She Reads Truth by Myers & Williams, A Review

I have read and reviewed a lot of great books since I started writing for Brave Daily. Through the books I have read I have learned a lot about God and have grown a lot. However, this one was a bit different. I do believe that She Reads Truth is the first book that I have read in a long time, if not ever, that has actually brought tears to my eyes.

Raechel Myers and Amanda Bible Williams both have known the pain of death and loss. They have both seen and know all too deeply how fragile and temporary this life is. She Reads Truth is the story of how their different lives brought them to the one thing that is permanent and always true. Their different stories have one thing in common, a permanent, never changing, always loving God. This book is beautifully honest. Amanda and Raechel both open up about the all doubts and every fear they have felt. And while the stories themselves are beautiful, perhaps what is most beautiful is how they continue to point outside of themselves. Much like the Bible itself, their stories simply serve as a canvas for a bigger Truth.

I said that She Reads Truth made me tear up a bit (ok maybe more than a bit). The honesty of this book really hit home with me and as I read through the struggles and pain, while my own story is much different, I saw a lot of my own fears and insecurities in these pages. As Raechel tells us about her lifelong determination to be seen as a good girl, I saw my own story and my own failure. I’ve always struggled with the notion that I have to do things just right for God to continue to love me. I sometimes get caught in this idea that while God saved me at first I now have to perform in order to keep His love And even though I do believe in His grace for me, I still have to remind myself constantly that “Christ died for me. Plus nothing” (68). That is one of the most beautifully difficult things to come to terms with. It’s such a simple truth, it’s the gospel plain and simple. His grace and love for me do not change. I don’t have to perform to keep His favor. “Christ died for me. Plus nothing.”

[Tweet “Christ died for me. Plus nothing. @SheReadsTruth @BHPub #SheReadsTruth”]

One of the other themes that hit hard with me is dealing with fear. Amanda tells a story about her daughter while they were on vacation at a dude ranch. Her daughter wanted so much to ride the horses at the ranch but she was afraid to. When Amanda asked her daughter why she was so afraid her daughter laid out a long list of all the things that could go wrong while she was riding. Amanda says, “My sweet girl was letting the beaucoup of things that could possibly go wrong dictate her direction. In zeroing in on what seemed like concrete, indisputable facts (such as “falling off a horse hurts”), she’d missed other facts altogether (like, “most people here won’t fall off a horse at all!” and “going fast on a horse is fun”)” (30). Amanda admits that she is a lot like her daughter. She focuses too much on the details sometimes and misses larger truths.

It’s only when “I zoom out to see the fullness of God’s promises- to remember His covenant that He has upheld for generation after generation- the Truth comes into view” (31). Personally, my closest friends know that this is also me. One of my best friends has been ear to my list of worries more times than I’d like to admit. I get caught up on everything that could go wrong in any situation that I miss out on countless opportunities. Even in times where God is giving me something that I have been praying for, I still worry about what could go wrong and I forget that He is always true, and that’s the only thing I need to know.

This is not a self-help book. It doesn’t sugar coat how hard life can be. Raechel and Amanda do not try to sell the Truth that we find in the Bible as some sort of magic spell. They know that the women they are writing for are tired of searching for empty truths and quick fixes. They know that we, the “shes” that read this book, are feeling real pain and want what’s really true. And they know that the only real Truth is that even in our world that is passing away that we have something to rest in and something, even better someone to lean on. God does not change and He does not leave and that’s the only Truth we need.   

She Reads Truth Application Points

1. This world is passing away but God is not.
2. This is without a doubt the main theme in this book. We live in a world that is dying. And that truth is scary. But we can take comfort in this bigger Truth that God will not die and He will not leave us alone in this world.
3. We cannot separate the promises in the Bible from the Promiser.
4. God’s Word is not a magic book and is only “true because He Himself is true” (4). The real reason we turn to the Bible in our pain is because we know we need Jesus and we will find Him there.
5. God’s grace and the Truth of the gospel does not change because of our circumstances, actions, or feelings.
6. Amanda and Raechel share how in their own lives they found themselves in dark situations, often feeling like they had been abandoned or that they were alone. But they remind us that God was constant even in their doubts and fears. Our lives may change and we may change but He will not abandon us or suddenly make the gospel not true.
7. We’re scared, broken, and messy and it’s ok to be honest about that.
8. It’s easy in life in general and in the church specifically to trick ourselves into thinking that if we talk about how hard life is, if we share how much we hurt, how angry we are with God, how scared we are, how much we doubt His love, that we aren’t real Christians or that people will look down on us. Raechel and Amanda show through their own story telling that this kind of honesty is what brought them deeper in their relationship with God because they saw that He was not dependent on their performance or their ability to muster up their own faith. He is the kind of God that sees our mess and sees our pain and does not gloss over it. He doesn’t shake His head in disgust or throw us away simply because we’re scared. Instead He is the God that will come down into our mess and walk through it with us and ultimately save us from it.

She Reads Truth Book Description

She wants faith, hope, and love.

She wants help and healing.

She wants to hear and be heard, to see and be seen.

She wants things set right.

She wants to know what is true—not partly true, or sometimes true, or almost true. She wants to see Truth itself, face-to-face. But here, now, these things are all cloudy. Hope is tinged with hurt. Faith is shaded by doubt. Lesser, broken things masquerade as love.

How does she find something permanent when the world around her is always changing, when not even she can stay the same? And if she finds it, how does she hold on?  

She Reads Truth tells the stories of two women who discovered, through very different lives and circumstances that only God and His Word remain unchanged as the world around them shifted and slipped away. Infused with biblical application and Scripture, this book is not just about two characters in two stories, but about one Hero and one Story. Every image points to the bigger picture—that God and His Word are true. Not because of anything we do, but because of who He is. Not once, not occasionally, but right now and all the time.

Sometimes it takes everything moving to notice the thing that doesn’t move. Sometimes it takes telling two very different stories to notice how the Truth was exactly the same in both of them.

For anyone searching for a solid foundation to cling to, She Reads Truth is a rich and honest Bible-filled journey to finally find permanent in a world that’s passing away.

Links Related to She Reads Truth

• Facebook: She Reads Truth Facebook Page
• Twitter: @SheReadsTruth
• Publisher’s Page: B&H Publishing
• Amazon: She Read’s Truth on Amazon