A Woman God Can Use: Old Testament Women Help You Make Todays Choices by Alice Mathews

A Woman God Can Use: Old Testament Women Help You Make Todays Choices Reviews

• 
  S. Daisy

  This is a nonfiction Christian book about lessons you can learn from women of the Bible, and how you can apply these lessons to your own life today. Each chapter is dedicated to a different Old Testament woman and one New Testament woman, covering Eve through Mary. Each chapter ends with a series of thought-provoking questions for either group discussion or personal reflection.
  
  I liked the fact that this book brought to mind several Biblical stories that we have heard before, but may have forgotten about, and helps you to apply lessons from these stories to your own life. The questions at the end of each chapter were another thing that I liked about this book... I was up late at night pondering them.
  
  On the downside, there were several things about the book I disagreed with or did not like. I did not like the fact that the author only used the corrupt NIV and New American Standard Bible in the book. The KJV or YLT would have been much better. I also did not like the fact that the author talks so much about divorce and remarriage and how it's sad that the remarriage statistics for divorced women are so low, but does not mention that according to the Bible, unless under special circumstances remarriage after a divorce is wrong. And another thing that I disagree with is the author's broad definition of "abuse". She says that things such as a grouchy husband saying at every meal that his wife should have made it differently and complaining about everything she does is "verbal abuse". The husband may be a rude grouch and hard to live with, but I would never consider that "abusive"!
  
  Overall, I am in the middle about this book. Unfortunately, on most reviewing websites you can't rate a book at 2 1/2 stars, though, so I will give it three stars.
  
• 
  Ricki

  Some good Biblical insights IF you can chew the meat and spit out the bones. Can't recommend to anyone due to its dangerous complementarian/patriarchal views that enable wife abuse.
  
  I should have known what I was in for when I came across this line: "We see a close friend having to cope with a broken marriage, not because she has been a poor wife, but because her husband has succumbed to the charms of another woman" (p. 53). Wow, so a broken marriage is only ever a woman's fault, let's not assign any blame to a husband for having an affair.
  
  But then I read the chapter about Abigail, subtitled "How to Live with a Difficult Husband." Mathews includes a long anecdote about a woman she met, whose husband had been beating her for all 13 years of their marriage. The wife finally got the courage to involve another couple they were friends with, who began informally counseling them and now the husband is beginning to improve and this "might save their marriage." Obviously this is problematic for many reasons:
  -abusers usually don't change
  -abusers usually react violently to confrontation
  -the other couple are not professional counsellors, and in fact the Christian counsellor in the story failed the couple because they just told the wife to be submissive to her husband (so definitely don't try Christian counselling I guess is a moral of this story)
  -even though this is the 2012 update of a 1990 book, there is no update to this story—was the marriage saved or not? Apparently that doesn't matter—it is enough that the marriage "might be saved." But possibly the husband ended up beating her to death, who knows??
  -Mathews is not an expert on domestic abuse and should not be giving any advice about these issues at at all!
  
  Obviously the chapter should have ended with something like, "God provided a way for Abigail to get out of her bad marriage, and if you're being beaten by your husband—if fact, if you and/or your kids are at all unsafe, INCLUDING from verbal, emotional, sexual, spiritual etc. abuse, you need to get out and protect yourself and your kids!" But no, it ends with "Work to make the best of a bad situation... Let God work in you and through you by his power to redeem a bad relationship." Wow wow wow.
• 
  Yakking Yogini

  My ladies' Bible study is going through this gem of a book. There are 12 short chapters and each chapter features a different woman from the Old Testament (except Mary), and what we can learn from her mistakes as well as her good decisions. I like the reflective questions at the end, e.g. after the chapter on Eve, a question posed is "What do you think are the consequences of choosing to live life without taking God''s will into consideration?" Of course, we all know about first Man and first Woman's bad decision and how we now live in a Fallen World waiting for the return of Messiah. That is, if you are a Christian, Jew, or Muslim. If you are not religious, look around you and I think you will agree that we are struggling with living in a Fallen World. In response to the other reviewer (below) who mentions a grumpy husband complaining about his wife's food....what I would do is let the husband cook for a week, including shopping and washing dishes. He will quickly learn to appreciate food presented to him where he does not need to lift a finger. Or be a 21st century woman for goodness sakes! My sister makes the meals on weekdays and her husband makes the meals on the weekends. Some backwards notions are presented in the book's stories, but just ignore them, roll your eyes, and look for the gold nuggets contained within.
• 
  Taci

  Read this with my bible study group. It’s very easy reading & a pretty simple study as well. There are good nuggets of info and insight - but the biggest learning for me came from the discussions and extra research and knowledge shared by my study group participants. I’m not sure reading it on my own would have yielded as much.
• 
  Charlene Gibson

  3.5 Stars
  
  This one was hard to rate. There were some chapters that were really good and others that were just okay. Overall it was enjoyable and I definitely learned some things I didn't know before and gained some insight into different situations, I just wish it had gone a little more in depth.
• 
  Amy B

  great lessons taught through the women of the old testament. Very real.