After a particularly painful period in his life, which he shared with us at the Beauty for Ashes women’s conference in May 2015, Sheridan Voysey decided to read Christ’s Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chapters 5 to 7) every day for a month. He had questions about faith and life and about the meaning of his life and calling. Before long the ‘Sermon’ had so gripped him that he ended up reading and studying it for three months, made copious notes, wrote some blog posts about what he was discovering, and eventually wrote this book of devotionals: Resilient: Your Invitation to a Jesus-Shaped Life.
RESILIENT: The word describes the ability to spring back after being bent or stretched out of shape. Resilient people weather life’s storms. They may get hit but they get up again—maybe even stronger than before.
It’s a journey of 90 readings through Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, showing how it can build spiritual, emotional and relational resilience in us. All of us experience life’s storms, but some seem to be more resilient and weather the storms better than others. What makes the difference? How can we develop this resilience? Sheridan provides us with some wise and thought-provoking insights.
The 4 Factors of Resilience
According to psychologists like Martin Seligman, there are four main factors that build resilience in us:
- Positive Emotions
- Strong Relationships
- A Sense of Meaning
- A Sense of Accomplishment
In Resilient, Sheridan shows how each factor is present in the Sermon on the Mount, and how we can live each one out. “It’s kinda cool that Jesus beat the psychologists to their discoveries by two millennia,” he says.
The book is divided into six sections: Your Invitation, Your Calling, Your Relationships, Your Practices, Your Choices and Your Resilient Life.
A gifted writer, Sheridan brings the biblical scenes alive and breathes new life into the familiar text. His fresh, almost poetic, perspective is thoughtful . . . in fact, deeply theological . . . yet easy to read and not the slightest bit boring or preachy. His words inspire and set off a deep heart-yearning after God.
This book isn’t meant to be read in a week . . . there’s too much in it to think about. It needs to be on your bedside table and read slowly and prayerfully so that none of its rich truths are missed, one daily devotion at a time over a three month or 90 day period. It doesn’t matter, either, how long you’ve been following the Lord . . . new or long-standing Christ follower, you will be blessed and challenged. We highly recommend this book!
These 5 Practices Can Help You Build Resilience (FREE eBook)
Read 8 chapters of Resilient FREE here.
You can buy a copy of Resilient here.
Aldyth organised the Beauty for Ashes women's conferences for 21 years since its inception in 1996. An ex history teacher, she and her husband ex-patted in Ghana, Zambia and Burkina Faso for 12 years before moving to Cape Town in 2017. She compiled the Beauty for Ashes Prayer Journal and co-authored the Beauty for Ashes Health Journal for Women with Sally-Ann Creed—a bestseller which was also translated into Dutch. She is a breast cancer survivor of 15 years.
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