If you’re familiar with Jackie Hill Perry, you know she rarely wastes words and seldom wades in shallow waters. Jackie has become a trusted voice to many in navigating deep truths of God from a relatable and thoughtful perspective. This is one of the reasons her new devotional Upon Waking has been highly anticipated, following her first two books, Gay Girl, Good God and Holier Than Thou.
In this 60-day devotional, each entry dives into a certain Scripture passage. Instead of a theme throughout, Jackie’s goal for this devotional is to point you to the Word of God and entice you to go further. Jackie says it best in the introduction as she writes:
“This work isn’t the meal; it’s the appetizer. My attempt to take us beyond the quick and easy is by centering the Scriptures and not the self on each page. Each devotional is exegetically focused or observational in its approach. With either form, the goal is to stir you up. To whet your appetite, if you will, for God and His Word. Each devotional is a shovel. Once the cover is closed, it’s your turn to dig. To open the Scriptures, using my observations of them as a resource, not a conclusion. My heart for you is that by seeing Him, then and only then will you discover yourself. Primarily, that you need Him. It’s the insufficiency of everything, including devotionals, that signals our need for more than what we’ve been satisfied with.”
What I love most about Upon Waking is twofold. One, I appreciate the invitation to begin your day focused not on the typical distractions filling most mornings (social media, email, to-do lists) but rather on the Father, with the application of examining your heart in relation to Scripture. It is amazing how different your day can unfold when, at its start, you simply turn your attention to God. Two, I appreciate how Jackie turns the reader’s attention toward God—with short, daily entries that simply operate to kindle your hunger for an even deeper and richer encounter with Jesus after the daily reading is complete. She says:
“That’s the point of this book. To cultivate in you the desire for God. I can promise you that a sixty-day devotional cannot do that for you. God sent Christ to die for sin, overcoming the penalty and power of it so that you can know Him. And Christ sent the Spirit to fill the saints so that you can know Him. He is the sufficient one. So if ever you finish a page on day one or sixty and notice that you’re still hungry, good!”
If you’re looking for a compelling devotional that doesn’t let you off the hook, this is one you don’t want to miss. In true Jackie style, she puts her finger on the pulse of what each day’s passage is pointing to and helps confront the main issues we face in relation to knowing God. Some quotes from the book that give a hint of what you might find are:
- “Time has never been the reason anyone doesn’t pray; the heart is.”
- “Prayerlessness is almost always a humility issue—the natural consequence of a heart that tends to believe it is good without God. Yes, you may be busy, but it’s possible that you are also proud.”
- “Suffering creates an interpretive lens. Either refining the sufferer’s vision of God or blurring it.”
- “The end of life will be a kind of beginning, on a new heaven and new earth, where nothing and everything has changed forever.”
Upon Waking is a devotional you’ll want for yourself, but also one you’ll want to give to those you love. There’s no better gift than “daily reflections to discover ourselves and the God we were made for.”
More About Upon Waking
What do you wake up to each day? What do you discover once your eyes have opened and you put your feet to the floor? A mountain of notifications? An endless feed of headlines that make you angry? A flood of tasks that you can’t possibly get done in the next twenty-four hours?
What if you could wake up each day to discover something so much bigger—and so much better for you—than all that chaos? What if you could discover God? What if you could discover yourself in light of that God? What if your eyes could be opened to the things that really mattered? What if, in one simple devotional a day, you could glean principles from timeless wisdom to sharpen you for each day’s inevitable challenges?
In her lyrical, compelling, and poignant voice, bestselling author and Bible teacher Jackie Hill Perry offers sixty short, daily reflections on specific passages from Scripture to help you awaken to the God you were made for, the life you were made for, and the person you were made to be.
About Ashley Veneman
Ashley Veneman serves as a marketing specialist for books for B&H Publishing. Ashley and her husband, Justin, have two children and live just outside Memphis, Tennessee, with a cat named Nancy. She holds a BA in Communications from Union University, and an MA in Communication Rhetoric from The University of Memphis. Ashley loves teaching young women in her local church, photography, and planning epic road trips with her family.
