If you are looking for to spruce up your reading list with inspirational and life enhancing books. Here is a short list of 5 books to consider to add to your bookshelf or to give a gift to someone you love. Check out these suggested books to add to your reading list:
1. The Game Of Life: Releasing The Weight When God Says Wait by Dacia James Lewis
Do you feel stuck in the waiting room of life—restless, anxious, or ready to give up? Frustrated watching other people’s dreams come true while you wait for your own name to be called? Let’s face it, waiting sucks. Although we may all be waiting for something different, the waiting game still feels the same. Feelings like disappointment, discouragement, and anxiety chip away at happiness and our confidence in God. In the Game of Life, Dacia James Lewis tackles the taboo subject of waiting by taking us through her wait journey. Her humorous, quick-witted, yet candid take on her authentic life experience will give you the tools to lift every weight you may be carrying while pushing through a waiting season. This ain’t your average self-help book. This is a help-your-self book. And by help-your-self, you will help yourself to the endless, bountiful promises of God available to you if you can push through the wait and enter into His presence. Feeling weighty? Well, it’s time to release the weight of the wait.
2. Woman Evolve: Break Up with Your Fears and Revolutionize Your Life – Sarah Jakes Roberts
Sarah Jakes Roberts, with life-lessons she’s learned and new insights from the story of Eve, shows you how the disappointments and even mistakes of your past can be used today to help you become the woman God intended.
Who would imagine being friends with Eve—the woman who’s been held solely responsible for the fall of humanity (and cramps) for thousands of years? Certainly not Sarah Jakes Roberts. That is, not until Sarah discovered she is more like Eve than she cares to admit.
Everyone faces trials, and everyone will mess up. But failure should not be the focus. Your focus should not be on who you were but rather the pursuit of who you can become. In Woman Evolve, Sarah helps you to understand that your purpose in life does not change; it evolves.
Making her mistake in the Garden of Eden, Eve became the first woman to deal with rebuilding her life in the aftermath of her past. Eve knew better, but she didn’t do better. With scriptural lessons and Sarah as your guide, you discover and work through
- past issues and questions that haunt you,
- seeing yourself as God sees you and trusting Him with who you really are,
- how to come out of darkness and pursue a real relationship with God,
- why it’s important to truly care for yourself,
- setting in motion the beautiful seed that God planted in you, and
- running to become who you were meant to be!
Your fears and insecurities may have changed how you viewed God, others, and yourself, but in Woman Evolve, you can breakthrough and use past mistakes to revolutionize your life. Like Eve, you don’t have to live your future defined by your past.
3. Live Free: Exceed Your Highest Expectation – DeVon Franklin
The bestselling author returns with his biggest book yet in which he teaches us the secret to living a happier life: get rid of as many expectations as possible—of ourselves, our future, our relationships, our career and our family.
Expectations are the secret software, running on the hardware of our minds, controlling our emotions, decisions, and actions. How?
Think about your life. How much of the sadness you feel derives from what you think should have happened—than with what actually happened?
Think about your career. How much of the discontent you feel comes from your belief about where you’d be at this point—than with the progress you’ve actually made?
Think about your relationships. How much of your dissatisfaction with friends, family, significant others, or spouses has to do with your unspoken presumptions—than with the people themselves?
Having so many expectations is distorting your perspective, decreasing your happiness and disrupting your joy.
You can live a life of true freedom, greater peace and less stress: release as many expectations as possible.
This, DeVon Franklin argues, is the secret to a better life now.
In a culture obsessed with more, Live Free is a bold counterintuitive book that can start a cultural revolution, Franklin contends.
Everyone struggles with unnecessary expectations. But once you learn to let go of them, you can set the stage for the life you’ve always wanted.
4. Bamboozled By Jesus: How God Tricked Me into the Life of My Dreams – Yvonne Orji
Thriving stand-up comic and actress Yvonne Orji—best known as Issa Rae’s BFF on the HBO series, Insecure—shares the secrets to living the life of your dreams.Yvonne Orji has never shied away from being unapologetically herself, and that includes being outspoken about her faith. Known for interpreting Biblical stories and metaphors to fit current times, her humorous and accessible approach to faith leaves even non-believers inspired and wanting more.
The way Yvonne sees it, God is a Sovereign Prankster, punking folks long before Ashton Kutcher made it cool. When she meditates on her own life—complete with unforeseen blessings and unanticipated roadblocks—she realizes it’s one big testimony to how God tricked her into living out her wildest dreams. And she wants us to join in on getting bamboozled. This is not a Self-Help book—it’s a Get Yours book!
In Bamboozled by Jesus, a frank and fresh advice book, Orji takes readers on a journey through twenty-five life lessons, gleaned from her own experiences and her favorite source of inspiration: the Bible. But this ain’t your mama’s Bible study. Yvonne infuses wit and heart in sharing pointers like why the way up is sometimes down, and how fear is synonymous to food poisoning. Her joyful, confident approach to God will inspire everyone to catapult themselves out of the mundane and into the magnificent.
With bold authenticity and practical relatability, Orji is exactly the kind of cultural leader we need in these chaotic times. And her journey through being Bamboozled by Jesus paints a powerful picture of what it means to say “yes” to a life you never could’ve imagined—if it wasn’t your own.
5. Bevelations: Lessons from a Mutha, Auntie, Bestie – Bevy Smith
From the host of the fabulous and popular show BevelationsonSiriusXM’s Radio Andy channel, Bevy Smith’s irreverent and inspiring memoir about learning to live a big, authentic, and unapologetic life―and how you can, too.
Bevy Smith was living what seemed like a glamorous dream as a fashion advertising executive, blazing a lucrative career for herself in the whitewashed magazine world. She jetsetted to Europe for fashion shows, dined and danced at every hot spot, and enjoyed a mighty roster of lovers.
So it came as quite a shock to Bevy when one day, after arriving at her luxury hotel in Milan, she collapsed on the Frette bedsheets and sobbed. Years of rolling with the in-crowd had taken its toll. Her satisfaction with work and life had hit rock bottom. But Bevy could not be defeated, and within minutes (okay, days) she grabbed a notepad and started realizing a truer path―one built on self-reflection and, ultimately, clarity. She figured out how to redirect her life toward meaningful creativity and freedom.
In her signature lively and infectious voice (there’s no one like Bevy!), Bevelations candidly shares how she reclaimed her life’s course and shows how we too can manifest our most bodacious dreams. From repossessing her bold childhood nature to becoming her own brand to envisioning her life’s next great destination (which will feature natural hair, important charitable giving, and a midcentury house overlooking the Pacific Ocean), Bevy invites readers along on the route of her personal transformation to reveal how each of us can live our best lives with honesty, joy, and, when we’re in the mood, a killer pair of shoes.
