Kristen Reads: 100 Days of Jesus Book Review

Hello, friends, and happy Sunday! Sunday’s are for coffee & Jesus, and today was no exception. It can be difficult making it out of bed and into church every Sunday morning in college, but I do my best to make it a priority. I actually did miss mass last week, so I was glad to be back this week. The Catholic church is still celebrating the Easter season, and this morning there was a Baptism for a sweet little baby. It was so beautiful and touching to watch. Throughout the baptism, I could so clearly feel God’s presence and love that I had chills and tears in my eyes. It doesn’t happen too often, but in those moments, I feel so blessed and overcome by God’s great big love.

Faith can be messy in the day-to-day, but in those moments, His love is simple.

I try to soak up those moments when I get them, and I’ve been listening to this song on repeat all morning. God’s great grace has continued to wash over me today, and for that, I am so thankful.

READ MORE: 5 Songs to Add to Your Christian Worship Playlist

One of my goals for this year is to read more, and I’ve been loving keeping track of all my monthly books read as motivation to actually read at least one book each month. A blogger friend from my Christian blogger Facebook group recommended joining the B&H/Lifeway Blogger program, which provides books to Christian bloggers for review. Today’s mass readings lined up so perfectly with the book I’ve received in exchange for my honest review, so today’s post is a two-in-one book review and reflection on church today!

The book I chose for review is 100 Days with Jesus: a Daily Glimpse into the Person of Christ by Diann Cotton.

I love this book because it goes through 100 ‘names’ for Jesus (like shepherd, lamb, king, cornerstone, etc.) with daily prayers and scriptures to go along with that ‘name’ for Jesus. I’ve been using this book along with this one for my daily prayers, and I like using these types of books to get me in the mindset of daily prayer. In learning to pray daily, people always ask the best way to get started, and I always recommend daily devotionals! I never really understood the purpose of them (because I didn’t understand the idea of using someone else’s prayers) until I started using them to begin my own nightly prayer time.

READ MORE: The Daily Habit that Changed my Prayer Life

100 Days is a great resource because it helps get in that prayerful mindset, while also learning more about the person of Christ. I never really considered just how many names there are for Jesus until I started flipping through this book! So I love that Cotton collected all these into a format that’s easy to read. This book would be great to read with kids too, and I think it’d be a great way to help little ones understand just who Jesus is. Another great resource for pursuing that child-like faith!

Faith doesn’t have to be complicated, so it’s nice when things are easy to understand.

Today’s readings at mass were all about us as God’s sheep, and the importance of Christ as our shepherd. The priest continually used this story throughout mass to relate us (and the baby being baptized) as God’s sheep, which is another child-proof lesson of faith. Listening to the readings and homily, I was reminded of 100 Days since the whole book is written around that idea of “Jesus as _______”. The 100 names included in the book go in alphabetical order, so you won’t get to ‘shepherd’ until day 83, but I flipped through to read it along with today’s readings ;).

I’m writing this post about an hour after mass (I stopped to pick up some coffee for my roommate and myself after), and I’m still listening to my Christian playlist and still feeling so overwhelmed by the ‘Reckless Love’ (listen to the song here) of God. This post may be a little all-over-the-place, but I’m still reflecting and digesting the great big love of Our Father this morning. We all go through cycles of faith, and it’s days like this when I wonder how I could ever have such little faith in such an all-powerful God.

If you’re looking for a new daily devotional to help with daily prayer, or if you just want to learn a little more about the person of Jesus, I’d highly recommend 100 Days! I’ve been reading more Christian books in general and I just found Thrift Books (use my referral link to get a 15% discount, I don’t make money off this, I just want to help save you money!), with the lowest book prices ever (even less than Amazon) and free shipping over $10, so that’s my favorite resource for expanding your personal library without breaking the bank and that’s also greatly helped restore and re-inspire my daily faith (I just read the Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis this weekend!).

I hope you enjoyed this first edition of the ‘Kristen Reads’ series, and I hope you’re having a lovely, Jesus-and-coffee-filled Sunday.

Blessings friend! And be sure to sign up for my new newsletter below if you’d like to receive even more Kristen Shane content 🙂