It’s No Secret Giveaway with Rachel Olsen
Note: If you are a Weight Loss Wednesday gal, please click here to locate our cyber accountability group now called His Weigh Wednesdays and lead by Lindsey Feldpausch. We’ve been talking about it for a few weeks but it officially kicks off TODAY!!!! New comers always welcome! See ya over there!
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Pssst….
I have a secret!
A dear friend and fellow Proverbs 31 sister of mine, Rachel Olsen, is releasing her new book today.
You are gonna love it! Read on for an interview and giveaway with this fabulous writer, powerful teacher and gifted girlfriend! Here she is:
Rachel, as the editor of the Proverbs 31 Encouragement for Today devotions and a university professor, you have lots of experience in writing and editing, but this is your first full-blown solo book. What prompted you to write it?
One verse. Jesus told His disciples in Matthew 13:11 there are secrets in the kingdom of God, and His followers can grasp them. That statement astounded me, and excited me. I was captured by the notion that God had secrets He was willing to share. I wanted to find out what they were.
I’d been operating with the assumption that the Bible was hard to understand, unless you were gifted to be a pastor or went to seminary. But in that passage Jesus said all you have to do is follow Him and He will supply the understanding. So I prayed for wisdom and dug into the Bible. I’ve since realized God never hides truth from sincere seekers. In fact, He came to earth in the person of Jesus to ensure that we’d learn His secrets and understand His ways.
With this book I wanted to share twelve of the divine secrets I’ve found, so they can empower others’ lives just as they have empowered mine. And I included Bible study sections at the end of each chapter to get my readers digging into the Bible for themselves.
The book is titled It’s No Secret. Can you give us a glimpse into a few of the secret topics it covers?
Sure, Karen. I uncover the Secret to Responding to God, the Secret of Interdependence, the Secret of Handling Conflicts Biblically, the Secret of Living Generously, the Secret of Perfection in God’s Eyes, and the Secret to Growing Through Trials, just to name a handful. The whole list can be seen online in the table of contents when you “look inside this book” at Amazon.
To put it more succinctly, this book will help you:
* Overcome the competitive urges that leave you lonely
* Grow spiritually despite life’s setbacks
* Discover how to make what you give away ultimately return to you
*View rest not as a have-to, but as a get-to
*Handle conflicts and criticism with grace
*Relax unrealistic expectations in favor of emotional stability
*Discover a key to increased spiritual vitality
*Find adventure as you yield wholeheartedly to God
Your subtitle talks about revealing divine truths every woman should know. What importance does truth play in a girlfriend’s life?
Truth is crucial. Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” So it matters where you get your truth from. I hold to the conviction that if God created life, He alone gets to define it. He is the Reality Maker. And His Word, the Bible, is our reliable source of truth. When we dig into it and follow it, our minds are renewed, our lives are transformed, and we grow in freedom. I’m confident It’s No Secret contains biblical truth that can do that for you.
Jesus, by the way, is the Word Made Flesh – He is truth in action! That’s why knowing truth always begins with following Him.
What is your greatest hope for gals out there who read your book?
My hope echoes the apostle Paul’s. I started the book with a blank page before the introduction with his words from Colossians 2:2-3, “I want them to have full confidence because they have complete understanding of God’s secret plan, which is Christ himself. In him lie hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”
My goal for my readers is that they would become God’s secret-keepers and His secret-revealers – that they would embrace the “secret way of living” revealed in the Bible and this book, and show others this empowering way to live as well.
You are offering a fabulous giveaway to our readers today. Tell us about it!
If you look at the cover of my book, you’ll see one of my favorite things: coffee! Specifically, I’m a decaf latte or frappe girl. :-) What I really wish I could do is meet each of my readers weekly for 12 weeks over cups of coffee and talk through the contents of our lives and of this book. But I can’t do that – I don’t have that many frequent flier miles! So I’m offering the next best thing in a giveaway: a free copy of the book and a $10 Starbucks gift card.
Thanks Rachel, for stopping by to visit and share your secrets with us!!
My pleasure, Karen. I am praying for each and every reader of It’s No Secret to encounter something life changing between the pages of this book!
Okay, now for the giveaway: Leave a comment on this post that names the topic(s) in the book you are most interested in reading. Or tell what drink you would order at the coffee shop if you could meet Rachel there. If you do both, your name will be entered twice!
This post will be left up until Friday morning when the winner will be announced and when we’ll have ANOTHER giveaway in conjunction with an Encouragement for Today devotion I’ll have running. It also involves a book and TWO gifts cards! See you then!