About the Book
Book: At Home in Your Heart
Author: Carol McLeod
Genre: Religion/Christian Living/Devotional
Release date: March 29, 2022
Where do you live—truly live? You may have a street address. You may think of your childhood home. But your real home, this side of heaven, is your heart.
Your heart is home to your soul and your emotions as well as your thought life. Your attitudes, habits, and dreams are found there.
At Home in Your Heart: Inviting Christ into Every Room is written for women of all ages, backgrounds, and stages of life. Each day in this sixty-day devotional by Carol McLeod includes an essay on the thought for the day, a heart inspection, prayer, and words from Scripture. Topics include: Is Anybody Home?; Blessed by the Begats; A Song at Midnight; Wear God Out; and many more, all offered with Carol’s characteristic humor, love, and affection.
If you are a Christian, Jesus lives in your heart with you, no matter what condition it’s in. If there are problems, however, He wants to clean until His hands bleed. Carol invites you to walk through the rooms of your heart to identify the issues that Christ is shining His light on.
“Jesus wants to paint your heart the color of white snow,” she says. “He will gently move around priorities, set things out for the trash man, and replace every outdated attitude with His unconditional love and inexpressible joy. He can take a home that has been literally demolished by the storms of life and rebuild it into a palace fit for a king.
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My Review
I liked this devotional collection of stories and insights from Scripture. McLeod does a good job of likening our heart, the home of our soul, to a physical home. She encourages readers to have a good foundation, to read the blueprints (Bible), have good insulation (love of God), windows (prayer), housekeeping (forgiveness), and more. She includes thought provoking questions for journaling, a prayer, and Scripture to read.
My favorite set of devotions was on prayer. McLeod writes, “When you are tempted to give time to other things such as games on your phone, scrolling through social media, or binging on television, pray instead.” (Day 26) Ouch. What a great admonition. Another good series of devotions was on goodness. McLeod reminds us that it may well be the most costly of the fruits of the Spirit as it requires self discipline and courage. (Day 41)
This is a good collection of devotions to take one through a couple of months. McLeod provides teaching to transform our heart, encouraging us to have a clean heart for Jesus to reside in.
My rating: 4/5 stars.
About the Author
Carol hosts a twice weekly podcast, A Jolt of Joy! on the Charisma Podcast Network, and a weekly podcast, Significant. Her weekly blog, Joy for the Journey, has been named in the Top 50 Faith Blogs for Women. Carol also writes a weekly column in Ministry Today.
She has written several devotionals for YouVersion, including “21 Days to Beat Depression,” which has touched the lives of nearly one million people around the world. Her teaching DVD The Rooms of a Woman’s Heart won the prestigious Telly Award for excellence in religious programming.
Carol was also the first women’s chaplain at Oral Roberts University and served as chaplain on the university’s Alumni Board of Directors for many years.
Carol has been married to her college sweetheart, Craig, for more than forty years and is the mother of five children in heaven and five children on earth. Carol and Craig also happily answer to “Marmee and Pa” for their captivating grandchildren.
More from Whitaker House
By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it
is established; and by knowledge the rooms are filled with
all precious and pleasant riches.
—Proverbs 24:3–4
You might suppose that your home is 83 East Academy Street…or 6555 Alleghany Road…or 16 Willow Lane. But it’s not. You can frantically inspect every printed map and strategically pore over every listing in an address book, but you will never discover your actual home at a zip code, on a street, or in a city.
You may presume that your particular home consists of three bedrooms and a bathroom…or a massive family room…or a farmhouse kitchen. But again, your actual home has nothing to do with the floor plan that lies under the roof of the home in which you live.
Perhaps when you think of home, you remember the childhood house in which you hung stockings along the mantle on Christmas Eve, blew out candles on eighteen birthday cakes, and colored Easter eggs every spring! But even that home, where you began your journey and where you were shaped as an individual, is not your true home either. The home of your earliest memories will never be the home of your adult realities.
Your real home—this side of heaven, of course—is your heart. Your heart is where you live day in and day out. Your heart is the hidden but obvious home in which you live.
Your heart is where you collect clutter, but it is also where you receive company, fill up trash cans, and then remodel. The wonderful, miraculous part of you that is vibrantly alive lives within the canyons of your heart.
