Tour and Giveaway At Home in Your Heart by Carol McLeod

11 Apr 2022 Leave a comment

by Splashes of Joy in Carol McLeod

About the Book

Book: At Home in Your Heart

Author: Carol McLeod

Genre: Religion/Christian Living/Devotional

Release date: March 29, 2022

Where do you live—truly live? You may have a street address. You may think of your childhood home. But your real home, this side of heaven, is your heart.
Your heart is home to your soul and your emotions as well as your thought life. Your attitudes, habits, and dreams are found there.

At Home in Your Heart: Inviting Christ into Every Room is written for women of all ages, backgrounds, and stages of life. Each day in this sixty-day devotional by Carol McLeod includes an essay on the thought for the day, a heart inspection, prayer, and words from Scripture. Topics include: Is Anybody Home?; Blessed by the Begats; A Song at Midnight; Wear God Out; and many more, all offered with Carol’s characteristic humor, love, and affection.

If you are a Christian, Jesus lives in your heart with you, no matter what condition it’s in. If there are problems, however, He wants to clean until His hands bleed. Carol invites you to walk through the rooms of your heart to identify the issues that Christ is shining His light on.

“Jesus wants to paint your heart the color of white snow,” she says. “He will gently move around priorities, set things out for the trash man, and replace every outdated attitude with His unconditional love and inexpressible joy. He can take a home that has been literally demolished by the storms of life and rebuild it into a palace fit for a king.

MY THOUGHTS ON THIS BOOK

I enjoy getting new Devotions to use in my Bible Study, and I find At Home in Your Heart: Inviting Christ into Every Room by Carol McLeod to be a beautiful book full of Devotions that I will be using from time to time. It is written to guide Christian women into how we can and should invite Christ into Every Room in our hearts. The book is somewhat different that what I thought, but it is exactly what I need right now in my life.

Ladies, if you haven’t checked this book out, I highly recommend it. I think you will find an amazing little book you will be able to use as your devotion or to supplement the Devotions you are already doing!

A special thanks to the author/publisher for a copy of this book. I am not required to write a positive review, the opinions here are mine alone. I am disclosing this with my review in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.

Click here to get your copy!

About the Author

The president and CEO of Carol McLeod Ministries, Carol McLeod is a popular speaker at women’s conferences and retreats. She is the author of a dozen books, including Rooms of a Mother’s Heart: A Sacred Call and an Eternal Purpose, Vibrant: Developing a Deep and Abiding Joy for All Seasons, Significant: Becoming a Woman of Unique Purpose, True Identity, and Irrepressible Hope; StormProof: Weathering Life’s Tough Times; and Guide Your Mind, Guard Your Heart, Grace Your Tongue.

Carol hosts a twice weekly podcast, A Jolt of Joy! on the Charisma Podcast Network, and a weekly podcast, Significant. Her weekly blog, Joy for the Journey, has been named in the Top 50 Faith Blogs for Women. Carol also writes a weekly column in Ministry Today.

She has written several devotionals for YouVersion, including “21 Days to Beat Depression,” which has touched the lives of nearly one million people around the world. Her teaching DVD The Rooms of a Woman’s Heart won the prestigious Telly Award for excellence in religious programming.

Carol was also the first women’s chaplain at Oral Roberts University and served as chaplain on the university’s Alumni Board of Directors for many years.

Carol has been married to her college sweetheart, Craig, for more than forty years and is the mother of five children in heaven and five children on earth. Carol and Craig also happily answer to “Marmee and Pa” for their captivating grandchildren.

More from Whitaker House

By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it
is established; and by knowledge the rooms are filled with
all precious and pleasant riches.
—Proverbs 24:3–4

You might suppose that your home is 83 East Academy Street…or 6555 Alleghany Road…or 16 Willow Lane. But it’s not. You can frantically inspect every printed map and strategically pore over every listing in an address book, but you will never discover your actual home at a zip code, on a street, or in a city.

You may presume that your particular home consists of three bedrooms and a bathroom…or a massive family room…or a farmhouse kitchen. But again, your actual home has nothing to do with the floor plan that lies under the roof of the home in which you live.

Perhaps when you think of home, you remember the childhood house in which you hung stockings along the mantle on Christmas Eve, blew out candles on eighteen birthday cakes, and colored Easter eggs every spring! But even that home, where you began your journey and where you were shaped as an individual, is not your true home either. The home of your earliest memories will never be the home of your adult realities.

Your real home—this side of heaven, of course—is your heart. Your heart is where you live day in and day out. Your heart is the hidden but obvious home in which you live.

Your heart is where you collect clutter, but it is also where you receive company, fill up trash cans, and then remodel. The wonderful, miraculous part of you that is vibrantly alive lives within the canyons of your heart.

