Choosing Love by Heidi Johnston

What do you wish that you had known about love before you made many mistakes and learned many lessons the hard way? This is a book about preparing our hearts to think rightly about love. You can tell from the pretty flowers that it is primarily aimed at young women, but I think that whatever age or stage we are at, this would be a helpful book to read to remind us of biblical truths about love. And then when you give it to the young people you know, you can be ready be ready to discuss it with them.

Heidi Johnston reminds us about our loving God and the way that he has designed us for relationship. This isn’t a book about dating, and it isn’t telling everyone to go out and get married. Johnston speaks gently and wisely and reminds us what the Bible has to say about God’s love and how we are to love one another. Yes she’s talking primarily to girls. In a beautiful letter to parents at the back of the book, she explains that the impetus behind writing was to tell her own daughters these important truths about love from God’s perspective rather than the world’s. But as a reader who really wishes that someone had handed me this book in the mid to late nineties, I do think that there is even something here for those who are already married. God is love. He has designed us for relationships where we live in obedience to him, and that is very hard. But he equips us for it and even when others let us down, his love of us through Christ is there.

Johnston wants to remind us that we are already loved. She wants young people to do a bit of preparation because, like it or not, they are going to need to be courageous against the onslaught from the world around them. We know this to be true. Whether its romantic comedies, magazines, MAFS or Instagram, snatching at happiness now, based on feelings, is a pale shadow of God’s love and the kind of love that he calls us to. I love the way that Johnston explains that she too finds the relationship of the Trinity confusing. I enjoyed her gentle tone and the way she takes us back to the Bible.

Real love is a decision. I’ll talk more in my next post about her chapter on forgiveness, where Johnston explains what a God-shaped marriage between two sinners looks like, and why we can decide to forgive when we have been hurt. In a foretaste of this discussion on page 38, Johnston’s description of a familiar scene cuts deeply:

“At home it could mean offering to do the dishes, even though you are tired. It might even mean letting go of something you are angry about, whether the other person deserves forgiveness or not.”

And she admits that in writing the book, she had to look at her own failings in marriage.

I hope that you can already start to think of a person to whom you could give this great book.

Meet Rachael Collins

Rachael is a follower of Jesus. Her friends are endeared and baffled in equal measure by her obsession with all things Jane Austen. In between helping a new church plant to grow and making chocolate fudge, she really hopes to read some good books this year.