Your heart is home to your soul, which is the birthplace of your emotions. It is also where your thought life is framed. Many people are deceived into believing that their thought life begins in their minds, but this is not the case. Your thoughts and attitudes make themselves at home in your heart.
What about your habits? Where do they live? It is easy to discern that both good habits and bad habits, which efficiently determine the exact floor plan of your life, can easily be found residing in your heart. Even your dreams, which are often beyond your wildest imagination, can be found hanging out unassumingly in your heart.
Your heart is the part of you that sometimes longs to escape from its earthly address. Your heart feels constrained by the white picket fence that you so lovingly built around the parameters of your life. Your heart is the part of you that is never content with who you are or what you are becoming.
Your heart is your real home. It is the place where the “you” that vitally matters lives and breathes. This “you,” who no one else knows, lives life with reckless abandon, glorious intensity, and holy intention in your heart.
Your heart is the most sacred part of your life because it is there that Christ has lovingly taken up residence. If you have invited Him in, He lives in your heart, and you should honor His presence day after day after day.
But perhaps an important question for you and me to answer is, “What else is living in my heart with Christ?”
Have you allowed attitudes, habits, and dreams that should not be a part of your life to live side by side with Christ? Maybe some of our hearts need a deep and detailed housecleaning due to the clutter that has accumulated, the trash that has yet to be taken out, and the out-of-date décor that we foolishly insist doesn’t look all that bad!
Jesus will live in your heart no matter what condition it is in. However, once Jesus takes residence in one’s heart and shares that personal address, He wants to clean until His hands bleed.
Jesus wants to paint your heart the color of freshly fallen snow.
Jesus longs to redecorate the house that you call home into a sanctuary of hope and peace.
He will gently move around priorities, set out the trash, and replace every outdated attitude with His unconditional love and inexpressible joy.
Jesus can take a dilapidated shack that has been built with rotten wood and miraculously turn it into a glorious temple! He can transform an unstable and cracked foundation into one that is steady and secure. He can take a home that has been literally demolished by the storms of life and rebuild it into a palace fit only for a King.
My friend, not only will He be more at home in your sparkling, restored, and renewed heart, but the greatest miracle of all is that so will you! You will love what He does with your heart and you will gulp in the splendid atmosphere that only His dear presence provides. His goal, as the Divine Builder, is to fashion your heart into His home.
As you walk through the front door of your heart, holding His hand, you will find the place where you were always meant to belong and the place that wondrously calls your name. At last—you are home with Him!
You will find contentment in the heart that you call home when He holds the keys. As you examine the masterpiece that He has created, you will be amazed by the wonder and wisdom that His lordship has brought. Most of all, you will find that His presence has filled your home with joy!
I’d love to invite you to come with me on this restorative journey that will transform your heart into a home of comfort, stability, and peace. We will discover nooks and crannies in your heart that have been wonderfully designed for learning and growing. We will dispose of every outdated appliance and replace each one with eternal truth; we will repurpose every dream into a masterpiece of prayer. As we allow the Lord to be the Architect, the Builder, and our sure Foundation, our hearts will become a place of divine residence. And we will each utter with a whisper of worship, “Welcome home, Jesus. Welcome home!”
Blog Stops
Debbie's Dusty Deliberations, March 30
Texas Book-aholic, March 31
She Lives To Read, April 1
Inklings and notions, April 2
Book Reviews From an Avid Reader, April 3
Locks, Hooks and Books, April 4
For Him and My Family, April 5
deb's Book Review, April 6
Ashley’s Clean Book Reviews, April 7
Because I said so -- and other adventures in Parenting, April 8
Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy, April 9
Christina's Corner, April 10
Splashes of Joy, April 11
Cats in the Cradle Blog, April 12
Mary Hake, April 12
Happily Managing a Household of Boys, April 13
I received a complimentary digital copy of this book through Celebrate Lit. My comments are an independent and honest review. The rest of the copy of this post was provided by Celebrate Lit.
(My star ratings: 5-I love it, 4-I like it, 3-It's OK, 2-I don't like it, 1-I hate it.)
2 comments:
Sounds like an awesome book! Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for sharing your review of this devotional, it sounds like a wonderful read
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