Your heart is home to your soul, which is the birthplace of your emotions. It is also where your thought life is framed. Many people are deceived into believing that their thought life begins in their minds, but this is not the case. Your thoughts and attitudes make themselves at home in your heart.

What about your habits? Where do they live? It is easy to discern that both good habits and bad habits, which efficiently determine the exact floor plan of your life, can easily be found residing in your heart. Even your dreams, which are often beyond your wildest imagination, can be found hanging out unassumingly in your heart.

Your heart is the part of you that sometimes longs to escape from its earthly address. Your heart feels constrained by the white picket fence that you so lovingly built around the parameters of your life. Your heart is the part of you that is never content with who you are or what you are becoming.

Your heart is your real home. It is the place where the “you” that vitally matters lives and breathes. This “you,” who no one else knows, lives life with reckless abandon, glorious intensity, and holy intention in your heart.

Your heart is the most sacred part of your life because it is there that Christ has lovingly taken up residence. If you have invited Him in, He lives in your heart, and you should honor His presence day after day after day.

But perhaps an important question for you and me to answer is, “What else is living in my heart with Christ?”

Have you allowed attitudes, habits, and dreams that should not be a part of your life to live side by side with Christ? Maybe some of our hearts need a deep and detailed housecleaning due to the clutter that has accumulated, the trash that has yet to be taken out, and the out-of-date décor that we foolishly insist doesn’t look all that bad!

Jesus will live in your heart no matter what condition it is in. However, once Jesus takes residence in one’s heart and shares that personal address, He wants to clean until His hands bleed.

Jesus wants to paint your heart the color of freshly fallen snow.

Jesus longs to redecorate the house that you call home into a sanctuary of hope and peace.

He will gently move around priorities, set out the trash, and replace every outdated attitude with His unconditional love and inexpressible joy.

Jesus can take a dilapidated shack that has been built with rotten wood and miraculously turn it into a glorious temple! He can transform an unstable and cracked foundation into one that is steady and secure. He can take a home that has been literally demolished by the storms of life and rebuild it into a palace fit only for a King.

My friend, not only will He be more at home in your sparkling, restored, and renewed heart, but the greatest miracle of all is that so will you! You will love what He does with your heart and you will gulp in the splendid atmosphere that only His dear presence provides. His goal, as the Divine Builder, is to fashion your heart into His home.

As you walk through the front door of your heart, holding His hand, you will find the place where you were always meant to belong and the place that wondrously calls your name. At last—you are home with Him!

You will find contentment in the heart that you call home when He holds the keys. As you examine the masterpiece that He has created, you will be amazed by the wonder and wisdom that His lordship has brought. Most of all, you will find that His presence has filled your home with joy!

I’d love to invite you to come with me on this restorative journey that will transform your heart into a home of comfort, stability, and peace. We will discover nooks and crannies in your heart that have been wonderfully designed for learning and growing. We will dispose of every outdated appliance and replace each one with eternal truth; we will repurpose every dream into a masterpiece of prayer. As we allow the Lord to be the Architect, the Builder, and our sure Foundation, our hearts will become a place of divine residence. And we will each utter with a whisper of worship, “Welcome home, Jesus. Welcome home!”

Blog Stops

Debbie’s Dusty Deliberations, March 30

Texas Book-aholic, March 31

She Lives To Read, April 1

Inklings and notions, April 2

Book Reviews From an Avid Reader, April 3

Locks, Hooks and Books, April 4

For Him and My Family, April 5

deb’s Book Review, April 6

Ashley’s Clean Book Reviews, April 7

Because I said so — and other adventures in Parenting, April 8

Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy, April 9

Christina’s Corner, April 10

Splashes of Joy, April 11

Cats in the Cradle Blog, April 12

Mary Hake, April 12

Happily Managing a Household of Boys, April 13

Giveaway

To celebrate their tour, Whitaker House is giving away the grand prize package ofa $20 Starbuck’s gift card and a copy of the book!!

Be sure to comment on the blog stops for nine extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link below to enter.

https://promosimple.com/ps/1c56d/at-home-in-your-heart-celebration-tour-giveaway

Tour and Giveaway for Room’s of a Mother’s Heart by Dr. Carol McLeod

28 Apr 2021 2 Comments

by Splashes of Joy in Carol McLeod, Celebration Lit Blog Tours, Celebration Tours

About the Book

Book: Rooms of a Mother’s Heart

Author: Dr. Carol McLeod

Genre: Christian Living

Release date: April 20, 2021

For thousands of years and in a myriad of cultures, women have forged identity, unconditional love, and vast purpose in the calling of motherhood. From Eve to Sarah, from Ruth to Mary, the Scriptures are filled with the accounts of the heart of a mother who was given a divine opportunity to raise the next generation for the purposes and call of the Father.

