Review: The Hurt & The Healer by Bart Millard & Andrew Farley

Genre: Non-Fiction
Publisher: Baker Books
Released: Aug. 15, 2013
161 pages

About the Book:

We all experience fear, shame, loneliness, broken homes, or broken hearts. We all hurt and need true, lasting healing. The trouble, according to bestselling author Andrew Farley and Bart Millard, lead singer of MercyMe, is that we don't know where to find it.

Inspired by MercyMe's #1 hit song of the same name, The Hurt & The Healer reveals exactly how God can be the gentle healer of all our hurts. Writing from the pain they've experienced in their lives, Millard and Farley reveal how their own struggles caused them to feel they had disappointed God. Through their biblical guidance, readers will see that God wants them to be open and honest about their pain. Only then can they discover how to exchange destructive thinking patterns for God's view of them and watch as God's perfect love casts away all their fears.

  

My Rating & Thoughts:    ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I don’t really know what I was expecting with this book, but when I first started it I was surprised to discover it was set up like a devotional with each chapter ending with questions to consider and a prayer. After reading the first chapter I decided I would read it like a devotional and do one chapter a day. There are some good perspectives provided that gave me quite a bit to think about. There were some spots that really challenged my thoughts and feelings due to how close they hit home with stuff going on in my life that I wasn’t quite ready to deal with at the time of reading. Because of this I had to take multiple days between reading. This book only has 16 chapters, so I should have been able to read it in just over two weeks, however it took me all month. I did highlight quite a bit throughout and I do want to go back and refer to this book later when I am at a different place. 

Favourite Quotes: 

“We all meet difficulty in this life, no matter who we are. The key is how we respond to it.”

“Our sense of identity and worth needs to come from what God says about us, not from what we have accomplished (or not accomplished) and not from what others might say about us, whether good or bad.”

(I purchased my copy of this book; opinions expressed 

in this review are my honest opinion and completely my own.)