#captivating book

[thecatsreaderslibrary]

Happy To Share Our Award-Winning Author Elizabeth Upton's New Post of Rave Reviews For Her Novel "The Shaman and The Mafia". . .

Are you up for reading an exciting, and gripping mystery-suspense?My title “The Shaman and The Mafia” is garnishing high praise from readers, book reviewers, and even editorial reviewers like the readers at Reader Views. Happy to share more… “The Shaman and the Mafia” from the title alone is not a storyline I would usually pick, but I am glad I took the chance because it paid off. The events in…

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[ayllebanna]

"Now we should live when the pulse of life is strong. Life is a tenuous thing... fragile, fleeting. Don't wait for tomorrow. Be here now! Be here now! Be here now!"

[ayllebanna]

Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6)

It speaks of teaching a child to live from his heart, attuned to it, awake to it, aware of it, and when that child is down he will continue to live a life from the heart. It's about seeing who a person really is and calling him out to be that person.

The impact on a life that has been seen and called out is dramatic and eternal. The nurturing of life is a high and holy calling. And as a woman, it is yours.

[ayllebanna]

And she, too, bears the image of God (Gen. 1:26), but in a way that only the feminine can speak. What can we learn form her? God wanted to reveal something about himself, so he gave us Eve. When you are with a woman, ask yourself, "What is she telling me about God?" It will open up wonders for you. First, you'll discover that God is relational to his core, that he has a heart for romance. Second, that he longs to share adventures with us—adventures you cannot accomplish without him. And finally, that God has a beauty to unveil. A beauty that is captivating and powerfully redemptive.

John Eldredge, Captivating

[ayllebanna]

A feminine heart

longs deeply to be pursued

fought for

to be seen as beautiful 

to be tender and kind

to feel deeply.

[ayllebanna]

But most especially, he (Satan) hates Eve. 

Because she is truly captivating, uniquely glorious, and he cannot be. She is the incarnation of the Beauty of God. More than anything else in all creation, she embodies the glory of God. She allures the world to God. He hates it with a jealously we can only imagine. 

And there is more. The Evil One also hates Eve because she gives life. Women give birth, not men. women nourish life. And they also bring life into the world soulfully, relationally, spiritually—in everything they touch. Satan was a murderer from the beginning (John 8:44). He brings death. His is a kingdom of death. Ritual sacrifices, genocide, the Holocaust, abortion—those are his ideas. And thus Eve is his greatest human threat, for she brings life. She is a lifesaver and a life giver. Eve means “life” or “life producer.” Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living” (Gen. 3:20)

—Captivating, A Special Hatred, page 85-86

[ayllebanna]

A Woman’s Soul

Our desperate need for love and affirmation, our thirst for some taste of romance and adventure and beauty is there. . .

Much of what we call our "personalities" is actually the mosaic of our choices for self-protection plus our plan to get something of the love we were created for.

The problem is our plan has nothing to do with God.

[ayllebanna]

"Our lovers have so intertwined themselves with our identity that to give them up feels like personal death . . . We wonder if it is possible to live without them (The Sacred Romance)"