Reviewer Conny Withay:Operating her own business in office management since 1991, Conny is an avid reader and volunteers with the elderly playing her designed The Write Word Game. A cum laude graduate with a degree in art living in the Pacific Northwest, she is married with two sons, two daughters-in-law, and three grandchildren.
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Author: Norma Luciano
Publisher: WinePress Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-4141-1662-4
Follow Here To Purchase Fireside Chats with God
Author: Norma Luciano
Publisher: WinePress Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-4141-1662-4
If we believe in God, we
talk to Him in our own way, sometimes by praying, sometimes by
actually talking or even yelling in frustration and sometimes by
writing. Norma Luciano has written a book called Fireside Chats with
God, Entering a Living Relationship with the One True God where she
bares her heart and soul to God and He answers through her journal
writings.
This two hundred and fourteen page soft bound book
has a serene photograph of two chairs in front of a cozy fireplace
with a Bible open on the front cover and several paragraphs about the
book and author including two small photographs on the back. It has a
two page table of contents along with a twenty page prologue that
explains Luciano's history and why the book was written. With an easy
font, blocked out reminder verses and bolded titles to read, only one
or two minor typographical errors were noted.
Besides Luciano
coming from a broken home with a checkered past, she has overcome
quite a bit but barely mentions it in her book. This is not a book to
concentrate on the past, one's forgiven sins, prior disappointments,
or things that should have been, but a book about her personal
relationship with Jesus Christ that she documents daily in a journal.
The book includes a decade of highlights, encouragements,
temptations, testings and trials which are splattered out during a
chapter year, jumping only to those she felt she wanted to share with
the fortunate reader. Due to her journal writing style, sometimes it
is hard to focus on what is going on behind the scenes or how the
issue gets resolved, but it is obviously not the intention of the
book.
The most important part of this powerful, humbling, and
soul-searching book is not her usual questions or reasoning or even
thoughts, but how she feels Jesus responding to her. She asks a
question or brings up a topic and has her perceived words of Christ
answering in her writings along with Biblical references. It is
interesting to see the transitions she makes throughout the years
from posting her fears, concerns and prayers to promoting and
publicly announcing her perception of our Lord's response to her. The
Norma of the book dwindles to a point that one only wants to read
what He "wrote," not her. She does not dwell on herself,
but on Him, as it truly should be.
Topics discussed with God
and her range from Israel and the United States (during and after
9/11) to spending more time in prayer, shedding hatred and
bitterness, learning to slow down and listen to others and God, and
prioritizing the most important relationship, the one with Abba, our
Father, in our day to day lives.
So as one reads, he or she
finds this book is not really about Luciano (or even how to relate to
her) but about Jesus and His abundant love, grace, mercy and
forgiveness for each one of us when He died on the cross, shed His
blood and saved us from our sins.