This Biblical fiction served as a teaser, so to say, to intrigue me back to the Bible and history of the Israel nation. I have read the Old Testament a handful of times, and always walked away from the books of the prophets with some confusion and apathy. What Lynn Austin does is bring life and characters who walk through the exile and return to Jerusalem. Although her characters are mostly fictional, she does add historically correct prophets, kings and rulers into the stories to give them historical accuracy. As you read the book, you begin to understand why God was so adamant about His people not serving lesser gods and mixing with non Jewish people of the day. Insight after insight was born while I read this book.

In the book, Fashioned to Reign, the author goes through a very slow process of dissecting Adam and Eve’s relationship and the timeline and happenings in the Garden of Eden. Before doing so, he states, “this Genesis story I am about to tell is the way I imagined Adam recounting it.” And the chapter follows with a lot of details that he interjects into the story, that quite simply aren’t in the Bible. Although it was interesting to read and imagine, I had to continue to remind myself of fact vs. fiction. A lot of the details were far reaching and by all accounts could be wrong. Given that, it was a nice fictional recount of the story of Adam and Eve.

This book tackles the topic of hearing God’s voice. Not audibly per say, but in that gut level instinctive way. The author covers basic habits to discipline yourself. She then goes on to discuss every Biblical story in which the main character speaks to God and vise versa. Dissecting their circumstances and attitudes to coach the reader into listening and obeying. It has taken me awhile to really finish this book. It’s not a ‘page turner’ at all, more like a slow roasted hunk of meat. The content is good, but I have had a hard time sticking with the author at times.

This is a very self-directed book, meaning you have to find your own motivation to fill in the blanks and lead your own prayer times. I do believe that praying the Scriptures of the Bible are powerful, and a very positive thing to do as a follower of Jesus, but I personally had a hard time finding the gusto to do it. This book is probably not for beginners, but for a more disciplined, season saint. Someone who already spends time in concentrated prayer would benefit from this book. There is a short devotional, (paragraph) in the beginning of each chapter, followed by a set of blank lines to fill in your prayer, ending with a scripture for reference. I think I needed more structure overall.

I read this book within a few days, as it is only 121 pages. The author, Betty Malz, relays stories from people that she’s gathered about angels. About 60% of the book, the author discusses the theological points and Biblical thoughts regarding angels. This was a bit on the dry side for me, and intertwined were the actual stories of angel encounters. Those were the fun parts.
The author also shares here testimony briefly in the beginning of the book about her own stories about Heaven. She was clinically dead for 20 some minutes and experienced Heaven before coming back alive while in the hospital. The topics themselves, and stories are very interesting if you can waddle through the theological points throughout the book.
I was given a copy of this book in exchange for this review by Chosen Books.