the adult. 

• Your teen needs your empathy even when you are the target of their rage. 

• You must be charm-proof. Many times there is a charm between a dad and his daughter, or a mom and her son, that causes the parent to overlook the bad behavior of the teen. 

• Your teen needs the safety of structure. 

• Require your teen’s respect. 

• Schedule family time with your teens. Walking together is much better than a movie. 

• Disrespect is a sign of deeper issues.

• Help your teen learn to be responsible by paying for things on their own.

• Allow your teen to question faith to learn what they believe. Help them think instead of giving a quick answer that only helps you as the parent.

• Help your teen to control their impulses, specifically when it comes to internet. Help them avoid harmful content, harmful people, and harmful over-involvement.

• Establish that Internet as a privilege, not a need. 

• As a parent, you have a lot of influence when it comes to your children’s attitude towards money. 

• Be the grown-up; don’t engage in fighting with your teen.

• Don’t get caught up in the crisis of today. Your teen needs you to pull them out of the crisis and know there is a tomorrow. 

• As you grow in your own life, so grows your parenting. Work on your own character issues because your teen needs your help. 

• You need God’s help. God can give you wisdom and insight. 

by Henry Cloud 

• Leaders lead people, and it’s the people that are going to get the job done. 

• There’s not just one way to do things, there are many, but you win, or lose in the area of people. 

• If leaders behave themselves correctly, they can get the results they desire, and the cultural problems will be solved.

• A boundary is a created line where something begins and something ends. As the leader, you’re responsible for the boundaries. You create the rules and the agenda.

• Who is the DRI? – the Directly Responsible Individual. 

• You must take responsibility and own it.

• Leaders define the boundaries, and successful leaders, define the boundaries in key areas.

• Do you enhance or inhibit their ability to focus?

• Clarity leads to attention and attention leads to results. 

• How your people feel at work will determine how much they do at work.

• Your position as a leader carries much more psychological and influential weight than you realize. You must be careful with what you say, and what you do.

• If you can get rid of the toxic fear in your culture, people will begin to perform like professionals.

• Relationship is the key to high performance.

• You cannot help people get to another place if you do not understand what place they currently are in.

• You must understand first. Listening is the glue that makes things work.

• Set boundaries against pessimism. Don’t buy into helplessness, find a way. 

• People must know two things about you as the leader: that you can overcome obstacles and that you are not immune to difficulties.

• When, choosing a team, you need people who have character. If they do not have character, they will hurt your team.

• In the busyness of life, you must not forget as a leader that it is your responsibility to lead yourself.

• Set boundaries for yourself by staying open to receiving input from the outside.

• We need outside eyes and ears to help us, and thinking we do not is only arrogance.

• Good character, welcomes feedback, while foolish character does not.

By Abigail Shrier 

• A wave hit the parenting generation, causing them to avoid authoritarian parenting, to seek help from professionals, and to believe they know a superior way of parenting. But after all the advice, avoidance of discipline, and listening to what society said, they’ve raised the loneliest, most anxious, depressed, pessimistic, helpless, and fearful generation on record. 

• Raising a generation of not spanking has produced a generation not wanting to have children of their own. 

• The mental health industry is minting patients faster than they can cure them. 

• According to Ortiz, a well educated therapist, therapy rarely works with a child. It would be better to treat the parents, then it would to treat a child. 

• When a parent pays money for a therapist to treat their child, they’re telling their child that there’s something wrong with them, and the problem is above their pay grade.

• Having children or young adults focus on their emotions only increases emotional stress.

• Although there is more focus on treatment today, mental illness has risen to a new high in the US. 

• Leading children to focus on their emotions will cause them to become more emotional. 

• Adults should be telling their children how unreliable emotions can be, instead of focusing on them. 

• Too many times, parents act like their ultimate goal is their children’s happiness. But the more you seek happiness, the more haunted you will be.

• Though parent might try to protect and make children comfortable, they’re likely creating more fears in the child.

• Not everyone is helped by talking about their problems. In fact, some are hindered by it.

• Therapist want to blame anything wrong in your life on your childhood. Since parents are responsible for your childhood, they become the easy target, and it is very trendy today for children to cut off their parents.

• If we are not careful, we are turning young people into emotional hypochondriac.

• Everyone has pains, but a hypochondriac focuses on his pains, believing he is the only one that has them.

• In the past, teachers would begin the day with pledges of allegiance, but today it has become very popular to start the day with emotional check-ins. Instead of checking on emotions, it should be taught one should worry less, think less of themselves, ruminate less, and verbalize their problems less. 

• With children, whatever you focus on is what you feed. Many are unintentionally watering the weeds more than the flowers.

• All bad behavior is not necessarily a cry for help.

• We are hurting children by telling them they cannot get over past or difficulties in life.

• Resilience seems to be pushed to the side and trauma has been pushed to the front.

• Focusing on trauma becomes an excuse for why you cannot accomplish more in life.

• Doing something nice for someone else and thinking about others will get your mind off of your own problems. 

• Schools call parents “partners,” and pediatricians let parents know what the children need from them. And school psychologist inform parents how to talk to their kids. The authority has been pulled away, and parents are now equal to their children.

• Raising your children according to what the “experts say” might not be the best for you or for your child. Parenting is not a skill, it is a relationship. 

• Your children will benefit more by knowing you are in charge and that you don’t think there is something wrong with them. 

• Having kids is one of the best things you can do. Raise them well, because you’re the only one who can do it. 

By Michael Reeves 

• To take care of the flock of God you need to take heed to yourself (Acts 20:28).

• Ministers must be careful that the Bible does not become a text book. We strive to master instead of being mastered by it. 

• Ministers can try to use God instead of being used by God.

• We become spiritually bored. But Jesus can satisfy the heart and mind for eternity.

