Reviews for God with a Human Face

The average rating for God with a Human Face based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-11-19 00:00:00 SHAWN SMITH Although Dangerous Surrender was published in 2007, I just read it this year. Kay Warren, wife of Pastor Rick Warren charts her own course away from his fame into her her own calling from God in this book. As it starts, she feels as many American women must. Me? Why me? My life is about my husband and children! What can I do? But slowly, this takes shape into a direction that while her husband supports her, it's her own calling, her own mission, her own destiny. She was reading and saw something about AIDS in Africa. At first she didn't care a whole lot because, after all, she lives in California and Africa is a world away. She couldn't quit thinking about that article she read, and she eventually found herself under a tree a dying African lady called home because she was kicked out of her home and her village because she was infected with AIDS. Like the article Kay Warren wrote and couldn't get out of her mind, this is an image that has stuck with me since I have read the book. Joanna. That was the lady's name. I read the book weeks ago, and the picture was painted so vividly of this lady I can recall the lady's name. Back in California, Mrs. Warren worked with Saddleback Church to start an AIDS outreach. The story she tells of the man who said his desire was he wouldn't be alone when he dies. Isn't that a desire of every one of us? We want someone to care about us. This is an amazing book, one of the best I've read this year. While your destiny may not be AIDS advocacy, there's something deep inside you, some way for you to help others, and it's ready to come alive, and I think reading this book will encourage you in your journey, whatever it may be.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-05-06 00:00:00 Brad Spady This is a marvelous read! Kay Warren carefully recounts the walk of faith and growth in trusting our Lord through key events that have shaped her life to this point. She is a champion for the eradication of AIDS in this world. She is convinced that the church has much to offer in reaching this goal. Her story begins with a life that I could identify with...church kid ,one who saw missionaries come through on their furloughs but none who particularly changed her life. As her story unfolds, we see a woman who is growing in awareness of her comfortable life versus the challenge to speak to larger, global issues: specifically the devastation of AIDS in the lives of 12 million (at the time in 2002) children in Africa. Her journey takes her through some honest appraisals of the encumbrances in her life that needed to be identified and given over to God. She is transparent and clear on issues of pride, self absorption and comparison with others. I know that I could identify with her starting place. With the Lord's call on her life to become informed and then organized about responding to the AIDS epidemic, she faces cancer...twice. These chapters are worth the read as I have known the call to a particular ministry and then a time of "sitting on the shelf" while other things are brought before me, and my confusion as to what God was really trying to do (after thinking I'd figured him, and the plan for my life out!!!) She describes her venturing out, first to Mozambique, and then to other African countries. She later on travels to Cambodia, to Thailand, to India. By now, she is praying for, and visiting with not only those afflicted and affected by AIDS but also those in the sex slave industry-children. She travels to India and meets with and prays with those battling leprosy. The descriptions of suffering in these chapters are graphic, and she acknowledges that the reader might have an urge to skip the rest and head to more uplifting passages. I grit my teeth and my resolve to complete every chapter. Kay speaks with an everywomen voice. She relates her experiences and at the same time she recounts her misconceptions and her stumbles. She doesn't overly spiritualize not does she write to manipulate. She simply recounts her path on which God has been leading her. Yes, Rick Warren and Saddleback church show up in the pages now and then, but this is not a promotion for her husband or her church. It's a promotion for God and his desire to move us from complacency to thoughtful, intentional action.