Inside the soul of every mother lies a heart that becomes a repository of sweet memories, hard lessons, glorious victories, ordinary days, glaring failures, and God’s grace over the years of mothering. The heart of a mother becomes home to jokes around the dinner table, holiday traditions, the tears of childhood, and the love that only a mother knows. And this tender heart that has given birth to the future of mankind or has lovingly adopted the seeds of the next generation also develops rooms of unsurpassed greatness and quiet strength. These are the Rooms of a Mother’s Heart.

With her characteristic charm, joy, and biblical teaching that she shares like a good friend over a cup of coffee, Carol McLeod examines what it means to be a mother and offers tender encouragement to all women who accept that calling.

Click here to get your copy!

About the Author

The president and CEO of Carol McLeod Ministries, Carol McLeod is a popular speaker at women’s conferences and retreats. She is the author of a dozen books, including Vibrant: Developing a Deep and Abiding Joy for All Seasons, Significant: Becoming a Woman of Unique Purpose, True Identity, and Irrepressible Hope; StormProof: Weathering Life’s Tough Times; Guide Your Mind, Guard Your Heart, Grace Your Tongue; Joy for All Seasons; Holy Estrogen; and Defiant Joy.

Carol was also the first women’s chaplain at Oral Roberts University and served as chaplain on the university’s Alumni Board of Directors for many years.

Rooms of a Mother’s Heart is a much needed book today. I haven’t given it a thought before now but there is indeed a number of rooms in a woman’s heart. Each room being different, with a different topic need or fix. Dr. Carol McLeod has accomplished an extraordinary job of taking each room and exploring each in a way that it is easily understood yet it is so much needed in my life.

From the Welcoming home of the precious baby till the Sitting on the Front Porch realizing how much you need to untie the Apron strings a little more each time, McLeod has something for every single mother reading this book. I was especially interested in the Welcoming home and few chapters after that, not that I was Welcoming a baby but I was Welcoming my son and daughter in law home with their first baby just a few months ago so this book is so appropriate for my sweet daughter in law. For all of you mothers out there, grab this book and settle into the teachings McLeod has for you in her wonderful book.

.A special thanks to the author/publisher for a copy of this book. I am not required to write a positive review, the opinions here are mine alone. I am disclosing this with my review in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.

More from Carol

Evening Conversation …

I am working with my fabulous editor on the edits for my next book that will be released in April.

“The Rooms of a Mother’s Heart” is the title and writing it has caused me to travel back through the memory bank of my heart.

As I was working on the edits for the chapter, “The Nursery”, tonight, I came upon these words and thought that I would share them with all of you in my evening conversation.

It’s a lesson that I am still learning …

“The nursery is filled with little things, isn’t it?

It holds little bears and little clothes, tiny blankets and miniature books.

It is in the nursery of your heart that you develop an appreciation for the little things in life and where you begin to understand that these are actually life’s big things.

The nursery teaches that it is the little things in life that are capable of building a grand and historic life.

So often, during other years of my life, I have made the glaring error of living for the big moments, for the red-letter days of graduations, weddings, and championship ball games. The nursery has taught me that those monstrous occasions, as fabulous as they might seem at the time, do not construct a vital and enchanting existence at all.

A glass of iced tea on the back deck while the children are playing baseball, and the sweet giggle of a child just waking up from a nap—these give birth to a whimsical life.

The smell of the roses as I walk to the front door, a good book and a cup of coffee on a rainy afternoon, and making cookies with the children to share with the neighbors—these build a life of grand and lasting proportions.

A glorious life is built on one small but meaningful and carefully chosen building block at a time.

A wonderful life is composed of long walks along country roads while the children gather wildflowers.

It is pancakes on a Saturday morning and popcorn on Sunday evening.

In the nursery of my heart, I have been taught that the real stuff of life is as close and as dear as the morning song of the bird outside my bedroom window, the companionship of my daughter on my daily run, and the treasure of reading a devotional book that belonged to my grandfather.

Those events may seem small and even in consequential to you, but to me, they deliver joy.

There is no applause in a nursery, nor are there diplomas on the wall or trophies lined up across the changing table, but it remains the most splendid room in the entire home.

The nursery is absent of the rush of adrenaline, but it is filled with the sweet sighs of contentment.

Perhaps living inside a regular day in which nothing of earth-moving significance happens is at the heart of all that is truly meaningful and extraordinary.

The glory of life is found quite simply in the ordinary moments.

The treasure of a life well lived is acquired not in getting but in giving.

The substance of all that is good, rich, and meaningful is found in a thousand inconsequential gifts that are easily overlooked if one is not careful.

I hope that you will treasure the time spent in the nursery of your heart and remember that it is the little things that contribute to a large life.”

These are my thoughts for Sunday, January 31, 2021.

Blessings, my friends.