• Though Paul accomplished many things, his boast was in Christ. We must boast in the Lord Jesus Christ, and His cross.

• When we define ourselves with something other than Christ, we become something other than like Christ.

• Boasting of the cross is what we will do for eternity, and is what is needed for today.

• Prayer is the mark of Christian integrity

• Prayer shows our dependency upon God. Prayerlessness is practically atheism.

• We breathe in Scripture and breathe out prayer.

• Do you doubt God will hear you? Go to your Father in faith, and He will hear you.

• God’s people should be humble people. The more we learn can cause us to become prideful and have a prideful spirit.

• The more you are given, the more humble you must become. There’s a blessing of receiving more from the Lord, but there’s a danger of becoming prideful and arrogant when you have more from the Lord.

• The culture of Lone Ranger is not that of the Bible. The Bible teaches and shows our need for fellowship of the brethren.

• The rod of refining, or suffering, is used by our God for many of His servants. 

• The accuser loves to whisper that God doesn’t love because of our suffering, but God is with us through the suffering and loves us. 

• If we are friends of Christ, we will love His bride, the church. 

• Work to to gather around you friends that can challenge and encourage you. Don’t live in isolation, for God teaches us to exhort one another as we see the day approaching Hebrews 10:25.

• There is no inner strength that can help you continue the race like looking to Jesus. Look to him and consider Him.

By Edward T. Welch 

• Many decisions boil down to one simple question: “Will you please God or please yourself?” 

• Your theology, what you believe about God, will affect how are you think and deal with addictions.

• Do you behave differently in private than you do in public? If so, you are believing that there’s some places you can go to hide from God where He does not see you. If so, you have issues with your practical theology.

• Everything we need for life and godliness comes through Jesus Christ. Our freedom is not through a program, but through the person of Jesus Christ. 

• God teaches that sin leads to slavery. You must realize it is not sickness, it is sin. All sin is against God. 

• Addictions are a lordship problem — who sits as lord of your life. 

• What starts out with few consequences will soon bring very painful consequences. 

• The sin of addiction can be equated to idolatry. God doesn’t want His children to have other gods — nothing is to be more important than our God. 

• The descent of addictions is a problem of worship.

• You should learn to value the rebuke of a friend as a blessing.

• Being rebuked is not the same as being critically judged. 

• Are you more troubled about the consequences of being found out or the sin itself?
• We pray that God would remove our cravings, but we should pray that God would make us fulfilled and satisfied in Him. 

• Addiction comes from the heart. 

• Addictions thrive on deception, on lies. God loves truth, and lies go against God. 

• At the core of addictions is the thought that God is holding out on you. 

by Brian Tracy

• Goals in writing are dreams with deadlines. 

• The intensity of your desire determines how much energy you put behind it. 

• Organizing your values and priorities will help you with your goals. 

• Belief is the catalyst that activates your mental powers. 

• Change your thinking, and you will change your life. 

• Act your way into feeling instead of feeling your way into acting. 

• Your beliefs are manifested in the words you use. 

• A goal that is not in writing is not a goal at all. 

• Have a deadline for your goal, and break it down into sub-deadlines. 

• The three keys to accomplishing your goals are: 

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. Commitment 
            2. Completion
            3. Closure

• If you measure a goal, you can manage it.

• You become what you think about. 

• Successful people think about solutions while unsuccessful people think about the problems and obstacles. 

• The main obstacles on the path to success are fear and doubt. 

• Most fear comes from ignorance. 

• Knowledge is accumulative. 

• The person who hears an idea and takes action on it accomplishes more than the person who hears or has a hundred ideas and does nothing about about it. 

• The act of taking the first step is what separates the winners from the losers.

• Planning is the key to success.

• Develop good habits and make them your master.

• You will inevitably find setbacks on the way to your goal. You must determine you will be persistent and reach your goal. 

• There is a direct relationship between the things you accomplish and the things you attempt. 

By Zacharias Tanee Fomum 

• Jesus did not say to only make disciples where we are. 

• The command and the commission is to make disciples in all the earth. 

• The Lord did not ask that we go and make religious people, or denominations, He said, go make disciples of Him. 

• A missionary comes from the heart of prayer. 

• A Missionary must be a pioneer because when he arrives to the field, he does the work of a pastor, evangelist, and teacher. 

• The heart and life of a missionary must be found in God, because God is a missionary God. 

• Many have heard the call of the Lord upon their life, but they have doubted it and some have rejected it.

• God’s command to His disciples to go into all the world means His salvation is available to all the world.

• A missionary’s job is not complete until he makes a disciple into a disciple maker.

• The mission field is not for everyone, but God will maintain those whom He calls.

• We should not just live our lives as we want — we are duty-bound.

• God’s missionary empire is the earth, and He has made sufficient provision for all those that are sent throughout His empire.

• You cannot go to the mission field without leaving. Leaving your father’s house is a must to follow Christ.

• You are not going to the mission field as a citizen from your country, you are going as an ambassador for Christ.

• What God calls us to is much greater than what we leave.

• Weaklings pull each other down; strong people pull each other up. This is the heart of a missionary.

• The call comes from God, and the answer comes from man.

• Our Lord renounced all to come to earth for us, and a missionary should renounce all to go share the gospel.

• A missionary should be a person who has history with God — one in His Word, knows His Word, and can use His Word.

• The missionary’s life should be rooted in self-denial.

• The moment you choose a mate, you set your future ministry a flame or you bury it.

• Because our God spared not His only begotten Son, we should not spare anything of our lives for Him.

• The missionary should pray, pray, pray, and then he should evangelize, evangelize, evangelize.

• Leadership is a life sacrificed for others.

• Prayer is the fastest way to the heart of God. Those that are and will be used of God are those that pray.